Notes:

1. As the great Eddie Izzard said, I have “techno joy!”. This means I tend to take a high-tech approach to motivation and tracking. It prevents me from cheating myself and the program. I also post everything online to prevent laziness.
2. I am new to running. My background is in martial arts and this basically means I have a good grip, good leg power and explosive energy. I rarely needed to go through “the wall” in my past training. Martial arts fights are only 3 minutes in competition and 3 seconds on the street. I will be honest here and say that my skill level has “let me off” a lot of fitness in the past few years (even unfit I could handle all the Goju fighters up to 2nd dan). This is bad! I ended up seriously injured by not being able to “keep up” and consequently getting a foot in my eye.
3. I was once very fit (standing back somersault), but now I have a middle spread.
4. I am on the road but not at the end of this journey. This post is what is working for me. So far. I will post in much more depth when I have reached my goals.
5. What I have learned is that the only person you compete against in this world is really yourself. You may be able to do more, or less, than I – I have a friend who can run faster and further than me for example. However, we can all excel by breaking our times, improving our weight and increasing our strength.

Goal:

100 pushups, 10k run, 19kg weight loss.

Software:

RunKeeper to track my times on the run.

MyFitnessPal to track my calories (the built-in bardcode scanner is brilliant).

100 Pushups to force me to improve my pushups.

PodRunner Intervals to set my pace. Interval training is the best thing in the world for fitness. I read a university paper on how interval training is 9X better than “Steady state cardio”. This software plays music at two tempo’s. When in the lower tempo you walk/jog. When in the higher tempo you run. You never cheat. I find it easier as I focus on the next, closer, down-tempo beeps than trying to run for as long as possible. Each week this gets slightly harder. It’s brilliant.

Hardware:

Left to right: Ipswich Gym Bag, ESS Sunnies, Panasonic “gym” headphones (sweat proof), Rohan Shorts, Decathlon Heart Rate Chest Strap, High Tech T-shirt, Decathlon Heart Rate Watch (also counts calories spent – nice and cheap), Samsung Galaxy S2 Android Phone (avec GPS), Gym Swipe Card, Keys, Lucozade Lite Bottle (just filled with water, light enough to run with), City Fencing Club light over-jacket (it’s cold in the mornings and after the gym), Nike Air Max (dug out from the attic), Gel Running Inserts (vital when road/pavement running or you will get shin splints). Missing: Socks.

My Routine:

Every other day I get up at 6 am and run to the gym at 7 am. I then train there in the following way and then run back. Calling it “running” is probably going too far. It’s more like “struggling”, but I am improving all the time. On Wednesday afternoon I go to Aikido training (http://www.aikijutsufelixstowe.co.uk/ under master Ragucci) this is not ‘”hard” training (hard like Goju), but of very high quality.

When working in London I do an evening set after getting off the train and a morning set on my day working at home.

Nutrition:

Before gym: “Grenade” fat burner pills x 2 (basically caffeine, green tea and Cayenne pepper) to raise the metabolism. Raising the metabolism is the key to weight loss. That’s why busy people have less fat. It’s a matter of “burning” it by just being around. Once raised the benefits come in the post work out where the body has to work harder to recover.

After gym: Protein Shake. There are hundreds of brands, but the important thing is to get some in you 20 minutes after working out. Your muscles are like sponges in this crucial time.

Diet: Target 1600 calories a day. One day off per week (pizza!). Drink is low-calorie beer or Gin.

Cardio:

So, run to the gym – 1.5 miles

In gym:

Weights note: Weight training is brilliant for burning fat. Also, my gym is basic (no bar) and this is the best I can do here (max weights 35kg).

Notation note: 3×6 is 3 sets of 6 reps (not the other way around!)

• Dumb Bell Press (on back on the bench) – 3×6 @ 25kg (Oh, note that weights are set to your own level. It should be hard to finish the last set).
• Dumb Bell Row (knelt over the bench) – 3×6 @ 25kg
• Dumb Bell Front Squat to Press – 3×6 @ 20kg (This is a compound move and all lifts should be compound if possible)
• Dumb Bell Clean and Press – 3×6 @ 20kg
• Dumb Bell Lunges – 4×6 @ 20kg (Lunges are great for the whole body)
• Woodsman chop downs 3×6 @ 15kg (on the wire)
• Woodsman chop ups 3×6 @ 15kg (lots of twisting and using the core)
• Dead Lifts 3×6 @ 35kg (the best work out move in the gym)
• “Finisher” of 3x Squats, 3x Bent Over Rows, 3x Curls, 3x Clean and Press @ 16kg (as fast as you can)

Every other visit I also do:

• Crunch Abs Frame – 3×10 straight, 3×10 sides (both sides), 3×10 legs raised. I know that the only way to show abs is to lose weight, but what the hell.

Cardio:

• Elliptical trainer for 12 minutes using intervals of 1 minute high intensity (lvl 9/ 160 per minute), 30 seconds rest intensity (lvl 1)

Then run home – 1.5 miles

• Finally, the Pushups program (around 60 or so with breaks).

Phew!

Then the shake, shower, breakfast (scrambled eggs) and to work. Note: No caffeine through the day when on the pills.

That’s me.

Comments are welcome, as is advice.

Regards,

Basho.

Introduction.

I am often asked, “Just what is Daoism?”

This is a natural enough question to ask, as since I “came out” as a Daoist many people have been genuinely interested. What the question really asks is, “Please can you encapsulate the concepts of Daoism into a single sentence?” The person then normally looks a little askance as I singularly fail in the attempt:

“Well,” I begin, “it’s, er…”

“Yes?” they ask, waiting on my answer, clearly forming the opinion that I can’t be a very serious Daoist without being able to enunciate at least that.

“It’s complicated…” I manage after a ruminating struggle, made all too plain on my face.

These are not particularly comforting moments in my life. I once attempted to write an answer for a work colleague and accidentally sent him a blank email with the subject, “Daoism is…”

He wrote back, “Are you trying to make a point or did you miss off the text?”

I wasn’t, but I wish I had thought to do so. I could then create an email that reads:

Subject: What is Daoism?

(THIS MESSAGE IS LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK)

Some people would perhaps even get it from that. It is possible a new Buddha would be created by the universal satori (enlightenment) brought about by reading my blank message. Stranger things have happened and there are documented examples of people having satori’s while gardening and doing the dishes. But if it were always that easy for everyone then we would all be Buddha’s by now. Indeed one of the ideas in Daoism and Buddhism is that you already are a Buddha, but have merely forgotten it.

NOTE: Daoism is the translation into English of a Chinese word. There are two ways of doing this. The old way invented by the English, translates it as Taoism. The newer way, invented by the Chinese themselves, gives us Daoism. Both mean the same thing. That is why the city of Peking is now known as Beijing. The city didn’t change its name, the way we translated it changed. I will always use the Chinese way.

Problems with defining Daoism.

When trying to define Daoism most people first get hold of the most famous book of Daoism “The Laozi”, more commonly known as the Dao De Jing, and start reading. Some of the poetry in that great work rubs off on the reader and like someone fumbling with a jigsaw puzzle formed of a million blank pieces they start to catch the edge… of something. At least the DDJ makes it very plain why naming Daoism is so hard. Right on page one, line one:

The Dao that can be named is not the true Dao.

Dao means “way” and it means “way” in every possible, er, way of saying “way”. So it means, “The way (to something)”. It means, “My way (of doing things)”. It also means “The way (of life)” and “The way (the universe works)”. But, as the line suggests, it is mysterious and you cannot simply name the Dao by containing it in a word or phrase. You can point to it by observing a tree, but you cannot extract its mysterious essence by chewing on the bark.  You can taste it in the air, but you cannot pick some up down the shops. You can suggest it in 10 thousand words, but you cannot write its definition in 1 sentence. It’s like the family quiz game Taboo in that you can talk about it, around it, but you can’t never simply grasp it “cleanly” using our limited language. That is not to say that language cant “evoke” the sense of it like poetry, stories (particularly stories as we shall see) or music. It’s why you nod your head to good music or dance when hoovering and no-one is watching, It is the blind spot, the blank space between the lines, you can no more nail it down than catch lightning in a bottle. It is the living meaning of the saying:

The map is not the territory.

It is all around you, in you, linking the universal heart beat and behind your eyes. If I am starting to sound like Master Yoda from Starwars, well now you know where they got the idea of The Force from.

But reading the DDJ raises more questions than answers. The DDJ is a very old collated-series of ancient sayings, it points to no deity and has no single author. It is attributed to Master Lao, but he almost certainly never existed and what remains was already ancient when it was collected into the current form and split into the two parts. The chinese did exhaustive research into trying to find Master Lao, but eventually gave up. Trying to force these sayings into some sort of fully sensible and coherent form is one of the major hurdles one has to come to terms with when reading the DDJ. Indeed, it has thousands of translations into English and all of them fail to capture the original perfectly. I have 20 copies in formats as diverse as podcasts, Penguin editions, master scholarly works, bowdlerised poetic rewrites and iBooks digital copies. All are different and all are, as the famous saying goes, “Fingers pointing at the moon. Concentrating on the finger means you miss the heavenly glory above”. You miss the point.

The same goes for the other major Daoist work in English, the Zhuangzi. Unlike Master Lao, Zhuangzi did exist (around 370 BCE), but he also only wrote part of his famous book. However, what a book! Zhuangzi’s work is a core text in the movement of scepticism and relativism. He is mostly concerned with wondering why people try so hard to split the world into dual notions, such as “Right and Wrong”, “Good and Evil”, “Smooth and Crunchy” and more importantly, “I and Thou”.

