Dai's walk around Wales blog

I took this shot from the top of the Foel in Cwmafan with a massive telescopic lens at 1 minute past 12 on the full moon last month, the Clangers of course live inside the moon and on the edge of the dark side and on a full moon they send a scout over the edge to check if the earth is still there. As the official Clanger liaison officer for the earth, it is my job to wave back and to let them know they are still loved and respected by earth people. Tonight is a full moon and the top of the Foel in Cwmafan is the only place you can see them from. I'm looking to run a bus from Glynneath to the top of the Foel if anyone fancies viewing a Clanger. Leaving the Halfway in Glynneath at 10.00pm and picking up in Resolven, Neath & the Cimla. Bring your own refreshments and plenty of warm clothes.

FB FUN

Ian Ben James to Dai...............
Can't make it sorry, but could you hold up a sign for me asking if the soup dragon is feeling better as I'd heard they had a space bug doing the rounds....

Dai Richards to Ian Ben James - I need both hands free just in case of an emergency signal is received but I can pass it on to my P.A. who will arrange it. Hope to see you next month.

Ian Ben James to Dai Richards if you receive an emergency signal and need assistance on a rescue mission I have a PHD in dreaming of space travel and a launchpad next to my shed which should fit a standard pedal powered rocket ��

Dai Richards to Ian Ben James - Brilliant - can you identify whether or not a tandem PPR will fit on the launchpad please?

Ian Ben James to Dai Richards - sorry butty bach it will only fit a Raleigh Grifter. I would love to extend it but NASA and the European Space Agency spoke to the planning inspectorate and objected and the devils refused permission ��

Dai Richards to Ian Ben James - In that case I would consider it an honour if you would join with me in the creation of a new agency - We should call it the Foel-y-Fynnon Fun and Faniciful Flipantly Flirtatious Flyaway into the Fosmos Group dedicated to furtherance of Clanger watching from the Foel. We could call it the F Troop for short. and F Troop will allow any bike to launch.

I would suggest that as human beings we cannot escape the enormity of this event. We are all linked to the people of Aberfan through our shared DNA. Having, I believe, grown older and wiser I know that we will not last for ever and we need to say our goodbyes to the world while we still can, because you never know what is around the next corner, so, every year as close to 9.13 as possible I hold those I love close to me and tell them that I love them and I think about those I've loved and lost and I think about them too. We call it the Cwtch of Remembrance.

21 October 2022 - The biggest mushroom I've ever seen - it would have been the size of a dinner plate if half of it wasn't missing.

I reproduce this FB post by Phil Knight for the reference to 'Double Think'. I believe Orwell to be the next step above genius. Beyond exceptional, someone who took the science of behaviour and predicted the future with alarming accuracy, or have governments taken 1984 as a blueprint on how to control the proles.

Phil's post: Below The Daily Fail displays a prefect example of what Orwell described as "double think" in his novel '1984'. This ability this believe that a lie is the truth, and to change ones opinion at the drop of a hat in line the will of those on high has become a guiding of political life. Without it the mass media could not function. No politican could lie to the people. And no newspaper could print such contradictory codswallop on a daily basis. And Orwell knew how they did it;

Orwell quote:

"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to be come unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink."