Nigel Gordon

This is being released on Kindle on the 1st of May, fortunately the author was kind enough to send me pre-release copy which I have spent the last two days reading. David has created a world of fantasy and magic in which he has set his young protagonists forcing them to face the challenges of not only the dangers that surround them but of falling in love and understanding what love means. This is one story that is well worth paying to get, you can find it here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wayward-Son-David-Fox-Schreiber-ebook/dp/B00WRW2T8K/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1430304356&sr=1-2&keywords=the+wayward+son If you want to wait a bit longer, apparently it is also due out in paperback.

Education is important but it is also important to have a system that allows the voices of the minorities, whoever they are, to be heard but which prevents any minority from obtaining a controlling interest in the political system. Unfortunately the political systems of derived from the Anglo-Saxon tradition tend to favor a two party winner takes all approach. Unless we can change the fundamental way in which politics works we are going to find ourselves increasingly facing more and more conflict, until we come to the day when the disenfranchised become the majority and we find ourselves to be a minority without a voice. Then no doubt it will be our turn to make use of violence.

That's always the problem, those that need to see it would never even think of watching it. The fact that it is produced by the BBC is enough to brand it the work of the devil for some groups.

Any group within a society that does not have a voice in that society will eventually turn to acts of violence. The fact that the violence in question may hurt them more than it does others is immaterial, they just want to be heard and do not care what the cost of being heard is. Unfortunately modern western politics is marginalizing more and more groups within society. Unless we can do something to bring them back into the mainstream of politics we can look towards more and more situation like we saw in the UK a couple of years ago and are seeing now in the cities of the USA. The problem is that in both much of the western world politics has been taken over by interest groups of the left or the right which have no interest in the voice of the center. Unless we can move the main body of politics back towards the center ground and the principles of western liberalism things are just going to get worse.

All Out have launched another petition, this time to Twitter about their failure to deal with homophobic attacks on Twitter. I believe this is one that is worth supporting having recently had the experience of dealing with a nineteen year old who had been outed on Twitter and then subjected to a lot of homophobic comments and threats. You can find this petition at: https://go.allout.org/en/a/twitter-trolls/?akid=5290.2993152.8nWfL7&rd=1&t=2&utm_campaign=twitter-trolls&utm_content=english&utm_medium=email&utm_source=actionsuite

I'm intrigued by the start of this novel - there is something different here from Cynus's usual style, though what that is I can't say exactly. It does though hint at a promise of an interesting story which I feel will take us to unexpected places. Certainly one I am going to follow. You can find it here: http://awesomedude.com/Cynus/the-navigator/index.htm

This has appeared in the short story listing, it is though in fact a Novella. It describes the fate of two displaced boys during the period of the Russian advance into Germany. I must say it is not the easiest of stories to read, partially due to the odd sentence construction in places, which I think indicates that English is not the first language for the author. More because I think it is drawing of a legacy of central European literature which is more metaphysical and uses more symbolism than is found in the mainstream English writing tradition. However, even if it is not the easiest of reads it is well worth reading. Truth may be the first victim of war but innocence is not far behind yet somehow it manages at times to survive. This is a story about survival, you can find it here: http://awesomedude.com/ruwenrouhs/josua-and-lukas/josua-and-lukas.htm

Just heard a Catholic Theologian on the radio talking about the upcoming referendum on Gay Marriage in Eire, he stated that the core teaching of Jesus was that marriage was between an man and a woman. Clearly he should have seem episode 2!

The latest episode has just been shown on BBC2 and it has some interesting facts in it. For the first thousand years of the Christian Church, marriage was a purely civil matter. It did not become a church matter till after 1072. Also the Catholic Church seems to have a long history of covering up child sex abuse by its members.

Yard in British English, when used within the concept of an area of land rather than a measurement, means an enclosed uncultivated space adjacent to or within the precincts of a property. Classical examples are the tiltyard, such as the one at Hampton Court or the farmyard. In 19th and early 20th century it was common for houses to be built with a paved enclosed or semi-enclosed paved area immediately to the rear of a property, with a garden or cultivated land beyond it.

