Month: October 2009

This BBC4 program mixed fictional sci-fi and ghost stories with mediums, illusionists and reality TV ghost-hunting programs. It therefore said nothing useful at all, but gave the overall impression that we like to be scared out of our wits, but really there’s no such thing as ghosts or the afterlife.

The technique was familiar to all who have watched TV shows about the paranormal. Any mediums/psychics were discredited, with claims they used tricks and cold reading which illusionists could easily duplicate.

Of course no evidence to counter these assertions were ever presented. Evidence such as I’ve had personally from Colin Fry, or which have been shown on his TV shows. Is a man standing in his pajamas wearing a knitted balaclava the kind of image one would get from cold reading? Yet it was 100% accurate – the strange outfit a woman’s father wore when decorating.

Or the woman who took in washing and chased a neighbor down the street with her wooden washing paddle? The woman given this message laughed out loud and said her mother did just this on one occasion.

Plants in the audience, paid to agree with Colin, Tony Stockwell, and other TV mediums? If these alleged ‘plants’ were so mercenary why haven’t they sold their stories to the tabloids for a lot more money, exposing these TV mediums as fakes?

I got a very specific message from Colin in a crowded theater, naming my maternal grandmother, describing the circumstances which led to her death, and then going on to describe a badly done refurbishment of my mother’s kitchen which had just happened. Even to the extent of saying someone stood a hot pan on the new working surface, burnt it, and then tried to cover up the damage. Colin even pinpointed where this damaged work surface was – on the left as you entered the kitchen.

Of course on the program it was alleged that mediums like the late Doris Stokes got accurate messages by reading thru letters people had sent her. So if she was in Burnley, for instance, she’d read all her Burnley letters, and having memorized them all (quite a feat in itself) and the various names, threw these stories out to the audience and someone would pick them up and claim them.

Now I don’t know how many people write to mediums telling them their life stories, but I can assure you I never wrote to Colin or anybody else about my mother’s kitchen or my burning the work surface, etc.. And I’m sure if the woman whose father wore a balaclava and pajamas for decorating had written beforehand and told Colin all this, she wouldn’t have been so surprised when he mentioned it. Similarly with the woman whose mother chased someone down the street with a washing paddle. There are countless more specific messages like this from Colin and other TV mediums which can’t possibly be explained away by ‘cold reading’. People wanting genuine messages just DON’T write to mediums to tell them these things in advance.

In all these paranormal investigation programs the most convincing evidence is always ignored. Such as when Dr Susan Blackmore is wheeled out to say all cases of near-death experiences are caused by lack of oxygen to the brain or drugs, and are hallucinations. Not once has she been asked to explain how people clinically ‘dead’ on operating tables having near-death experiences have accurately reported  things in the vicinity, in adjoining rooms, outside the hospital, in the operating theater, etc. which they heard and saw whilst unconscious with no vital functions. Nor how people, blind from birth, have accurately seen and described things happening around them during a near-death or out-of-the-body experience.

Of course there are bad mediums and psychics, and there are charlatans. Of course most reported UFO sightings are of conventional aircraft, balloons, helicopters, clouds, birds, stars/planets/comets/satellites, etc. This is NOT the kind of evidence which should be used to evaluate whether these sort of phenomena are real; it is the hard evidence which is left after all the charlatans, the fakes, dream-like and religious visions, tunnels, angels, beings of light and the misidentified objects have been discounted which needs to be studied and explained away. This is never, ever done on TV in these kind of programs, because there is some unwritten rule that all psychic or paranormal phenomena must be debunked.

This latest program sunk even lower than that, in mixing fictional sci-fi and ghost stories, even comedies and children’s programs, and Dicken’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ with genuine psychic phenomena, though there was precious little of the latter presented, in fact none at all.

The wealth of evidence of clairsenstive mediums, physical seances, the testimony of great scientists like Sir William Crookes, Alfred Russel Wallace (whose independent theory on natural selection encouraged Charles Darwin to publish his own), Sir Oliver Lodge, the present day scientist Ron Pearson, inventors like John Logie Baird, Marconi, Edison, etc. are never really presented to the public, yet these people all became convinced that the afterlife is a reality. Nor is the hard indisputable evidence of near-death and out-of-the-body experiences, or the phenomena of Instrumental Trans-Communication and Electronic Voice Phenomena – TV pictures, audio recordings, photos, written messages, etc. received from the Other Side on TV screens, radio sets, recording equipment, computers, etc.