He criticises these things by telling funny stories.

In these he shows, gently, loftily, that trying to over analyse situations is almost always to commit a fundamental error. His stories tell of people who just “do” rather than think. people such as cooks, craftsmen, swimmers and butchers. People to whom reasoning is of little use in their activities, in the sense that a Cicada-catcher is attentive to his task and heedless of the doubt of “thinking too much”. He just catches the bug.

Master Zhuangzi is poking fun at people’s perceptions in order to show them that most of the things they over-think and rationalise are actually the arms holding them back from being happy and free. Zhuangzi would probably be labelled a “free spirit” today, but his work isn’t a dreamy loose fantasy, his mind is sharper than a razor. It is chock full of epistemology (How do we know “what is true”? How do we get knowledge?) mixed with an attractive humour missing from most Western religious texts. Zhuangzi was a detached master flowing with the world and not against it.

It asks some amazing questions:

Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased.

He didn’t know he was Zhuangzi.

Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi.

But he didn’t know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi.

Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction!

This is called the Transformation of Things.

(2, tr. Burton Watson 1968:49)

It is at this point that a lot of people give up; having fumbled with the subject, but found no clear answers, they leave it safely on the shelf. Only the stubborn continue to look further into it. However even those robust investigators may not like what they find. Reading into the history of Daoism brings no golden age of philosophical freedom, in fact it brings up many “types” of Daoist endeavors full of cults, crazy gods, Celestial Masters and drinking mercury to live forever.

To western eyes this part is a real turn off. So in their defense they simply ignore Daoism’s history and focus on the two books mentioned above. Thus you get the “break” between Religious Daoism and the so-called Philosophical Daoism. Let me assure you that break is not really there. It has been created by philosophers with limited access to the works of the subject and taking the small parts they see as something else from all the dress up and dancing. In fact the religious practice is an expression of the Dao. The strange Celestial Master Daoism found in China today is also an expression of the Dao.

Daoism is the embodiment of the phrase, “the correct answer to free speech you find offensive is more free speech!”

For Daoism is a religion and not a simply a philosophy. That it is a hard to understand and essentially mysterious religion does not change that it contains a religious experience at the heart of it. That is a necessary part and cannot be worked around by wishful secular longing for an Eastern path that doesn’t “get weird”. Without that you wont be able to stick at it long enough to “get it”.

So, I am going to take up the challenge of communicating “what is Daoism” in two parts. Firstly, I am going to give a brief history of Daoism. That’s the easy part. Secondly, we are going to, if not capture lightning in a bottle, at least be standing atop a hill during a thunderstorm with our fingers in the air.

Daoism: a short historical primer. 

Please note: While the following is a gentle line drawn through the history of Daoism, I am not suggesting that Daoism has a linear progression in the same way as the churches of Europe. Hence I have not written this history with many names and dates that would become “milestones” in the movement. Daoism is a very large and diverse subject and China is a very large country with space for all sort of “interpretations”. In fact Daoism encourages interpretations.

Daoism started as a shamanistic collection of cults and religious practices in ancient China (around 1000 BC). It mingled with the folk religion of nature worship and a few principles stuck. These are such ideas as personal transformation, which is the commonality in all Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. This principle first took the form of talismans, mysticism and external alchemy that was basically trying to find ways to produce potions and become immortal. That proved popular and many cults and sects were merrily trying all sorts of poisonous brews to become one with the gods in heaven. Around this time (4th Century BC) some written works appeared that would later become the most recognisable Daoist thoughts such as the DDJ and the Zhuangzi, while a man called Zhang Daoling codifyed Daoism into a religion with a canon and gods after a spectral visitation from Lao Tze. Eventually this transformed into the idea of internal alchemy (3rd century onwards). No longer searching for elixirs, the Daoists searched inside themselves through such practices as meditation, sexual magic and living in caves. This practice gave us the notion of “chi energy”.

Daoist priests, philosophies and practices were in the heart of the Chinese culture and even with the arrival of Buddhism it remained a driving influence in China even for hundreds of years. There were even Daoist states in China back then. But China’s history is one of various rulers and philosophies rising and falling and while all this was happening another great master was born whose influence on the Chinese is still felt today. He was called Master Kong, who is better known in the west as Confucius. His teachings were seemingly at odds with Daoism, but nothing could be further from the truth and all three practices spiralled around and through each other, in and out of the corridors of power for the next few hundred years. They influenced each other immensely as shown in this classic painting:

Song painting in the Litang style illustrating the theme “Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism are one”.

It depicts “Taoist Lu Xiujing (left), official Tao Hongjing (right) and buddhist monk Huiyuan (center, founder of Pure Land Buddhism) by the Tiger stream. The stream borders a zone infested by tigers that they just crossed without fear, engrossed as they were in their discussion. Realising what they just did, they laugh together, hence the name of the picture,Three laughing men by the Tiger stream.” Source: WIKIPEDIA

Also worth noting is that religions were not split by class in China with Daoism being the stuff of the country folk. Emperors were Daoist, Daoist priests were at court performing ceremonies to keep the country in harmony while farmers followed the paths of Confucian thought and family structure. Over these years Daoism gave rise to many of the things we take as Chinese, such as Tai Chi, the Ying Yang symbol and speaking like Master Yoda. Chan Buddhism (heavily influenced by Daoism) was practiced in such places as the famous Song monastry of Shaolin, but after much persecution moved on to Japan, and became Zen Buddhism.

Eventually, Daoism and Confucianism met with the unstoppable force of Maoism and were both sublimed and crushed in equal measure. The Maoist revolutionaries knew that they could never totally eradicate Daoism as it contains a large amount of “folk” belief that resides in the cultural psyche and so they selected a particular form of it and put the governmental stamp on it.

That is an incredibly short version of the history of Daoism. What I hope it highlights is that Daoism is a little strange for a religion:

• It has had gods and deities at some times and not at others.
• It has been an immortality cult for while and contained shamanistic magic at others.
• It has “borrowed” from Buddhism, but also given back to the middle path.
• It has had celibate priests in the heart of empire and yet has had sexual magic practiced in the mountains.
• It has two main books translated into English, but neither author knew about the other, neither would label themselves as Daoist and at least one of them is legendary.

I can appreciate the problems in trying to understand such a changing and seemingly constantly moving target! Western intellectuals have worked hard for hundreds of years to try to bring the wisdom in Daoism under their command. The traditional method of doing so is the finding of commonalities amongst the various beliefs. After all, no matter how many strange and diverse Christian sects exist; they all believe in Jesus as the Saviour; that is what makes them Christian. It is what gives them their religious comfort. Daoism is eventually just as comforting, but given the five contradicting points above this is not an easy exercise.

The trick is to realise that these actions are an attempt to “express” the Dao, but there is no “true way”, indeed anyone claiming to have one is always false. For this reason, Daoism has at its heart the understanding that everything is relative.

Relation to Buddhism.

Another method, and one expounded by such philosophers as Alan Watts, was to not only draw a line between the various “Daoisms” of antiquity, but to highlight by reference to the religion it most heavily influenced; Zen.

One of the main ways in teaching Zen is through the master ignoring his students. Often the master will reject a new applicant outright and in such a forthright way that the student will give up there and then. “I have nothing to teach you,” the master will say. The pupil will, if he is earnest, persevere with the master and many stories and legends abound regarding this strange situation and how various adherents have dealt with it. The most famous story is told of the Indian Zen Master Bodhidharma, who rejected a pupil again and again until finally the pupil cut off his arm and demanded an audience. The great master agreed to meet with the pupil and took him under his wing.

This story only makes sense to Western eyes in that we know that one must strive to understand and that one must show commitment and diligence. But actually there is a secret here:

The Master truly had nothing to teach.

Zen is about coming to your own realisation. It takes a lot of time and work and the master will help you, although not in a way you might appreciate. Should he accept you as a student then don’t expect to receive anything that could be construed as an “answer” to Zen. That is, don’t presume that Zen has esoteric knowledge and concerned only with moving through stages of learning. In fact, the most similar western experience to Zen training is probably Army Drill School. The army takes in “normal” people and turns them into killers; people with the will to kill. This is not easy. They do this by working you physically until you drop, regimenting your life and stripping you of your identity until you can be mentally reprogrammed. Zen is similar to this, but instead of forming you into a killing machine the Zen master strips you of your illusions, pares your personality down to its core and then makes you look at yourself. He does this by forcing you to answer impossible riddles, making you work in the fields, attend very very long ceremonies and hitting you with a stick if you are not meditating properly (or even if you are). This effort can take a lifetime, but finally you break the distinction between body and mind, between self and universe and wake up. You realise that the personality you hold so dear, that special “me” you think is yourself, it is a blank sheet of paper with no writing on it. It is not there at all. You are not apart from this Universe at all.

Zen is a form of psychoanalysis!

Daoism is similar to that, just without a Japanese guy hitting you around the head with a stick. In Daoism you have to hit yourself. Daoism is therefore like many religions from the East in that they all believe that you can transform yourself through training. This training involves mastering meditation and learning to live in the “now”. This means not allowing your mind to float into dreams of the future nor reminiscences of the past.

To the Daoist , the future doesn’t exist, the past doesn’t exist, there is only the present.

There is no set way to do this, no definite doctrine to follow and no master to teach you. There is only yourself, the books, other Daoists and a number of self then universal realisations on the road to understanding. Be they sudden or slow, they will come to you.

