Life – A Puzzle to Be Solved?

By Mike Joslin

Have you ever been perplexed or disappointed with life? This book will provide you with many opportunities to ‘set a different course’ for yourself. Mike uses his stories in magical ways, which quickly focus your attention on the characters and their vagaries. Through them, he reveals both the conscious and unconscious ways we employ to reach decisions that will affect our route through the ‘maze’ of our existence. You may recognise yourself ‘here and there’.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528994415

Mike Joslin

When Mike Joslin was in his teens, he used to dream about growing up and living his life performing various jobs. He imagined working as a sheep drover in Australia, waiter, long-distance lorry driver and numerous other temporary occupations, each one lasting about six weeks. Naturally, these objectives faded into obscurity to be replaced by more sensible aims but the underlying urge for change maintained itself since he was employed in a variety of positions during the course of his working life. Including brief jobs, these totalled about 17. After matriculating at grammar school, he attended night school, studying chemistry for four years whilst working in research for the National Coal Board. Reasons for moving on varied between desire and necessity but boredom and being told what to do by those superiors he considered incompetent were constant spurs to change again and again. He spent the last 25 years of his working life self-employed in Dorset, where he started his own water treatment company. In the 1990s, Mike obtained granted patents for several water treatment inventions which were entirely environment-friendly, replacing chemicals in protecting equipment from corrosion and scaling. He formed a limited company which successfully marketed the resultant devices all over the world. The company was sold in 2005 to a Canadian group. Mike has played a number of sports during his later years, becoming quite proficient at golf, and represented the county at senior level. He was the over-70s champion for three successive years. He is married with three grown-up children and three grandchildren. He and his wife help look after the two youngest ones, COVID-19 permitting! Mike has previously published a smaller book of short stories called, Fragments of Reality in 2012 and in 2018 published his challenge to the Big Bang Theory entitled E=mc2 Unravelled: An Alternative View of the Cosmos. He is keenly interested in philosophy and has written several theses of his own. He has always supported the underdogs of life and regularly fights their cause in the ‘Letters’ section of the local paper.

Book preview

Heck?

About the Author

When Mike Joslin was in his teens, he used to dream about growing up and living his life performing various jobs. He imagined working as a sheep drover in Australia, waiter, long-distance lorry driver and numerous other temporary occupations, each one lasting about six weeks.

Naturally, these objectives faded into obscurity to be replaced by more sensible aims but the underlying urge for change maintained itself since he was employed in a variety of positions during the course of his working life. Including brief jobs, these totalled about 17.

After matriculating at grammar school, he attended night school, studying chemistry for four years whilst working in research for the National Coal Board.

Reasons for moving on varied between desire and necessity but boredom and being told what to do by those superiors he considered incompetent were constant spurs to change again and again. He spent the last 25 years of his working life self-employed in Dorset, where he started his own water treatment company.

In the 1990s, Mike obtained granted patents for several water treatment inventions which were entirely environment-friendly, replacing chemicals in protecting equipment from corrosion and scaling. He formed a limited company which successfully marketed the resultant devices all over the world. The company was sold in 2005 to a Canadian group.

Mike has played a number of sports during his later years, becoming quite proficient at golf, and represented the county at senior level. He was the over-70s champion for three successive years.

He is married with three grown-up children and three grandchildren. He and his wife help look after the two youngest ones, COVID-19 permitting!

Mike has previously published a smaller book of short stories called, Fragments of Reality in 2012 and in 2018 published his challenge to the Big Bang Theory entitled E=mc² Unravelled: An Alternative View of the Cosmos. He is keenly interested in philosophy and has written several theses of his own.

He has always supported the underdogs of life and regularly fights their cause in the ‘Letters’ section of the local paper.

Dedication

Recently, I became extremely conscious of the tremendous debt we owe the NHS and particularly its hospital workers. Their bravery and self-sacrifice has astonished everyone.

One of my earliest memories was being in Great Ormond Street Hospital aged four recovering after six weeks of intensive care and seeing my mother walking through the ward with some bananas in her hands. This was in 1937 when the NHS didn’t exist. Much later, our lives were transformed with its post-war creation by being able to constantly rely on it through good times and bad.

