Here I am at the edge

 Japanese YouTube Channel Tonight, I was watching a YouTube channel about mysteries posted online by a vlogger in Japan . One mystery involved the body of a young lady that turned up in Norway . The lady had several wigs, and passports from various countries; to me, it was clear she was from Germany . What makes me think this? The lady in question was heard talking in german in the locality; German is not a natural second language as it is not a widely used language. Outside Germany, the only areas that speak German are Austria , some areas in the USA , parts of Switzerland , France , and Luxembourg . The most common second languages are either Italian or Spanish.

  World War 1 Poetry This post -  http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/john-mccrae-in-flanders-fields.htm?fbclid=IwAR0afRsaHTT6ZEXe8aVqekYfXqIM7ybpELPo234o95yKFiupDAZc7ebmIv0&mibextid=Zxz2cZ   is dedicated to the men who died during World War 1 . My grandfather fought and was injured during The Great War .

 Once upon a time Years ago, when I was in the mood for writing , some people I knew asked me if I was going to enter a writing contest , The contest rules were to write 30,000 words in a month, at the time I did consider entering as I was "in the zone." The thing which kept me from entering was the thought of having to write four pages a day; on my good days, I doubted I could keep the pace, even for two weeks. I knew several writers who did get certificates for completing the task; it made no difference to them as they didn't get a contract for their work. I did enter a couple of contests but found the judges biased toward their favorite writers, not only in the USA but in the UK .

 Vanity Three years ago, I considered the option of video streaming ; I decided against the idea for several reasons. Mainly because I am not a good talker, which is why I don't do webinar meetings; also, I am not vain enough to think anyone could be interested in my life; nor do I play video games which a lot of streamers put online.

 A pretty face can't save a bad film Often directors think a pretty face can save a bad film https://hereiamattheedge.blogspot.com/2023/01/even-star-cannot-save-lousy-film.html , but eye candy , as in the case of  H uma Qureshi (above) is not always able to do this, I have seen Ms.  Qureshi in three films and all I can say from my point-of-view is that she is an attractive young lady, as an actress she leaves a lot to be desired. I am pleased to see that Raveena Tandon has progressed from being the eye candy in films with Govinda and Kader Khan  to the Indian public these films are comedies https://hereiamattheedge.blogspot.com/2023/01/comedy-films.html , to me they leave me cold.  One of the biggest flops in India this year is the new film featuring Madhuri Dixit , Ms. Dixit is another example of eye candy, despite the success of the series "The Fame Game"    https://hereiamattheedge.blogspot.com/2022/06/indian-tv-series.html   she remains a l...

 The cross-genre ebook Many years ago, one reader accused me of being a Nazi, which is ironic as several people told me I look like a rabbi and tend to think like a Jew. The issue arose through the reader not liking the style of the story; the story is based in the mid-1940s USA, a time before PC, and criminals had more civil right s than their victims. The reader didn't approve of one of the police officers using violence to beat a confession from a criminal; but, that is how they worked in the 1940s, and in parts of India still do. The story is hard to define, is it a ghost story , is it criminal fiction , a mystery , or is it a mix of all three?

  Not too long ago At one time, in the not-too-distant past, I was all about writing and e-book sales; I used to stay awake worrying about the lack of sales . Then, I came to a realization that changed my outlook on my writing and sales. The realization is, it didn't matter how hard I plugged my wares, the sales would not come. From that point, my views changed to buy if you wish, the links and titles have been on the internet for years. At the moment, I am writing for my friend, Julia, in Seattle, as she appears to be the only person interested in what I write . Our joint project has changed to writer and editor , rather than joint writers.  I am also working on two or three projects alone, I have no plans to put them for sale as I don't wish to see more hopes of sales dashed. If I had some sales on either Draft2Digital or Amazon, I would put more for sale, my sales on Amazon are so bad that my bestseller on the site has sold less than a copy a year.

 The land of the Opera In my search for foreign films, one thing I realized early on is that despite being the land of Opera , both in writers and performers, Italy has virtually no film industry, and what it does produce is mainly gangster movies. For the last few days, I have been trying to think of the name of an opera. I knew the leading character is a lady with a fierce spirit, and I knew it wasn't Carmen , I was certain the opera was set in either Spain , or Cuba , but I had difficulty in finding it. Tonight, I found the answer to my question - no wonder I couldn't find it before - what I was looking for is Tosca , which is set in Rome .