So, how does one become a Daoist if there are no “vows?”

Where is Daoism Practiced?

There are many Daoist mountains in China, but one of the most famous is a mountain called Wudang Shan.

It is famous for being the birth place of internal Kung Fu styles such as Tai Chi. Walking up it is quite an experience. There are 20 thousand steps up Wudang before getting to the top and it is an exhausting journey.

The endless stone steps tower above you, winding upwards seemingly into the heavens. Along the way there are many temples and the steps often lead you through the courtyards. Each of these temples has an increasingly strained mystic name which each subsequent temple tries very hard to trump.

So the harmony temple may be followed by the grand harmony temple, the majestic temple of great tranquillity and so on ad nausea, all the way up the steps. This naming convention seemed to me at the time to be a cute cultural translation and something quite un-purposely funny, but actually it had a definite point; the idea that you are rising to heaven and every time you think you have made it: you haven’t and there is more to go. Along the way you meet many people on the same journey. You see rich and poor alike. The rich are carried up in palanquins, totally breaking the point, and this is most discouraging. More encouraging, but not perhaps comforting, are the groups of little old Chinese ladies you meet that even at the tender ages of what looks to be 150 can hop up the steps like a heard of mountain goats.

After hours of climbing you arrive at a large temple and then upwards still more until you finally come to the top, which is above the clouds. You are here at the pinnacle of China’s attempts to reach heaven. Here sits a large golden temple and some very old Daoist priests.

Here is a film about my trip up that mountain:

After an age you have to walk back down and find some hot water for your strained leg muscles. For me, and I didn’t know this at the time, I was not the same guy walking down. My trip into the clouds had prompted me to leave something behind and to gain the courage to be what I wanted.

Experiences like that are something of a slow burn for most of us. It took another two months before I felt a change in myself and what I believed. I suppose that was simply how long it took me to “check” my beliefs inside. Most of the time people simply remember that they believe something, but they don’t check. Many religious practices are geared towards sustaining belief so you don’t have to check it.

So, what exactly are the beliefs of a Daoist?

Daoist Beliefs.

Many philosophers and religious teachers, not to mention a lot of Western Intellectuals, have found and labelled a common set of traditional Daoist thoughts. These do not stretch from all the way back to 1000 BC and I don’t think anyone will ever manage to capture that, but they at least enable you to have some conceptual framework around which you can talk. Often you hear people refer to historical Daoism becoming “recognisable” as we come closer to our age. So, let us start with the big one:

Dao.

The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be defined is not the unchanging name.
Non-existence is called the antecedent of heaven and earth; Existence is the mother of all things.
From eternal non-existence, therefore, we serenely observe the mysterious beginning of the Universe; From eternal existence we clearly see the apparent distinctions.
These two are the same in source and become different when manifested.
This sameness is called profundity. Infinite profundity is the gate whence comes the beginning of all parts of the Universe.

There is a reason that Western films and culture like to steal gently from the Daoists. It is because Daoism concerns itself with something that is all around us, that it the fundamental core of us and indeed the core of everything, but is hidden from view.

Consider this:

Scientists have worked out that the elements that make up the human body are the same as those found in the core of stars. In its beginning the Universe was not even. If it were, if matter was laid out in neat rows, then galaxies, stars and life would never happen. Instead the gaps in the lattice of matter mean that gravity acted to pull matter together. This process eventually collected enough matter that it underwent collapse and exploded, leaving behind a star. In this super-heated ball, more advanced elements formed up in layers inside the star. At the end of its life it no longer had enough energy to hold itself up and collapsed. Because of the layers of elements, energy was released in the form of an enormous explosion that we call nova (super-nova and hyper-nova).

This burst of energy, released by the star’s death, flung the more interesting and exotic elements into space. But, as before, these elements are uneven and some formed, through the attraction of matter to matter by gravity, into planets. On one particular planet the elements gave rise to life and. by forming complex molecules with strange chemical patterns, this life ate, reproduced and died. It also “evolved” under the same principles and eventually formed a creature; the first animal. This animal, our common ancestor, swam around the primordial soup until it too reproduced and died, but leaving behind generations of new creatures: faster, stronger, and more determined. One of these took the most important step on behalf of life on Earth. It took a step onto the land, giving rise to larger animals and eventually to us; humans.

But through all this the elements that make up those creatures haven’t changed. They are still the remnants, the sparks and debris, from those exploding stars. You, me and everything around you is formed of those elements.

You are made of stars.

Doesn’t that make you feel connected to the world, the sky and the Universe? It did for this man:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of piece of mind.

Albert Einstein

You may have imagined that you are apart, that you were born into the world without being asked. That you don’t belong to it. But, actually, you grew out of this Earth in exactly the same way that an apple grows out of a tree. You’re a fruit. You’re a cantaloupe. You are not separate from the world, you cannot be separated from it.

And you know what? Neither is anything else. Look out into the country and you will see the light play across the hillsides. Can you separate the valley and the hill? Just because one side is dark and the other light? The whole world, the whole Universe, is fundamentally connected. It is the nature of the Universe. It is the way the Universe works. It is the mysterious Starmaker, it is the spirit behind the beating life-energy of spacetime. You cannot grasp it, because it is chaos, it is formless, it appears passive because it works on such a grand scale that nothing you do bothers it. All life is sustained by it and would not exist but for it.

It is the Dao.

The great Tao pervades everywhere, both on the left and on the right.
By it all things came into being, and it does not reject them.
Merits accomplished, it does not possess them.
It loves and nourishes all things but does not dominate over them.
It is always non-existent; therefore it can be named as small.
All things return home to it, and it does not claim mastery over them; therefore it can be named as great.
Because it never assumes greatness, therefore it can accomplish greatness.

Taken in this way, one see’s that all creatures share this world with us, that all races are simply one and that compassion for others is the way of the Dao.

The Universe wants you to live with it. It is ready to catch you if you accept it. If you want to be happy then live in accordance with the Dao; the life energy of the Universe.

The question is How?

Ah, well, now you know why Daoism has changed so many times. How can one live in accordance with a mysterious spiritual nature that defies the understanding?

There are a number of ways, and the DDJ, Zhuangzi (among the other Daoist works of which these are but the central texts of a huge canon) have many things to say about how to live with the Dao and in accordance with it.

These principles are worthy of entire articles in themselves and indeed there is much you can read out there to assist. They are, like Dao, also endlessly translated, here is the outline of two:

De.

That which things get in order to live is called De.

De is the second core principle of Daoism along with Dao itself, its rough translation means “inner integrity” or “virtue”, but it basically can mean to grow, to ascend, graciousness and even heart as in “heart and mind.”

It is virtue in the sense that a medicine has the virtue of healing. For the Daoists, this virtue comes from living in accord with the Dao. So, if you act with wisdom and inner integrity then you are having a positive effect on your life and expressing De.  In other words if you wish to be a “good man”, do so. Don’t wish it, do it. If you can achieve the focus “on the now” required to be able to move from wishing for things to doing them, then you are expressing De.

When they clearly understand the Dao and De (Virtue), they then understand benevolence and righteousness.

Wu Wei.

A person like that could ride through the sky on the floating clouds, straddle the sun and moon, and travel beyond the four seas.
Neither death nor life can cause changes within her, and there’s little reason for her to even consider benefit or harm.

Wu Wei is “non action”. Acting without acting. This does not mean “doing nothing”! It is best thought of as “not forcing.” For me I bring my martial arts to the fore with this principle. In martial arts the most masterful skill is in getting maximum effect for minimum effort. Many martial arts are based around finding and mastering ways of achieving this. But, they basically follow the idea of a fulcrum. A fulcrum is a pivot point and the point at which other things can revolve with multiple times the effect. In the martial arts this is best seen in the soft styles that enable even the most gentile motions cause tremendous results.

I was once thrown by Don Bishop who is a 7th Dan in Shodokan (Tomiki) Akido. He asked me to attempt a stab at his stomach using a rubber knife. Now, Don is in his 70’s and a small frail looking old man. However, looks are deceptive for he is one of the powerful martial artist I have ever encountered. But, how does he generate so much power in such an old and small body? I, 6ft 2 and 18st, lunged at him as hard as I could. Don gently moved aside and using only one finger on each hand pulled me in such a way that I totally over balanced. Then, at the perfect moment, he changed the position of his fingers only by a few inches and suddenly I was thrown right over my own head. He had moved hardly at all, hardly used a jot of effort and yet had thrown me across the room. Was this magic? No, this was Wu Wei.

Another example I can give was with another martial arts master. This time it was Kendo sensei Jeff Humm of Hizen Dojo in London.

He was giving his normal end of lesson berating to the class and singling out a few choice lessons for black belts and beginners (like me) alike. He was explaining to a senior grade about a counter to a head strike technique. After a few puzzled looks he tutted and called for a training-sword.

“Hit me,” he said to the student. Now the sensei was not in armour and not wearing a helmet. He was also just standing there in his glasses. The pupil, naturally, performed the strike very slowly and gently. Sensei Humm waved his hand, “No no no, with effort.” The class slightly held its breath as the student drew back his hand and with a brilliant loud scream flashed his training-sword down at the sensei’s unarmoured head. But, the sensei was no longer there! In fact at the absolute precise moment he had moved very slightly so that not only did the students sword miss, but he had somehow cracked the student a clean ringing blow on the top of the head. I sat watching this dumfounded by the skill. Acting while not looking to act, that is what it means for me.

The essence of his life is perfect.
He can cry all the time without losing his voice.
His inner harmony is supreme.
To be aware of inner harmony is to abide with reality.