We have all benefited in one way or another from having such a marvellous service at our disposal for the last 75 years. Recently, in the performance of their everyday duties, many NHS workers have lost their own lives in the fight against coronavirus, sometimes regrettably because of bureaucratic failures to adequately protect them. We must never forget their contribution to the community.

It’s for this reason that I have decided to donate the proceeds from the sales of this book to the NHS staff health and well-being fund which targets frontline hospital workers.

Mike Joslin

Copyright Information ©

Mike Joslin (2020)

The right of Mike Joslin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528994408 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528994415 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2020)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Acknowledgement

I’d like to thank my family for all their support and love. I can only hope that the machinations of my life, which they have been somewhat obliged to share with me, don’t outweigh the marvellous times we have all had together. I am truly grateful for being part of such an interesting, varied, accepting and talented group of people. I’m proud of every one of you and I love you all.

24 Hours Left

No crowds, no booze, no things to lose

Some sun and fun, no lights to fuse

Family and friends are just

in time for love. No room for lust.

Food and drink in the open air.

That’s more than fair. I’ll see you there.

10 Answers

It seems that when people read a book they like, they want to know a bit more about its author so on the assumption that I’ve just written a bestseller, these 10 things might be more illuminating than my CV.

The bravest thing I ever did was being born here on this planet. I took a big chance as I stood in line with everyone. It was a huge risk; I could have continued exploring the universe but allowed myself this adventure not knowing how it would begin or where it would end.

My regrets include not saying sorry to all those people who have loved me and whom I disappointed in any way. I love them all.

My first love was June Cumber. We were both six years old and we fell in love immediately after dancing around the maypole tree.

Useful lessons I’ve learnedinclude the one my parents taught me, which was to always take the smallest piece of cake on the plate.

My most expensive purchasewas my life. I staked everything I had on it.

My favourite county is East Devon. You can actually swim in Beer there.

The best day of my life was when I was three or four watching my mother walk down the ward at Great Ormond Street Hospital holding a bunch of bananas. I was returning from nearly dying.

If I had only an hour left on earth, I’d immediately stop doing what I was doing and sit down with whoever I was with and enjoy it while it lasted.

A real friend is someone I can talk to about anything, however crazy it may be, however embarrassing, however stupid, however farfetched, however simple, however complicated, however conceited, however crass, however revealing, however guilty, however dishonest.

I wroteEinstein’s E=mc²Unravelled because everyone was telling me that if I looked back in space with a powerful enough telescope, I would see the universe being formed. They must have overlooked the fact that the light from that event went by 13.8 billion years ago!

A Big Friendly Dog, a Bicycle

Spanner and Road Rage

Bill Bradley ground to a halt and threw his bicycle onto the grass verge in disgust. Bloody, bloody hell, damnation and shivering shitting holocausts, he exclaimed. His words, not mine!

He pulled his bike into the shade of a tree and lay down beside it, allowing his rage at everything that had recently gone wrong in his life to swamp him in self-pity and sobs of anguish. A puncture was all he needed: his girlfriend of five years standing had walked out on him three months ago. She had abandoned their weekend cycle rides and picnics in the countryside in favour of some total arsehole in the accounts department whose Daddy, the MD, had bought him a new Porsche to go with his appointment as a director.

Eventually, he managed to restore his sense of dignity and dug out his tool kit from the saddlebag and unrolled it in order to find a wheel spanner and puncture repair kit. His thermos flask and bought sandwich caught his eye and he decided the puncture could wait. He settled himself into a comfortable spot with his back against the tree and munched away on his lunch, managing to forget for at least 20 minutes why he was all alone on a beautiful summer’s day just made for people in love.

A snuffling snort startled him. In the New Forest, ponies, wild pigs and various other animals were quite common so he was surprised to find a large friendly looking Labrador ogling him with its head cocked on one side as if asking a question. After looking at each other like old friends for a minute or two, the dog wagged his tail and advanced cautiously with his nose forward as if inviting further depths of acquaintance. Bill shared the remains of his sandwich with the dog and started to talk to him as if he was a complete stranger, which he was, of course. However, he spoke to him with a degree of openness and self-revelation that would have been impossible with another human being. Bill was amazed that he was telling the dog his innermost thoughts and how hurt he was feeling.

