Peter Jo

To Tracey L ,  The Editor AA Reviver Magazine                       “The Choice to Live”

Distance is no obstacle to the pain alcoholics can cause to those we love most.

22 years ago my eldest daughter in the UK rang me to say that my other daughter had given birth to my first grandchild and that I had not picked up the phone or even sent a card. There was an appalling silence. I had no answer for her and she said, “Daddy, you’re a bastard!” Then in tears, she hung up. I don’t cry easy but now my eyes have filled up… Without doing anything, just being a drunk, I had hurt the two people I loved most in the entire world, from 12,000 miles away. Thank God, we are all the best of friends today. They have forgiven me and we keep in touch through the Net, the phone and visits home.

Apart from obsessive workaholism and a few disgraceful patches glimpsed through blackouts, the ‘80’s are still a complete mystery to me – after two decades! I do remember my poor wife driving me home from yet another party in our flashy sports car one typical night and like a two-year-old leaving the beach; I was cussing her for spoiling my fun, all the way. In an ugly hush we got into bed, where I lay on my back thinking, when is she going to stop crying and let me get to sleep? I don’t love her, she can’t love me. Why doesn’t she leave? And why can’t I feel anything? In the morning she left for work and I ‘came to’ – filled with panic shame and self loathing, looking over at her pillow spotted with sad mascara. (It is impossible for alcoholics to love anyone or anything, certainly not ourselves, when we drank as we did.)

On Tuesday the 8^th May 1990 a friend came to dinner and invited me to an AA meeting up the road – and I joined the biggest dysfunctional family in the world. All I remember is being seriously intimidated by the calm fearless eyes of the sober members and the intense relief at discovering what was wrong with me. It amazes me when I hear folks quote something they heard from their first meeting, because I haven’t the foggiest idea what anyone said… 

All I know is that one day I had to be sad and I had to drink, every day and the following morning – I never had to drink again!

And for the likes of us – if that isn’t a miracle then there ain’t any miracles! 

Filled with fear and zero self-confidence, envying the arrogant newcomers who could hide it, I was one of the very lucky ones with the ‘gift of desperation.’ After several weeks of crazy making confusion and wall crawling boredom I suddenly realised that I hadn’t thought about a drink for a week and that was when I first thought that maybe I could do it too. I had hope.

For the first 18 months, with no idea why, I cried in the dark walking home from meetings. At the end of that time, my opinion of all the drunk people being exciting and the sober ones boring, had completely turned around. I think I had to go through that inner turmoil, in order for that radical change to happen.

If you are new, trembling alone in your room with nobody to see you except a God you can no longer believe in – and you go to sleep instead of to the bottle shop – it might be the bravest thing you ever do!

Whenever I say that, or even write it down, I sit with it and feel the quiet courage it takes – and get goose-bumps, because it really is a sacred moment in our lifetimes. (The funny thing about doing something brave is that you feel like the world’s biggest coward!) Nevertheless, you will have taken the first huge step up a mountain of grief, anger, temptation and joy as your denied feelings flood back in.

In the early days, what might help you to hold out may be to read from the bottom paragraph of Page 84 in ‘Alcoholics Anonymous, ‘ beginning with, “…And we will have ceased fighting anything or anyone – even alcohol, we recoil from it as from a hot flame.” And then continuing over to Page 85; finishing at the bottom of the second paragraph with, “…It is the proper use of the will.”

Really understanding those few paragraphs is something for you to look forward to. It is my favourite part of the whole ‘Big Book.’ It sounds a bit ‘holy’ but this might be the time to start ‘faking it till you make it,’ as they say. Like I said, it is impossible to believe in anything when you drink the way we did, but there are no atheists in life boats. It could save your life, liberty and sanity.

Fact: Alcoholism turns kind decent people into raging monsters and it always gets worse – never better. I’d say that having written ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, ’ Robert Louis Stevenson must surely have had alcoholic parents. Thank God I didn’t!  Drunken heroes in movies are sometimes portrayed as being cool, but the reality of waking to that enslaved shame and fear is anything but cool. Accepting the truth, pain and denial is bad enough, but for a woman, just admitting to it even to themselves must be much scarier. It is often quoted in AA: ‘They never say, ‘as drunk as a lady.’ In every way, I take my hat off to all of them.

