A perfect recreation of a scene from ‘War of the Worlds’ (2005)

This video is a good summary of how me and Manof spend our days outside of work. This flawless re-enactment is almost indistinguishable from the original… Truly. The part of Ray Ferrier is beautifully acted by none other than Manof Steele.

Three men and a chemical factory.

This is the story of one of my many adventures with Manof, and another friend who I will refer to as Halvard. My story begins on a damp, cold spring morning. I trudged along a muddy path I had walked only once before, every breath condensing into wisps in the crisp air. I readjusted my bag to cease the incessant assault of the torch in my bag against my back as I approached my destination. I shivered with anticipation, knowing what we planned to do with our day was crazy. I reached the small pharmacy on the hill, set my bag down next to the wall and stretched. I looked across the road to where we would be spending the majority of our day. Marchon. This chemical factory had been abandoned for over a decade now, and a large portion of it had been demolished. I stared at the remaining three buildings which we had earlier christened Bronze, Silver and Gold from left to right. It would still take us a few days for us to fully explore the facility.

A short while later, both Manof and Halvard arrived.
‘Does everyone have their torches?’ I inquired.
‘Of course.’ grinned Manof, and they both held up their own respective torches.
‘Shall we get started then?’ I asked, rubbing my gloved hands together and pulling out the foot long maglite torch that had been punching me in the back earlier, excitement now building.
‘Bloody hell CC, compensating there?’ laughed Manof, pulling out a head torch.
‘Hey, if this is me compensating, then why does yours go on your head?’ I replied, shutting him up.
If there is any place in the area that retains information as to the history of the town, this is where it would be found. Marchon used to be the biggest thing here, and was the only reason people ever knew about this small corner of England. We entered through a gap in the fence and walked across the open grounds toward the centre building.

‘All right everyone, don your masks.’ chirped Halvard, always being one for health and safety. In this case, it was definitely a good thing though. We continued walking as we tied balaclavas and neck ties around our noses and mouths. We could see a broken window next to the way we would have to enter, and through it was a large quantity of asbestos hanging out of the walls and ceiling.

For those of you who don’t know what asbestos is, it is a dangerous substance which used to be used for insulation in buildings until about the seventies, when they realised it wasn’t a good idea. Asbestos particles can float around in the air, and when breathed in, they settle in your lungs and cause problems later in life, mainly lung cancer. Hence the masks. Marchon closed down before they changed the insulation to fibreglass, which is used these days instead. And due to decay and probably vandalism, the building had fallen apart in places, leaving large strips of asbestos insulation hanging freely, waving around in the wind. We walked past the window and into the main hall of the middle building.
‘This is really cool.’ I said, looking around the huge hall. The ceiling had fallen in in most places, so there was a lovely coating of decaying wood, glass and broken concrete over most of the floor.
‘It’s almost as messy as my bedroom.’ said Manof. (You’d think he was joking, but I once found a bowl of noodles down the side of his bed that had been there for five weeks with black fur growing our of them)
There were corridors on the opposite side of the building, some dark rooms to our right, a long row of lockers on the wall perpendicular to the exit and to or left in the corner was a small room with a sign that read ‘quarantine area’. This small room was our first stop. There was a large window and a lot of light in this room, in addition to a lack of asbestos. A shower area was the first thing to greet you as you walked into the room. On the left, some lockers had been tipped over and the floor was covered in bits of wood and other rubbish. We decided to make this our meeting point if we were to get split up somehow.

Eager to explore, we put our bags in one of the lockers that had not been overturned, taking with us our torches and masks. First we decided to go through the corridors opposite the entrance. They were pitch black since all of the windows had been boarded up. We switched on our torches and plunged into the darkness. In the next few hours we explored several offices and found records of transactions, paperwork written by Manof’s relative who worked there before it closed, a pristine dining area which looked completely out of place in the otherwise rotting building, a vending machine that accepted old money like half pennies, a huge safe that required two keys and a whole bunch of original blueprints for machinery. We stockpiled the things that caught our eyes in the quarantine room.