Today has been one of the worse days I have had for a long time and tomorrow looks like it is going to be even worse but Habakkuk's Mill has really cheered me up. Not only is this a hilarious story, it is very informative.

We have come to the end of this story and I must say that by the end I was in tears. This has been an insightful and wonderfully well told insight the events of both the Second World War and the Indo-China war. More importantly it has been an insight into the feeling and motivation of those involved in combat. What must really be recognized though is the extent and detail of the research that has been done by Solticeman in bringing both this story and his other two stories in his World War II trilogy to life.

Congratulations to Cole, I came across the word anile some years ago and always wanted to use it somewhere but never could find a fit for it. Now I find that not only has Cole managed to get it in with a perfect fit he has also managed to do it within a really great story.

I sent the link to a friend in Canada and she has been able to view it. Not certain how she did it, might have used a VPN.

A new series has started on BBC Two Television entitled Sex and the Church, it raises some interesting points about the Church's attitude to sex and why they arose. If you can access the BBC IPlayer you can find it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search?q=Sex%20and%20the%20Church

This is another of Cole's story that I have really liked, then I can't think of one I didn't like. There were some I liked more than others and this is certainly one of those. If you have not read it then you should, if you have read it then consider giving it a reread.

I am a bit disappointed, not in the story or in the writing, as they are both great. I am disappointed in the fact that this is a short story, a short story which clearly has a massive back story and a potential to be taken forward into a novel or a series of short stories. With a bit a luck and some hard work by Pertinax we might get one or the other some time in the future. I certainly hope so. I would certainly like to read the back story. In the meantime we will just have to make do with what we have got. A clear and insightful story into a world that for many readers must be totally alien, and which is totally fascinating. This is well worth reading and you can read it here: http://awesomedude.com/pertinaxcarrus/the-hamilton-twins/the-hamilton-twins.htm

I don't care what the reason is, I just want Chapter 5,. By the way I can believe a major internet outrage in Silicon Valley, it is just a variation of the 1st Law of Computing i.e. the more important the person to whom the demo is being shown the bigger the bug that will make itself known. The 1st variation of this is : the more important the customer the bigger the bug!

I would agree with you about Tim but my second choice would be Cole's Distorted Perspective, though that may be a bit unfair. Just choose any one of Cole's novels and you will be OK for a second choice, but I think Tim should be the first.

Actually at one point in the early church priests were barred from performing marriage as the church did not recognize marriage regarding it as a purely civil status that had no standing in church doctrine. It was only when the church realised that they were losing property through the civil rules around marriage and the spouses of priests claiming the property gifted to the parish, therefore, to the priest, upon the death of the priest or the break up of the marriage that the church got involved. The need to protect church property was dealt with in two stages, first marriage was made a sacrament under the control of the church. This meant that the church could draw up and oversee the marriage contracts. It appears that it became common with contracts involving clergy to stipulate that property given to the priest was not to go to the wife upon the priest's death but to the church. The next stage was the introduction of celibacy within the priesthood. Contrary to the meaning placed on the term celibacy these days its introduction was not intended to bar priests from sexual congress, celibacy does not mean chastity, it originally meant refraining from marriage. The concept of chastity amongst the priesthood did not really arise till the a couple of centuries later and, to be honest, never really caught on. The matrimonial rights between same sex couples were, it appears, were mostly carried out between parties in holy orders. Indeed at one period it was seen that for a priest to marry his curate or deacon was a way of ensuring that property was passed on within the parish upon the death of the priest. Once celibacy is mandated within the catholic church it is clearly impossible for a marriage to be performed between any parties where one of the parties is a member of a holy order. As such the practice ceases in the western catholic church around the 11th century, though it continues to exist in the eastern churches where the rules on celibacy are imposed differently, basically in the orthodox churches a priest could be married provided he was married before being ordained and a married priest could not become a bishop. So we see some instances of same sex matrimonial rituals being performed until quite late.