There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. There are also none so stupid and ignorant as those who refuse to examine the hard evidence because it might upset their cozy materialistic theories and their whole smug philosophy of life.

Last night I dreamt I took a friend to Margate, where we had most of our Summer holidays as kids. I was showing the friend where we used to stay, and then started crying thinking of all the happy memories. I woke up still crying.

The whole family spent many happy times in Margate, which to me was a truly magic place. It has, like so many places, now changed almost beyond recognition. Gone are the many colored lights, including the peacock in the gardens by the clock tower. Gone is the pier, the Sun Deck, Dreamland with its fairground and Thursday evening firework displays, Punch and Judy, Anderton’s bakers where we got juicy steak and kidney pies to eat on the beach.

Gone are the crowds who packed the beach and the public address system appealing for parents to collect their lost children from the First Aid hut in the clock tower. Gone is Otto, who put the boards out to indicate the depth of the salt-water swimming pool for use when the tide was out (the swimming pool has been turned into a boating pool, and the old boating pool the other end of the beach has gone). And long gone is the laughing sailor machine on the front which could be heard on the beach. Also gone are the many prize Bingo stalls on the front, where my grandmother won so many dinner services and other great prizes. Gone is the Film Star machine in Dreamland where Marilyn Monroe and James Dean paid out sixpence, Gregory Peck fourpence, and poor old Ava Gardener just tuppence (so I always called her ‘the tuppenny film star’.)

Joan’s boarding house at 3/4 Albert Terrace is still there overlooking the sandy bay, but no longer a boarding house and Joan long ago moved out. I’m sure the rooms now have running water – when we stayed there Joan brought up cups of tea and bowls of hot water to wash in and left them outside our bedroom doors every morning.

Other places have changed too. Swiss Cottage, where my father had his restaurant. The building was the original Swiss cottage which gave the area its name. A farmhouse with a dairy attached, standing amidst fields when built in the style of a Swiss cottage (NOT a Swiss chalet). The Swiss Cottage pub which stood behind my father’s restaurant, with a small garage in between the two, looked nothing like it does today. It has been completely rebuilt in the style of a Swiss chalet since they pulled my father’s restaurant down in the mid-1960s.

Wilton Road, Victoria – this is where one of Britain’s oldest cinemas stood for almost 80 years till suddenly demolished without warning in the 1980s. The Biograph had continuous programs of two films running all afternoon/evening, with no adverts or trailers. It was frequented largely by gay men who sat on the left-hand side of the large auditorium, and was owned in its last days by Henry Cooper’s brother who looked remarkably like the boxer.

And of course Bowes Park, that London area where I grew up in my grandparents’ house with its long, narrow garden. Formerly part of the Bowes-Lyon estate (the Queen Mother’s family), no pubs were allowed in the area. But we had Myddelton Road with its many little shops, including Seagrave’s the butchers and the Home and Colonial grocery shop. Bowes Park railway station was lit by gas, as were the streets in the area when we first moved there in 1951. A wooden bridge over the railway led to the platforms, and the other side on the left was a little hut selling meat for cats.

Trolleybuses ran, and the trams had recently been phased out. London Transport was a huge concern running buses and the Underground which covered most of the Home Counties. The Metropolitan Line ran out to Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, the Bakerloo Line to Watford Junction. Green London Transport Country Buses ran as far north as Luton and Dunstable, and covered all of Hertfordshire, Surrey, Middlesex and much of Essex, Kent, Buckinghamshire, etc.

I remember the bus numbering system – 1-299 were red urban area buses, 300-499 were green country buses, 500-699 were the trolleybuses, and the 700 numbers were reserved for Greenline coaches. London bus stops covered the Home Counties for both red and green buses and were white for compulsory stops, red for request stops (the colors remain the same, but now all bus-stops are effectively request stops. London Transport buses no longer serve much outside the Greater London area since LT green buses were discontinued).  Greenline coach stops were similar to other LT ones with their roundel, but green and white were the primary colors.