I like the smell of petrol, not that ethanol stuff, the pure old fashioned one, (though I ‘never ‘sniffed’ it.)  But if I drink it I’ll soon die, it’s poisonous. Alcohol will kill me too but slowly like a cancer. If I tried a sip today I might wake up three weeks later grinning up in terror from a gutter in Darwin, instead of being careful not to cut up my alloy wheels in Sydney.

I’ll never be a bishop or a politician. All my friends know I am ‘AA.’ It is my 12^th step. If anyone gets into trouble, they all know I am here. Booze has become just ‘coloured water’ to me. At home we have a small collection of lead crystal, and bottles of posh port, brandy, whisky, vodka, rum and wines. A few of them are even open! I finished up drinking cheap $5 bottles of Minchinbury Brut champagne – my drink of choice today is tap water. I love it. Suppliers keep giving my wife magnums of Moet Shandon, some of them in pretty boxes with fake gold and leather pouches. We’ve got eight of them lying in the kitchen and I cheerfully thumb my nose at them. For the first 10 years I couldn’t have anything in the house, especially open! (I do not recommend that sort of silly attempt to impress your friends until you are well into long sobriety!) Lying beside my computer is the knife I used to hold to my chest. Just like the bottle shop, it’s there if I choose to use it.

I will never complete my steps 6 and 7. Never be entirely rid of my character defects, but they have become like tiny dust mites in the sunshine, ‘just coloured water’ and as dear Baba Ram Dass used to say, “Well hello lust… come in and have a cup of tea!”

My lovely devoted wife, Vonny and I quarrel maybe 4 times a year – completely opposite to the misery of my drinking days. My cat died, my dear mother died, I wrote off my favourite sports car, we’ve been on many exotic holidays and I’ve been through 3 years of fairly agonising cancer – bedridden in constant pain throughout 2008, the final year. And never in all those times did I decide to drink. Why make a tough situation infinitely worse? My brave Vonny, (who I hurt most,) spent well over $70,000 on both orthodox and every available alternative treatment to keep me here. At my annual check-up recently, my oncologist told her new registrar to deal with me, describing me as indestructible! HA!

Suicide,  I heard in ‘the rooms,’  is the absolute solution to a temporary problem.

I wanted to die. Now I want to live!

‘Peter Jo’ Neutral Bay Saturday midday meeting              

(A bad Christian because I’m a Buddhist. A bad Buddhist becasuse I love God and I have quit all my addictions… well…  except fast cars.)

Like me, this is an un-proof-read work in progress:

A few bits of Peter Jo. – a foolish happy monk still loving God but still discovering more about the limitless peace and acceptance of Buddhism, like the philosopher Hermann Hesse, carrying my temple around in my head. Living simple, I’m just lying back on my leaf like some tiny creature,  floating down life’s river, currently enjoying the smooth deep waters, anticipating an occasional exhilarating – or traumatic ride over the rapids here and there. Periodically locked into a few eddies, going around in boring circles before being dragged out into the main stream once more, but generally enjoying the tranquil serenity of deep water and then haughtily standing up for the umpteenth time – and deservedly falling off and desperately having to swim for another leaf to crawl onto and sensibly sitting down. Learning my lesson once again to just go with the flow, to just be here, try not to judge, gaze at the astonishing scenery and keep on grabbing all the fun I can get along the way – seizing it with both hands – because one day I will sit and recollect all of this and assess what I did or did not do, with regret or gratitude, shame or delight. We are all exactly where we are supposed to be, doing exactly what we are doing and we are all doing it perfectly. (Ram Dass.) “Pete,” my mother used to say, “Nothing is very important.”  They should teach that in schools and there would be less teenage suicides.

 A friend said recently, “…but we are too old for that, aren’t we Peter?” My surprisingly sardonic answer was, “I am young and then I am dead.”  Suicide is the absolute solution to a temporary problem. If you ever feel enough is enough – first go for a long stroll with a dear friend, then help someone – anyone; then if you are still sad, pack your bags and run. Find a job stewarding on a huge deep sea cruise ship. Just get your sea legs and do what the purser tells you – that’s the most fun I ever had working – ever! But don’t miss out on the magical simple joys to come in this short sojourn down here. Imagine losing everything you have…   Now imagine getting it all back. Smell the roses, eat more germs, be silly, belly laugh once a week, cry now and then, go at your own pace, breathe deeply – often.