‘You know, if this is going to be where we keep coming back to, I think we should make it a bit more… homely.’ Manof said on returning to the quarantine area yet again to drop off some new blueprints we had picked up.
‘That sounds like a fantastic idea’ I said with a smile.
‘What do you have in mind? We can’t exactly bring furniture into an abandoned chemical factory, can we?’ said Halvard frowning.
‘Somewhere to sit would be nice. Don’t worry, I have a plan.’ Manof replied.
‘Well we can do that next time, it’s getting dark.’ Halvard said, looking outside. We had agreed previously that we would leave before it gets dark so as to avoid company of anyone who had the same idea, as most people do these things under cover of darkness.

The next time we visited, Manof took us to a pool of discarded furniture and other junk left by people from the town when Marchon had closed down. We decided first of all to take the sofa that lay near to the top. Now I don’t think I conveyed just how narrow the door to the quarantine area was, nor that there were three door frames in a very awkward position for getting a sofa through. It is almost as though the people who designed the area for people to be cleansed of harmful chemicals were not thinking of how three boys would get a sofa into the room around sixty years later. An amateur mistake for architects.  I urge any architect that may read this to always keep that thought in mind when designing. ‘Looks good, but could I get a sofa in here?’ Yes, anyway. The task proved to be quite a challenge. We had to lift it vertically and push it up through the first door frame, which resulted in Halvard being trapped quite helplessly in the corner between the outside shower block and the door frame. Then we had to twist it around and turn it upside down and… I’ll save some time and just say it took a good hour. Eventually, we got it through the doors and set it back the right way up. A lump of something quite mouldy fell out of a hole in the side, obviously having been shook loose by all the movement. Manof picked it up first.
‘Halvard… was this your old sofa?’ asked Manof, suppressing a smile.
‘No, I don’t think so. We’ve had our sofa for seven years.’ said Halvard, not sensing the joke.
‘Well I found your magazine in it.’ said Manof, bursting out in laughter because what had fallen out of the mouldy old sofa was a really old gentleman’s magazine. This was hilarious in itself, but the best thing about this magazine though was not the fact that we had found a porn magazine in an ancient sofa, it was that the next time we came to Marchon, someone had found the magazine and gone to the effort of ripping out any pages that weren’t completely taken over by mould and sticking them all over the walls of the quarantine area.  You don’t know how surreal it is to stand in a room in an abandoned chemical factory quarantine room with a sofa and a fake plant, surrounded  by pictures of naked 70’s ladies.

There are a lot of stories that sprouted from Marchon. It would take a long time to write them all out in this format. There was the time when Manof walked into a dark room in Bronze. There was a huge BANG followed by a series of BANGS and he ran out of the room shouting profanity. He’d disturbed a pigeon nesting in the room, which had then tried to fly out of the window. Unfortunately, the window was closed. Hence the bang. The series of bangs afterwards came from the pigeon which, having noticed there was glass in the window, tried to fly through a large hole in the window. However, the window was double glazed, so the pigeon flew into a second pane of glass on the other side of the hole and got stuck between the two panes and was flapping it’s wings furiously trying to escape the gap between the panes of glass.
There was the time we found a suitcase full of test tubes. Halvard touched one and Manof told him he was going to die, so he cried for half an hour.
There was the time we found out about the site next to Marchon which is where most of the demolished buildings used to stand, which we called Platinum. We were wandering across the field through the foundations of old factory buildings and we found three horses in outside of a mine shaft.
There was the time we walked into a room with packets of asbestos all over the floor, but the next time we returned to that room they were all nicely stacked in three separate piles.
There was the time we brought a dining table from the canteen into the quarantine area and shared a cherry bakewell tart. We had a plan for if anyone walked in to find us. We would raise our plastic spoons in the air and shout ‘Noops’ (spoon backwards) and start dancing around whilst talking backwards. Admit it, you’d leave if it were you.
There was the time Doc (see my earlier post ‘Friends’) tagged along with us. We took him through some dark offices and he found a bag. He picked it up and inside were human faeces, which he got on his hands. He never joined us on an outing to Marchon again.

