Here I am at the edge

 The USA saves Europe. To me, Christmas is a time of remembrance and thanksgiving. I am thankful for the entrance of the USA into WW2; without them, there would be no life as we know it today. In the winter of 1944, the Germans made a final push to cut the Allies off from the port of Antwerp ; if they had succeeded, Europe would have been under German control within weeks.  The tank onslaught known as The Battle of the Bulge resulted from  French stupidity; again, the same result almost happened in WW1. Only the reluctance of the Imperial German Army commander halted the von Schlieffen plan,  which was the same as what happened in 1944; only Hitler almost pulled it off. The French's error is that tanks could not be driven through the Ardennes woods; the Germans proved they could, and if bad weather hadn't slowed them down, they would have probably succeeded. Another major factor was that the rains forced the fronts to be massed rather than act as a twin attack. The A...

  Medical Staff I am giving thanks to the wonderful staff at the Bristol Royal Infirmary for saving my wife's life. I will never know who you are, but you have the eternal thanks from my family

  Vajont Dam disaster In my opinion the best option for energy is Hydro-electricity ; after all, nearly every country has a large rainfall; not that HE does not have its downfalls, as the people of Ereto e Casso , a village 62 miles north of Venice found out when the dam nearby brached its banks in 1963. Due to unusually high rainfall, part of the valley subsided into the dam causing a megatsumani over 250 feet high as the water was pushed into an increasingly smaller funnel and increasing its power. Several villages in the locality were destroyed causing 200, 000 deaths. The incident occured because the governement and the company concealed scientific evidence that part of the valley was unstable and could collapse at any time. The dam has since been drained and is now the site of a memorial to the lives lost.

The biggest danger I support Marine Le Pen in most of her concepts, but there is one idea that no politicain or scientist will be able to convince me is safe, that is nuclear energy  is the way of the future. This generation can recall Chernobyl , it WILL happen again; the history of nuclear energy is scattered with such events from Windscale in the UK to Three Mile Island in the USA ; then there was the Karen Silkwood murder which the powers that be put down her to her smuggling Plutonium out of a plant. The element was planted in her car, which was forced off the road, because she was going to expose unsafe working conditions at the plant. Ask yourself this question, how can an energy source that has a half-life, that means half of the danger has passed in the time, be considered safe when the half-life goes into thousands of years, as many of the elements either used or created in the energy are?

  My Sporting Days There are ways in which I can relate to the central character in the film " Loneliness of the long distance runner ." The film is based on a book by Alan Sillitoe . Unlike him, I was not escaping from a life in borstal, I was escaping from my academic failures in school; while I was never good at short distance running I came into my own in long distance running as I could go on a run for hours, I was the same when I was swimming while my physique was a hinderance for racing it was ideal for swimming long distances. I could never have been a contest swimmer, the main reason is you are bound by rules to turn your head every other stroke whereas I take a breath and swam until I needed to breathe.

  British weather Typical of the UK weather , our house has two variations of what may arrive. Out the back it looks like a late Summer's day, and out the front it looks as though it could snow , which some forecasts say may happen but I've been reading that for weeks now.

  Buying from Israel Moon and Son It may surprise you, but I can get DVDs from this site in Israel    https://ioffer-movies.com/   faster than I can from the EU , and another advantage is they have a far greater variety; especially if you are looking for older series as I usually do.

 T he EU is becoming unbearable for business As I enjoy foreign tv series, and buying from Spain , and other countries in the EU involves endless delays in delivery, and unreasonable import costs. I shall try to either download what I can from various sites, or buy the DVDs from my sources in either the USA or Israel . This will mean I shall have the films, but not the official box covers which is no problem as this cuts down on storage.

 Isla de la Mientras On Jan 2nd, 1921, one of the greatest tragedies of modern shipping in Spain happened. The SS Santa Isabel ran aground of the coast in the Ria de Arousa , only 100 yards from the coast of the now deserted island of Salvora .  Of the 256 passengers hoping to go to Cadiz  and from there to South America, only 56 lived. The ship hit the rocks at the spot marked (X). As it was New Year, most of the people were celebrating in the town hall, so the lighthouse keeper had to run 400 yards to raise the lifeboats; usually crewed by men, but with most people far away one boat was sailed by three women in their teens. These ladies were accreditted with saving 30 lives and were awarded the highest civilliam gallantry award. For many years, there was a rumor that the people of the island were wreckers, hence the subtitle of the post  Isla de la Mientras meaning Island of Lies.  The facts shown show that these people were not wreckers, wreckers typically m...

