Islands have always held a particular fascination for me - ever since reading a book by R.M.Lockley about his years on the island of Skokholm, Pembrokeshire, South Wales. I was becoming a keen bird-watcher at the time, age about twelve and soon to be an avid collector of the skeletal remains of birds. This was 1948 and probably my earliest manifestation of oddity.
Incidentally, that was the first factual book I had ever read having been a total Biggles addict after I passed beyond Rupert Bear. Flying and aircraft were other, more acceptable passions. I was mildly dyslexic - not that it was recognised in those days - so nobody minded what I read as long as I did. I was thought slow as a result of the bombing of our home in Swansea. Well, it was pretty traumatic.
There was an earlier example of a certain strangeness that is relevant to my story: When the war began, my mother took in lodgers - people moved to take posts to forward the war effort; the first were fisheries experts from the northeast coast. Our next was a lady doctor - Doctor Molly to me - who one evening began showing me one of her medical books, describing anatomical features... then I began to leap ahead of her pointing out structures I should not have been able to understand. Dr. Molly was sufficiently amazed that she immediately told my parents in an attempt to explain this phenomenon. I was four at the time.

The picture shows my father and I with Doctor Molly when she came to visit us in Devon in 1946.
There is more to being an Islander than living on an island. I have been an islander - perceiving myself as separate - from a very young age. John Donne said, 'No man is an island, entire of itself; everyman is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.' I take a different view.
I was sixty-nine before it became apparent that I am somewhere within the spectrum of Asperger's Syndrome. It was quite a shock - and a revelation; it explained so much.
In 1945, our village of Kingsteignton in South Devon, held Victory Celebration to mark the end of the Second War. The photographs give an idea of the magnitude of the affair in our microcosm - quite the biggest grouping I had ever been part of. I believe I was happy enough until the tea was seated - goodies must have been brought out specially, things we kids had not seen before, jellies and the like. Iced cakes! Then something happened to me that left a lasting mark upon my consciousness. I suddenly

found myself excluded from all that was going on around me - it was as if a glass bell-jar had been dropped over me. People were distant and sound muffled... it was terrifying.
It took me a long time to put the experience aside - life went on but it never left me entirely and to this day. Rationally I have learned it could have been a panic attack but at age nine there was no explanation, only fear.
Labels are beloved of the psychologists therefore the 'anxiety' and the 'depression' that dogged me for years, the inability to work with people that would send me running to escape are, of course, symptoms exacerbated by 'chest breathing' as opposed to 'stomach breathing'. Admittedly using my diaphragm helped but my innate reclusiveness is, I firmly believe, a symptom of AS.

My father is marching beside me, though I am invisible, the figure seen just above the bus stop sign. My mother is in the centre of the feast wearing a conical soldier's hat.
We were living in Devon as a result of the 1941 three-night blitz of Swansea. An incendiary bomb that wrecked my bedroom - I was under the stairs at the time -and it was only by the heroic efforts of my parents and later, a Fire Watch team that spared us being burnt out. My mother fetched an extra bucket of sand from next door, negotiating flights of steps and stairs to my room whilst Dad ripped up floor

boards by hand to get at the thing. He actually managed to pull the bomb out and stuff it in the sand, extinguishing it - something that magnesium incendiaries were designed to prevent. He was lucky not to be burned.
I had that partially consumed bomb for years.
Within nights, Ben Evans, the major department store in Swansea, was burnt to the ground with the rest of the heart of town by just such incendiaries. My father remained with Bens, assisting to open the Stables at Rutland Street as an annex for Hardware and Furnishings. Redundancy loomed which led to us relocating to Devon where he worked at Bidgoods in Newton Abbot.
We did not return to Swansea until 1950.
Mother in our garden at 3 Longford Park, Kingsteigton in 1946.

Ma was five feet nothing earning amazed praise from the team
that arrived in time to hose down the smouldering boards of my floor.