 Nordic Noir Last night, I was asked where my interest in films from India came from? My reply was that my interest was more in foreign films, than India, per see. My interest in India has many sources as this post -    https://hereiamattheedge.blogspot.com/2023/01/indian-cinema.html will show. My interest in films from Scandinavia started long before the recent craze for Nordic Noir with shows such as Borgen , Trapped , Forbrydelsen and others hit the screens. For many years, one of my wishes has been to buy a set of films by Ingmar Bergman  but which films to get?

  How did he not miss the money? Reading the news can be scary, but at the same time, it can be funny, and mysterious as is this case of an enormous scam . It appears that the athlete Usain Bolt is the victim of a scam to the value of £12.7m. This news raises several questions, mainly how did he not realize the money was missing? I got scammed once,, so I check my account at least once a day. If he can be scammed to that level, and not know he must have more money than he can account for.

  Getting Noticed Apart from issues mentioned in other posts in recent months, the links are at the bottom of this post; it has become clear to me that to be noticed in the cinema in India , there are people you need to work with. Outside of the Kapoor family, to be seen in Hindi cinema you will need to appear with some of these actors Shah Rukh Khan , Amir Khan , Salman Khan , and Govinda . I am not sure if Bollywood cinema has accepted what Hollywood was forced to accept in the late 1960s, that actors and actresses have the right to choose their roles.

 Blurred Reality For several years, I have been concerned about my mental health ; most of the time I put my concerns down to the gallons of coffee I used to consume when I was writing . In the past year, I decided to cut back on caffeine, and the results on the whole have been better health for me. Today, I got a shock; I woke to a knock at the door, after going to see who was there I thought I heard a neighbor say "There's a parcel for you, Alan." After thanking him, I looked across the road, and thought I saw a delivery van which had delivered a new computer I was waiting for. After knocking on the door, and getting no reply I began to question if I had seen the van, or had I imagined the entire scene?

  Hunt the Hunters If people in the West weren't so "civilized," I would suggest turning the tables on those who hunt for fun. In medieval times, lords used to chase people for fun; I wonder how the hunters would feel if they were driven to the ground, to be torn to pieces by a pack of ravenous animals.

  George Romero Though I have no proof, I would say, yes I believe in zombies. Not the film genre created by  George Romero ; that is pure fiction. Zombies are living people who are put in a state of trance, the practice came to Haiti from West Africa during the era of slave trading.  The fear of the Living Dead was used by Papa Doc , and later his son to control the population and to rig elections by eliminating the opposition. However, like most dictators in history, at some point, someone stands up to them. Though Papa Doc died in office, his son, and his family were sent into exile. Junior and his family lived their lives out in Paris , they reputedly escaped with as much money as the Marcos family held in the Philippines .

 Miss Wales Tragedy can strike at any moment, as the current Miss Wales has found out this week. She is a Black Lives Matter activist, who a few days ago had the world at her feet. She was looking forward to entering the Miss World Pageant in May. Now, after a car accident that left her with a fractured pelvis, and two bones broken in her neck, she lies in the University of Wales Hospital , in Cardiff . The last I heard about BLM was a few months ago, several of their leaders are in jail for stealing thousands of pounds from the organization.

  Kerala The movie of Kaattu Vithachavar from India is based on a true case. A small gang of thieves raided a jeweler shop in Kerala , India . Through investigations, it was proved the gang was connected to gangs in the Thar region hundreds of miles to the North. A group of policemen chased the group to their hideout in the mountains of Rajasthan  continually putting their lives at risk to uphold the law they believed was just and would punish the thieves.  They did get their men, in a way, but on the way back they received a message the thieves had been bailed and were free.  It may not be the correct thing to do, but in cases like this, you can understand how an officer could cross the gray line between the law and justice as they did in the series Braquo from France .  It is the same situation as a film I recently saw, a young police officer joined the force to uphold the law he believed to be just, only to see criminals walk free because of corrupt offic...

 The law This film from India raises a valid question; one I have asked myself since I was in Ireland during The Troubles .  I was in Ireland at the time Bobby Sands died during his hunger strike.  It may not be a Christian outlook, in my view, one dead terrorist is better than perhaps hundreds of innocent people maimed, or killed, as the IRA did in Brighton ,  Hamas  in Israel , and Boko Haram  in Nigeria . This is a story of two police officers, who are tasked with bringing a terrorist to court after hearing of the deaths of several of their friends caused by allies of the terrorist. The senior officer is old school and wants to uphold the law, whereas his junior is out for justice for the deaths. To be honest, if this was me, I couldn't choose. My instinct tells me to seek justice, as we know how courts work, why should we pay for a good life for criminals when people are jobless, hungry, and homeless?

  No Sales rank on Amazon It may appear odd to some people that to have no sales range for most of my ebooks on Amazon , but I consider this a positive; as they have no rank, at least they are not sink ing.

