Archive for the ‘Biography’ Category
Paradise Valley
Dorset is experiencing its worst winter for 30 years but in Paradise Valley it just makes the views more beautiful and the adventures more exciting.
See here for the latest instalment.
The Real World
Anytime I want. Day or night. Summer or winter.
All I have to do is step outside.
Leave behind all the paranoid stoners, political junkies, earnest enquirers and put the deadlines on hold.
Right outside my front door is the real world.
London Games – The Novel
Now On Sale Here.
It is 2012. Britain is slowly emerging from the longest and deepest recession for 100 years. It has been a dark and difficult time. The London Olympics are now just a few months away. The whole country is hoping that the games will provide the inspiration and renewal that it needs.
London Games follows five characters through the spring and summer of 2012, culminating as the games open at the Olympic stadium. It is a gripping tale of relationships and dramatic personal experience. It concerns an Afghanistan veteran suffering from combat stress, a disgraced ex-banker sent to jail amidst scandal and public outrage, a cocaine dealer with customers at the very top and the very bottom of society, a property developer on the cusp of making his fortune and a restauranteur starting to make his name as a celebrity chef. At times it plumbs the depths of London’s sordid underworld yet it also catches an uplifting mood and celebrates the city’s unique history and environment. It examines crime and punishment as well as food and drugs, love and ambition. Ultimately it reveals a bond between the most unlikely of friends, thrown together in an extraordinary and thrilling climax with a redemptive message of hope and optimism.
Sir Damian Fremantle experiences the shock of his first night in Brixton prison while Susan is confused between shoplifting in Sainsbury’s and bomb disposal in Helmand province. Clive Dumonde is still mourning the death of his parents as he struggles to understand what’s involved in developing a multi-million pound property in Notting Hill. His business angel Mark is also an investor in the uber-hip and trendy Vermont restaurant just around the corner. Meanwhile, Mo, or Big M as his customers call him, is living the hectic, stressed-out life of a cocaine dealer, supplying crack to streetwalkers one minute and top grade powder to city bankers the next.
John George is on the brink of becoming London’s top chef. It is a constant struggle to devise new dishes while coping with the relentless pressure for perfection. As the guests become ever more famous, so the financial pressures increase, the staff becomes more difficult and the vanilla vodka bottle in his desk becomes his best friend. Then, without warning, the scales fall from his eyes and the sous chef who he has barely noticed for months is transformed into the love of his life.
The pressure on Mo never lets up. His customers call all day and all night. He is always looking over his shoulder, expecting to see a blue light in his mirror or hear a knock on the door. Then, for no good reason, his principal supplier accuses him of passing counterfeit money and Mo is in a race for his life with both the police and violent gangsters.
Susan finds herself locked up and heavily sedated. She thought she was doing her duty but she has committed a dreadful crime that will have consequences for the rest of her life. What future or hope can there be for someone who has been a hero, trained as a killing machine but now behaves like a homicidal maniac?
Five characters, products of their time, all on an inevitable path as their stories intertwine and we glimpse a post-2012 Britain, rejuvenated, reinvigorated, ever more complicated, challenging and exciting – a Great Britain.
Paradise Valley
Come with me into the crisp, sparkling air of the Dorset countryside. Let the salted breeze blow away your cobwebs and the sheer beauty still your soul.
This is real life. All the rest is illusion.
Go here.
Cannabis Is A Wonderful Thing
Two days ago, I found this marvellous image of Hunter S. Thompson which reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to write about for ages.
Cannabis is a wonderful thing. We spend so much time having to engage in intellectual, scientific, medical, moral and human rights arguments that we forget to tell the truth. We forget to say what’s good. We forget to advance the wonderful, beneficial, delightful, life-enhancing qualities of this amazing plant. Cannabis is good. It does you good. It’s done so much good for me in my life and for so many people that I know. It opens hearts and minds and understanding. It reveals truth and beauty and music and conversation and the joy of existence on our beautiful planet.
Now, I can even substantiate this with science. Cannabis has been treated with reverence and as a religious sacrement by some yet demonised and reviled by the forces of darkness and evil. The positive benefits of God’s herb, known to mankind for thousands of years but shrouded in mystery and superstition, are now revealed by science as an integral part of the universe. The Endocannabinoid System (ECS), only discovered in 1988 but now known to be fundamental to life, is the reason that the natural supplement of the plant is a good, good thing. A nutrient that can benefit us all. See here.
The ECS, present in mammals, fish, reptiles and birds, is now known to be vital in pain relief, sensation, appetite, taste, weight control, mood, memory, motor skills and fertility. Contrary to the idea that each pull on that joint kills millions of brain cells, in fact the ECS facilitates neurogenesis, the birth of neurons. In 2003, the US government registered US patent no. 6630507 for cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants for limiting neurological damage following stroke or physical trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and dementia.