The Credit Note below still lives in my father's cigarette case where he had kept it since at least 1941.
The site of that impressive building is now a pleasant open space, Castle Gardens and, as far as I know, the surviving department store, David Evans, is still adjacent.
Dad returned to Bens between about 1955 to 1961 when the pale remnant on Walter Road contracted and finally imploded.
Until he retired at age seventy-two, my father worked at John Hall Tools, Kingsway. As with so many men, retirement took the heart out of him and he died in 1970.

Some months ago I came upon a site via Climate Audit run by an individual who
made it clear that there would be no point in looking for his personal details because
he had absolutely no desire to advertise himself in the manner so common on the
Web. He was tartly dismissive of those who do.
Because of my particular hang-ups, I had to ask myself why I tell the world so much
about myself yet avoid contact like the plague.
My original reason for getting on line was to publish my novel, something that has
obsessed me for decades and, with some exceptions, eluded me. I had no idea that
it would escalate into the mania that has led me to own several domains all
trumpeting 'me'.
I bought and read We Blog by Bausch,Haughey and Hourihan because it tackled
publishing on line then discovered it more or less concerned 'self publication, not
novels... ! However, I was hooked and merrily surged on and, because they
recommended domain usage, set up dot com via Yahoo.
The one thing led to another and I tried several blog systems because the site
building tools were difficult to master - for me, anyway. I found that the prime blog
sites that the book recommended really existed for those who wallowed in code
which seems to be a very American thing. I am too old for it, thank you. Then I
found Fasthosts and went postal, quite literally.
So, why do I do it?
I have given this question a fair bit of thought and apart from the obvious answer
that I seek to publish before my years of effort become a total waste at my death, I
also see the inclusion of so much personal material as a kind of Memorial.
My seventy-one years have been a mixture of the ordinary laced with the unusual.
My personal predicament that has, in the past, given me confusion and pain needs
expounding because I feel it might just help others who find themselves trying to
make sense of their lives and genetics.
Even folk like me, who are innately reclusive, seek contact. Being unable to decide
whether to just open up to comment of all kind is not easy when you frequently
misunderstand the signals people send. I learned to cope, face to face but I miss out
on visual nuance via print. Though it is a truism that people are always
misunderstanding each other and don't have the excuse of Asperger's. The Human
Condition.
So I think I'll just go ahead and unashamedly memorialise myself -and mine.
Some day it can be an obituary

I made the above drawing when I was working as radiographer to three hospitals. This was the way the mental hospital affected me, though allow for 'poetic' licence. I was, however, going through a very rocky patch, although my detachment to these hospitals came as a huge relief from the department at the General. I was beginning to suffer from the depression that was to change my life and I was - to put it mildly - a confused bunny. Basically I was having problems with my sexual orientation. Enough to depress anyone.
Eventually, having learned that I really enjoyed working alone, I was lucky enough to go to a single-handed job - which solved the problem of 'people'. I have to say in my defence, that 'people' were not recognised as the root of my trouble for many years. Something was wearing me down and I mainly blamed it on my home life. Regrettably it was mother who, after my return from Cyprus and National Service, had become horribly jealous and dependant.
To be perfectly honest I wanted a woman and I wanted to love and be loved.
It was not a row or anything dramatic that forced a change in me, it was the look on her face when I told her I was asking another girl out. Something slipped in me and I thought 'if I can't have a girlfriend - I'll have a boyfriend'*. Now this wasn't quite the upheaval that might be imagined because I had been through this once before in Cyprus. On that occasion I had not succumbed because I felt myself bound to a girl at home... but I was sorely tempted.
Anyone reading this must understand that in 1956 this was a big issue both in and out of the Services.
I deal with this kind of sexual ambivalence in the novel via my alter ego. My views on homosexuality are not typical and though I do not regret going through that phase for, oddly enough, it gave me great insight into my own femineity, and I believe put me in touch with my Muse, my Anima. Yes, I have Jungian leanings.
The greatest urge of my life has been a creative one - and creative drive leads necessarily to a desire for recognition... and that is the fundamental thing that brings me to these pages, these blogs

There! I have found my reason for being. Above I asked 'why do I do it?' - I have answered myself.
A glance through these various pages will show that I resolved my problem - I fell in love with my best friend and we married, etc, etc. There were five etc., actually - two girls and three boys. Makes me a very lucky bunny.