The list goes on. The remaining buildings have been demolished now, so our Marchon days are over. But it gave us a great many stories to tell. If you do something similar to this, then I would suggest caution. Things like checking whether the building used asbestos for insulation so you know if you should wear a mask or not, don’t touch anything sharp and rusty, don’t go around breaking things because abandoned buildings aren’t always structurally stable. Just common sense really. I think that is enough from me for one day. I hope you enjoyed reading. Thank you for doing so. -CC

Friends.

Being me has its perks. By the hundred. But truly the greatest things in my life are my friends. There are quite a few people I consider friends, but there are two who I truly could not live without. I don’t use my own name when writing here, and so I see no reason to use their names either. Coming up with an alias is much more fun anyway. One of these people I shall refer to as Manof. He has been my friend for a long while now, and I intend to recount as many of our misadventures as I can in this blog. The other I shall refer to as Scarlet. She is a long way from me, but our friendship knows no bounds. These are the two people that brighten up my life and make every day worth living through, no matter how difficult it may have been.

Friends are easy to take for granted. They’re there for you how ever you’re feeling. You can talk to them about problems in life, you can relax and be yourself around them and, no matter how bad you are feeling, they offer you the support you need to get through your rut until you are bright and shiny again. If you have a friend like that, make sure you let them know they are appreciated.

This post is mostly for reference in any later posts I make. It probably won’t be of much interest just to read, but if I talk about a friend in a later post, I will refer you to here so that you can see who I’m talking about. Like I said, I don’t intend to use real names, but here I’ll tell you a bit about the people who mean so much to me.

Manof is a mechanic, I have known him for years and he is a really great guy. He never fails to make an impression, always ready with something funny to say if you’re feeling down and he has been there by my side through the vast majority of my adventures.

Scarlet is my other half, she currently lives a long way away, but the distance is a small price to pay for being with such an incredible person. She shares my personality and interests, and there is no one I’d rather spend my life with. She’s also incredibly attractive, so that’s a positive.

Halvard is training to be a paramedic, I don’t see him much any more, but it’s always fun to have him around. He’s quite clumsy and is always trying to prove himself, but with a mixture of not being as athletic as myself and not knowing when he can’t do something like Manof, he tends to end up hurting himself.

BB is a guy I met not too long ago. Compared to Manof and I, he’s quite lazy. However, when he finds the motivation to join us he is great company and can generally contribute quite nicely to whatever we decide to do.

JemJar is BB’s girlfriend. She’s a great artist and takes a lot of jokes from the rest of the group. 

Rayron is my gaming friend. She’s good fun to talk to, her mind is in the gutter and no one knows more about The legend of Zelda than her.

Polo is a typical Brit. He reads the newspaper every morning, watches football and goes to the pub. He’s very good at complaining and not particularly good for one on one conversation.

There are others who are not as close to me, but they may come up in later posts. I have a lot of friends who live a long way away and I don’t have much contact with. These are the most likely people to pop up throughout my blog. There is a likelihood that I will have to talk about others who I am not so fond of. They seem to hang around like a bad smell, either because they are friends with my other friends or other reasons I don’t even know myself.

Doc wants to study philosophy and thinks he is fantastic at debating. He is the kind of person that must be right about everything, regardless of whether or not he has actually heard of it. He will genuinely make something up and argue that it is true until you prove him wrong, then he pretends that is what he meant. Sometimes it’s not even something that just came up in conversation, he just comes out with things. He also has a habit of repeating things you’ve said to other people as though they are his own thoughts. Once he repeated something I’d said to me. I can’t even explain that one.

