The Cost of Value

Yesterday, I responded in a private message to a post on my facebook timeline. To my surprise, the message window appeared again seconds later with a reply. I say surprise, because the person I messaged is not only extremely well known in his field of exploration and authorship, but recently apologised to his followers en masse that, due to an exceptional workload, he was unable to respond in person to the many who had contacted him. However, he kindly added that he really appreciated everyone's contributions. I just assumed that my message would be pertinent to his posting and that he might read it sometime.

We then engaged in a brief exchange, during which I mentioned some information I had related in one of my own books that might be of interest in relation to one of his current topics. He wanted to know more and then said he would buy the book.

It wasn't until I had sent him the Amazon purchase link, that I remembered the cost of the book. For a moment I wondered if I had over-priced it - due in part to the cost of production being higher than other books I have written because it necessarily has to contain colour images. The book is also rather thin - actually being more akin to a booklet. He seemed a little surprised at the price and I apologised with the explanation just given.

"Bought it." He typed.

I thanked him and we ended our conversation. After about 10 minutes of elation, that someone of such standing had bought a book off me, I thought I'd better have a quick read through and see if it stood up to the scrutiny it would no doubt receive... and at that cost!

It may seem odd to some, but I often read through my own books. I actually believe I write well and it is testament to my diligence that I rarely feel anything needs to be changed in hindsight. I write precisely and concisely, with little unnecessary padding. Of course, the downside of this is that I often end up with booklets more often than books! As a writer, I choose my words very carefully. It is very important to convey what I mean to be received. QMS was originally a talk given to scientists and researchers in Barcelona.  It came from inspiration and the words flowed easily through me. For over 30 years, I have explored the more 'hidden' aspects of physical life, and QMS suddenly made a lot of sense.

I realised that the 'Worry Monster' (as my friend puts it) was dancing on my shoulder as I read through my work.  "Is this value for money?" it goaded. "Are you actually saying anything new?"

I woke in the early hours, still thinking about the book and what apology or recompense to offer, should it be rejected on receipt. Perhaps I could offer to return part of the cost, or maybe offer a second complimentary book free. "Stop it!" I thought. "Think of all the things people spend money on. Think of that same amount of money you put into the car as fuel every few days!" The Worry Monster wouldn't let go. "Yes, but look at the thickness of his books - and you can buy them for less than £10." I just hoped that my book was appreciated as substance over quantity.

Check out my books at www.richardgentle.com and here: https://keekoo.co.uk/books

Stopwatch TV

Until a few months ago, I hadn't realised how invasive TV advertising had become on Freeview channels. On the old terrestrial stations, 3 minutes of advertising during programme breaks was normal and whilst it was still annoying, most of us learnt to live with it. 

However, I now find myself having to endure 4 breaks of between 5 and 6 minutes each in a 1 hour programme! That amounts to some 20 minutes of wasted time.  It means that an hour's programme could actually be shown in less than 40 minutes (I include here the fact that most programmes on advertising channels end a few minutes before the full hour).

These intrusive marketing interruptions are wasting my life! In an attempt to avoid them, one might just say: "Mute the volume." But quite frankly, I would still be sat there, wasting my time. No - that is not an option... and neither is missing my programme by leaving the room and returning too late!

Since I do not want to take the other option of recording the programme and then viewing it at a later date - skipping through the often scare-mongering sales-pitches... You could get Cancer if you don't do... You could lose all your teeth or get horrendous disease if... I choose instead a different tactic of avoidance.

Let me introduce you to my solution: 

I have timed the adverts on some of my favourite programmes and now I can start my stopwatch as soon as the interval begins.  I now mute the TV and leave the room, taking my stopwatch with me.  I can go to the loo; I can make a drink; or more often than not, I can check my emails or social networks... there's certainly plenty of time and I am doing things I would otherwise do if I wasn't watching the TV adverts!  When the clock reaches the 5 minutes or the 5 minutes and 15 seconds, or the 6 minutes - depending on the programme and which advert break we are on: 1, 2, 3 or 4 (for the average hourly episode), I return to the TV just in time to see the start of the next segment.

The bottom line is: The ad breaks are now too long! 

I know that many channels rely on advertising to finance their programmes, but this is an invasion of my time and when we reach a point where we have to sit through almost as much time in adverts as the programme or film we are watching, something is seriously out of order. 

I'm never going to be interested [even subliminally] in any of your stupid mis-information, your high-cost services, or expensive household products - so stop bugging me!  The only people who gain anything from these adverts are the broadcasting channels who charge the advertisers. In fact, the same goes for most advertising. The winners are the people selling the space - not the people selling the products - and certainly not the people having to sit through so much drivel. 

Actually, the same applies to hosting conferences and other public events.  The winners are the owners of the accommodation and those providing catering. We all need somewhere to go and we all need something to eat and drink.  We don't need most of the products alongside these.