London, and England, were so different then, in so many many ways.  Has everything changed for the better? Many things no doubt have, we had no fridge, TV or even a telephone back when we lived in Bowes Park. But the radio was our constant companion with shows like ‘Take It From Here’, ‘Journey Into Space’, ‘Meet The Huggets’, ‘Life With the Lyons’ and Wilfred Pickles with his wife Mabel asking people to come up and ‘have a go, Joe’.

 

Eagle comic would drop thru our letterbox, and I’d rush to read the latest adventures of Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future with its scary aliens in full color, including the green Mekon from Venus on his little flying saucer. Head of a Venusian race called the Treens. The Thants were blue with yellow noses, and looked something like upright horses if I remember correctly. Dr Who? He was far into the future, and when he arrived he really looked like a crazy old inventor, played brilliantly by William Hartnell. No other doctors, in my opinion, matched the original, though perhaps John Pertwee came nearest. Most are far, far too young to be convincing as a crazy old inventor, which was the original concept.

But best of all were those happy happy family holidays in Margate. Even the long coach journey was exciting, long before motorways. It took hours because of the traffic jams in the Medway Towns on the way, and the compulsory, and very welcome, half-way stop for sandwiches and drinks. Then, finally, the joy of seeing the bright blue cloudless skies, blue railings, blue sea and golden sands of Margate as the coach arrived right on Marine Parade on the seafront.

Chas and Dave summed it all up so well in their eulogy to the town: ‘You can keep your Costa Brava and all that palaver’. Just give me the old Margate by the sea! Dreamland? It most certainly was.

As Alice said thru the Looking Glass, or was it when she entered Wonderland? Anyway, subjects such as the afterlife and the nature of our eternal selves/consciousness is far more complex than we ever could imagine or comprehend with our human minds.

It seems there are many facets or parts of each individual human spirit for instance. Certainly higher and lower aspects, but maybe many more as well. It also seems, according to communications from the Other Side (an entity claiming to be Martin Luther King Jr for instance) that there is a universal pool of knowledge/experience which can be tapped into sometimes. This could possibly explain reports of reincarnation.

Spirit told me last night that in order to practise or perfect certain traits or skills, some of us have access to a ‘skeleton key’ which enables us to tap into the memories/experiences of other individual lives. If this is the case, and it ties in with the universal pool of knowledge/experience idea, than although we are all unique individuals with perhaps only one lifetime on Earth as that individual, we may well under certain circumstances have access to other lives and experiences. Certainly all consciousness seems to be interconnected on the Spiritual level, part of one universal whole.

I still subscribe to my personal theory that we, as individuals, did not just hang around for millions upon millions of years waiting our turn for a few decades on Earth. I think it far more likely that our present selves evolved over these millions of years, and while we may never have lived on Earth before as the individuals we are now, parts of our Spirits or life-force may have done so.

How I look at it is that the spirits/life force of many single-celled creatures and plants after death combine with other primitive spirits/life forces to form a new, more complex individual. They may retain their individuality within the new, combined personality. It is sort of analagious to the genes of the mother and father pooling together in a new individual.

Similarly, I believe after we die if we continue to develop spiritually eventually we will seek to merge with other spirits to form a greater whole. This is, after all, the driving force in our Earth lives. Not to remain isolated individuals, but to seek close friendships and relationships with others, particularly our spouses. The sexual act and conjugal love may well be the ultimate demonstration in this Earth life of this desire to merge with another individual soul.

Quite apart from this, many feel the need to belong to something bigger than themselves. It may be a football or pop group/artist fan club, it may be a political organization. As a group, we feel more powerful, and experience a sense of comradeship. With me, for a number of years, it drove me into the Communist Party, and it felt wonderful to be part of a powerful worldwide movement which I believed at the time was going to change the world for the better. I still believe we had a damn good try, but made many serious mistakes on the way. Let’s hope we learn from experience and don’t repeat these mistakes, as that what life on Earth is all about – no experience is wasted if we learn from it and progress.

I still desire to be part of something bigger than myself. Perhaps this is part of why I am so interested in the afterlife fraternity and also believe I will one day merge spiritually with something bigger than myself, call it Source or universal consciousness, whatever you like. Also why I belong to various organizations, and would still like to find an international Socialist group I could identify with which has learnt from the mistakes of the 20th Century varieties.