Jonno is a self proclaimed ‘part time viking’. He is a living travesty. I don’t know where to begin. He looks about 20 years older than he is, he is loud and obnoxious, he doesn’t know when to stop and is generally just a pain.

That’s enough complaining. I don’t enjoy being negative, being positive is so much more enjoyable. So I will end on a positive. It makes me genuinely happy every time someone reads my blog. If you have any criticisms on anything I say, or would like to discuss something that I’ve posted about, please feel free to get in touch. I am more than happy to do so. Like I said earlier, this post is different to my usual writing and probably won’t mean much out of context. Even so, thank you for reading. -CC

Relationships.

Something that has become much more frequent in recent years is divorce. In England and Wales, the number of divorces has risen by 4.9% in the last three years. 33% of marriages in 1995 ended in divorce, which is an increase in 11% from the number of failed marriages in 1970. And that’s just the marriages. Most relationships don’t seem to last more than a few months for most people, and a large portion of people don’t even bother with commitment, going from bed to bed without batting an eyelash. It would seem that loving, lasting relationships are dying out slowly. They’re certainly in decline. You could blame it on a whole bunch of things, from reality television shows such as Geordie Shore (Similar to Jersey Shore in America) setting the bar low for the next generation, to movies about true love which over exaggerate the good points in a relationship and make people yearn for a similar perfection in their own life. A lot of people could probably go on for a few pages about how relationships are terrible and you always end up getting hurt, using statistics just as I have to make you see all the bad points and putting you off ever even trying. But would that be the truth? Are relationships all so terrible?

If you have read my past posts, you may have noticed I’m not much of a pessimist. I’m more likely to be the one who says 77% of marriages in 1995 worked out, rather than my previous statement. All statistics can be turned around that way. A lot of relationships that, regrettably, end in tears are between young people. People begin dating earlier and earlier every generation. If you start seeing someone when you’re thirteen years old, you’re unlikely to be able to make a good judgement on whether or not someone is good for you. I’ve heard people say you can’t control your feelings, but that’s not true. Emotions are like children. They’re wild and do silly things, but you couldn’t live without them. It is your responsibility to keep an eye on them and sometimes they will run to far away from you and get hurt, but eventually they will get back up and run all over the place again. It is these incidents in which your emotions get hurt that you have the opportunity to learn. Through life’s experiences, you learn to keep an eye on your emotions and make sure you don’t let them run off again. This is why it is more difficult for a young person to make that judgement. Experiences that we learn from happen all the way through our lives, and I don’t mean just relationships. Life is full of things that can get you down if you let them, and each one can build you up as a person and makes it easier for you to deal with everything.

Of course, you have to learn from your mistakes. If you let something get you down and don’t do anything about whatever it is that has happened, you will stay that way. Put simply, if you cross a road carelessly and get hit by a car it will take you a while to recover. But when you do, you can either stay cooped up in bed all the time, feeling sorry for yourself and refusing to face a road again, or you can learn from your mistake and be more careful next time you’re crossing a road. You certainly wouldn’t go out the day after you recover and saunter across the road without paying attention. If you haven’t made the right choice when choosing a partner and, sadly, things do end, it will take some time to recover. No one expects you to be fine straight afterwards. But after you’ve recovered, you can think ‘I’m never going to try again, it just hurts too much.’ or you can be more careful when you find someone you think would be a good partner.

