Have you ever really tried to stop thinking? To put an end to the ‘constant inner monologue’ (as I’ve heard the mind referred to in some book or another)? I mean, obviously, you won’t be able to do it right now because you’ll be reading this and so you’ll be thinking everything that I’ve written. But even if you weren’t reading it I’m sure your thought process would be something like this: “Okay, so I’m going to stop thinking… Now. Now I mean. Well, in just a second. Sheesh, why can’t I stop?” and onward. Because for some bizarre reason it is incredibly difficult to ever stop thinking.
    But last night, I managed it, and I don’t mean for a few seconds, but for a significant period of time. I couldn’t get to sleep last night because my mind kept babbling on about one thing or another and it was keeping me awake. So I decided to focus and to simply stop thinking. I managed it eventually and everything suddenly seemed to be so quiet. Perhaps this is the point of meditation, to literally stop yourself thinking. This whole thing may sound a little strange, but it was just very relaxing when I did it last night, so I thought I’d make a blog entry about it.

I was walking down towards the wilderness sometime last year. The sky was a dark-bluish grey because it was fairly late and would soon be dark. It was around winter time, so it was pretty cold, but it was the nice crisp chill of winter so I didn’t really mind, especially after doing up the buttons on my blazer. I’ve mentioned in previous posts the problems I’ve had with wasps, and so, this entry will show the problems I’ve had with cows…
    To get to the wilderness I have to pass through this fairly small field where there is occasionally kept a herd of cows. On this day those cows were in that field but, luckily for me, on my way there they were all bunched up in the corner of the field and far away from the path. As such, I walked on to the wilderness without incident.
    When I was standing at the top of the hill that overlooks the whole area I saw that there was a slight mist around the woods, making it all look much nicer than it usually does. The dark sky above it coupled with the shroud of mist gave it a kind of mysterious look, one that I really appreciated.
    After I’d wandered around there and enjoyed the view for about an hour (there was now barely any light at all) I decided to turn back and head home. Bizarrely, when I was back on the path which went through the cow field, all of the cows were huddled together in a kind of circle in the middle of the path. I thought this was a little suspicious, but decided I’d just walk around the cow circle and ignore them.
    However, as soon as I started passing the cows practically all of them turned to face me and began walking slowly towards me. I couldn’t really continue in the direction so the cows were slowly backing me up towards the edge of the field. I reached for my Trusty Water Bottle and swiped it at them a few times, hoping they would turn back and run away in fear, but unfortunately they totally ignored me. Realising that swiping at them wasn’t going to do any good, I decided to try scaring them off in a different way. Specifically, I tried scaring them off by squirting water at them. Again I realised that this wasn’t going to work, so I returned my water bottle to my pocket.
    Before long I would have been pushed all the way up to the edge of the field and crushed amongst the cows. With no other option, I quickly turned and tried to run away from the cows in the small gap between them and the large bush at the edge of the field. Cows are a little unintelligent, so it took them a while to realise I had started running away, but once they had they all turned and began to run after me in a large group. Due to the fact that I have only two legs and they have four, they were speedily catching me up, the problem being now that cows running all over you is much worse than cows slowly walking towards you.
    Luckily for me, as I said before, the field was pretty small, so before long I had reached the stile (which I virtually jumped over mid-sprint) and I was safe on the other side of the fence. The cows had all stopped running and were all stood around the fence, staring at me with their murderer eyes. But all I could do was laugh, I’d escaped and those cows and now they were left stupidly staring over the fence at me.

I apologize to any readers of my blog for not posting a new entry yesterday. Unfortunately I didn’t have access to a computer for a long enough period of time to write one. Anywho, today’s entry is about two failed attempts of mine to buy a birthday present for my friend.
    I was invited to a birthday party but I was rather low on money so I wondered whether or not I should buy them a gift. I told them my problem and asked whether they would mind if I didn’t buy them anything. He said, kindly, that it would be fine if I didn’t buy him anything because he only bought me a really cheap gift for my birthday.  The ‘cheap gift’ that he had bought me was a delicious plank of chocolate so I decided that I would buy him one as well.
    The next day I brought two pound coins with me while I headed out to do my MDSA work at school. My plan was to head into town once I was finished and to buy him the chocolate then. However, while I was out on the school field picking up rubbish a young boy ran up to me and said “Can I have a pound please?” obviously he needed it importantly for some reason so I gave it to him.
    “Oh well,” I thought, “I can probably still buy him some chocolate with just one pound…”
    Once I had finished my MDSA work I walked on into town. When I was just outside the super market there was a charity collector standing at a table with charity buckets. I took out my wallet, thinking that I would just give him my spare change, when I realised that all I had in it was the pound to buy the chocolate. If I hadn’t given him the pound it would have been like wagging a treat around in front of a dog’s nose before putting it back in the cupboard, so I gave the pound away. I decided that the next day (the day of the birthday party) I would buy him the chocolate.
    Again I went through my day as normal and did my MDSA work. Once I had finished I headed up to the office where the litter picking claws are kept and put them away. As I left the office I came across that boy who had asked for a pound the day before I thought to myself “Ah well, if he wants another pound I can probably still get one with my other pound. All I need to do is keep my wallet away when I see the charity man…”
    “Can I have two pounds please?” asked the boy.
    So I was left with no money to buy the gift. In the end I bought him a drink at the party, but the moral of the story is this: always bring more money than you think you’ll need.