So with subjects like reincarnation, which most sources seem to agree is not a universal law by any means, we as individuals may not have lived past lives before. Parts of what we now are may have, or we could be tapping into experiences/memories of other individuals stored in the universal consciousness pool.

A unique key opens a unique lock. A skeleton key opens many locks. We are all analagious to unique locks in that we are unique individuals. But anybody with a skeleton key may access our individual experiences/memories, which are apparently all stored in the universal pool the King entity and others have mentioned.

Yes, curiouser and curiouser indeed as Alice said!

I just saw a film ‘comedy’ today with a friend. The film was called ‘The Invention of Lying’. Though it has some funny lines, it is essentially a mockery of those who believe in the afterlife, and also of all religions and those who believe in God or as the movie calls the concept ‘the man in the sky’.

Meant as a comedy about a world where people never lie and always believe everything, the Ricky character invents lying, and the chief message the film portrays is that all talk of the afterlife or a Supreme Being is a big lie, a comforting fairy-story.

The trouble with religion is it is so divisive. I made up my mind, as a teenager, that Christianity couldn’t possibly be the only religion which was right, and all the others wrong. Much less that Christians would go to Heaven, and everybody else go to Hell. In actual fact it was more divisive than that, since Madge, a Catholic friend of the family, once came on holiday with us to Margate, watched me and my brother as little boys playing in the sand and commented to my mother and my grandparents: ‘I can’t bear to think of those two little boys going to Purgatory because you’re not Catholics’.

However, there is a philosophy, science, movement – call it ‘religion’ if you like – which encompasses all religions and none. It explains absolutely everything. It is called Survivalism or Spiritualism.

It encompasses all the major religions because it teaches that we all survive that barrier we perceive as death, but which is simply a gateway to a new dimension, a continuance of life in eternity. Either on the Spiritual planes, as an Earthbound spirit (this is a temporary state), or by experiencing many future incarnations on Earth or possibly other inhabited planets.

Since we all survive death, according to Survivalism/Spiritualism, then for example Christians who feel Jesus is their personal friend and always near them, who hope to see him in Heaven, or who actually see visions of him or his mother, Mary, could all be absolutely correct. There is no reason whatsoever, according to Survivalism/Spiritualism, why Jesus or Mary should not appear to people since they are still very much alive like everyone else who we think of as being ‘dead’. It would only be natural they would gravitate towards those who call themselves Christians and who would accept them as Spirit guides or helpers/teachers.

The same applies to spiritual teachers of other religions, such as Mohammed, Krishna and the Buddha. If these were real people who once lived on Earth, or even if they never lived here but were real Spirit guides/teachers, then they still live today, can appear to people who are psychic, and can continue to teach and help them.

As to the miracles that Jesus and other spiritual leaders are reported to have performed, these too are perfectly consistent with Survivalism/Spiritualism. Accomplished physical mediums are able to levitate (explaining how Jesus apparently walked on water, and maybe also explaining his ascension after the Crucifixion). They are also able to de-materialize and re-materialize, both themselves and other objects. In physical mediumship it is very common for mediums to be tightly bound and shackled to prevent trickery or fraud, yet in many cases it is obvious some form of de-materialization has taken place. For instance, cardigans at the end of the seance, sealed at the button holes, are reversed. All seals and shackles are intact. Mediums have dematerialized in one place and then rematerialized in another room, often whilst bound and shackled, and after the rooms have been thoroughly examined to exclude trapdoors, secret doors, passages, etc.. Apports also appear in some seance rooms. These are objects such as coins, flowers, items of jewelry or indeed anything which has been dematerialized in one place, maybe hundreds of miles away or more, and re-materialized by Spirits in the seance rooms. So this would explain, if indeed it did happen, how Jesus apparently suddenly appeared to his disciples after the Crucifixion. Whether he really died on the Cross or was taken down alive, and later moved to the Far East as some modern theories suggest, he could have materialized and de-materialized if he was an accomplished physical medium, as he appears to have been.