Before you worry about how to find someone, you should take a look at yourself and make sure you are ready to take that step. Do you get jealous easily? Jealousy is like an enzyme that catalyses the break down of a relationship. Do you want to be tied down to someone? If you were planning on travelling at all, you have to make damn sure you’re ready for a long distance relationship. They’re more difficult than they sound. Can you deal with extreme emotions? If you get angry easily or you’re often sad about nothing, it can really upset someone who cares about you and that can easily lead to arguments. You also need to think about why you want to be with someone in that way. If it’s purely a physical thing then you are not mentally mature enough to be in a relationship. Sorry, that’s just how it is. If it’s because you’re lonely, that is not a good foundation for a relationship. It’ll probably end up with you getting overly attached and scaring the other person away. If it’s because you like their personality, then great, but do you find them attractive? Sometimes it’s better to just stay friends. People don’t have to be beautiful for you to find them attractive. They just have to have that special something that catches your eye. Also, do you find yourself falling in love with lots of different people in quick succession? Let me tell you, that isn’t love. That’s infatuation. If your emotions are skipping around that much, you shouldn’t be thinking about making things serious with someone. Wait for them to settle down a bit first.

I think the most important thing when it comes to finding the perfect person is don’t go looking for a relationship. If you’re looking for a relationship, it will generally be just that. If you’re friends with someone for a while before hand, your relationship will be much stronger, and more often than not leads to you falling in love. You will have much fewer unpleasant surprises if you get to know someone before you dive in head first. People are strange, and a lot of them have a whole side to them that you never see. You know when you’ve found someone who just fits your personality. Things generally come naturally after that. It’s just a case of making sure you’re ready for it before you try to make something more of a great friendship. I would say almost all relationships that don’t go well are the ones in which people decide to date purely because of looks, money and other traits that are nothing to do with the actual person. Things also tend to go sour when you rush things. There’s a sort of honeymoon phase when you meet someone where you can talk about everything all the time and it’s fantastic. But a lot of times, that fades away and you’re left with nothing to talk about. If you’re together at this point, things can become more physical, you stop talking as much, your relationship loses meaning and one of you realises that it’s not a good relationship and breaks it off. I’m posting this because I really do care about people on this planet. I’m not going to pretend I’m all knowing or even nearly an expert. But I do have experiences that I can share, and I wish for as few people as possible to have to go through heart break. Having a girlfriend or a boyfriend is not the only thing in life. And you may not realise it, but love is hard work. If you’re not willing to put in the effort, it’s not going to go well. If you’ve read this, I congratulate you for enduring until the end of this particularly long post. What you do with your life is your choice. I just ask that you be careful when making decisions. There are nearly 7,000,000,000 in the world. There’s bound to be someone who matches your personality and interests somewhere. I wish you all the best in your endeavours. Thank you for reading. -CC

Calamari’s kitchen nightmare.

Washing up. A task I had never thought much of before. The cleansing of cutlery and kitchen utensils after use has never been of much interest to me before. Today on the other hand, the mundane task took on a new, terrifying form. I am lucky to be alive. There I was, in the kitchen, a sink brimming with soapy water, the last of the plates had just been washed and it was time to move on to the pans. I looked to my left where the pan resided, not ready for the monster that awaited me. The once domestic and shining steel pan was covered in a thick layer of corruption. The black burnt coating stared at me, taunting me and daring me to try to remove it. Purging the poor pan of it’s parasite would take real bravery and determination.
So I put on some music, raised my mighty sponge high into the sky and began my assault on the gates of the black citadel built atop my pan. The gruelling battle went on for a good 20 minutes, I was fighting well but barely scratching the surface of the beast. Several minutes later, disaster struck. My weighted companion, having battled with me so valiantly, fell. Torn in half by constant, rigorous scrubbing. I will remember him always. But there was no time to mourn, I was still in the heat of battle. The ugly, lumpy creature in the bottom of the pan stared at me, waiting for my next move, barely phased by my previous efforts. I reached to my right to the cutlery I had cleansed earlier and pulled out a butter knife. At that precise moment, knife in hand, poised to strike, the music changed to the dragon battling music from Skyrim. It was a beautiful moment. The knife was much more effective a weapon against the burntness. Bit by bit the citadel crumbled until, after another 10 minutes, all that was left to do was to rinse the pan. The pan will always have remnants of burn. Battle wounds. But I will always take extra precaution when cooking rice to avoid the disaster from recurring.
As for those left behind, you will always remain alive in our memory. Farewell brave sponge. I will write to your manufacturing company to tell them of your valour.
NEVER FORGET
Thank you for reading. -CC

Can you measure intelligence?