I suppose that the ultimate solution is to just stop watching TV altogether. Indeed, I have one or two friends who have taken this path and ditched their TVs forever! It's not that I watch a lot of TV, but when I do watch it, I really don't want to be interrupted every 14 to 17 minutes for a 5 minute... and always increased volume (did I miss mentioning that?) delivery of verbal and visual excrement!

And it's not just adverts that waste my time!

I am sure I hardly need to mention that most hour-long programmes could be condensed into about 20 minutes!  Because after the adverts, many programmes insist on giving a complete synopsis of what has so far happened - just in case we are either switching the TV on part-way through, or in a stupefied state of catatonia have suddenly contracted a pandemic outbreak of TV amnesia!

The ARCHITECTURE of BELIEF

A busy half term week started with collecting my daughter from the West Midlands and ended with putting up an exhibition of my Dad's artwork in Cambridge.

We arrived at St Michael's Church, Trinity St, Cambridge, on Thursday 31 October at 4.15 pm. To reach the Chancel, we passed through the very nice Michaelhouse Café.

The Chancel side walls are lined with curtains hanging from pelmets and this is where the exhibition had to be hung from.  The pelmets are about 9 feet from the floor of the seating and access with a ladder is complicated by the proximity of the pews:

However, we managed to position the ladder at an angle - even though it felt almost vertical when standing near the top! By about 7 pm all but one of the paintings was hanging. This was due to the curtains on the left wall being longer then those on the right wall, since the last arch on the right was only half an arch to accommodate a through-way to another area of the building. This meant we had to move some of the paintings along and place another in an area with no pelmet:

(You can see the painting on the right in the area it has to be hung).

The next afternoon, we arrived at 4.30 pm to put up the last painting and adjust the spacing between everything. An extra spar of wood had to be used to bridge the gap, since there was no other way to secure the wire fixings:

This is the main synopsis for the exhibition:

"Everyone believes in something, however practical or abstract. At the centre must be "The Architecture of Belief" we have in SELF. Imparted in family; embedded in community; developed by groups and associations; sharpened and made more inwardly and deeply personal by individual thought, experience, reading and reflection. This belief can lead to striving beyond limitations; extending physically and imaginatively our lives and way of life or the opposite, withdrawing and defending what we believe and how we live.

Across this broad spectrum we can witness and have placed before us instances and images of human activity across our planet. This kind of broad view, however partial, can help us recognise that there, somewhere, but for the chance of being where we are, we could have been conscripted, regimented, deprived, abandoned, to any of the other conditions of life we are shown that are not ours. Any overview, however simplistic and 'detached', should induce feelings of compassion, wonder, sadness but also hope; even as we are not placed in dire positions to defend our belief but want peace of some sort for those who have to defend theirs.

Each of the twelve images evoke aspects of humans conducting their affairs and the hope that belief in the diversity and range of human life can release its spirit rather than kill it." - Keith Gentle 2013

The exhibition will be visible to the public from now until the end of November 2013:

St Michael's Church, Trinity St, Cambridge CB2 1SU

Phone: +44 1223 309147

Hours: Closed on Sunday

The Michaelhouse Café

Felt Up The Wrong Way!

Last Sunday, the weather produced a small gale where I live - the result being that on Monday morning, I noticed the felt from my shed roof folded in a neat heap on the ground next to it. A year previous, the wind had lifted one length of the felt and left it dangling down the length of the long side of the shed. As the felt was mostly intact, I managed to flip it back over the roof and make a reasonable repair with some more felt nails and a couple of wooden strips. However, after inspecting the latest damage I discovered about a quarter of the felt now missing and it was obvious from other tears and gaps that the only solution, to save the contents of the shed from rain damage, would be to re-felt the lot!

I managed to find a place to buy felt in Wakefield, together with more felt nails and some bitumen-type sealer for the felt overlap areas. Despite having had rain showers on and off for most of the morning, a gap in the weather allowed me to complete the re-fit in just over an hour in warm sunshine. After completing the felting, I realised that only one of my original edging fascia boards was free of rot. The two ends were well past being reusable.





In the past, I have always bought my wood locally at the Timbernest in Clayton West. Sadly, the last time I went it was closed for a week, and a couple of weeks after that, it looked like this!

In the end, I remembered Ernshaw's Timber (even more local to me) and they had the wood I needed for about £3. I added two new ends and a further strip along the back:

As soon as I'd finished, it started to rain. The only thing left to do, was paint the ends to match the rest of the shed colour.

Work complete (between rain showers), it should last the winter now - and hopefully, several more years. 

The garden area has continued to flourish and it's now a nice place to sit out.

Garden Plants and Classic Cars

August is one of the busiest months for me - mainly due to it being the school summer holiday for my daughter... which in turn means complying with numerous requests for various activities... not to mention her birthday in the same month!

Anyway, I managed to complete the patio seating area and a local gardener helped by supplying several plants at little cost.

(With bubbles)

We attended both Woolley Horse Show and Emley Show - taking numerous photos we will probably never do much with... Here are a couple:

No one that I know, but the goat was delighted (Emley)

Some of you may be mistaken in thinking that the focus of my attention and the main event here (at Woolley) is the horse and rider...