Buddha said, “There are no holy people and no holy places, only holy moments.”  There is so much incredible jubilation to feel – as varied as you can imagine…!   Things like the awe inspiring sight of Vonny stepping out of that white Rolls Royce and climbing the steps of St Martins in the Fields Trafalgar Square towards me, on that sunny morning of 6th October 1973 – and Joyfully serving my ‘Nefertiti’ from morning ‘till night, forever… The precious unmerited love and devotion I receive from my two gorgeous girls, ‘Nicky Loo’ and ‘Kaela’ in England. (Those are the only 3 people in the world with whom I keenly seek approval.)

The myriad of adrenalin rushes buzz on: The inability to sit still with the kettle drums vibrating on my stomach at a live symphony by Stravinsky, Jumping backwards off a 300 foot crag to abseil down after a knackering climb in Snowdonia with Cp’n Morgan - always shouting either ”Geronimo” or “Bridgett Bardot!” Standing on a bucking yacht in a drenching force 8 gale in Biscay shouting ‘Eeee-hoo!’ In fact, bobbing up and down on anything that floats, hands free in a heavy sea, gazing out at that sparkling clean ever moving desert. Somersaulting out of Billy’s Lotus Super 7 at 95 MPH on Hunger Hill, both of us unhurt and laughing fit to bust as we looked down at it – sadly up-side-down, squashed flat as a pancake – luckily before seat belt laws! The stinging knife in my thigh on the hippy trail in Marrakech; the bed-bugs in Casablanca and Pastor Cooper’s redeeming hospitality. Running laughing falling and running again with the bulls in Spain; the pet monkey that fell asleep in my lap on a yacht in Gibraltar; another little one doing the same on Puket. Smelling God, burying my nose into the dry musky fur of dear Jinny, my donkey at Froghall. Bela Ruka’s six tigers that broke my heart in 1964.

Stroking an agitated forty-year-old Thai elephant’s face after her alarming disagreement with her keeper as her eye relaxes with empathy spanning our species, receiving my love and respect, sharing long empathetic moments of calm - just two beings melting into one consciousness in our silent secret language. And then slowly stroking and gently patting her immense trunk as in an instant of panic, she inadvertently squeezes my entwined left arm dangerously tight – my ulna and radius twisting together in our mutual affection. (And feeling blessed relief when she politely – and promptly looses me!) 

Standing eye to eye sharing the universe with that magnificent sleeping brown Tai Pan snake I stroked with the hanging sleeve of my sweater in the winter of ‘83 and the honour I felt when he left without killing me. The 2 stinking wild Doberman guard dogs I petted in East London, my heart pounding as they both simultaneously licked my face. Holding the two tiny red fox cubs in Wales; the lion I stroked in Bali; the two baby crocodiles running up and down my arm in the 60’s and the 5 foot boar constrictor that finally fell asleep on my lap. I must be boring, animals invariably seem to sleep on me.

Sharing supper for over 20 years with dear ‘Big Red’ the pacifist and generations of my other possums on the kitchen windowsill. The sad night when he wanted to come and live with us and I had to pick him up and put him out. Poor Red. ‘Mascara,’ ‘Close eyes,’ ‘Sore-eyes,’ (later renamed, ‘Scar-face,’) ‘Baby,’ Son of Red and ‘Close Eyes,’ born behind the washing machine. And then much later, the other unnamed baby who played with Tom, our totally telepathic cat who tolerates ALL my creatures with patient forbearance. (I arrived home one evening to find Tom and the new baby possum sitting side by side; noses almost up against the glass balcony door, waiting to be fed!) Tom even disdainfully ignores ‘Mr. and Mrs. Cheeky’ and the other 32 screeching lorikeets all over my arms and head, eating bread and honey, painfully making our ears ring and never once was I shat upon! And the beautiful crow family, calling me for wet bread and/or cat food from the garden and the magnificent blue black, grey eyed male, singing amazing long and wide-ranging love songs to me, right beside my elbow on the balcony rail. So many incredible privileges!