A lot of emphasis is put on IQ these days. If you have a high IQ the you are intelligent and if you have a low IQ then you are not. That is what common belief would have you think. However, that is not necessarily the case. IQ is a test of a certain kind of intelligence. But there is a plethora of different kinds of intelligence. I am not trying to undermine those with a high IQ. Quite the contrary, I applaud you. But there are other kinds of genius too.
Albert Einstein said ‘If you judge a fish on it’s ability to climb a tree, it will spend it’s whole life thinking it is stupid.’ That summarises my point rather well, I think. Everyone is good at something, you just need to find what it is. Natural ability differs between people because we all have different genes, we’re all different shapes and sizes and we all think differently. Some people are good with numbers, some people are good with words. Some people are physically fit, some people are better mentally. Some people are artistic, some people are academic. Some people are only good at a few things and are not particularly good at picking up other things. These people may be considered the less intelligent at school. Well everything you learn at school is at an academic level (which is why most schools urge students to participate in extracurricular activities). If you happen to be someone who is more creative than academic, you could be made to feel stupid or inferior as a child just because you aren’t good at picking things up in a classroom, which has an effect on your personality as an adult. If you’re not good at something, don’t fret. It might just not be something that you don’t have a natural gift for. If the thing that you are trying happens to be something that you enjoy, then I will tell you now: you work hard at that, and you will get it eventually. I think that the following image illustrates this point quite nicely:

If you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will spend it’s whole life thinking it is stupid. Or it will learn to climb a tree. Just because you don’t have a natural affinity for something doesn’t mean you can’t pick it up. You are human. Humans happen to be the most adaptable creatures roaming the Earth. If you set your mind to something and try your best, I honestly believe you will achieve your goal. Take me for example. My natural talents are academically based. Not to say I’m a genius or anything, that is far from the truth. But if I were to do only what I am naturally good at, I would spend most of my days doing Mathematic and Science based activities. Now much as I enjoy doing these things, I also enjoy physical challenges. As a child, I set my mind to being good at climbing and now my week consists of swimming two days a week, Muay Thai once a week and climbing once or twice a week, so I am quite physically fit. Just because I’m not built for strength and physical labour doesn’t mean I can’t be good at it. It’s just through my own choice rather than nature’s.
IQ, intelligence, clever, stupid, they’re all just concepts. No one is stupid. People are just different. If you are good at something, fantastic, keep at it. You have my support. If you are not good at a certain thing, please don’t feel bad. You have my support just as much. If it’s something you want to do, keep trying. Don’t worry about how quickly other people are succeeding, just focus on your own progress. If it’s not something you want to do, then keep looking. You will find something that you just understand, and it might be something everyone else is perplexed by. Good luck in your endeavours, whoever you may be. Thank you for reading. -CC

Fragfest.

Late Rendezvous’ very first production ‘Fragfest’ is on it’s way. Fragfest is a brand new series which uses state of the art technology to bring warriors through time and space to compete in one big bloodbath in which contestants rely on their own skill, with the aid of their choice of weaponry, to climb the ladder of bodies straight to the top! Contestants will be challenged by a range of gruelling battle areas including mountains, streets and forests with the goal of killing their opponents as many times as possible!

How does it work?

10 points for a kill and bonus points for a particularly creative or entertaining kill, the contestant with the most points at the end will be named champion. Different rounds will have different rules which will be explained at the beginning of each briefly.

Is it safe?

Certainly! With new deoxyribose reading technology, the contestants don’t die, they simply return to the battle field after 5 seconds in a random location!  (Fragfestisnotresponsibleforanyaccidentsorsideeffectsfromnewtechnology.
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Who’s competing?