These principles, together with many others detailed in Daoism, help me try to live in harmony with the Dao. I am, of course, only human and not a master at it, but I persevere (without trying too hard to!) All the principles combine and complement each other and gives rise to the truly virtuous human being.

And eventually to becoming a sage.

The Sage.

A person who masters the principles and lessons of Daoism, who lives perfectly in harmony with the Dao. He/she is The Sage. The concept of the sage is key to Daoism. The sage is the master of life, but he is also a man who sees reality as it is.

What does that mean?

As I have said in my prior articles on philosophy: many of the things we cling to in the world are not actually real, they are figments and creations of the person thinking them and culture that they live in. Human judgement on “what is right” and “wrong” or “what is beautiful” or “ugly” are in the mind of the speaker, not the universe. Following the principle of Wu Wei, the sage realises that it is our clouded minds that create these distinctions and judgements and he refrains. Thus, Daoists do not see the world as a toy of man. This is why they are often said to be deep lovers of nature. They realise that man is a part of the animal kingdom and do not consider man to be other than an animal. However, Daoists also realise that life requires that one creature eats another so not so many will be vegetarians. A dead animal is a dead animal. It should be respected, loved, cared for but to eat one is no bad thing.

They realise that ethical judgments are fraud with peril and that there is no true man-made morality. Nature has a way. Not that Daoists suggest we all become troglodytes! Just realise that much of the intellectual and rational “truth” we take for granted is nothing more than “models” of the truth, tellings us only one perspective and not, perhaps, something that we should rely on. Daoism has no celestial monarchic view of the universe, it can accept what it likes. Many Daoists have great respect for religious masters, but most are not and cannot be “believers” in the Christian sense. Many Daoist are big fans of Buddha, but are not “Buddhist”. Other Daoist hero’s include Ghandi and other Indian masters.

In many ways the sage is similar to Plato’s theory of the Philosopher King.  A man of great natural wisdom: living within nature and strong in will, but able to see what must be done. When he acts it is gentile yet powerful. Such a sage has no fear of death, but more importantly he has no fear of life either.

So, that’s a little bit about Daoism, what it is for me. As I said at the top “It’s complicated” and yet simple. I always keep in mind the first lines of the DDJ and I always try to capture the humour of life found in the Zhuangzi. I don’t think I have a compete understanding of it, but I am trying all the time to learn and appreciate more about this most amazing of religions. Daoism is like a template on the nature of reality and the Universe. One can believe in a god and still be a Daoist, and indeed this is the form found today in China. One can certainly be a Buddhist and a Daoist. One can even follow many of the teachings of the Christ and be a Daoist.

Following the Dao, using De and Wu Wei brings the person naturally to gain the “Three Jewels” of Compassion, Moderation and Humility and these, I hope you agree, are some of the highest virtues of all.

A good soldier is free from violence.
A good fighter is free from rage.
A good winner is free from competition.
A good leader is humble before the people.
This is called the attainment of non-contention,
Or the application of the strength of others.
It is also called identity with the ultimate
Beyond space and time.

Regards,

Basho.

If you would like to know more about Daoism, please leave a comment.

Quotes: Various translations of the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi, most – if not all – of the translations are online here: http://home.pages.at/onkellotus/index.html

I have been reading a book recently, called “The World Without Us ,” in it the author, Alan Weisman, writes of how nature – that pervasive force – would take over after we are gone. Concrete would fall down, buildings would crumble under vines and the remains of humanity would disappear; and quicker than you would imagine. Of course, for us Daoists we don’t see the human and so called “natural” worlds as different at all. They are all parts of the same thing; and it is only human arrogance that distinguishes us and our achievements. When we see metal and we think that it is not a “natural” substance, we forget that we stand upon a 50 trillion ton ball of the same stuff. Given the size of the Universe, our small scratches on that metal ball amount to a glint of light in a million years of sunshine, but we don’t see it that way. We still think we are in control. As Weisman shows in his book – that is the ultimate illusion.

And so it is with the UCS garden, losing control leads to organic growth and non-human cycles of birth and decay taking back the ground. Returning to the rhythm all of its own. It wont be rushed, it is like the blowing playful wind, and as gardeners we might conduct this orchestra briefly, but we hardly could claim control of it.

We work with it.

So, I looked upon Cesca’s and friends’ work and read its title and I considered what it meant. I think it means that we may stop listening to the song of nature when we build our concrete pillars and throw away our rubbish, but that song is only just out of earshot; and awaiting to erupt upon our works when we turn our backs from it. Even the most ugly structures return to beauty. A fence, a bucket, a sign, a pool of water – given time – are visited and reseeded. We just need to lose “control” and release our nature; our natural ability to live in harmony with this planet. That is what I think attracts many out into the gardens of this world, and what makes some gardens great, that one word; harmony. It suggests a tune, a gentle tune carried on the breeze, whistled by Gia herself upon the wind and waiting for you to hear it.

Making this garden was backbreaking work for a lot of people and I salute them all here. I watched for the final week of the preparations, seeing what was a simple patch of grass become the garden. There were many risks: the planting could have looked “planted”. The whole effect of such a work required the highest knowledge of nature, how the seeds would catch and how the plants might spread. Such risk was then doubled by the redoubtable students with their choice of a 360 degree view on the final piece. That is, you could walk all around it and it left nowhere for any mistakes to hide. That took courage and demonstrated confidence and the RHS noted the skill and spirit in the garden and upped the marks accordingly.

Some visitors didn’t understand. For they: a garden is an expression of man’s supposed dominance over nature. But they can be safely ignored as ignorant of the truths this garden exposed; man lives IN nature, as a part of it. And lo – look what beauty we can create together! As partners, not master and slave.

The film: My rather poor footage (I really need a tripod for this sort of work) and the fact that my camera was struggling to focus through its armour (ready for airsoft use it the field) meant that I could only capture some of the wonder to be seen here. I also decided to capture footage with nobody in it, for while I could have made a film about “the story of the garden being built”, I decided that the story in the garden was more important and that is what I aimed for. The cutting was back in Sony Vegas (version 9 now), my brief dalliance with Adobe being well and truly over; at least for the time being; due to its incomprehensibility.

I hope you enjoy the results, please leave a comment below or feel free to ask a question.

Vimeo version:

Malvern 2010 Show Garden – Losing Control, Releasing Nature from Basho Matsuo on Vimeo.

Regards,

Basho

It is your brain.

And while we can explore the furthest reaches of light-enabled space, we cannot claim to have begun understanding this small lump of tissue we each possess. Our sciences regarding it are crude at best and mostly replying on mere observation. That sum of knowledge eventually comes down to this: which bits you should not poke. On the other hand, our mental science experts, doctors and scientists try to reduce the functions of the brain down to an increasingly morbid collection of faculties about which they then bicker and argue about endlessly.

And every single one of them has missed the point…

Like the people locked up in Plato’s cave they are looking at shadows on the wall, dancing in firelight, and totally missing the magic trick. I suggest ignoring the slight of hand, diving in and seeing if we can make head or tail of it on our own. So, let’s try this:

Hold up your hands so that your thumbs and forefingers are touching and then hold them out at arm’s length. What do you see? What have you formed?

A triangle.

But, is it actually there? Is it not defined by the gap between your hands? Isn’t it really formed of nothing. There isn’t really a triangle there; it is negative space.

Oh, there is a triangle you claim…

Ok, then pick it up…

You haven’t created a triangle. You have bound a negative space in a shape, which from your point of view is similar to, what they told you at school, is a triangle.

It is your brain saying that it is triangular. It doesn’t exist other than that.

Take your hands away. Where is the triangle now?

And yet, your hands still at the ends of your arms?

The difference between these two things is the mental back flip you will have to come to terms with in this article.

OK, another example for those with furrowed brows…

Imagine (or cut out) three blue squares all the same size. Put them on the table. These three objects conform to what, they told you at school, are squares.

They are square objects:

Now place them in the following order:

What shape is there in the middle?

You can say to me that it is a triangle. Right? You can work out its length, its height and its width. You can do all sorts of things with it. You can even say exactly how much weight it would support if it were in steel or in concrete.

You can also destroy it.

In the end, it was only conceptually real. It wasn’t really real. You can talk about it all you want, but it wasn’t really there.

You are applying form to it with your brain.

You do this to your notion of “self”. Your “self” is not really there. It is the gap in you made by the meeting of all the objects that make up you.

It is negative space.

Now that we have that cat in the chicken coup, let’s start:-

One of the most common mental illusions, one that almost everyone falls into, is the identification of the “self”. Most people identify perceived mental states (collected into what we call consciousness) as somehow comprising and illuminating this self. In other words, they believe that they are in control of the consciousness to such an extent that they identify totally with it.

Many people, if asked and pressed to identify the self and its consciousness, would say that the consciousness is something in the head, perhaps a few inches behind the eyes, or between the ears. They also think that they are in control of it like a captain in a ship or a driver in a car. The body is the car and the conscious mind is the driver who directs the car into action directly through the will. From this comes the idea that the self resides in the body and yet is separate from it in some manner that is unknown. After the body dies, it goes somewhere else.

Where? Who knows, but one thing is for sure: Dead people have no consciousness.

It is clear that all the stories, fables and myths of all the cultures are founded on this unmistakable observation and the formulation of potential answers. Usually very complicated ones involving magical kingdoms in the sky or underground. That makes sense. After all, the dead person’s consciousness, their self, sure isn’t around here anymore.