Getting accepted by Hanna Barbera in a 3 minute interview and ultimately animating 1000 (clean) frames a week in ‘work-a-holism’ at Burbank Films. Joining AA in 1990 after a bad, mystifying, blank decade of insidious alcohol addiction – and now, my new life with gratitude for my second chance. Then in 2005, getting the ‘big C’ (my silliness inside,) 3 times and the relentless agony, so bad I can’t remember – all through 2008 but then getting cured – forever – by my stoic, loyal, unwavering Vonny and the healing love of SO many others! AND with my Sobriety intact!

Doing 110 k’s an hour half lying in my new sports car on the freeway, with the windows down and the sunroof open under a clear blue sky. Giving a gold coin or two to a street person; smiling at small children and seeing a loving God in their guileless eyes. Angrily admonishing shouting, frightening fathers – in front of their frightened children, twice – so far…  (Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.) Getting into wrecked cars and chatting with trapped people awaiting ambulances, (5 times so far…) Smiling as I touch my forelock with a steady heart-beat, as rude dangerous drivers cut me up. Doing an almost perfect set of Qigong and Tai Chi on Balmoral Beach on a warm cloudy day with the sand almost all to myself…    

Isn’t it great that money can’t buy happiness?

During this trip alone, I must have experienced millions more unrecalled singularly joyous moments through so many shifting decades, eventually living by the ways of the Buddha; not to mention the countless previous escapades down here on this beautiful blue sphere. To return relatively soon to whatever the Eternal Source (which I call God,) really is. Home again to the unimaginable place that I believe we all come from – in the hope that I might have evolved into a better being than when I arrived.  And wow! To see my little Goddess again!

Nobody can know what will follow this apparent illusion we see as life – we can only feel what it might be. We are the only species on Earth that stupidly denies death. Some eminently amusing bloke wrote, ‘…but I thought they’d make an exception in my case.’ Denial ain’t a river in Egypt – it will even happen to me; but how can I be entirely fearful of passing through the brief slender veil of death, having been so very fortunate?

Blessings, From the Fool on the Hill.

I just love to profane the sacred of the status quo, but I’m not sure that this bit of quo could be called profanity – or even swearing…!  Sacrilege perhaps? However, if the truth hurts it’s probably supposed to.

Men have secretly feared the wit and wisdom of women since before the written word. When a woman has known a man intimately she knows all men. When a man knows a woman intimately, he still knows nothing at all.

From children, women are quicker to speak, learn and mature to adulthood, much sooner than their opposite gender. Without the strength of men they have to find more subtle ways to accomplish heavy tasks. Their intuitive gifts of manipulation will forever be a mystery to men.  They have nine hemispheres of brain; whereas men have two – one above the belt the other below, (a little humour there.) Or as Billy Connelly said, “If women are so good at multi-tasking, why can’t they have a headache and sex at the same time…? man.”

Women have wider peripheral vision than men do, enabling them to see the bigger picture – and to see men’s bums while appearing to be looking at their backs. In order to peek at a woman’s revealed cleavage the myopic male has to look away from her eyes and down directly at it! And this brazen gaze is frequently misinterpreted by timid ladies. It’s why men can’t find things. Women are stronger than they look; they can ‘multi-task’ with hands that are incredibly quicker and nimbler than those of men. They can converse with ease while performing the most complex activities, with enviable dexterity. Roadmen lean on their shovels because they are talking – they cannot talk and work at the same time.

Men are ‘largely’ taller and stronger and from the beginning they hunted while the women cooked, protected and reared the children. Men where always hairier than women to survive the cold away from the fire and leaner in order to run fast, then drive heavy spears into beasts. With their physical strength and deep fearsome roars, they have dominated women since first hitting them over the head with clubs. (Smile next time you hear the baritone voice of a tall manager ‘doing lunch’ in a restaurant, no smarter than his peers – just mega decibels louder!)