Contestants come from a range of times and dimensions, so the mix of ability is incredibly varied. This seasons line up is:

a prince-warrior blessed with the arcane powers of the Norse gods who commands ice, fire and lightning with one hand and wields a sword to chop his foes down with the other.

Gulch, a shape shifting chimera created in an attempt to fabricate the ultimate warrior. It can change the shape of its body to match anyone it sees, and even rewrite its own DNA to copy their abilities.

Krieger, a German mercenary specialising in knife combat. He loves his knife a little too much to be right in the head.

Mactabilis, a highly skilled soldier in training from the year 2244, armed with a plasmachinegun and proficient in close quarters combat. The skull mask he wears gives this elusive killer a terrifying and mysterious quality.

McKillock, a cyber ranger skilled in archery, mad with rage since the loss of his loyal canine companion. The multifunctional tool he carries is cyber-kinetically linked to him and can transform to fit a variety of situations any ranger may find himself in.

Miroslav …A British plumber. It seems there was a mix up due to a close match in DNA with a deadly warrior. Well, he’s got a big wrench and he seems angry enough, so we’ll just throw him into the fray anyway.

Nikolai, a Russian war hero who has a burning love of vodka. Some say his blood is 25% alcohol. They’re wrong though. It’s more like 40%.

Nuriel, a fire mage from the promethean order. His favourite pass times involve burning buildings, burning people, burning plants, burning animals… you get the picture.

Sim MacGhillielaidir, a druid from an ancient highland religion. He can manipulate nature at will, and the destruction of nature in anyway enrages him.

Wolfgang, a fast learning traveller with a natural alchemical talent. He has the ability to transmute elements, change the structure of compounds and manipulate energy.

I bring you this news because I am a part of Late Rendezvous studios, and also I am acting the part of Wolfgang in Fragfest. It’s our first show, so we need to promote it as much as possible. If all goes well, Fragfest should be out in the next couple of months. Thank you for reading.-CC

Life isn’t all bad.

The sky is really quite inspiring, don’t you think? The mysteries of the universe loom above our heads every day, yet barely anyone on this planet pays it any mind. But looking up at the sky, especially at night time, fills my head with all kinds of words and thoughts. When my problems seem too big, or start to become painful, I can sit somewhere quiet and watch the sky. Looking at that black canvas and seeing the stars and so much more painted across it, I know that I am a part of this magnificent universe and that I will be able to cope with almost anything thrown my way. Even when the sky isn’t clear, like today, it is still easy to draw inspiration from it. I sat in the car park of an abandoned warehouse earlier, watching a single star shining brightly through a small gap in the dense sheet of clouds. Lights from a warehouse on the other side of the one I was sat by stained the sky behind me a reddish orange colour which faded into purple and then a dark blue laced with the moonlit lining of each cloud, running like veins of silver through the cold air around that one star.
There is beauty to be found in everything. It is more difficult to see in some things than others, but it is there all the same if you are willing to look a little bit harder. If you spend your whole life complaining about things, you miss that beauty. That’s what I think. And that’s what keeps me going.
Of course, I would be a madman to profess to you that life is not difficult. That’s not what I’m saying at all. But if you take a step back from everything occasionally and just admire everything around you, it is so much easier to put your problems into perspective. If you enjoy science, look at everything around you and think about how it works, how the natural forces of the universe govern everything from the strong nuclear force keeping atoms from falling apart to the moon orbiting the Earth. If you enjoy art, lie somewhere quiet under the night sky and allow nature’s nocturne to spark your creativity, admire the colours and shapes of everything around you. If you like architecture, find particularly intricate building and lose yourself in the genius of the design.
Life may be hard sometimes, but it needn’t be all of the time. I see it this way. Something bad has happened, so I can be sad about it, or I can move on and be happy. Being happy is so much more fun. I have rambled enough for one evening I think. If anyone reads this, I hope you take heed of at least some of what I have said. Thank you for reading. -CC