But as I said above - 'a rocky time', and my dreams reflected an uneasiness that came out in my drawing. I had always loved book illustration and my drawings were usually put together
as though story telling. Sometimes I would write a story to go with the vision in a dream. Usually there seemed no rhyme or reason for the image I came up with. At least putting them
down on paper got it out of my system.
I have always been a fan of the ghost story thus it was no great step from M.R.James to Lovecraft, though it was Science Fiction that was my main interest. The more macabre expressions of my output appeared after I became involved in post mortem work.
It seems that anything unpleasant that happens to me takes time to work through so that there is a disjunction between cause and effect. When these problems were new to me, I had no idea what was going on - I just knew that I was a very miserable person for no particular reason. I don't think it is strange that my problems with my libido became worse at this time. My psychic energy was being drained away by the trauma of coming face to face with the irrelevance of the dead.
That latter phrase has just come to me but I believe it is meaningful as many things that rise from the subconscious are.
My thoughts have moved in this direction as a result of looking through my illustrations from this period - and last night, I saw CSI Miami for the first time in a while. Tends to focus the under-workings of the mind and bring them to the surface.
I had suddenly found my life had no relevance and that, although I did not realise it at the time, was my major problem.

Alienation is an old, now disused term in psychiatry but it is very apt for what has happened to me through my life. Above is another picture from that period. Not very well executed but quite telling as an example of my state of mind at that time. I do like to think that I was demonstrating some sort of movement away from the ruin I felt my life to be towards something better. This insight only came later.

I am disillusioned by Science.
For most of my life, science was the shining light of progress and, early on, the career to which I aspired - providing Medicine is part of Science.
Like any child, I wavered about a bit, whilst I was anatomising birds (already dead), I wanted to build aircraft - then it was flying them. But I began to harbour a sense of duty to my fellow humans and wished to help. But I always had the sense of' been there, done that'... not that the phrase was current back then.

My private Zoological studies impressed one headmaster sufficiently for him to take me into Grammar School direct at the Lower Sixth level and I became devoted to the idea of pursuing Marine Biology.
Well, the usual problem put paid to that - I started too late and National Service loomed. Two years as a clerk in the RAF in Cyprus and although I continued my zoological interests as best I could, too much time was lost. Even a year in Technical College after demob whilst I did my A Levels did not advance me far.
Ultimately the need to pull my weight with the family economy led me to become a student radiographer - a branch of Medicine had claimed me after all.
I remained in Radiography for sixteen years... but this preamble is now drifting off thread:
Why am I soured by Science? The feeling has been growing upon me for a number of years partly because I have some extremely unscientific theories - I won't say 'beliefs' - and partly because I had little access to information whilst living on our island with a family to raise, and a cottage to maintain - not to mention animals and boats.
Since returning to mainland life that is virtually a generation ahead of basic island living, I have been able to catch up. Since gaining access to the Web, my awareness of the scientific world has exploded. And so has my myth.
Even before leaving Wales and our modern life I had conceived a dislike of the mania for computer models - and that was over sixteen years ago. The mania has grown over the intervening time and is now out of control. Witness the Global Warming fiasco.
It is the subject of so-called Climate Change that has opened my eyes to the short comings of science as it now performed. I am not going to itemise every solecism - I am not writing a treatise - you have only to look at the disgusting behaviour of the scientific community regarding the IPCC and its lunatic claims to realise something is very wrong. We hear of 'peer review' - a process that should be the most honourable of safeguards against foolishness and fraud - yet the incestuous nature of the practice today is no hedge against chicanery.
What do I perceive as the reason for this behavioural shift? - the end of tenure and the advent of funding with strings.
Of course it is difficult for governments that pay lip-service to education to fund the noble universities when they have other calls on taxes - Trident, Iraq, Saudi Princes... to use examples close to home. Misspent monies would fill another treatise.
I am also creeping astray once more.
My appreciation of Science owes more to the old label of Natural Philosophy but the age of the gifted amateur has passed and Science is now an industry subject to all the ills of corporate machinery.
I am led to these musings for a variety of reasons: the shenanigans of the climate community initially, though I must say not all workers are tarred with the IPCC brush - there are notable exceptions and they can be tracked by a glance at Climate Audit - but when even the Royal Society can be taken in by the current hype, what hope is there?
I am driven to voice these misgivings also because I have just read Dawkins' 'The God Delusion - and I hasten to add that I agree with almost all his thesis - but his constant appeal to his science irritated me. I am one hundred percent behind him with his anti-creationist stance and his