If you ever have a free minute or two, maybe you should visit the website Lightning Made of Owls (link). This website is a webcomic made up entirely of comic strips made by random contributors. I’ve occasionally added to the site myself (my contributions) so please read my own strips on there.
    Mainly though, I’m making this post because the website hasn’t had many contributions recently and so hasn’t been able to update its strips when it should. So if anyone is interested, you should go ahead and make a strip, the only requirement be that it is funny, it’s very easy for strips to be accepted. I thought this might be of particular interest to anybody into art or writing. I hope I’ll have been able to find at least one more contributor or reader for the site!

Due to problems with my laptop it is possible that I won’t be able to continue updating my blog daily. But hopefully I will, I just thought I’d better write something now so that it’s clear in the future that that is the case, if there’s no new entry.
    Anyway, I’m sure you can remember my entry entitled Failed Joke, well this is basically another instance of me trying, and failing, to be hilarious:

Friend: Hey, I’ll be right back, just going to the toilet…
Me: Okay then.
(a few seconds pass)
Me (thinking): Hmm, wait a minute; they didn’t lock their laptop… I can do what I want with it! I think I’ll play a very funny prank heh heh… *goes onto Google searches for pictures of radishes*
*Friend comes back in*

Planned reaction:
Friend: Wait a second… I don’t remember searching for radishes on Google Images…
Me: That’s because it was me!
Friend: Hahahaha! That’s so funny, it’s even better than your gullible joke that you played on me before. This really has solidified our friendship!
Me: 🙂

Actual reaction:
Friend: Wait a second… What have you done…
Me: Oh nothing… 😀
Friend: Why did you search for radishes?
Me: I didn’t, it’s on your computer, you must have done it…
Friend: Except you did it while I was out of the room.
Me: …
Friend: You’re so weird.
Me: 🙁

A couple of days ago, after finishing my MDSA work, I was sitting in the sun eating a brownie. It was, honestly, a really delicious brownie, Co-Op sells the nicest brownies I’ve ever tasted, but these mouth-watering snacks aren’t the main subject of today’s post. While I was enjoying this brownie a young woman came up to me…
    This young woman was one of those religious people who try and persuade people to change to their way of thinking. Now, generally, these people are very annoying. There are a group of them who can often be found in Swindon on a Sunday, they shot very loudly that every non-Christian has Hell to look forward to at death and that Muhammad and key figures from other religions aren’t as good as Jesus because they didn’t die for you and other offensively irritating things like that. In fact, they even use children to hand out their leaflets for them, presumably because people would feel guilty if they didn’t take it from a child who’s less than ten years old.
    But this young woman was nothing like those lunatics, she said, very politely “Hello, would you like to read this small leaflet while you eat? If not that’s fine, just if you’d like something to read while you eat, you might like to take this.” Since she asked so kindly I agreed to take the leaflet, as I did want something to read, because, as I’ve established in a previous post, reading is cool.
    I read the title which was something like “Have you heard the Truth?” which was kind of off-putting because I then assumed it would be the same kind of arrogant nonsense the Swindon street preachers say, but I read the whole leaflet and it was nothing like that at all. Basically, the leaflet highlighted all the benefits of a religious life style, talking about how it can give you a moral code to live by, a sense of hope about existence and all the other good things about religion.
    Now, this leaflet didn’t persuade me to change my belief system, but it was by far the best example I’ve ever seen of that kind of thing. It made me think of the book Utopia by Thomas More (buy it!), where it says that people with beliefs that are very important to them should be able to rationally argue with people if they think it’s important that they adopt them. This is what I think happened here, the woman, or the leaflet, wasn’t disrespectful of my own beliefs and merely stated the upside of her own. There was a kind of mutual respect, the leaflet wasn’t telling me I was wrong to have different beliefs, and at the same time there was nothing in the leaflet that I could take issue with, it wasn’t claiming The Bible was absolute truth or anything, just the reasons that somebody might choose to adopt the Christian lifestyle.
    This shows perfectly how I think religions should be, a way of living that acknowledges it isn’t the only way of living, but respectfully lays out the reasons that you should give it a try.