The dog held Bill’s gaze in a quite intriguing fashion: he cocked his head at appropriate times during Bill’s discourse on his personal misfortune and even moaned gently when Bill became a bit emotional with it all. He seemed quite content to continue to hang around. Eventually, Bill decided it was time to repair his punctured tyre and set about doing so. The dog moved away a pace or two before sitting down again to watch him quite intently. Bill removed the wheel from the frame, took out the inner tube, found the hole and applied some glue to the repair patch and was waiting for it to dry a little when the dog made his move. He suddenly stood up and grasping the bicycle spanner in his mouth, set off down a path leading through the trees.

Hey, where do you think you’re going? shouted Bill.

The dog stopped and waited patiently until Bill chased after him. He trotted just fast enough to stay in front. If Bill stopped and made encouraging sounds hoping for the dog to come back to him, the dog also stopped, even occasionally putting the spanner on the ground as though enticing Bill to keep on pursuing him. Since Bill had no alternative but to retrieve the spanner, the game continued like that until first the dog and then Bill emerged from the woods in front of a small isolated cottage.

A young woman dressed in shorts was standing on its tiny front lawn and was holding a large sledgehammer above her head poised to bring it smashing down on a tandem. She started to scream insults at the tandem as though it was a living thing before suddenly becoming aware of her observers. She lowered the weapon and rather shamefacedly left it with the tandem and walked over to the dog and gave it a pat.

What have you got there, Ruffy?

He’s got my spanner. I was repairing a puncture on my bike, complained Bill.

I’m really sorry, she said and took it from Ruffy’s mouth and handed it back to Bill.

You must think I am really crazy but I found out last night that my husband was leaving me for someone else and I’m afraid I flipped my lid. I was going to convert our tandem into two unicycles, which was probably a safer course of action than attacking him and that would be difficult now since he has already gone!

It’s no problem, I can assure you but I must get back to my bike soon or someone may steal it. It’s half a mile back to where I broke down, thinking under his breath, In more ways than one.

Why don’t I give you a ride back to it? My name is Daisy, by the way.

That sounds good to me. I’m Bill.

Do you want to take the front seat, Bill?

Beginning to appreciate how attractive she was, Bill said, No, I’ll leave you to steer and take the opportunity of enjoying the view on the way back!

They both smiled in genuine pleasure and Daisy certainly swayed her hips a little more than usual as she led Bill back to the tandem. It would have been hard to see whose tongue was hanging out more, Bill’s or Ruffy’s.

A Day to Remember

A billion voices from a trillion sources crowded her being as she rode upon the invisible energy of the universe. She was in constant touch with every entity that was capable of astral communication, which was within a few light years’ distance. Just as a bat could negotiate the most complex of obstacle courses in total darkness, she knew her position in the galaxy just as surely, using its network of electromagnetic forces as easily as if it were a satellite navigation system.

She knew not where she was going, what interested her, how long she had been in existence or how long it would continue; it was enough to observe. She needed no sustenance since she was sustenance herself and able to transmogrify at will. She just was. Her purpose was undefinable by our limited intelligence. She just was, or should I say, is.

She was never surprised or disappointed and would be unable to explain such emotions since she had never experienced them. Occasionally, she paused near planets and on some of them was aware of strange convolutions and structures of electrical activity. More often than not, they confused her although that word is my own interpretation since she would have no knowledge of confusion. Perhaps it would be best to describe the effect on her as one of unconcerned amusement. The complexities of her life are beyond our understanding because our own existence is so irrational that we would regard hers as untenable in its simplicity; although by comparison, it is ours that runs for short distances on very straight rails.

Since I have a very slight understanding of this entity, it’s necessary for me to use somewhat simplistic language if I am to communicate her situation to you with reasonable accuracy. So, I’ll try to keep it simple.

One of our days, not hers, she bombed into our tiny lives. Since she’d experienced everything else that had made itself available to her during the infinity of her own, she decided on something new; she just mingled. She integrated her being to become part of the planet. To anyone with a modest knowledge of physics, this is quite simple. By dissolving herself completely in the matter of the Earth, every cupful of our planet contained a few electrons of her essential being.