Shark Attack  Since the disappearance of   Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in 2014; it has been my view that the plane will NOT be found. I base this decision on the lack of debris that has turned up. My view has been and still is, the plane didn't crash it landed. This would explain the lack of debris.  My theory is the pilot landed the plane, flaps down to add to the "drag" factor, enabling him to land the plane with minimal damage. After settling on the water, he could have released the airlocks on the doors, allowing water to seep in, but the water pressure would have kept the doors shut. At the time of the incident, I did a survey, taking into account the fuel, the type of aircraft, and the size of the airport needed for a landing with a plane that size. The only airports large enough to land the aircraft in that area are Delhi , and Bombay and they are both far out of range of the fuel the plane would have carried, even taking into account a 10% extra payload to...

 A Divided Mind Years ago, when I was in a writing group based in Germany , s everal writers in the group said they admired me for my ability to flit from genre to genre. This ability lessens the risk of me suffering writer's block; well, the usual definition, at least, I used to get WB, but my variation is I used to get too many ideas. I used to admire writers who could focus on one story at a time; then, some years ago, I turned a 1,500-word blog post into a 35,000-word novelette , and the rest is history, as they say. The story on the head of the post I turned into -  a short story called The Mill House Terror   which I hope to release soon in an eBook short story .

 Forget the glamorous image. I have been asked to expand on my life as a photographer; from here on, you can forget the image of David Bailey and Lord Lichfield . They are NOT photographers, by my concept of the title. How do you earn your living? I have no idea; I gave up long before I could try, even though my father said I was a good photographer. That was a great compliment to my ability; my father never paid me a compliment. If I was good, why did I give up? The answer is easy to understand. If you can find a village to set up, you have to make your mark against the established photographer for the first five years; the next five, you try to break even, and after that, you MAY have made enough to keep going, but what are going to live on for those early years?  Most of the B&W photos in my posts are from my collections; if you wish to find me at the seaside, go to the docks. I love to sit, watch the boats coming and going, and listen to the seagulls. I could not have ...

 The duality of celebrity life Unlike Page 3 of the newspapers, which is a space for sexy photos of young ladies. The film, Page 3, from India , deals with the dual lives of being a celebrity , much like the life of the hero of my book,  The Chronicles of Mark Johnson ,  left behind.  I did base the antihero character on myself; the story of a disgusted photographer of the world of celebrity glamour speaks volumes to me.

 Geology The recent flooding reminded me of a short story I wrote several years ago, loosely related to a series of floods that happened when I lived in Clevedon , North Somerset . The image is not of Clevedon but Scarborough . The flooding resulted from heavy rains from the surrounding hills colliding with the high neap tide coming up the River Avon. The water held back from the hills was such a large amount the floodgates could not retain it, so the water had to be released. You had the perfect storm with the water rushing down, meeting the water drawn up the river by the moon.  Half of Clevedon's seafront was torn to pieces by the force of the water; waves were breaking over the top of the sailing club, which was situated on top of a 20-foot wall. People who go on about climate control are to put it in terms they can understand "batty" and crazy, to put it mildly. We are but ants on a spinning ball in the galaxy. If you think we can change the Earth, you are crazy; th...

 I am not afraid of DEATH. I have had several near-death experiences, going back to my youth. While I cannot say for sure, as everyone's experiences are different, I can say from my experience when I faced death there was no white light, a sense of peace, or anything spiritual about the experience for me. The only sensation I had was the fight for life; my experiences could not be considered natural as most occurred when I was young and had the urge to go on living. These days, I'd be more inclined to seek the calm of passing over. And then, I may see the light. The short story shown at the header is based on one of my encounters; it is fiction based on fact , as my editor asked me to change a few points to not scare the readers too much.

 Another close call Less than an hour ago, I almost choked to death; I am getting concerned at the number of times I appear to cheat death. This time I was watching the loveable series The Snoop Sisters featuring Helen Hayes and Mildred Natwick .  Towards the end of the film, there was a gag where one of the sisters explained why she said to duck when she knew the man chasing them could not have hit them when he fired his gun. She said, "I knew he couldn't hit us, but he may miss the shot and hit us by accident." I could see the punchline coming before it was said, so I began laughing; unfortunately, I already had coffee in my mouth, so I choked as I began to laugh. I struggled to clear my throat for a few moments, but in the end, I evaded anything more severe than a sore throat.