  They gave their lives Some people remember the end of World War 1 at the 11th hour, of the 11th day of the 11th month with a minutes silence; others remember those who gave their lives each day - I am one. I wrote this short story as a remembrance of the grandfather I never knew; we moved south before I had the opportunity to get to know him. My life is a testament to the strength of British steel over a German bayonet; my grandfather was bayonetted in the trenches, but lived because the bayonet broke, to his dying day he bore the hole in his head were the blade hit but never penetrated. I took the title from the two composers who typified the outlook of the period. In  Elgar 's time the view was the British Empire would push the hun back to Germany in no time, and then our men would come home safe. In four dreadful years, the view was that we'd been lucky to come back, a time depicted beautifully, if sadly by the tune The Lark Ascending by   Vaughan William...

  The Long Shot At one time, I was in search of an agent, to help me gain the notice of a publisher for my book selection; those days are far behind me. Now, if I bring out a book, I shall do it via either Amazon , or Draft2Digital . I realise with no publisher, or agent to bring the material to the notice of the public my sales will always be low, but one consolation is I won't have the worry of paying back an advance of sales. One idea I had was to tweak my romance - A Homecoming - the concept was to change a few names, and move the romance story from Israel , to India . I changed my mind this week, if I go ahead with writing the story; the story will be a different story, not a tweaked edition.

   It would be a curse I would venture that at some time, most of us have thought about immmortality, and the possibility of living for ever. I know I used to ponder the question what to answer if asked the question. Long before I saw Mutant-X , X-Files  or Futurama I had decided that being immortal was not for me, nor was cryogenics . To me, there are no points in favour of longevity/immortality, and many against the practice. The main thing is if you are immortal you'll lose so many loved ones during your existence that the only way to prtotect your sanity would to become solitary so you do not form a realtionship; as you know you'll outlive your partner. If you contract a disease that to a normal person could be life-threatening, you'll have to endure this illness for all time as you cannot die even to end your suffering. Futurama is a great animation series, but think what happened to Fry when he energed from the cryotube, he entered a world he didn't know, all his ...

  A scary time I doubt I am in the minority, I have never enjoyed bonfire night ; to me it is an enormous waste of money.  When I see the sparkles in the sky, and hear the booms, my mind has for years told me that for each firework a family could have something to eat. There are other reasons, as an animal lover I worry about wildlife and how the night scares them, and then there are the overworked emergency services that always get thousands of burn victims each year; many lives are ruined tonight for the sake of a few moments pleasure - is it worth it?

  A genetic disaster On her deathbed, my mother confirmed what I had suspected for many years; I was not wanted. My parents wanted a girl they could mold to thier liking, and they ended up with me; this explains why I never pleased them no matter what I did until I enlisted in the Royal Air Force , and was out of thier lives for the majority of my six-years. It also explains why my mother kept asking "When are you going back?" when I went on leave, after I'd sent a letter, and made a phone call the week before. At the time, it just appeared to be a normal thing to say to an innocent person, but in retrospect it was meant to be another way of telling me I was in thier way.

A Change of perspective As my Google Chromebook is on its way out, I think rather than buy another, I shall save up and get a better quality computer; my demands have changed significantly in the last two years. I am going to do some computer work, including adding subtitles to some films, so the need for a quality computer is very important. 

 Blog exclusives I decided if I am going to get my short story selection read it would be best for me to write the short stories only   on my blog . I realize this means giving up selling on Amazon and Draft2Digital ; the reality of my situation is that nothing have hardly sold on D2D for several years, and my only sales on Amazon in the last eight years were for my romance which I put for sale two years ago, so I am not losing much, if anything, by not trying to sell. If I can find some motivation , BIG IF, I have several story ideas, and many stories I can expand for the blog.

 Pitching my romance I am going to attempt to turn this 20,000 word romance short story  - into a 40,000 word  novel  over the next few weeks; I did this type of transformation once before when I found I could transform a 1,5000  blog  on a friend's site into a 35,000 word story. The reason I stopped  writing  that story was I'd been on the project for two years when I realised the  ebook  may not have sold if I'd gone on. Despite the odds of 6,000+ - 1 against I hope to impress a  publicity  agent. The enlarged version, will tke the leading lady from Israel to meet a friend in India .