Cannabinoids have been shown to have analgesic, anti-spasmodic, anti-convulsant, anti-tremor, anti-psychotic, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, anti-oxidant, anti-emetic and appetite-stimulant or appetite-suppressant properties.
Is it any wonder that cannabis has been used as a medicine for thousands of years? Is it any wonder that millions of us have known instinctively for so long that cannabis is a wonderful, beneficial, health-giving plant?
Cannabis really is the wonder drug that the hippies rediscovered in the 1960s. It really does offer so many benefits to mankind. However much the prohibitionists lie and dissemble and spread fear, uncertainty and doubt, the truth is out. Science now knows what we knew all along. Cannabis is a wonderful thing!
Paradise Valley
Heaven On Earth
It’s that time of the month again!
No, no, no ladies. Happy times! Another walk in Paradise Valley. See here.
Was Tony Blair A Force For Good?
My Non-Appearance On Sunday Morning Live
Since Wednesday the BBC had been in touch every day. This morning they started calling me and testing my webcam and sound from 8.30am. They had me sitting at my desk from 9.45am, 15 minutes before the programme started. I was warned I could be in shot at anytime. I drank too much coffee. I did get a little nervous and jittery. I was desperate for a cigarette even though I gave up six months ago!
Who was that suave, debonair, good looking chap in the crisp white shirt on the background screens? Yours truly of course, waiting patiently for my big moment, trying not to sneer or laugh too raucously at the ridiculous first discussion on animals.
I had my notes blu-tacked to the window frame right behind my webcam, adjusted so that viewers would never lose deep, seductive eye contact with me.
“We’re coming to you now Peter”
“Stand by”
I fancy I can see Susanna Reid flushing slightly in anticipation of introducing me…
“Uh, sorry Peter, we’re not going to be able to come to you. Out of time I’m afraid.”
Such are the trials and tribulations of my life! Suddenly the programme was over.
You'll Get Your Chance, Gorgeous
Turning to far more important things, the dogs and I set off for the hills. My mobile rang and it was Anna from the BBC, apologising and promising me dinner and a hot night with Susanna all at the corporation’s expense. “No, sorry, I can’t be bought off. Call me tomorrow. I’m too busy now.”
On the panel in the studio had been Mary Whitehouse’s successor, frumpy Anne Atkins and the utter jerk, Francis Beckett. What a prat? Why would anyone want to listen to his obnoxious, ill considered views, delivered with all the grace of a blind, three legged rhino?
Was Tony Blair a force for good? This was the question I was supposed to be answering. The BBC had come to me as a result of this article. I had, of course, considered my response and this is what I intended to say.
Was Tony Blair A Force For Good?
I do not count myself as a Tony Blair supporter. I never voted for him. In fact, at all those elections I deliberately spoiled my ballot papers writing “no suitable candidate” across them. I am an admirer though.
I think you have to give him credit for a number of things. He rescued Labour from its madness and turned it into a credible and electable political party. That was good for democracy. He finished off the good work that Margaret Thatcher had done on the unions. He was her true successor. Now the only nutters that we have left are Tweedledum and Twitterdee from Unite and the mad and bad Bob Crowe from the railways.
You have to give him huge credit for Northern Ireland, for Kosovo and Sierra Leone. I think he was also responsible for a fundamental change in British politics in that he reconciled caring with competition. For the first time it was accepted that you could have a social conscience but still believe in business and the free market.
On Iraq, clearly it is a good thing that we got rid of Saddam Hussein although, personally, I think we should have assassinated him. If there was a moral justification for war, for shock and awe, then there was for assassination. Even if we had lost thousands of special forces that would have been better than hundreds of thousands of innocents. I do think that Blair became carried away with George Bush and that was a mistake. Bush will be forgotten long before Blair. He was not of the same calibre. All he had to offer was the might and power of America.
Fundamentally, what you have to ask is did Tony Blair act in good faith? I believe he did. I believe he is an honourable man. Look backwards from Blair to Thatcher and there’s noone else until Churchill and then Lloyd George. That is the company in which Tony Blair will be remembered. He is a great man.
I Was There For You Tone!
The one thing I really don’t understand in this man of vision and intelligence is his conversion to Catholicism. I can just about accept his Christianity although why a man with his intellect needs organised religion I don’t know. I really can’t understand why he wants to be allied to the institution that has been responsible for more evil over the last 2000 years than any other. I think it demeans him. He has far, far more to offer the world than that stupid old bigot the Pope, for instance. It seems to me the Catholic Church will benefit far more from him than he will from it. That’s his business though.
Peter Reynolds 