I cannot believe that there is not a topic in the forum for this, but I have used the search function and nothing has come up and I can't find it with a manual scan of all 25 pages of topics. If there is an existing topic in the forum then my apologies and maybe the Dude can merge this in with it. If there is not either at some point there was a major failure in the appreciation of good writing that we see here normally, which I somewhat doubt or something got lost in the server move. Anyway this story is one which I would recommend anyone to read. It is a story which has drawn me back to it time and time again and every time I read it I find something more in it. I believe it is one of Cole's earlier stories and it does not have the Cole trademarks of unexpected twists that we have seen in some of his later stories. Don't, however, let that put you off. This story is well written and exceptionally well told. It is an exploration of boyhood angst at rejection and the impact that can have. If I had to recommend a novel for Dude's pick form the past, this would be one I would suggest. So go and read Tim, you can find it here: http://awesomedude.com/cole-parker/tim/index.htm Now I am going to get back to working my way through Cole's novels. Who knows I might find a dud one, though I somehow doubt it.

A new Nicholas Hall and one set in the wilderness. Anyone who has read Parker's Love or any of the author's other works set in the wilderness will know that Nicholas has an ability to write about the wilderness in a way that makes it come alive, especially to a townie like myself. I have no idea where this story might be going but one thing I can say is that it has already grabbed hold of me and I look forward to reading more. More about the people involved and more about the wilderness which they are in, both physical and emotional.

I think Indiana is going to start to feel the backlash quite quickly. I have just received the agenda for a council meeting of events management team of a body I'm involved with. Sorry as I am not an official spokesman for them and this has not yet been made official I cannot identify them. However, the agenda notes have the following statement in them: In matters arising it is proposed that the short list approved for the venue of our 2016 biannual conference should be amended to remove Indianapolis from the short list of possible venues given recent legislation in Indiana that may provide a basis for discrimination against a section of those likely to attend. What was interesting was that this was tagged with the identifier of a group of members based in Indiana.

A common principle, at least in UK jurisprudence, is that prisoners enjoy the same rights as other members of society except where those rights have been explicitly removed by reason of their conviction and subsequent sentence to a period of imprisonment. The right to marry is a universal right in the UK now, after a long fight by the LGBT community. To deny this right to any prisoner, no matter what their crime is, would set a very dangerous precedent. It would effectively say that certain rights are reserved certain groups and if you are not part of that group you have no status to exercise that right. Personally I think that they have made a mistake by getting married - it would not surprise me at all if National Offender Management Service (NOMS) takes steps to move one of them to a different prison. This has been the general policy within NOMS for many years, that when a relationship is identified between two male prisoners that they should be separated as much as possible. Personally I believe this is a mistake, many prisoners have never been able to establish meaningful relationships on the outside and the fact that they can start to establish such a relationship on the inside should be taken as a positive sign. From what I have heard from parties within the prison community I understand that NOMS had already taken steps to separate these two men and it was after this that the application to marry was made. If that is the case one can suspect that it might be a reuse being set up by some involved in prison law for an action under Article 8 - the right to a family life. I am aware that in the past this has been looked at when prisoners who had become involved in a relationship have been separated but such cases have always failed to get to the courts as there was no easy way to establish that there was a 'family' entity within the strict legal sense as recognized by the courts. The fact that two prisoners shared a cell for a period of time has not been sufficient to establish there was a 'family' given the fact that they had no choice with respect to the location that they were placed in. One way though that you can show that there is a 'family' within the meaning of Article 8 is to show that the parties are married. As a result I would not be at all surprised to see an application for Judicial Review being made sometime in the future, after one of the parties involved is moved to another establishment. I have long thought that the position of NOMS with respect to relationships between prisoners is wrong and I am aware that a number of people in the prison system are of the same opinion, so much so that they often turn a blind eye to such relationships even though they are against the rules. A number of relationships that I know of which started in prison have continued after the parties have been released and have resulted in the couples being able to establish mutually beneficial support systems as a result of their relationship.

So we get to Chapter 22 and the end of a story that I thoroughly enjoyed reading from start to finish. Alright you are left with some unanswered questions, but that's life. Hopefully it is also a indication that there will be a sequel, I certainly hope so. This has been an excellent story very well told.