...but actually, the horse was in the way on that previous shot:

I've always liked that commentary box - it would make a great motorhome / travelling workshop. For much of the year it is parked not far from where I live and I often drive past it.

More to my liking was the Gala and Classic Car event at Barnsley's Locke Park:

I've not been to the Locke Park event before and previously have had my classic 'fix' by going to the Thornes Park event in Wakefield.  However, this year they got the date wrong - changed it twice and I ended up missing it!

Here's a small sample of some of the Locke Park vehicles:

Sun, Seats and Sangria... well, almost

I've spent the last few days making a patio garden/seating area.  I recently discovered that the end of my house is a real sun-trap and after my friend Helen gave me a couple of chairs, I thought it really needed 'beautifying'.  Eventually, I bought a couple of rolls of fence material and then wondered where I could get some wood from.  In the end, I discovered the perfect solution. All the wood is reclaimed and was given to me by my farmer friend Rob and another friend, Lynette.  When I drove home after my wood collecting, the Jeep was crammed to the roof - I actually wondered if I'd ended up with too much!

After removing nails and sawing off rough edges, I had to buy some screws (since I couldn't remember where I'd put the ones I had from a few years back).  Once I had screws and tools sorted out, I started by making a few planters.  They had to be free-standing and durable enough to take the weight of soil and plants... and not get blown over on windy days.  A further complication was the multidirectional sloping of the paving. All the legs had to be cut to different lengths for everything to appear level.

I wanted to have different levels to add interest and an arrangement that would give a cosy, private and enclosed feel.  Another friend donated a little 'Turkey Oak' tree (shown left).

With the last of the wood, I decided to make a personal chair...

Notice the folding drinks table on the arm

The shaped back spars were originally used to keep clay drainage pipes apart when stacked. After doing a sketch to show my friend George, he said it reminded him of an Adirondack chair design.  (I'd never heard of them, but a web search brings up loads). Here's another view of the layout:

Amazingly, I ended up with exactly the right amount of wood for the whole project.  All I had left at the end was one small bin bag of sawn-off rough bits - which my neighbour said he would take for kindling to light a steam traction engine's boiler.

So... Time to think about the next phase...

I have a cunning plan...

The Art of Allowing

It's been an interesting few days - but they almost didn't happen!  

I finally gave up using Hotmail after 18 years after the version of Outlook provided ground to a stop and several times I couldn't access my account.  I'd put in a 'forward' to another of my accounts, expecting everything to come through.  However, when I went to check my Hotmail, the spam folder was unusually full and some items hadn't been forwarded.  Given that I had 465 items to go through, I wondered about simply emptying the whole lot.  However, I knew there were a few things I diverted there and occasionally viewed, so I started going through them.  On the third of four pages, I suddenly noticed a message from my author contact form:

Comment or enquiry: Would like to talk to you about your books. I am a radio talk show host on the Law of Attraction Radio Network.

Sometimes when I receive messages through my websites, it's people simply wanting to increase my search ratings or offer some service I don't require.  However, when I get something like the above, I go and check it out.  I arrived at Fulfilling Your Purpose and found the Law of Attraction Radio Network talk show page.  The first person I recognised was Jack Canfield (from "The Secret" film and author of "Chicken Soup for the Soul")  which certainly added credibility.  I then replied to the host, Constance Arnold, and apologised for my late reply - since her initial contact had been made a week previous and I usually reply to people on the same day as receiving messages.

We arranged an initial Skype video chat and got on really well.  Constance informed me that she "has millions of regular listeners" and people who contact her requesting to go on her show - but in my case, she had simply come across my author site through her own searching and she liked what she found on 'law of attraction' - a topic her listeners are most interested in.

We talked for about 45 minutes and arranged to do a proper interview for the show this weekend - which could go out live either Sunday 21 or 28 July at 7:00 EST (4:00 PST - 12:00 GMT).

Interestingly, what I forgot to mention to Constance, was how 'law of attraction' had brought us together from my perspective.  As mentioned in a previous blog, I had spent the last 30 years of my life practising invisibility - not wanting to draw attention to myself in any way.  However, since developing my writing full-time, being invisible hasn't helped people to find my books!  After almost a year's effort in self-promotion, followed by some thoughtful consideration, I decided that conventional methods to regain visibility were falling short of expectation and when I really thought about it, I'd need a very expansive and potentially costly, marketing campaign to get anywhere near started!  At this point, I decided to hand over the task to the universe, along the lines of: 

"I need to stop being invisible; I need people to know I exist.  Please help me to attract the right people who will be interested in my books and help me to become more noticed."

Following my own practice with 'law of attraction', I then removed myself from 'interfering' in the process or outcome, made a coffee and sat in the sun for a while.  Over the next days, I relaxed and let go of concerning myself with publicity and potential wealth generation, since I finally admitted the truth to myself:  

"Cold marketing is not something that comes naturally to you; you don't have to be good at everything; and you don't have to kill yourself with strenuous effort to "make" yourself good at something if it really doesn't interest you!"