Science laughs at this. But science is wrong to do so. It all follows logically. In fact science is doing a pretty bad job of coming up with answers regarding the self and consciousness as well. For these people thinking about this problem is simply a matter of reductionist dogma. Entire tomes and uncounted reams of paper go into arguing whether mental states can be literally counted and consciousness explained in simple terms of reference, as if attaching a term to something somehow enables it to be real.

It just appears real. Or at least your “self” appears real. Some people believe that other people are mere ghosts or robots. This is a common form of fantasy entertainment.

All of these arguments start too far “up the tree” and not at the root of the situation. The truth is that consciousness identified as the self is not real. Consciousness is an illusion in exactly the same way that the triangle was.

But before going any further, I want to speak of this in simple terms with an example of oranges.

I like oranges.

Should someone throw me an orange then my hand will always rise to catch it. If I deconstruct the chain of events in this circumstance then I come to a startling observation; my (so called) conscious mind has little to do with my effort at all.

Most descriptions here would start with the orange being airborne, but let us move a little backwards than that.

Firstly, the person throwing the orange will usually warn me that an orange is “incoming”.

“Do you want an orange?” they will ask, often brandishing the orange aloft for me to view in their hand.

They do this to let me see it, and secondly to enable my brain to start calculating how the affirmative response may be achieved. My brain will have already worked out that the person is likely to throw the orange to me. It does this by instantly remembering everything I know about this person. If it is my brother, then oranges’ will soon be aloft. If it is my wife, well, she will always pass me an orange like a gentlewoman should. All of this memory stuff happens in an instant and then my brain really gets to work and all sorts of new things happen at once.

My brain works out if I am hungry and if I like oranges.

Many women would say that the male brain ends its decision processing at this point, but in reality that is a crude explanation for the richness of what my brain is doing.

It actually performs thousands of calculations in that split second. From how healthy does the orange look, to will I have to wash my hands after and where is the nearest sink? It also considers if you have washed your hands recently? As well as perhaps wondering why am I worrying about cleanliness so much these days? or will this orange be a really juicy one or like that last one I had, which had been sitting around for ages?

Where does the brain get all these questions from?

The brain is full of memory connections formed from the linking, copying and combination of concepts into memories. Some concepts are stronger than others and the links between them, forged into large enough conceptions, become what we call opinion. The most important aspect of memory is that it appears to us as history and is the way in which the brain perceives the passage of time.

Time, of course, is also an illusion but that is another article.

Suffice to say that an opinion is a collection of memory connections that has been formed via the perception of history. At a higher level the brain is collecting, mapping and storing memories all the time. Like a stream of information, data, is flowing through the eyes, down the ears and across the skin. This is the endless information of the senses. It flows into the brain in the form of electrical signals, or at least that’s how we can detect its flowing, and the brain sorts it all into different forms.

Out of this massive signal, the brain picks out how I feel about oranges (in particular this orange I see in front of me and in pedantry how I feel about you holding this orange that I see in front of me).

“Yes please!” I say in return.

The orange is hefted aloft and flies through the air towards me.

Now the brain is able to go into another mode. Out of all the data coming into it, it is able to single out the orange in flight. It calculates its trajectory in a microsecond. It then orders signals to be sent to various parts of the body. It does this by finely calculating which nerves to pulse and which to switch off. A fascinating and very complicated ballet unfolds as signals bounce around my muscles in my arm and other parts of my body like my shoulders, legs and hips. All of this is amazingly routed through memory again as I am able to avoid objects around me, recount the hundreds of thousands of things I have ever caught, the known weight ranges of oranges, the past grips that have worked well in orange catching situations and even the danger of catching the orange too tightly and thereby ending up covered in orange juice.

I catch the orange as though it was easy.

From the start of this orange flinging section maybe two seconds have passed and my brain is not even tired. But, something occurs to me:

In all the millions of calculations that the brain performed; in all the pulses, memories, actions, movements and expressions; I did not “will” any of it. I did not “think” any of it. My body acted on its own to catch the orange and indeed this does shock me, but come to think of it, my brain acted on its own as well.

I did not muse through my so called consciousness to make the decision to have the orange; I did not make a logical list and consider the points of orange eating. I certainly did not control my arms directly nor pump blood to my lungs to take a breath.

I, me, my “self”, was not involved at all. I did not even will the motion. Many people think that the body is awaiting the consciousness to say “go”. But, actually, all the options, all the thinking and all the doing was outside the will.

But not the effects.

I was aware of what was happening, but not in control. Not in control? But this is my body! My actions, my mind, my “self”, my will!

Well, was it?

Which part of your consciousness was involved?  None, the brain did it all on its own. And that got me thinking. I started thinking about the other things that this wonder flesh lump between my ears does without my say so.

Driving. Fighting. Shooting and running to name but a few.

When I drive, sure decisions are made, but does my consciousness make them?

No.

My mental perception of the orange event, especially the catching of the orange, was behind that of the brain’s. The sequence of events is difficult to unravel, but when it finally comes out the consciousness only knew after the fact.

The “I” knew last.

Why does my body move without my “self” saying? And I don’t mean in simple crude ways, I mean in all ways. Why does my consciousness get in the way when I am driving or fighting or shooting? Why, if I let the brain get on with it, do I perform better?

These are important questions because they outline the shape we are building with the blocks that the brain gives us. The shape of me. The sides of the “self”.

We know that our consciousness can be affected by many things. Poke us in the brain, punch us in the jaw and fill us full of beer (often this list operates in the opposite direction) and we notice an affect on the consciousness. Take LSD and we notice consciousness expand. Take a class in yoga and we notice it change shape.

Clearly it is controlled by the brain.

One of the highlights to these questions is the actions of memory. Memory is, as I said, the recording of history in the form of various types of neurokinetic links between bits of the brain. Like a mesh, all connected and yet separate. A matrix of the past. Why do we perceive one thing happens after another? Because the brain is recording it somewhere second by second. It happens so fast that we don’t even notice. Second by second the brain records, assimilates, turns back up the right way and presents.

But in which order? If I am not “thinking” of an action makes little difference to whether the brain does it or not. The brain manages to do everything automatically. I perceive that I am still breathing. Still on a train. Still waiting to get home.

Waiting is the answer. The brain is clearly aware of time, but the consciousness drifts. Why is this? The clue is in the nature of what Einstein called Spacetime. You see, time and space are not actually separate. They are one. They are indeed different ways of looking at the same thing. The brain is a real thing; it records the “passage of time” correctly. Can’t fool the brain. It knows when you are hungry, when you are tired. What of the consciousness? That can be fooled very easily. Simply make me bored and time drags on and on. Make me excited and time rushes passed like, well like a train.

Could it be because the brain is in the real world, and therefore effected by space time, whereas the consciousness is not and can therefore become detached from it? Nevertheless, my consciousness is directly affected by the operation of the brain and not able to act separately from it. The question is does it control the brain? As we have deduced it doesn’t. In fact, it happens to be at the end of the chain when it comes to even knowing about things.

But, you say, if I want to pick up a cup, I can do so by my will!

Really? We have shown that the brain operates separately from the consciousness. This we knew, what is new is the causal relation between them. The brain runs the conscious, not the other way around. The brain is paying attention to the world around it. You are the brain, the brain is you. The brain controls the picking up of cups and other objects. It is not too much to understand the brain as having much more influence on the decisions that you think. Your consciousness doesn’t try order the brain to pick up the cup, nothing orders the brain at all. The brain is the thinking organ. It hears, thinks, decides, controls and picks up the cup.

So what the hell is the consciousness?

I am not suggesting that there is nothing in control of your body’s actions, I am just saying that the brain is actually what does it, because you are the brain, you are your body. You are not separate. The consciousness is the memory of the brain’s actions.

The brain needs to be able to mesh together the data coming into it to be able to make decisions. It needs, what is in effect, a focused light of sensation. Now there are so many sensations coming into this part of the memory that the brain meshes only some together. The brain does this. This is like spotlight thrown onto a wall of shapes. The spotlight of the consciousness. The point at which the brain joins together the data-streams, so that it may use this data to function, is the consciousness.

The conscious is just a function of the brain when writing to memory. We have come to identify ourselves so much with these endless perceptions that we mistake it for the “I”, the soul, or the “self”.

There is no “I”.

There are millions of memories being written all the time, to use a metaphor: millions of perceptions being posted into boxes or millions of waves of data crashing together. The conscious is the foam on those waves. The clashing of signals.

And like the output of a TV, it projects a picture. Sure that picture is in full colour, full sound, full experience, but it isn’t in control. The TV does not feed back into the studio and change the program. It is just a projection.

This is what Plato was going on about. This is the truth behind David Hume. It is the point being grasped at by Bishop Berkley. The consciousness is not the real “I”. We draw the data together and believe that the mental mashup, the energy of the brain crashing sensations together, is somehow in control. Well, like in the TV metaphor, the brain is the real viewer. It is using the consciousness to make decisions, not the other way around.

That is why if you “think” too much you get in the way of being able to act. Because the brain is spending too much energy turning up the fidelity of the signal and not enough processing the effects. That is why you can narrow the focus of your mind. In actual fact the is brain narrowing its focus, your consciousness just experiences it. That is why you get drunk and forget. That is why LSD works. That is why you can experience the world as boring. That is why the so called “self” can be in a mood.

The brain is making the sides of the triangle and you are mistaking the sensation of consciousness for the “self”. But, like the triangle, take away the walls; take away the brains signals, and consciousness cannot form. That is why “you” die. That is why how you see yourself is different from how others see you.

