Life - A Puzzle to Be Solved? , livre ebook

L ife – A P uzzle to B e S olved?
Mike Joslin
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-11-30
Life – A Puzzle to Be Solved? About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgement 24 Hours Left 10 Answers A Big Friendly Dog, a Bicycle Spanner and Road Rage A Day to Remember A Holiday in Thailand A Modern Predicament A Role with Honey A Suitable Case A Visit to a Special Place Life in the Slow Lane A Water Shortage After the Party Alienated or Just an Alien All I Remembered After That Was… An American Dream My MOT Am I an Epilogue or a Preface? As Usual BINGO Blind Man’s Bluff Called to Account Carpark Blues A Dangerous New Epidemic “Change is Illusory,” said the Lecturer Christmas is Coming. So What! Dave A Tribute to Gerard Hoffnung Expectation and Disappointment President Yaws Looks Back First Days Who needs Philosophy Fun at the Seaside The Funeral of Democracy: Dorchester 2011 Grains Greed The Alien Housewife Lip-Reading Unsuccessfully If Computers had Never been Invented I’m a Caveman Inside Incontinence Is it too Late to be Human Again? Philosophy or Science: the Paths to Wisdom or Reward? Starting Work Jungle Lore Lady in Waiting One Journey Listen Modern Life Multi-Tasking My Achilles’ Heel My Favourite Landscape NATURE GREEN, ROOT and SPORE My Diary Not Safe, but Good Oh Dear On Insignificance People Watching Percy’s Blockbusters Questions Salad Days Slippers, Ice Cubes and Anxiety Something I Care Passionately about: Fairness Spring is Coming Taking Things for Granted The Biter Bit The Boss The Browser The Cost of Everything and the Value of Nothing The Doctor was Perplexed Sacrificing Winning to Eat The Games Mistress The Party The People-Watcher The Priest, the Poodle and the Peculiar Recipe Book The Rep The Gallery of Life The Telephone Rang Thoughts on the Wars Tigger To Thine Own Self be True Toast Tough Guy Toyland Trust and Betrayal Two Women get off a Bus We, the Undersigned What a Marvellous Machine What goes Around Comes Around “What on Earth is that?” What’s in it for Me? Reflections Aired to My Writing Group Will I Ever Ask for Directions? Will I Heck?
About the Author
When Mike Joslin was in his teens, he used to dream about growing up and living his life performing various jobs. He imagined working as a sheep drover in Australia, waiter, long-distance lorry driver and numerous other temporary occupations, each one lasting about six weeks.
Naturally, these objectives faded into obscurity to be replaced by more sensible aims but the underlying urge for change maintained itself since he was employed in a variety of positions during the course of his working life. Including brief jobs, these totalled about 17.
After matriculating at grammar school, he attended night school, studying chemistry for four years whilst working in research for the National Coal Board.
Reasons for moving on varied between desire and necessity but boredom and being told what to do by those superiors he considered incompetent were constant spurs to change again and again. He spent the last 25 years of his working life self-employed in Dorset, where he started his own water treatment company.
In the 1990s, Mike obtained granted patents for several water treatment inventions which were entirely environment-friendly, replacing chemicals in protecting equipment from corrosion and scaling. He formed a limited company which successfully marketed the resultant devices all over the world. The company was sold in 2005 to a Canadian group.
Mike has played a number of sports during his later years, becoming quite proficient at golf, and represented the county at senior level. He was the over-70s champion for three successive years.
He is married with three grown-up children and three grandchildren. He and his wife help look after the two youngest ones, COVID-19 permitting!
Mike has previously published a smaller book of short stories called, Fragments of Reality in 2012 and in 2018 published his challenge to the Big Bang Theory entitled E=mc 2 Unravelled: An Alternative View of the Cosmos . He is keenly interested in philosophy and has written several theses of his own.
He has always supported the underdogs of life and regularly fights their cause in the ‘Letters’ section of the local paper.