 Kirk Douglas Until the mid-60s Hollywood had the power to make-or-break actors and actresses under the studio rule; this was when a person was hired to do so many films for a studio, and they had no right to complain. If they did complain, the studio could give them such lousy work that no studio would touch them afterward. This practice was supposed to have been outlawed by the Actor's Guild in an action led by Kirk Douglas, but does it still go on?  I ask because several years ago, after his role in Apocalypse Now , Martin Sheen a big star at the time, played in the film Spawn . I cannot judge the film as a whole, as I was so disgusted by the first 15 minutes when the clown character never stopped passing wind; I switched off. I am led to ponder if this is happening in the BBC , David Tennent , at the time noted for playing Doctor Who played in a series called Deadwater Fell .  I am not boasting, I know I can do far better than this series, without trying too hard as ...

 No big names This film is a first; it is the first film collaboration of two arch-enemies - India and Pakistan . Since the separation in 1948, the two countries have been almost continually at war, with India winning most of the battles. Though the film, which is about a young lady who foresees a murder, has no major stars in it, the film is an excellent example of a thriller. The only recognized name in the cinema of Bollywood in the film is Neena Gupta , who has a minor role as a fortune-teller.

 Hindi movies Last night, January 10th, 2023, proved to me that you cannot go by the IMDB ratings for films, not that I do. Most are rated by viewers from India . The film shown here is a movie I bought recently as it has Kiran Juneja  in, a lady I saw in a minor role in the film Shimla Mirchi . This film only rates 3.5 out of 10, despite being a reasonably good film (despite the cheesy ending) because it has few songs and no irrelevant comedy(?) antics. This film is the story of a man who helps a young lady with amnesia fight an entity to get her life back together; Mrs. Juneja has a major role as a medium in this film. I recently bought a film titled Freaky Chakra  mainly because it came in a double pack with the film Satta , which had no subtitles. This film is worthy of the low rating (4.5), mainly because the writer keeps irritatingly injecting himself needlessly into the plot. The film is also hindered by the fractured way the story is portrayed.

Radhika Apte It does not matter who is in the film. My blog readers will notice that I like films from India , thanks to Netflix . Readers will also note that I am not biased, as I lambast some series and movies I do not enjoy watching . Such is the case with two recently-watched films with Radhika Apte. The first is the movie Oh Monica, my darling,  a comedy about three hapless scientists paid to kill a lady. Also in the film is Huma Qureshi,  who I don't rate as a good actress. In this movie, Ms. Apte only had a few lines. The other film I didn't have the patience to watch to the end is called  Crime Scene; in part , I saw Ms. Apte must have been added to attempt to boost sales of a lousy film.

  A teen romance The  Young Adult Romance Short Story entitled  Debbie's beau  is one I wrote several years ago as a two-part personal challenge. The first part, writing the story, was easy; the second part is yet to be fulfilled as it hasn't sold a copy. The romance  I mentioned in the header was published in a men's magazine when I was in my teens, both short stories ,   by today's standards, are weak, but I prefer to put romance in my stories rather than have lots of sex and try to make a story out of it, This is why 13 years ago, I turned down the only contract I got offered. It was from a publisher in Miami called Horny Devil. I kept wondering if I did the right thing, hoping a contract offer would arrive, but it never did. Four years ago, out of boredom, I tried looking the house up to see if it was running, but there was nothing. I could get to the site, but once in, there were no links.

 The Diver While stationed at RAF Lossiemouth , Morayshire , Scotland , a friend, Phil Taylor, invited me to join the Lossiemouth Diving Club. I politely declined the offer, I was an excellent swimmer then, but I don't like having my face enclosed. Scuba diving fascinates me, but I am addicted to terra-firma LOL. Phil never got to be a Corporal despite being a great person, friend, and photographer; he had a thing about people who did not know our job telling him how to do it.

  My Award Winning book I am always ready to learn, especially as my geography has proved to be severely lacking in recent months. Last night was another lesson in geography for me. I had always thought the prison on the   Andaman Islands was off the coast of India ; they are in the Indian Ocean, closer to Thailand  than India. In another matter concerning the islands, one of the villains in my award-winning ebook ,  The Chronicles of Mark Johnson , is from the islands.

  Govinda For several months, I'd been trying to watch the comedies R ajajiji and Aunty N0 1 with Govinda and Raveena Tandon as the stars. This week, I finally got the opportunity, thanks to subtitles on YouTube . I wish I hadn't bothered; the style of comedy is puerile and not funny. I bought the DVD shown here as it has Ms. Tandon, but I am not looking forward to watching the movie. The story is pathetic before I even begin to watch the film; who would build a restaurant opposite a huge hotel? Govinda may be a big star, still, in India , but he does nothing funny for me.