On a declining scale, the more primitive the people the worse men treat their chosen women. Even today, a Zulu bride in Africa would feel rejected by her husband if he did not beat her on her wedding night! Boy-children in some third world countries are virtually worshipped and female babies still killed! 

Conversely it is correct for a ‘civilised’ man to be a little afraid of his wife, treating her with dignity and respect.

Following the discovery of the tens of  thousands of  ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ in 1920 we have learned of the ancient plot the male Homosapiens devised against it’s opposing gender, (written eloquently in ‘The Genesis of the Grail Kings’ by Lawrence Gardner. )

Religious leaders forbade women to enter the temples with the weak excuse that they were unclean due to menstruation! Poppycock! The Catholics slavishly hold onto the archaic decree that priests must be celibate, in the vain hope that men might acquire the higher spirituality and purity of women – who could, without losing their confidence nor gaining nervous tension, go without sex for decades!

The priests could never hope to attain such devout piety; it was completely contrary to their most primal instincts. A man’s mind is apparently distracted by fleeting thoughts of sex for about seventy percent of the day. And when that’s a sin, they were and are, even with the strongest faith - in for some pretty up-tight-outer-sight tension…! And that impervious strategic intelligence is what  confused and feared men most in the fairer sex.

Accordingly, with mankind’s height strength and resounding bluster, this is the cunning plot forever perpetuated by laws and traditions that women have been sucked into since time immemorial.

Incidentally, I do not recommend the very unsettling ‘Genesis of the Grail Kings.’ to anyone devoutly religious who does not have the courage to face possibly, more truth than has ever been printed!  Virtually all of history has inevitably, been a string of political lies and almost every belief we were taught is stood right on its head in those shocking pages! And we can’t blame Mr. Gardner; he merely translated it all from the Sanskrit – and I’m only gossiping about what he wrote. And although they are the oldest written documents, they were still only written by mankind.

Scandalous things were written in the scrolls, like Jehovah being only one of a committee of Gods. I think his original name was Elhom and he didn’t like us very much. (Thou shalt have no other God but Me – I am a jealous God, a God of wrath etc… His gentle brother, Enki, loved us however, but the Jewish people apparently chose the wrong one.

Whoops!

Then there was the beautiful Lilleth, who Enki loved and was an insatiable nymphomaniac! Men would tremble in their beds at night in case she came in and raped them! Many, afraid to sleep alone in the house. (I doubt that a Shropshire lad would have had any fear..!)   Sorry, serious stuff this theological academia.

It’s spooky – the amount of relatively new people entering Alcoholics Anonymous who say that the kind God they know in AA is not the hell and damnation one they were taught about in Sunday school.

Anyhow, Adam and Eve were the first successful hybrids of the Niffillim? ‘Giants amongst men who came down in spaceships called ‘chariots of fire’ and ‘lay with the daughters of man’ (in Genesis chapter 6 verse 24, by memory.) Doo-de-doo-doo!

There was lots of crazy alarming stuff like that  – profaning more supposed illusional sanctity of the status quo. For instance, the ‘Masons are seemingly good guys who were once the Knights Templar, who’s only sin it seems was becoming richer than King Richard, (the George W Bush of the 12th Century) with the bounty from murdering poor little Arab people – and anyone else who got in their way.

Was it Oliver Cromwell who kicked out the King and ruled England peacefully for 10 years or so? Unlike Johnny the tax collector, ‘Richard ‘The Psycho Heart’s’ brother, history portrays Cromwell as a violent lefty bad guy, yet that decade was probably the first glimmer of Democracy. I’m probably wrong and should look it up in my books but I’m too idle. And anyway, when you reach the grand old age of 33 you don’t need to impress people as much. I used to get high marks in history but I’ve forgotten a lot. (I was 30 for exactly 38 years until the 24^th of Feb – and suddenly the years caught up with me and now I am 33..!  Jeepers – it creeps up, I’ll tell you!)

In actuality, I was born the same day as George Harrison and the day after Keith Richards – a sobering lesson in saying No to drugs!!

Please don’t think I’m not a Royalist incidentally, ‘cos I am. They do no harm – now that they’ve stopped killing people. Oh and as a mere male, I am almost certainly quite wrong in regard to my generalization concerning feminine sexuality. I have always adored the puzzling gentler sex and this is about them, not swords greed and testosterone. Apparently, the all covering Hijab-compliant clothing for Muslim women only came in about 200 years ago; a bit before the introduction of long cumbersome skirts for European women, which limited their actions and conduct.

Hey girls! Ask your date if he loves his mother. If he says no – say “Thank you and goodnight,” because if he hates her, it’s likely he will subconsciously hate all women!

Any old how, I will continue tweaking this rambling drivel for a giggle and twiddle it with a little more twaddle, on another idle day… and loving my God/Enki.

PERFECT AWARENESS IS PERFECT PARANOIA:

In 1976 at twenty-past-seven pm on the Tuesday before Christmas in the UK, my wife Vonny and I were traveling North on the Dover road in the county of Kent where we lived at that time. Vonny was driving our Austin Healey on a stretch of motorway a little over two miles south of Canterbury. It was a completely cloudless evening and from the passenger seat I noticed a small star sized white light moving at incredible speed from our right. Wow that plane is really moving, I thought and then it stopped dead in the sky!

I kept my eye on it and it reversed a short distance, even faster this time, stopping momentarily before returning left. It stopped and in a millisecond, dropped diagonally down to the right and stopped again. It moved left, stopped and then whizzed obliquely upwards faster than a mosquito – zip, zip zip completing a triangular path.

Then it disappeared from one place and reappeared in another!

It moved upwards, stopped again and then began to slowly move down towards us and I asked Vonny to pull off the motorway onto an approaching slip road.

‘Pull up here,’ I said, adding that I was seeing something strange up in the sky. I got out of the car and the white light came straight for us, getting bigger of course and stopped at about a thousand feet to our right.

It was a shiny silver disc shaped flying saucer!

Hovering completely motionless at an oblique angle it seemed to be just as absorbed in staring at us. I invited Vonny to get out of the car but she declined, preferring to lean out of the driver’s window. I was standing beside her and at her suggestion we described to each other, exactly what we were seeing.

‘It is silver, looks like polished silver alloy,’ I said, ‘It is ‘Electric Light Clear!  Its silhouette is shallower at the bottom than at the top. The portholes are definitely round and brightly lit, much brighter than aircraft lights, dazzling! They are going round, clockwise to a sort of heartbeat. Buddum…buddum…buddum.’

‘The top is revolving but the bottom isn’t,’ Vonny said. ‘You can see that the portholes are going around because they are getting smaller at the edges. It’s about the size of a jumbo jet and it’s not making a sound!’ We both agreed later that the light in the ‘portholes’ was indeed much brighter than the stars around it and wondered why no other cars were stopping to see it hanging there, so big!

After about three or four minutes it silently zoomed off, heading towards the village of Sandwich to our right. Before leaving, it did not ‘bank’ as a helicopter would have had to. Instead, belying the theory of every action needing an opposite reaction it remained at that slightly oblique angle, moving off  base first at an unbelievable speed  like the white dot on an analogue TV over the horizon.

Oddly it was not an alarming experience at all, more one of exciting wonder – a sort of ‘fairies at the bottom of the garden’ feeling. I got back into the car and we drove on to a dinner party we had been heading for in the next village. Neither of us had been drinking but our friends would not believe us, asking ‘what we were on.’ We gave up trying to convince them and did not report it to the press. We were in the midst of a charity advertising campaign for our business, with the staff all dressed in pantomime costumes. Folks would have thought we were out for more publicity and anyway, apart from probable ridicule we had a vague uncomfortable feeling that the authorities would not have liked us to publicise it.

Our minor business challenges and other seemingly important cares of life were suddenly diminished compared with the incredible sighting of that evening. As the years pass we occasionally retell our short surrealistic tale. In doing so we’ve watched skepticism shadow the countenances of the most unbiased acquaintances. Nevertheless, nothing can make us forget those feelings of awe and finite smallness – or the silver metallic clarity of that silent wingless machine.

In the early nineties, we were at the Sydney Opera House in conversation with three little old ladies, recounting our unworldly event. As we finished our tale a guy in his thirties approached me wearing an Australian Air Force badge on his blazer. He put his face within an inch from mine and with furious malice said, ‘You saw nothing!’