That is why you dream. That is why you feel love. That is why you consider yourself alive and that is what we identify as living. Having a consciousness is an illusion of having a separate “self”. In actual fact the brain is the sum total of you. It is in control of your mind, not the other way around.

This is why sometimes answers, “Just come to you”. They are not coming out of thin air, the brain – you – has worked them out, but not shown the consciousness.

Enjoy it. Enjoy the knowledge that “you” are surfing on the shoulders of one of the galaxies’ true wonders. It will look after you, this little fleshy lump is you after all. You are it.

You are wonderful, little brain. I love experiencing your actions; I thank you for being me and for showing me myself. I promise to take care of us both and together we can go out and experience the entire universe.

So, having come to this conclusion, what does that mean for the science of the mind?

It makes no sense to talk about consciousness as separate from the brain. The conscious states are an output signal, the brain makes decisions based on them, but those decisions are all, entirely, what is called sub-conscious. The illusion of decision making by the conscious arises from the passage of time and historical memory. The brain makes all decisions and the consciousness is not involved. The brain does all the thinking, including the thinking about the brain thinking. It is more than capable of being self-referential.

So it makes no sense to talk about consciousness in any way that suggests control. Or of decision making and of it being the “self”, soul or “you”.

That is the worst type of illusion. The brain is in charge. The brain is capable of processing everything we ascribe to the consciousness, which only acts as an output signal matrix of sensations clashing together. Our over-identification with this sensation matrix as the self is holding science back.

Regards,

Basho.

There follows a true story of a situation that took place in the street, but equally could have been straight out of a dojo training session. It is interesting because it highlights many things: the dangers of being “switched off”, the speed of the trained man’s reactions, the attitude of the police and the judgement of others. It also highlights a part of conflict that is often missed and shows that in the end the most harsh judge is in fact yourself.

This story is true and happened in late 2009, I repeat it here as it was told to me with permission of the person involved.

Raymond was walking through his local town of Brixton, London. As he walked down a quiet street near the park, three large men approached him from the front. Raymond didn’t totally ignore them and walk straight into the situation, but he was not instantly aware of the danger either. They closed on him and formed a semicircle that blocked the street ahead. Raymond looked up to see the man in the middle pull out what he later described as, “the biggest knife I have ever seen”. The knife came up threateningly and moved towards his midriff. It looked as though these guys were going to mug another helpless victim and escape into the park. However, this time they had made a huge mistake because Raymond is a professional martial arts instructor.

“As soon as I saw the knife, I just started moving. It was instinctive,” he told me. “It was like a sudden shock and my body took over, it was so fast.”

Indeed the entire episode was over seconds later. Raymond turned his body so the knife passed by his stomach. He then covered over the knife arm with his hands and slammed his hip against the man’s elbow. The move was textbook perfect and the knife man’s arm was dislocated instantly. The second man moved in to strike Raymond. Without letting go of the first man’s arm, Raymond kicked out with the classic downward sidekick to the knee. This missed its intended target and his heavy shoes crashed into the second man’s shins, breaking through his leg with a sound Raymond described as, “a sickening crunch”. As the second man fell down, Raymond pulled the first man’s arm around and disarmed the knife by pushing it towards the man’s face making him let go of the blade that passed into Raymond’s hand. Another textbook technique, except as Raymond was describing this to me I saw a look on his face; a look of self-reproach.

“You moved the knife towards his face?” I asked.

“Yes, it was the technique,” he replied to me, “when it is taught in class, the end of the technique is to have the knife against the opponents neck. I have taught it for years; take the knife and use it against them.” He shook his head and looked down.

“And did you?”

“I was about to. My body was just doing the technique automatically and the blade was moving towards this guys neck. I realised that this was going to kill him. I screamed at myself inside my head, trying to stop the action from completing. I was like, ‘what the hell are you doing?!’ to myself. At the last moment I turned the blade away.”

As the blade moved in front of the first man’s face the last man moved in to grab Raymond’s hands.

“What did you do then?”

“I stepped forwards into him and struck the last guy with an upper rising elbow to the collarbone. It broke and he went down.”

“A stepping upper rising elbow?” I asked, “that’s a strange technique choice.”

“With the knife in my hand I didn’t want to stab him, it was just instinct,” shrugged Raymond.

With the three men disabled and rolling around on the floor in pain, Raymond did what any good citizen would do in these circumstances; he called them an ambulance. Then the police arrived and promptly arrested Raymond.

“They arrested you?”

“Yes, they spoke to a bystander who had been on the other side of the street and he said I had been excessive and over the top,” he said.

“Really, there was three of them. Did the bystander not see the knife?”

“No, I showed him it on the ground and he said that I had still been too violent. I couldn’t believe it, I was like, ‘can you not see the size of this thing?’”

Raymond was telling me this story the next day along with some friends. To them, it was exciting and macho. They replayed it again and again amongst themselves, shouting and whooping and saying how they would have dealt with the situation. The only person not smiling was Raymond.

“What do you think the police will do?” he asked me. Luckily, one of the friends present was an off-duty Metropolitan police officer.

“What did you say at the station?” the policeman friend asked.

“The truth. That they pulled that knife and I was defending myself. That they were coming for me and I was in fear of my life.”

“Don’t worry,” the policeman friend said, “you appear to have acted correctly. You waited and phoned the ambulance too that shows a lot. They will probably give you a medal.”

Raymond looked across to me, “what do you think Basho?”

“How long have you been teaching Raymond?” I asked him.

“18 years.”

“Mate, you will have hundreds of students willing to give you a character statement. Don’t worry.”

“Yeah,” said the policeman friend, “I will give you one too, just get them to call me. You have my number.”

“Yeah,” broke in one of our other friends, laughing, “and if you need one from a bricklayer, let me know!”

We all laughed, except Raymond. The others went back to describing the event to each other excitedly. Raymond remained quiet.

“Look,” I said, “I know how you feel. Guilty, right?”

“I was so close to killing him. Maybe I was excessive.” He sounded unsure of himself.

“Take your time,” I said, “you just need to work through this.”

Raymond’s reaction to the event was not unusual. Where one might expect him to be happy, elated and empowered by single headedly defeating three muggers, in fact he was badly shaken by it. The huge amount of danger he had been exposed to had put his mind into shock. What if he had lost the fight? Would he have been stabbed to death? These things were running through his mind again and again, playing over different outcomes, a mental state the French call, L’esprit de l’escalier” or in English, “the spirit of the staircase.” Such feelings are very common after a violent situation. At the moment Raymond saw the knife, and his reactions took over, his brain ordered his glands to dump all sorts of chemicals into the blood. These chemicals made him stronger, faster and narrowed his vision. It also made his blood coagulate quicker and his mind process faster so that the entire event seemed to be happening in slow motion.

One side effect of such a body reaction is the feeling of either terror or rage. The ‘beast’ inside is unleashed and takes over the body. For martial artists, this is channelled through our training. By the endless repetition of techniques, basics and kata we have conditioned ourselves to act in a certain way under pressure. The downside is trying to control that rage with ‘the beast unleashed’. Our civilised brains, the part of us that doesn’t want to hurt anyone, fights for control. For some, like Raymond, it succeeds. For others, the beast wins and tragedy happens; someone gets killed.

Regardless of the outcome, the chemicals burn the event into the memory and what Raymond was feeling was essentially survivors guilt. Guilt for having lived through a traumatic experience, prevailed against the odds and having almost killed in the defence of his life.

The part of British law that covers self-defence has been clearly written to take this mental state into account. The police arrested Raymond and made him make a statement very quickly after the event. At this point he was either still pumped full of adrenaline (making him more talkative) or coming down off the chemicals in his blood stream (making him feel down and possibly needing to “offload”). The police are trained to take advantage of this situation to get the truth out and down on paper. Therefore, your statement is the most important thing to get right. People acting in self-defence have still gone to prison because of what they put in their statement. Knowing not ‘what to say’, rather ‘how to say it’ is going to be the second ordeal you face on a day this happens to you. The law is available in clear and understandable terms at the following government web address: www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/self_defence/

The question of how to translate the mental part of combat into training is the primary challenge for instructors. Most doctrines teach that building muscle memory is the way to go, and it is often said that a thousand repetitions of a technique will embed it into instinct. While this appears to be true, there is a large question left outstanding; if we are not teaching people how to cope mentally, then are we teaching them to freeze up and fail at the vital moment. On the other hand, it is important to avoid fully automatic instant responses and end up battering someone honestly asking for directions. It is a balance that forms the hardest part of training and teaching. How many instructors inadvertently teach techniques that kill, sometimes tacked onto a disarming technique as an afterthought? Instructors spend all their lives teaching how to deal with the physical outcomes of conflict, but is it not equally important to understand and teach the mental aspects?

While objective answers to these questions may be impossible, it is surely vital that the class and the instructor considers the questions.

The next week I met up with Raymond again. He told me that he had re-visited the police station and been told that all three men were still in hospital. However, he was also told that the police were not going to press any charges against him. He looked most relieved. He was free of the event legally, I only hope that he is able to free his mind as well.

Basho has been in the martial arts for 18 years and holds a 1st Dan instructor grade in Taekwondo. He recently returned from a year touring the far east.

During this time, the Mongol led precursors to the Ming had collapsed and China was about to enter its most fascinating historical age. It was an age of intellectual flowering, towering social and political achievements and immense scientific progress. During all of this, Chinese Daoism was again forming into something new. The almost shamanistic practices of external alchemy were giving ground to a new practice of internal alchemy. Internal alchemy was the search for ”immortality” through the development of magic powers inside oneself. This is a syncretic idea heavily influenced by both Confucianism and indeed the movements of Buddhism, which after all is all about internal realisations, forming ideas that are readily recognisable for their influence on the west.