Healing is also practised widely in Survivalist/Spiritualist circles, so that too is not inconsistent with Christian and other religious teaching about the power of prayer, the laying on of hands, and the many people spiritual leaders like Christ are reported to have healed.

Even the religious concept of Heaven and Hell is backed up by evidence obtained by Survivalism/Spiritualism, though the religious versions are described as eternal bliss or eternal damnation. According to the evidence obtained from the Other Side there are many Spiritual planes or levels, the very lowest being unpleasant states of existence because they are populated by very unpleasant, selfish spirits who have failed to evolve. However these are not places of eternal damnation, fire and brimstone. All spirits have the potential, thru the karmic process, to learn from past mistakes (paying for them on the way by reaping the consequences) and to evolve. The concept of Hell as demons creating new bodies to torture and burn is just a dramatic and negative description of the natural learning process of reincarnation. Most of us have lived, and died, many times, and need these various life experiences in order to evolve. Yes there are unpleasant places on the lower Spiritual planes, but hopefully most of us will go to far more pleasant places, and even those who end up on these low, dark Spiritual planes will eventually evolve and reach the Light, probably thru many more incarnations on Earth-like planes, if they so desire.

How does Survivalism/Spiritualism fit in with science, atheism and agnosticism? Very well indeed. It is not a faith, but a science based on repeatable experiment, evidence and proof. It uses the scientific method to prove life-after-death, and it is only the obstinacy of certain orthodox scientists who refuse to examine the evidence that prevents this being more widely accepted in scientific circles.

Nevertheless some of the greatest scientists and inventors have endorsed Spiritualism and the concept of an afterlife, studying physical mediumship, ruling out fraud in many cases and announcing that the afterlife is a scientific fact. Such scientists/inventors as Sir Oliver Lodge, Edison, Marconi, John Logie Baird and many many more all came to the conclusion that communication with Spirits in the afterlife was possible.

The inventors of recording and communications equipment were especially significant, since many believed that electronic communication with those in the afterlife was possible, and indeed this is happening today. It is known as ITC (Instrumental TransCommunication) and EVP (electronic voice phenomena). Voices, pictures and messages are regularly received from the Other Side on recording equipment, TV sets, computers, etc. The evidence is there, but many orthodox scientists refuse to examine it because it upsets their cozy belief systems.

Nevertheless more and more of today’s scientists, and medical doctors, are coming round to the conclusion that we all survive death. It is only a matter of time before this becomes orthodox scientific theory. Indeed scientists like Ron Pearson have mathematical theories which correct the flaws which Einstein himself recognized in his own theories, and these new Pearsonian theories state that we all survive death, and also state where consciousness is located, in a form of energy/matter Pearson terms the i-ther which permeates the Universe.

(See http://www.cfpf.org.uk/articles/rdp/s_macq/summary-macq.html for a summary of Pearson’s theory.)

Such things as dematerialization/materialization, levitation (neutralizing of gravity), etc. are at present only science fiction, but it is only a matter of time before they become scientific fact. Experiments in both these fields have apparently been conducted, and they are not inconsistent with scientific theory. It should be possible one day to dissemble atoms and sub-atomic particles and then reassemble them (dematerialization and rematerialization) and also to neutralize gravity or alter the composition of material objects and therefore make them weightless (levitation). 

Survivalist/Spiritualist teaching pre-dates and accurately predicts modern quantum physics theory in the area of various frequencies of matter and energy. These can be variously described as many Spiritual planes, alternative dimensions, multi-universes or parallel universes. All scientists are agreed that matter as we perceive it with our five senses is largely an illusion, since nothing is solid but is composed of largely empty space, the sub-atomic particles just giving the appearance of solidity. These spaces between sub-atomic particles allow other orders of matter operating on different frequencies, or other universes/dimensions, to interpenetrate our own.

This means the spirits of the dead and the plane they are living on could literally be ‘in the next room’ or actually sharing the same physical space, but invisible to most of us not tuned in to these frequencies. Much like a TV set tuned in to one channel will not be picking up any pictures/sounds from hundreds of other channels in the atmosphere all around the set and the people watching it. All these channels will be invisible and inaudible to them unless they tune their set into one of those other channels.