He was obviously a ‘pen pusher,’ not a warrior type. I thought afterwards that it was foolish to get that close to an Englishman’s face – we have a tendency to fight with our heads! I was raised in the country and we are used to more space around us than city folk. Where I come from if anyone stands in your face like that it means they either fancy you or they want to fight. Perhaps I should have kissed the silly idiot. If I had any doubts about what we had seen, after that little fiasco I was totally convinced – not only of the existence of UFO’s, but also of government cover-ups!

Over fifteen million people worldwide claim to have seen UFO’s. If just one of those people is neither mistaken nor seeking attention, then UFO’s would have to be the most important discovery since the Dead Sea Scrolls in nineteen twenty!

You don’t have to believe it by the way.

It’s true, but you don’t have to believe it.

The Editor

The Mosman Daily

 Dear Editor,

It has taken me two months to calmly write this down.

In January I drove over the Harbour Bridge for the first time in close on a decade. (My wife does most of the driving these days and I mostly look out of the window.) On my return I took the wrong exit out of Clarence Street and had to use the helpful small loop exit back into York for another try at getting back across the Bridge.

Once more in Clarence’ I took the next left entry for the Bridge and encountered a queue of about eight vehicles waiting to be breathalysed by the Police. I wasn’t in a hurry; in fact I was vaguely amused since I’ve been in AA for 22 years.

But then I was astonished to find that I was in a very short bus lane! I had come to the front of a queue of motorists whose only crime was unawareness! It was mid morning in the middle of the week, traffic was very light and there was absolutely no benefit to any of us being there.

Having gone up the first ‘wrong’ turn off from Clarence, I didn’t want to go down into Kent Street to the Observatory, so I took the middle exit, out of a choice of three and got robbed of $297 – and far more valuable than that extortion, was a point lost off my licence!

Travellers used to fear highway robbers. Now they travel in fear of the police! As if the Orwellian revenue cameras are not enough to make driving a stressful experience! Why can’t the police give warnings to motorists, when they can see no actual danger caused by their unfamiliarity with the roads?

We were all in need of advice not punishment, on that day.

Yours sincerely,

 PS  When I pointed out that I had caused no danger the officer said, “There would be if you had a bloody big red bus up your arse!” In which case, by parking there, he was putting both of us in danger!

Not to waste too much of your time,

Here is a SHORT joke that starts badly and ends superbly!

Five surgeons were discussing who were the best patients to operate on.

The first surgeon says, ‘I like to see Accountants on my operating table because when you open them up, everything inside is numbered.’

The second responds, ‘Yeah, but you should try Electricians! Everything inside them is colour-coded.’

The third surgeon says, ‘No, I really think Librarians are the best; everything inside them is in alphabetical order.’

The fourth surgeon chimes in, ‘You know I like Construction Workers. Those guys always understand when you have a few parts left over at the end, and when the job takes longer than you said it would.’

 But the fifth surgeon shut them all up when he observed, ‘You’re all wrong. Politicians are the easiest to operate on. There’s no guts, no heart, no balls, no brains, and no spine, and there are only two moving parts – the mouth and the rectum – and they are both interchangeable’

In the wake of the courageous, the Right Honourable Mr. Kevin Rudd, Australia’s first leader for decades, having been undemocratically voted out for the second time – by lesser men/women; in my ‘umble self opinionated opinion:

Did you know that the lesser figure that ‘his usurper ’ settled on for the miners was the one that Mr. Rudd chose to settle on anyway? And only one TV channel reported it just after his first political demise – and then, only once. And then I heard her make the same offer!

Napoleon, Churchill, Hitler, Stalin, Kol Pot – and Kevin Rudd, all had one thing in common: they were surrounded by pestered, overworked people. Now they have all gone back to sleep.

I said the miners would get him and they did – from within the party!

And I’ll bet it cost them millions in covert bribes!

I will never forget his tears - not for lost ambition, but for his principles and what he tried to do for the people he loved.

I’d love to get the lying bastard by the throat, who informed two companies on the Internet, that I had a little dick and couuldn’t get it up!   My ‘inbox’ has become really boring.