I am talking about internal kung fu.

One of the leading thinkers of Daoism at the time was the legendary Chang San-Feng, who wandered up Mount Wudang and made it the base of his Daoist sect. Legend has it that, in one of the temples up the mountain, he formed his magical exercises into Tai Chi after watching a snake and bird fighting. After the Yongle Emperor decreed Wudang to be “The Grand Mountain” its place in history was assured. Fast foward in time and the monasteries and buildings were made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. The palaces and temples in Wudang contain Taoist art and icons from as early as the 7th century. It represents the highest standards of Chinese art and architecture over a period of nearly 1,000 years.

Of course, the true nature of Daoist history is as slippery as the core texts. I will have more to say about the veracity of this “history” later.

So what is it like to visit? Walking the 20,000 steps (!) up the mountain is one of the most spiritual things I have ever done, but not perhaps in the way that you might imagine. We came to Wudang half way through our journey in China and before our journey into Japan. Since we were basically on a spiritual journey around the world in general, and Buddhist journey in particular, the effect of Wudang took a long time to settle into my bones. However, my muscles ached like hell the very next day! Also, this was still China in 2009 and Daoism is a very strange and illusive beast to get a grasp on. So what the hell happened? This is something I will have to go into far more depth about at a later time, but essentially the contrast between this strange and very foreign way of life gave me the space to consider my own thrown into sharp relief. When you meet people and visit places that are so different to your experiences and your life, then you have two choices. You scoff. Or you stop and think. Mount Wudang is one of the best places I have ever visited for making time to stop and think. To, in fact, go beyond thinking and be able to sublime the nature of your existence. It is a fair thing to say that I walked down Wudang a different person than when I walked up, but that I didn’t realise it until much later.

So, here is the (small) film about that day. I hope that I managed to, at least a little, capture some of the feeling of the place and time.

NEW You Tube version:

Vimeo version:

Wudang Mountain, the Heart of China from Basho Matsuo on Vimeo.

He lived over 1100 days (all through my university years) and was simply wonderful. When he got old, his fur went grey and he couldn’t trim his own nails, so I used to take him out very gingerly and clip them for him using my Leatherman.

“Biscuit!”

He was the most kind and friendly hamster you could imagine. Always pleased to see me, always happy in his life and very well fed and watered. He died of old age the day that I moved back to London. I remember just an empty flat apart from this massive hamster cage made of bright tunnels and little rooms and bases; it could have fitted 10 hamsters.

So, I buried him in the garden.

I remember that he once taught me something I will never forget. Taek’ was an escape artist par-excellence. He could escape from almost anything and go ‘on the run’ around my room and flat. Sometimes it would take ages to find him and I would have to trap him back using food to entice him into the open. He never minded my handling him and I never minded his escaping.

He decided to teach me a lesson.

One day, he escaped in my university room and after much searching I realised he was under the bed. The little bastard was hiding so well that I was forced to go right under the bed to catch him, which was not easy as I am 6ft 2inches tall. It took 5 minutes to move all boxes and stuff from under the bed as he kept retreating further and further under. Eventually I was right under the bed and he had nowhere to run.

He was completely cornered, but he wasn’t finished with me yet.

He paused, raised himself up onto his little hind legs and looked at what was, from his point of view, an enormous pair of arms blocking both to the right and the left. I still swear to this day that I saw him take a little determined hamster breath, look me in the eye…

…and charge.

He flung himself forwards with all his considerable scampering speed and at full gallop leapt up at my face. I was far too far under the bed to move in that split second and I still have the memory of a flying kamikaze hamster soaring towards me and attaching himself to my nose. His sharp little teeth caused a level of pain in my sinuses that I have never experienced before or since. The shock made me involuntarily jerk my head up which was a mistake because my bed was one of those cast iron jobs normally seen in a mental institute and weighed a ton. I cracked my head on the metal frame thereby adding mild concussion to my increasing list of injuries.

My hamster briskly detached himself from my nose and ran out from under the bed via the gap under my arms. He continued his freedom for another three hours while I, 500 times his size, was completely defeated and could only lay there ruminating my ignoble fate as a trickle of blood ran down from the back of my head.

I learned a very fine lesson that day and have since named a martial arts technique (the Angry Hamster Technique) after the shear brilliance of one of Gods smallest creatures; brother to the bear, a fellow that was my old friend: Taekwondo the hamster.

“Judge me by my size do you?”

The Angry Hamster Technique is this: when you are cornered by a larger, over confident and significantly stronger opponent; do like the hamster and have the courage to wait for the right moment to attack the exposed weak spot!

Hamsters: excellent creatures, not to be underestimated for their courage!

Basho

So, Saturday rolls around and Cesca and I jump in the car at a god early time in the morning and rush all the way around the M25 to Basildon. It is too early in the morning for me to get up any head of anger and a strange killing calm is evident in the car as we drive. I think Cesca has come just to make sure I don’t shoot anyone, but she is relaxed as she thinks that for me to be really really angry I need to be awake. Hence, she has got us moving before I got a cup of coffee. In actual fact my level is up to the Hulk in one of his planet smashing rampages. Cesca should be worried because I have a secret weapon ready.

Amtrak is in a Trading estate near the motorway and following the traditional British formula of these things, it is best described as a real shit hole of epic proportions. A hive of scum and villainy with rubbish dumped everywhere and evil looking warehouse frontages with pokey little offices. We park up and I practice my look; The Look:

The Look is one of practiced pure malevolence.

It is The Man With No Name pissed off,

“You gonna draw those pistols or whistle Dixy?”

Kaiser Sosa being in a line up,

“Hand me the keys you fucking cock sucker”

Butch being called “paunchy”,

“What did you just say?”

My wife knows it as “my killing look” and gives me a little kiss on the cheek to calm me down. We leave the car and approach the door, where I knock. This is ignored. So I hammer with my first which makes a ungodly noise. The door opens I come face to face with my nemesis; the lady from the phone calls. In real life she is even more repulsive looking than in my imagination, I shudder to think of what her painting in the attic looks like. She is old and fat and mean. She eyes me up and down and jerks a thumb signaling that we should join a line of quivering members of the public all waiting, endlessly waiting, for their packages.

I save The Look for later and sheepishly join. Not a word has actually been said.

This line was an amazing experience. Everything in this office moves at a glacial pace that would have tried the patience of a Buddha and had Gentle Jesus biting his knuckles in frustration. It actually gave me a moments glimpse of the of the afterlife as only Limbo could be more endless and painful. In fact, I think the pope is wrong, people don’t go to Limbo; they simply come here and wait in this office.

Finally, she rolls around to looking for my parcel’s information on the system. After the consultation of her computer she pronounced her favourite catch phrase, “We don’t do night deliveries”.

My wife almost ducked. You see, I have been a martial artist for 14 years; I have 2 national titles and 1 international title. For my black belt I broke three bricks using my hands and feet and spared against two other black belts at once. I am also 6ft 2 and 18 Stone and thus can loom when I want to.

I didn’t react outside of my head. In my head Bruce Lee unleashed the whoop’ass. I saved The Look and merely grunted. After all this is all much the same as usual for me and I hadn’t had any coffee or breakfast.

She continued and explained that since Watford had to authorise any delivery changes and they are ignoring ALL methods of contact, she has loads of deliveries stacked up waiting to go out which can’t. Head office had informed her that she was not to send the package anywhere until such time as a FAX was received from the long lost customer service department of Watford Electronics.

Hell may well freeze first.

It was at this moment that I could have pointed out that she had told me herself that it would be there Thursday without fail, so why did she do this if she KNEW she wasn’t going to send it? OR that perhaps she should have advised me this 15 days ago and I could have come down and got it sooner? Or that she doesn’t answer her phone or FAX or even open the door to anything less than the knock of Cthulhu?

Frankly, I couldn’t be fucked . If I had to spend another moment in the presence of such evil I would be forced to do the honest thing and take her out the back and put two bullets through her lungs.

Deep breath…

I gave her The Look and she shuddered. Moving very slowly I leaned slightly over the desk still looking her straight in the eyes,

“Can I please have my parcel now?” I asked very quietly.

“I..I will just go get it”, she says and hurries off her chair and out of the room.

Clint Eastwood eat your heart out!

“Thank you,” I answered standing back up and my wife hugged my arm.

Ten seconds later…

The door opens and my PC arrives in my presence. The pure shining light of its beauty banishes the dim shadows of the room away like a new star had been born in the night sky.

Without a word I take it home and unpack it. My wonderful wife goes and makes me some coffee.

It works first time and it is beautiful. I relax and all the weeks’ of stress bleeds out of me and away.

I load up F.E.A.R. (the best game of the time. Ed) and auto detect the performance settings…

They ALL come back MAXIMUM!

Xmas is saved! I cancel the order for The Kraken and sit down to play. 17 Days late, but worth it in the end…

Basho

Well I have been busy all week and getting excited about receiving my new PC from Watford Electronics any century now.

As regular readers will know from the previous post on this matter, I am still waiting for my much delayed packages and have been assured that they will turn up Thursday the 15th. The fact that I am writing this on Friday the 16th and I don’t sound happy should give you a clue as to what I am about to relay.