Charles Darwin was absolutely right in his theory of evolution, and the whole Survivalist/Spiritualist concept is based on evolution. According to the evidence obtained from Spirit, absolutely everythng is evolving, and that is indeed the key to why we are here, the very meaning of life itself. We experience various lifetimes, possibly first as plants and animals, then as humans, moving up the evolutionary scale and learning lessons all the time. Eventually we progress to the level where we have no need to incarnate as physical beings any more on this or any other plane or dimension. We then exist as pure Spirit or energy, ultimately to merge with the i-ther, the universal consciousness, the unified conscious energy field, the Great Spirit, Allah, God, or whatever other term you like to use.

Survivalists/Spiritualists are not agreed on the subject of the Supreme Being. Survivalism is the atheistic/agnostic branch of Spiritualism, based on pure scientific evidence, and with no need for a belief in a Supreme Being. This is the branch I tend to follow myself. However, evidence coming thru from the Other Side, including the evidence about everything being connected and continually evolving, suggests that something very akin to God or a Supreme Being has emerged over eons and is constantly evolving.

Rather than being a man in a white beard sitting on a cloud who existed at the beginning of Time, created the Earth and Universe out of nothing, and everything in it, the Survivalist evidence suggests these are highly embroidered pictorial explanations of a very basic scientific truth: that mind or thought energy (what Pearson terms the i-ther) is the prime creative force in the Universe.

According to this theory, consistent with Einstein’s own Theory of Relativity, energy is convertable into matter and vice  versa, they are interchangeable. If everything is evolving, as Darwin suggests and as an objective study of the Earth’s history backs-up, then this conscious energy or i-ther is also evolving. It may have been far from God-like in the beginning, but it is evolving into something very like a Supreme Being. What is it? It is us, all living things, we are all part of it because we are all connected. This is what both Survivalism and Spiritualism teach, based on evidence.

We are potentially God, it is as simple as that. We often don’t act like God or have the powers of a god because we are not yet evolved enough to have reached that level, but that is our ultimate destiny thru the process of spiritual and physical evolution. What is more, we all come from this same Source, the prime conscious energy which existed for eternity, long before the Universe was created out of conscious energy organizing itself into matter.

The terms I prefer to use in place of God, Supreme Being or even the Great Spirit are the simple word Source (not to be confused with tomato ketchup to add a flippant note!), or the more cumbersome term I invented myself - the unified conscious energy field, or indeed, Pearson’s i-ther is an equally valid term. Whichever expression you use, it seems that Mind or Thought is the prime creative force in the Universe.

The only disagreement really is whether this Source was all-knowing and all-Wise at the beginning of Time (itself largely an illusion by the way, but that’s another subject) or whether it too has evolved and is continuing to evolve. I take the latter view. Darwin’s evolution would not have been necessary if Source was all-wise at the start; why go thru the incredibly slow and cumbersome process of physical evolution unless life on Earth was a slowly developing learning process with gradual improvements and innovations, and the less successful ones dying out. Darwin called this process Natural Selection, but clearly there is some intelligence behind it. I find it impossible to believe complicated organs with specific purposes like the eyes, heart, liver, birds wings, the gills of fish, etc. have just evolved blindly – it is far too fantastic and far-fetched. They have evolved with some intelligence guiding the next stage, learning from the stage which has just preceded it. Spiritual and physical evolution go hand-in-hand, that is what all the evidence suggests, and that is what I believe orthodox scientific theory will teach in centuries to come.

I attended the Saturday evening of clairvoyance at the Clapham Common Spiritualist center tonite, and got a message from a very nice, but rather nervous, obviously gay medium called Martin. He felt he wasn’t getting accurate messages for people, but I suspect he was rather better than he thought.

In my case he was, on reflection, pretty good. He mentioned how I felt more at home on the coast, had many friends there, and might move there some day. This is exactly how I’ve felt, especially recently. I have three friends in Hastings, one of whom has just gone into a care home and it seems very unlikely he’ll ever return to his flat, where he lived with his gay partner for about 40 years till the partner died. That flat has been a home-away-from-home for me for some 38 years, much longer than I’ve ever lived in any of my own homes.

