52

I don't believe it is an exaggeration to say that our story - the story of our world - cannot end happily ever after. In my lifetime, probably, we will see global average temperatures increasing by up to 6 degrees Celsius. In the next 22 years CO2 emissions are projected to increase another 45%. They are already beyond CRITICAL levels.

I guess it is this information, and my own personal context, that governs to some extent my present mindset. Over the past few days I've dived into an Enid Blyton book (Look out, Secret Seven) and tonight I'm embarrassed to say I started watching a series of Anne of Green Gables I bought on DVD.

When I was a wee lad I read every Enid Blyton book I could get my hands on. Enid Blyton produced over 800 books in 40 years. I suppose it started with Noddy and Big Ears. My father painted me a picture of a Noddy Scene that went onto my wall for many years. As a young boy I read through all of the Famous Five books, every Secret Seven book, all of the Adventure Series. Even as I grew older I studied her biography and was very dismayed to learn of her death - that she had died 4 years before I was even born, so meet her was never possible). It was through audio tapes of her books and one JVC video I got my hands on once upon a time, that I developed a love and fascination for England, and its lore of castles and hedgerows. It occurs to me now that it is something of a shame that I never visited her home in Beaconsfield. I lived for at least a year very close by in Maidenhead, Berkshire, which is another satellite of London. As it turned out, my experience of England was marred entirely by falling out of love.

Watching Anne reminds me what it our world has lost, and will lose in the time to come. The countryside. Country folk. Country living. Healthy food and healthy living. Kevin Sullivan, who directs the series, manages to make of every scene a picture worthy of a painting. In Anne there is spirit, passion, a yearning to belong. It is quite a simple story about an orphan girl who dreams of a life...
It begins with a couple that were mistakenly sent an orphan girl instead of a boy, yet decided to keep her.

Wiki: Since publication, Anne of Green Gables has sold over 50 million books, more books than Gone with the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In fact, Anne of Green Gables has sold nearly as many books as The Da Vinci Code (57 million). The only Twentieth-Century English-language novelists whose work has sold more copies are J.R.R. Tolkien, Agatha Christie, J.D. Salinger, and Dan Brown.[1]

I find it really pulls at my heart strings, and at turns has me close to tears. I believe it is the theme of 'dreaming of a life' and 'yearning to belong' that resonates with me. Strangely, this is a theme echoed by many of Enid Blyton's books.

Blyton's books often mirrored the fantasies of younger children. Children are free to play and explore without adult interference, more clearly than in most authors before or since - although the children in Swallows and Amazons were equally free. Adult characters are usually either authority figures (such as policemen, teachers, or parents) or adversaries to be conquered by the children. Children are self-sufficient, spending days away from home.

I think the fantasy of self-sufficiency is not as childish as it may seem, particularly given our present circumstances. In many respects, the human condition is far from self sufficient. The opposite of self sufficiency is in fact dependency and addiction. Modern society is characterised by addictions - so much so that vast swathes of the population are obese, on anti-depressants, suffering from heart disease, or otherwise distracted by petty entertainments that drown out real world imperatives - global food shortages, energy crisis, financial crisis and all the rest.

I had a fantasy that I too would be a prolific writer, as Enid Blyton was. I have been. This blog is evidence of a fraction of this. I wrote my second manuscript at the age of 15 completing it 2 years later, on the morning of a matric science exam. Neither that manuscript, or the one that preceded it, or the half dozen that followed have been published. I believe my most recent effort, HOLIDAY, showed a lot of promise. It is becoming increasingly difficult to rationalise the effort and the faith in my ability when others, apparently, do not. I take heart from the following though:

A publisher rejected a story of hers [Enid Blyton's] in 1960, taking a negative literary view of it but also saying that "There is a faint but unattractive touch of old-fashioned xenophobia in the author's attitude to the thieves; they are 'foreign'...and this seems to be regarded as sufficient to explain their criminality."[8]

Nevermind that in many conventional instances criminals are foreigners. Often, but not always.

The world today appears not to need any more fiction or entertainment than it already has. It needs large doses of reality. I've attempted in HOLIDAY to entertain and teach with what amounts to a climate horror story. This may sound self-indulgent, but the horror of HOLIDAY - I have on good authority - gave at least one reader nightmares. I have recently initiated a rewrite, and some sections of the book, no doubt, are very difficult to bare (not due to bad writing, but to the increasingly awful vistas described).

I recently did a Fitness Test on my heart rate monitor. My OWN-INDEX was 52. Up from a miserable 45 a few weeks ago, but well down from 59 and 60 measured in South Korea whilst preparing for the Ironman and half Ironman. My resting heart rate dipped to as low as 45bpm.

I have some faith in my body's ability to retain some of the vigor it had, even though I am over 20kg heavier than I was in my 20's. I have to believe, I have to hope, that if my body is capable of regeneration, rebirth, rejuvenation and resuscitation of earlier fitness, perhaps the world can too. I am in a war - a war with my own thoughts, a war against foods and commercials. This is how the body changes, by adopting new habits. It is not easy. Perhaps hardest of all is dealing with petty, self-interested people who masquerade as grown ups, but have not the self control of children. I have had to learn to let go, to not even engage with these people, because it is a wasted investment. It is a sad admission that some educated people are little more than egotistical narcissists, and incapable of operating outside of these parameters. Many corporations are guilty of similar levels of selfish preoccupation.

I have tremendous respect for the openness and honesty of children. We will need to regain this if we are to build atmosphere processors and set to work finding ways to feed ourselves in the time to come. There is no doubt that many among us have lost the capacity for openness and self control. Perhaps incontrovertibly so. For my part, I aim to see the changes that need to start throughout our world, start with me.