She did take a bit of a risk but then she didn’t know what risk or safety was, being incapable of feeling danger. She was however bombarded with experiences of which she had no foreknowledge. To describe the aliens she encountered as intelligent would be rather flattering to us since we are irrational and unreliable. There is no pattern to our lives and if she was capable of disinterest, then that is how we would have perceived her. It was when she was immersed, or rather when those parts of her which were in contact with the infinite complexity of our oceans, that she became, for want of a better word, touched in some way.

She had ignored the constant sound of the universe so that she could better concentrate on the hidden languages of our planet and its creatures. It had never been advantageous for her to be equipped with emotional intelligence or she would have recognised the distress all around her but she could experience rapid change in her surroundings. It would be trite to say that she found our sea animals appealing since the difference between content and disappointment was indiscernible to her so I’ll just have to say that she underwent a transformation beyond our comprehension. What rubbing up against a dolphin would mean to us was quite different to her reaction.

When she decided to move on, the effect of her being part of everything our world is, caused her to experience a sense of feeling for the first time in her existence. Instantaneously, across the galaxies and universes of space and time, her message went out. I can only provide a primitive translation: That was a day to remember.

A Holiday in Thailand

Betty couldn’t sleep.

The night was black, stiflingly hot and humid.

Something rustled beside her.

Dry and scaly, it slithered across her naked flesh.

A rancid odour disgusted her as its tongue flicked her face.

Fangs closed on her neck.

She braced herself.

Please George, not tonight, I’ve a headache.

A Modern Predicament

Bob Arlington was a highly trained US Army unmanned aircraft pilot and after finishing his courses in satellite navigation, missile targeting and aerodynamics, he was posted to Afghanistan as a ‘drone’ pilot.

He was only 24 years old but his degree in physics and subsequent accreditation qualified him to work locating Al Qaeda suspects across the border in Pakistan. It also entailed destroying them with pinpoint accuracy by remote control. Just the droning sound of the remotely controlled aircraft struck terror into the lives of ordinary people and their lives were spent in constant fear of where their guided missiles would strike each day.

For the first month or so, the experience was novel and powerful. He selected those whom he supposed were enemies of democracy mostly on the advice of the intelligence arm of his unit. The importance of the job had been indelibly instilled into his brain through the many hours of simulated piloting of drones and the endless propaganda emanating from the White House. Eventually, it became just a routine job and its appeal was similar to what one might expect when playing computer games. It had its own form of addiction and some of the other operatives persuaded him to join in their weekly sweepstake on who would make the most ‘hits’.

Bob found, rather surprisingly, that despite his plain appearance, his sex life improved enormously since his job and the power he commanded over life and death proved to be a strong aphrodisiac to one or two of the female officers stationed on his base. There was hardly any reflection on his part concerning the actions he was making on a daily basis since he had no real emotional involvement with the repercussions. The explosions that he viewed on radar and later reviewed on video tapes did little to disturb his acquiescence. However, one day, all was changed for him.

He visited the intelligence section on a quite unrelated matter and was confronted accidentally with the aftermath of his work the previous day in the shape of detailed photographs. He was shocked to see the arms, legs and other body parts of Pakistanis spread over a large area. One showed about a dozen villagers screaming in horror and disbelief at what had happened to their relatives. Bob went on to commit suicide after a period of intense depression.

What can we gain from Staff Sergeant Arlington’s experiences? Is it the risk we run by unconsciously separating ourselves from the unpleasantness of reality? Who can reasonably comment on the horrors of war or make decisions on its application if he hasn’t already shared a trench or suffered the radioactive poisoning of his family? It takes little effort to imagine and empathise what war entails but it’s not quite as effective as first-hand experience.

It goes further; we all love to philosophise on life from the lofty position of our imaginations and elaborate fantasies. But this can be a route to megalomania often exemplified by politicians with the belief that they have God ‘on their side’.

Fortunately, for most of us, the views we arrive at in solitude are tempered somewhat by the acquisition of other ‘mentalities’ that we acquire during our membership of the various groups and associations of our variegated and complex social structures. We often puppet their consensus views for limited periods of time before the sands shift and we take off yet again in another direction.

Is spending too much time in introspection or prayer at least as dangerous as spending too much time in pursuits that decrease our ability to think for ourselves? Doesn’t every group