Another friend living in Hastings is a married man who I have had a sort of affair with for some 14 years now, though since he moved from London to the South Coast we don’t see each other that often. His wife is aware of the situation, and said once ‘if I kick the bucket you can have him all to yourself’.  I do sometimes wonder if she ever leaves him, or indeed dies, whether we’d get together, and if so I could end up in Hastings. It is a very long shot, but possible. He once said if he wasn’t married he’d be my partner.

Martin also brought a little old lady, about 5’2” with white hair. Now this was too vague to place for certain. At my age this description could fit many old ladies I’ve known who have passed over. It could be my partner’s sister, his cousin, or his aunt. Or a couple of women I knew in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament years ago.

Then he mentioned my father, and was very accurate about his love of money, which was all my father really cared about. Another medium in the same center said something very similar a few years ago about my father. Martin mentioned him being a heavy smoker, which was true in his younger days till he was instructed to stop smoking. He also mentioned tanks and soldiers, and I thought at the time this fitted more with my maternal grandfather who was in the First World War. But my father came from Cyprus and traveled widely around the Mediterranean. It could, I guess, refer to the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus in response to the fascist Greek-led coup in 1974. It certainly couldn’t apply to the Second World War as my father spent the duration avoiding military service.

The medium mentioned my changing a ring, or replacing it. I did lose a ring and had to replace it recently. Also I changed around the rings my partner and I exchanged about 39 years ago. I now wear the simple signet ring he gave me on my wedding finger, since gay couples now have civil partnerships, and I know we’d have had one if he’d lived long enough. They didn’t exist when he was alive. The medium referred to a ring with a stone in it, but I’ve never had such a ring. However it all makes perfect sense, since I know this is the kind of wedding ring we probably would have wanted to exchange, but it seemed too ostentatious at the time when gay partnerships weren’t recognized. The signet ring he bought me got very discolored, and I had to have it re-gilded, but again the gilding is wearing off. I feel the message was that he appreciated me wearing it on my wedding finger, and wished it was a more expensive one, looking more like a wedding ring. I don’t care, it is more precious to me than any other ring, except the one I gave him, which I wear on the same finger on my other hand.

Martin said I was involved in many Spiritualist circles, and this is absolutely true, though they are not development circles in churches. They are circles and contacts I have made thru the Internet. I get regular bulletins, emails and even a magazine thru the post from these circles and contacts. He also said I have laid hands on someone and passed on healing, but I’m not aware of ever having done this, or if I have, of it being successful. I just don’t know enough about Spiritual healing.

He also mentioned a little boy, aged about 4, who he said has been my Spirit guide. Martin said he felt this little boy was a miscarriage. My mother indeed had a miscarriage about 4 years before I was born, and it was a boy. So the Spirit boy would have been around 4 when I was born, so I find this quite evidential. Whether he has stayed looking about 4 or has since grown to maturity is unimportant, he identified himself by appearing to Martin as a boy aged about 4, the approximate age he would have been in Earth years when he apparently took on the role as my Spirit guide.

The medium accurately reported that I took early retirement, something he couldn’t possibly have known, and that I needed to keep busy. This is true, though he seemed to think I was creative with my hands. This isn’t true, but I am creative in other ways, particularly in writing. I suppose this is using ones hands in a way, to type (I’m a touch typist and spend hours writing on this computer). I’ve written several books, one of which has been published.

So all in all a fairly accurate reading from a very nervous medium. He apologized at one stage for not being as good as Colin Fry, who I got a very accurate message from once, and who I’m going to see in a few weeks time at the same venue – Fairfields Halls, Croydon. Martin was not nearly as specific as Colin, who is quite uncanny in his spot-on readings, but I feel Martin definitely had a connexion with Spirit. Oh, he mentioned one name – Flo. I had a great Aunt Flo, my grandfather’s sister, who we visited shortly before she died. There was also a friend of the family called Flo who was so fond of gin we referred to her as ‘Boozy Aunt Flo’ even though she wasn’t a real aunt!

There are so many friends and relatives who have passed on. We always expect to hear from certain ones, so it sometimes throws us when those we don’t expect come thru. And they don’t always give names, as these apparently mean little on the Other Side where they recollect many names they’ve been known by in various lives on Earth. At least that’s what I’ve read – names are unimportant on the Spiritual planes.