Firstly, this time I was taking no chances. I had agreed Thursday the 15th on the phone with the delivery company, but I was not going to sit by and expect them to actually remember this or anything, so I rang them on Wednesday the 14th to check they were still there, everything was OK and the PC had not inadvertently turned into a hamster or evolved into a sentient life form and made a break for the tree line. My conversation started after two hours on hold and went like this:

“Hello, I am tracking parcel xxxxxxxxxx and am ringing up to double confirm you are going to deliver it tomorrow”.

“Oh, er, right… hold on” Cue impossibly long pause. “Right, yes it’s all ready and you will definitely get it tomorrow”

“Great. Can I just check you have my number?”

“Sure… 0207 xxxxxx”

“No that’s my work number, try 0208 xxxxxx or 07769 xxxxxx”

“Ok, and it is flat X, Queens Rd, Buckhurst Hill”

“No… (sigh) It is flat 3, Number xxx, Queens Road, etc”

“Ah right…”

“Look, I will fax all you could need, just deliver the bloody thing. I have been waiting 3 weeks for this and can wait one more day”.

“Ah bless” (she really said this!) “It will be any time between 9-6”.

Right. I definitely don’t trust them now. So I fax off directions to my house from Google. Directions so clear that an 86 year old blind Korean rice husker could find me and deliver something.

I get up on Thursday morning all excited like Xmas has come early. I plant myself in front of my front door buzzer and I have the wife check the buzzer works and everything is fine. I sit there getting on with some work I need to be ready for Monday.

Midday comes and no sign.

3pm comes and no sign.

At 4pm the phone rings. It is Watford Electronics Customer Service! This was when I realised that I was in the twilight zone. Watford CS has phoned me!? ME!? A customer!? I was so shocked that they had emerged from behind the rock they had been hiding for 15 days that I couldn’t even swear clearly and resorted to speaking Norwegian.

“SNOR BORG A SNIT SNARD!!”

“Sorry?” came the female reply.

“(COUGH) Sorry about that. I can’t believe you are calling me”

“Er now, your delivery was due for the 1st… and today is…”

“The 15th”

“Er… yes. Now Amtrak don’t do night deliveries”

“O’way? Do they not now? Now there’s a thing”. I was so angry I started speaking with an Irish accent. “H’er’way well, what are ye be doin’ about it?” Although at this point I started lapsing into pirate. “Me’harty” I added for good measure.

“So, er shall I refund the money for the delivery and book another?”

“Yes please, and don’t bother. I have spent so much time mucking around with you people I have organised it myself for today”

“Oh, OK. Fine”

“Thanks now bye”. Click… phone down. Point made. Letter to Watchdog formulating in my head.

So I wait…and wait…and wait…At 6pm I go buy a few beers and sit down. It didn’t come.

Friday… I wake with a permanent head ache. I am in a hardwired ass kicking mood. I get into work and after a mere (ha!) 50 minutes on hold I get through to the young lady who booked the delivery for Thursday. You know what she said? I assure you I couldn’t make this shit up…

“We don’t do night deliveries”

“GAHHHHH!” I scream

“Pardon?”

“You. You booked me a DAY delivery for Thursday, remember?”

“Oh er, well we have called head office about it, would you like their number?”

“No, I want my package”

“Monday?”

“I am at work” And then she said… (This is classic)

“I can book you a night delivery, if you want?”

“I tell you what, I am going to come and get it tomorrow. Will it be there?”

“Yes”

“It better be” SLAM! of the phone going down. Deep sigh.

I honestly think I may have died from stress there and then if I had not been paid today and just got my Xmas bonus. So I can take it. Suck it up man! Tomorrow, it is showdown at Amtrak Basildon. 8:30 am they open. I will be there and I will not be denied again…

Watch this space!

Continued HERE

It all started so well; I got promoted to manager at work. Which basically means I have twice the work to do and I don’t have to fetch the coffee and biscuits any more as I have peons to do it for me (For any of my peons reading this, I am of course joking as you know I don’t take biscuits with my coffee).

To celebrate this largess I decided to invest in a new computer. A BRAND new computer. Well, it happens to us all eventually and I knew that I would one day, theoretically, earn enough cash to be able to afford a new one and not just upgrade what I have. That day had finally come. Being a geek at heart I asked a 22 year old what was the best one to buy and was promptly pointed towards the hearty fellows at Watford Electronics under the sinister pseudonym of Saverstore.com

No fool I. I read all the reviews. Perused all the feedback. Even phoned them up and checked the specs and finally decided on the Carrera Octan Ultimate 7800 that had the most heart staggeringly good specifications that I could hardly begin to believe it.

# AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
# 2x512MB Dual DDR Memory
# 256MB NVIDIA 7800GT PCIX Graphics
# 250GB ATA Hard Disk
# 16X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW
# 19″ TFT Flat Panel Monitor

Credit card in hand I ordered over the web safe in the knowledge that the man on the phone has assured me that they do a late night delivery to my area so that I don’t have to take time away from my aforementioned high powered job to pick it up. I was also told that a mere 6 days would pass before I would have in my hands the Ultimate PC!

Swipe that card baby!

So, here it all started to go wrong. The point that they had my cash. Firstly, 6 days was a little on the misleading side and it was more like two weeks before I heard anything at all. Finally, after 13 working days I see on the Savastore website order tracking that the PC is taking shape and looking good. Then I get an email that it has been dispatched. Oh joy of joys! Wonder upon wonder! Soon I will be delighting to my new monolithic dream computer!

Will I hell.

I eagerly log on to the delivery companies tracking system to find it is not listed. So I call them and find they don’t have an option on their system for customer service so I choose sales and get through after 2 hours on hold. “Don’t worry”, they say “It is so hot off the press that it hasn’t shown up on our system yet, you will probably get it the day after they said”. Ah, problem. My mother is staring in a play that night and I have top tickets. Bugger, ok ok I reschedule the play (much to my wife’s chagrin) and sit in waiting the door bell and my night delivery.

Nothing.

Perturbed but not angry I call the delivery company. Perhaps they could not find my address, or got lost finding my street, or delivered it to someone else? I mean, I am easy to miss; being the flat between the number after mine and the one preceding. I can see how that would throw them off!

After 2 hours on hold I get through. “We don’t do night deliveries”, the lady says.

“What? But I have paid extra for one!”

“Tough.”, came the reply.

“Will you deliver tomorrow (Saturday)?”

“Only with Watford electronics customer services authorization via fax” she retorts.

Fine thinks I. I will get that authorization quick smart. Being an IT manager, I am used to dealing with suppliers and know all the tricks on the phone. Yes, I would soon hit them with the right combination of indignation and scorn and they would fall over themselves to help me if only to get me off the line. I look up the customer services phone number.

They don’t have one.

They do have an email address! No worries, I once did an email that got Dell so flustered that the head of UK services called personally to apologize and gave my entire department free PDA’s! So I put together a short but effective message, pointing out that I would call Trading Standards, Watchdog, the Small Claims Court, and offer a sacrifice to Satan himself if I didn’t get my PC Saturday.

I get no reply at all. Total ignore. And, of course, it doesn’t arrive.

So on Monday, I roll up my sleeves, gird my loins and sit down for action. I email, Fax and use their online feedback form 3 times each.

They ignore me again and still the PC is somewhere between them and I (Mars probably). I start to have visions of the delivery drivers son getting a very nice early Christmas present.

Wednesday, I decide to go for the throat and Fax them 21 times, email them twice and feedback till the cows come home. We all laugh about it at work, but the jokes on us. They persist in ignoring me still. What has happened at Watford? I wonder. Has it been hit by a nuclear missile, or an asteroid strike? Are they even now in fallout shelters because Gabriel has sounded his trumpet? Had I missed something about Watford the town? Are the poor wretches of the Saverstore.com Customer Services Department even now being herded into the wicker-man?

Who knows?!

Thursday, and by now I am a little stressed to say the least, I hold on the delivery company phone number for another 2 hours (and remember this is their sales department option!) and finally get through to The Voice Of Sanity. This, young, eager sounding guy says “Yes! I can see it right here” and “It must have fallen through the net ”. Ha Ha goes I. He goes on for another ten minutes about how their internal company procedures work (or in this case don’t work), how faxes are needed, how he will handle it all for me and how I should 90% get the package this very night, most sorry sir.

Great! I rush home giddy as a school boy. However, the night ticks around to 9pm and the package is obtuse in its absence. I have a very restless night wondering if I will ever see the package or my £1300.00 again.

The next day (today) I hold for 3 hours at the delivery company sales department and then give up.

But wait! It appears that since the day before they have updated their hold music, it now mentions a FAX number! Resigned to failure I fax them, taking 8 times to get through. I list every possible number, fax and email address they can call me on including my mothers home and work numbers and the numbers of all the pubs I visit. I point out that if they don’t phone me back then they are really trying hard to ignore my plight. 10 minutes (!) later they call me on my mobile. It is the women I spoke to the first time. “We don’t do night deliveries”, the lady says.

“But I was told yesterday…”

“We don’t do night deliveries”, she says again sticking firmly to what she knows.

“Look lady… ”

“We don’t do weekend deliveries either without authorization and Watford are ignoring our faxes”

You and me both!

“Look, can we just agree a delivery time and I will take the time off work?”

“Next Thursday?”

“Done”

So here we are. Lessons learned. If you want something ordered, kill Watford Electronics before you start.

Will it arrive? Will I get rescued from this hall of mirrors? Will Watford stop hiding behind the sofa? Watch this space and see!

This happened to anyone else?

Basho

PART TWO CONTINUES HERE