DO NOT EVER BUY ONE OF THESE SILLY THINGS!

The epademic is spreading to Australia now.  Is there no limit to the silliness of American consumerism? Our mothers used to bake these for birthday parties.  They are for children not mature clear thinking grown ups. They even claim them to be organic! Back in the UK, my uncle Geoff was a head master and had his students do a street survey on public IQ and the result was that the average citizen had the IQ of a 14 year-old.

It must have dropped a bit since I saw that they now have vending machines for cupcakes, 24/7 in the world’s most powerful military country on the planet.

The world has truly gone mad…!   Well it has!!

A quick tip if you read – or better still re-read his BEST book so far, ‘Stillness Speaks:‘ 

Inside the first page, write, ‘White Noise.’

A year after I joined AA back in 1991 I tried meditation and persevered for three weeks, 20 minutes a day seeking emptiness - and all I got was angry! In AA they say that if you are alone (with your thoughts,) you are in the worst possible company, but I think that only applies to people in early recovery. I could meditate easily in a group and soon feel dizzy with mindless tranquil serenity. For daily usage however, anger was not quite the feeling I was looking for and so I took up Tai Chi which is meditation in movement, (a much more healthy way to meditate.) This really works for me and in absolute concentration to adhere to the form I frequently feel an adrenaline buzz from elbows to fingertips, virtually seeing the ethereal Chi trailing off, 2 feet from my fingers! Then sometimes it rains; I get busy – or lazy but need to just stop and while reading ‘Stillness Speaks’ I found the answer to clearing my mind.

I listened to the ringing in my ears. And presto! I had something to listen to instead of my inane chatter. Listening to the white noise, I can now meditate where and whenever I please. There may be a slight downside to my suggestion – it could be hard to take your awareness away from the ringing when you’ve finished with it. If this happens it might be an idea to put on some music.

I might be wrong, but I think it was Eckhart Tolle who coined the phrase, ‘serenity stealers.’ Most of us have met them at some time in our careers. These are people you have been forced to work alongside who by nature or nurture, have the most unfortunate personalities.

Perhaps lacking much of a sense of humour, they still appear to be just as pleasant as those around them, even deceptively friendly. In actuality they mistrust everyone, especially those with an easy smile. My mother said “Envy people if you must Pete, but never be jealous of them. Jealousy hates someone for what they have and is one of the ugliest emotions.” Maybe that is one of their problems.

They will beguilingly befriend you for a while and then out of the blue with startling hatred in their eyes, they will, figuratively speaking, slap you in the face!   This will come as a complete shock to you since nothing happened to cause it. They may tell secret lies about you, do something devious to get you into trouble or find ways to publicly ridicule you. If you try to understand or make it up with them they will think you are weak, crawling and patronising and lose all respect for you. Do not be surprised to see people looking askance at you, as if you were a thief or child molester. Just quietly be yourself; it will all soon float away as it becomes someone else’s turn and the truth will out.

If you don’t ignore them – they will lure you into a false sense of security and once you are sucked in, they will pounce again, sinking the knife in with more lies, insults and weird innuendos. If you are unaware of this disorder and keep going back for more, they can suck out so many seemingly small dribs and drabs of your self confidence that you could become mysteriously hurt and depressed.

The only way to live with them is to pity the poor things. I find that saying to myself, “It could be worse, I could be them.” This helps enormously. They must live in intolerable misery, frequently blurting out unbelievable overtly cruel things, which they probably don’t even consciously mean to say and regret afterwards.

Following the earliest possible attack from a Serenity Stealer, ignore them forthwith, (at which time they will patronise you.) Should you suspect that they are defaming you, make it publicly known that you two do not get on. This way, regardless of whatever they say about you will be disregarded by your other coworkers, by the silly sod’s prejudice.

Then have as little to say to them as is graciously possible, forever… That is the golden rule.

About a week after she was personally crushed by one such damaged being, a charming and vivacious friend was walking down the street on a windy day and bliss…  a piece of paper landed almost under her foot. She picked it up and it read, “WHY DO YOU TRY SO HARD TO FIT IN, WHEN YOU WERE BORN TO STAND OUT!!!!”

Isn’t that lovely?