A rebel without a clue.

So much thinking and thoughts are both empty and ephemeral but they occupy, pointlessly, my sleepless mind. They seem filled with matter but really there is no substance in them. Thinking in that time between sleep and the struggle to return to sleep, before I gave up around 5 and came downstairs to a pot of coffee and a podcast before 6am. Dawn is coming in the east. The birds are singing and it's all good. It's simple. My thoughts are complicated, layered, interlocking and insane. But they do nothing. Over thinking is a real disease. But there is no point crying over split milk. It's gone. It's evaporated in a cloud of memory. For a moment I thought I hadn't fed Ruby when we returned from just one more beer, but I had because her dinner from Thursday is missing in the fridge - it had some fishes in it and they are not on her shelf in the Utility Room fridge ... The guilt I felt reflecting opening the bottle of Bordeaux I saw laid down alongside the many other wine...

Prayer is a means of speaking to oneself in a very direct and, perhaps, meaningful way. The individual isn't speaking to God, actually, but to something deep within which is god. When I am contemplating am I speaking to god? Or am I speaking to the elephant in the room? That's the thing. There are two aspects to my being, and I've understood this for very long, but I am still one. Duality is an internal reality. One voice is speaking to one aspect of me: appealing for witness. Focusing my thoughts on "god" or "ego" is the choice? But how do I know which voice I am speaking to? Is it in the overall feeling this gives me? One of tranquility or one of anxiety? Just one pint yesterday: the music on in the Mews is dire and people comparing Putin to Hitler are just idiots who should be shot, or told they're completely wrong to drawn that comparison - there is no comparison in the systematic extermination of the other with the imperialism of Putin.

Well I did it. Day One, again. Sobriety. This morning the sun is shining and there is a widespread frost: so good for garlic budding... Day two. Mother still in chains at the Duchy Hospital. Lola had her breakfast, did a hasty toilet and then went back under the covers in mum's room. We kept each other warm throughout the night. Two bodies are much better at the conservation of energy. Makes me wonder: like binary star system. From next-door comes the voice of Adrian. It's 7:10am and it's time for my breakfast

Until I awoke this morning the universe didn't exist. Until I saw the crows wheeling above the distant sycamore and beech they didn't exist. Until the sound of the motorcycle was heard it didn't exist. All night a low level humming came into my awareness, and I am not talking of tinnitus, but what is it behind the double glazing? That humming was much more placeable as the perpetual background sound, which assaults constantly all hope of peace, the A1(M) as it pours forth. There are probably areas of Wetherby, say for instance down by Sicklinghall Road, where the sound has refracted and never reaches - as it sits on the west side of Spofforth Hill? Mother is back. She's back in her lair. The last three days of silence with Lola, the allotment and 42 Braine Road have reduced to a zero. There is no present moment which is all encompassing: within the moment, the riddle, there may be something profoundly still and infinite but I think it is beyond a mere animal, humanity, ...

My soul is dying. The moment I had when I felt I was understanding something real is vanishing and I don't know how to stop it popping off. Yesterday went wrong, again, what should've been a wonderful day of oneness with Lola - 100% - was ensnared by the rottenness at my core. And I am utterly sick of myself. There was some nice moments, true, but I went down that bad path once more. Now I am quite concerned that I'll never really be free of debt because I am a weak man. Full of flaws. The money I needn't have spent on beer. I have a roof, food, bed, allotment and Lola that's surely more than enough? Sitting down to another 2 cups of coffee on another Sunday, full of regrets. Pissed off with what people did, how they reacted to my ways and the feeling I really wasn't wanted in the brewery or in Wetherby. Let's start again. It's Sunday and I've everything I could ever need laid on my knee, under the covers, on the sofa so nice and toasty. It's too...

So far so busy. It's 17:30 and I don't believe I've stopped since I left mum's, with Lola, at 9am. But now I've got to go back to mum's and make the camp bed up: I decided going to Leeds was a push too much as I would've been incapable of anything in the morning; and a few tomato seedlings... Won't dry out in a day? They're Mexican after all. And I am watching, haphazardly, the Sky News feed. It is the last place I would turn for news: we're in Europe but The Ukraine is a million miles away socially and culturally. They keep showing 'tank' rolling by: it's very simple, and if they can film destruction from a drone all they show is destruction. *** Almost feel into the ditch of drunkenness, but ate a hearty dinner - Morrisons' Chicken Madras, rice, onion bharge, naan - and watched the end of one episode and most of another episode of Around the World in 80 Days. Mother wanted a take out, but they only take cash at the Chinese she s...

It's the beginning of Lent. 2nd March 2022. A month of my 50th year has vanished and all the good intentions of January have evaporated during that alternating February. Back on the 1st January I promised that this year would be different or it would be my last. Some things in Ukraine might make this my last for other - out of my control - reasons, but directly I am responsible for one individual who can change to be a better individual? The lady I see about my alcohol issues says I don't actually have a problem with the bottle, but that I have no 'Goal' in my life. She sees I have certain commitments - mother, Lola and the allotment, as well as the to-ing and fro-ing on either the X99 or X98 between Wetherby and Leeds, but that except for those 'must do' occupations I have no guiding light or compass to navigate by. She's correct. Never have I really had any substantial aim to my existence. Even when meditating, walking or becoming 'spiritual' there...