Darwinian philosophy - I feel that bumper stickers should be produced for
every car in America: 'It's Duration, stupid!'
(I single out the United States for this treatment because the pernicious
intelligent design nonsense is most rife there).
I am in no sense anti-science, it is the current practice of science that has
me concerned. Dawkins has merely forced me to voice my misgivings
because I feel he is placing too much weight on foundations that may be as
shaky as the religious ones. I believe I have come to this conclusion
because the current Global Warming panic has all the trappings of religious
conversion and the driving force of this movement is Science... or at least
what the media perceive science to be.
Constantly saying science insists that he must be an atheist because it shows him a greater cosmos than any god myth could, is undoubtedly true but suggests to the unscientific reader that they cannot comprehend that wonder.
Personally I decided in the Third Form that any religion that owes its power to a book written by men has to be idiotic. As a result of this I called myself agnostic but by the time I went into the RAF I was officially Pantheist on my documents; very eyebrow-raising. I was nineteen.
Dawkins calls Pantheism 'sexed-up atheism'.
Pantheism is the label for the means whereby I came to my own peculiar philosophy.
I have not given up on Science as a concept, nor do I believe science is peopled by fraudsters - there are far more decent workers beavering away at their own particular speciality, adhering to the Scientific Method, than the other kind motivated by any number of human frailties.
I think my fundamental disquiet is rooted in the almost superstitious regard in which science is held by the public. Yet the general public is virtually illiterate in scientific matters as are the journalists who feed them their version of events in the form of tabloid pap. This state of affairs makes it easy for a body like the IPCC to manipulate public opinion for their own peculiar ends. But then, the IPCC is actually a political body financed by the UN and the governments that constitute that body.
What they are doing defies explanation.
I have slipped into 'rant mode' and this isn't the place for it.
Dawkins is eloquent upon the joys of scientific enlightenment and I can only agree with him - but he is preaching to the converted. In his final chapter he discusses at length the world unseen by our unaided senses -particularly the quantum realm. He describes, or attempts to, the incredible strangeness of matter as it might be seen from a quantum perspective - as if it wasn't strange enough already in atomic terms. Wonders...
Curiously, Dawkins does not seem to realise he sounds religious. He does not seem to realise that because every particle of our bodies - and probably our minds - obeys some quantum dictat, there is more than enough room for manoeuvre regarding things not dreamed of in his philosophy.

But I dream them

We have Jung to thank for New Ageism - enough said. At least, for now
I feared my fire would consume me and inflict a new religion on the human race.
Such inflation - but it is a fact that something should be done about religions that cause such pain in the world. I felt that I had the answer in my Rebisite Philosophy.
I seem to have some kind of mental block that prevents me from putting down a clear exposition of my beliefs - as they have come to be my beliefs in the course of writing Inside the Rainbow. 'Belief is a loaded word with so many religious connections that I quail at its use - but what else can I say when it is the only word that I can use to introduce my reason for being.
The fundamental principle of my 'belief is reincarnation.
I have been convinced of the reality of reincarnation for so long, I think I was born with it. The matter of my precocious anatomical knowledge must have predisposed my mindset so that by the time I was old enough to intellectualise, I just took it for granted. To put the concept on a sounder footing that my growing scientific sensibilities could accept, I proposed that it was a question of the 'conservation of energy1 - life being an energy at least as dynamic as those conceived by Einstein.
Now, I suppose, I should explain that I was something extraordinary in a