Dedication
Recently, I became extremely conscious of the tremendous debt we owe the NHS and particularly its hospital workers. Their bravery and self-sacrifice has astonished everyone.
One of my earliest memories was being in Great Ormond Street Hospital aged four recovering after six weeks of intensive care and seeing my mother walking through the ward with some bananas in her hands. This was in 1937 when the NHS didn’t exist. Much later, our lives were transformed with its post-war creation by being able to constantly rely on it through good times and bad.
We have all benefited in one way or another from having such a marvellous service at our disposal for the last 75 years. Recently, in the performance of their everyday duties, many NHS workers have lost their own lives in the fight against coronavirus, sometimes regrettably because of bureaucratic failures to adequately protect them. We must never forget their contribution to the community.
It’s for this reason that I have decided to donate the proceeds from the sales of this book to the NHS staff health and well-being fund which targets frontline hospital workers.
Mike Joslin
Copyright Information ©
Mike Joslin (2020)
The right of Mike Joslin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528994408 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528994415 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgement
I’d like to thank my family for all their support and love. I can only hope that the machinations of my life, which they have been somewhat obliged to share with me, don’t outweigh the marvellous times we have all had together. I am truly grateful for being part of such an interesting, varied, accepting and talented group of people. I’m proud of every one of you and I love you all.
24 Hours Left
No crowds, no booze, no things to lose
Some sun and fun, no lights to fuse
Family and friends are just
in time for love. No room for lust.
Food and drink in the open air.
That’s more than fair. I’ll see you there.
10 Answers
It seems that when people read a book they like, they want to know a bit more about its author so on the assumption that I’ve just written a bestseller, these 10 things might be more illuminating than my CV.
The bravest thing I ever did was being born here on this planet. I took a big chance as I stood in line with everyone. It was a huge risk; I could have continued exploring the universe but allowed myself this adventure not knowing how it would begin or where it would end.
My regrets include not saying sorry to all those people who have loved me and whom I disappointed in any way. I love them all.
My first love was June Cumber. We were both six years old and we fell in love immediately after dancing around the maypole tree.
Useful lessons I’ve learned include the one my parents taught me, which was to always take the smallest piece of cake on the plate.
My most expensive purchase was my life. I staked everything I had on it.
My favourite county is East Devon. You can actually swim in Beer there.
The best day of my life was when I was three or four watching my mother walk down the ward at Great Ormond Street Hospital holding a bunch of bananas. I was returning from nearly dying.
If I had only an hour left on earth , I’d immediately stop doing what I was doing and sit down with whoever I was with and enjoy it while it lasted.
A real friend is someone I can talk to about anything, however crazy it may be, however embarrassing, however stupid, however farfetched, however simple, however complicated, however conceited, however crass, however revealing, however guilty, however dishonest.
I wrote Einstein’s E=mc 2 Unravelled because everyone was telling me that if I looked back in space with a powerful enough telescope, I would see the universe being formed. They must have overlooked the fact that the light from that event went by 13.8 billion years ago!
A Big Friendly Dog, a Bicycle Spanner and Road Rage
Bill Bradley ground to a halt and threw his bicycle onto the grass verge in disgust. “Bloody, bloody hell, damnation and shivering shitting holocausts,” he exclaimed. His words, not mine!
He pulled his bike into the shade of a tree and lay down beside it, allowing his rage at everything that had recently gone wrong in his life to swamp him in self-pity and sobs of anguish. A puncture was all he needed: his girlfriend of five years standing had walked out on him three months ago. She had abandoned their weekend cycle rides and picnics in the countryside in favour of some total arsehole in the accounts department whose Daddy, the MD, had bought him a new Porsche to go with his appointment as a director.
Eventually, he managed to restore his sense of dignity and dug out his tool kit from the saddlebag and unrolled it in order to find a wheel spanner and puncture repair kit. His thermos flask and bought sandwich caught his eye and he decided the puncture could wait. He settled himself into a comfortable spot with his back against the tree and munched away on hi