Bus Stop Blues!

Got into town early to check the times of the Arriva X40 to Aberystwyth. Went to Bay B2, where it said in peeling paint, that that's the Bay it left from. Went to Central Library where lo and behold the revolving doors were working to check on the timetable. 11.10 from Cardiff getting into Aber at 3.15.
As I left the library, we were entrancing and exiting through the Disabled Exit, as the Engineers had been called out once again to the Revolving doors that do not work. (Silent Scream)

Where am I now? sat at home blogging because the Bus no show. Got to the Bus Stop B2 at 10.50 ready for a 11.10 departure. Left the Bus Station at 12.00 on foot. No Bus at the Time Stipulated from the Bay stipulated. The B1, B2, B3 concourse is the one furthest away from the Railway Station yet this is the one that Travellers for National Express to Victoria and Gatwick Station use. I know this because an elderly gentleman was sat on one of those horrible metal yellow seats on B2 and missed the National Express to Gatwick on B4 even though he had been sat there for 15 minutes. None of the signs had any signs on them apart from the time and the Bay. He ran towards the bus with his Trolley Bag, he must have been in his early seventies. The driver saw him but just went sailing on out there at 11.45. The Driver and National Express were at fault. There was no announcement. They expect you to know. There are no times on the Timetables only destinations and the Bays they depart from. The poor man was ushered over to the National Express Office by a lady with a walky talky whilst at the far end of Bay B a lady was screaming at someone on her mobile phone. 
"How are you going to get the table home on the bus or in a Taxi?
Can you hear me?    
How are you going to get the table home?
What's wrong with your mobile?
Get it sorted out
For Fuck's sake!
Are you on the Bus or in a Taxi?
Have you got enough money for the Table?
Can you fucking hear me?
For Fuck's sake?"
And so it went on. These distractions made me forget about my long wait. You don't need A.A Gill to tell you that
" Travelling and Eating in the United Kingdom" are an absolute disgrace. Can you honestly say that when you go out for a meal or take a journey that you are expecting pleasant service and value for money? No, you are expecting surly service and to get ripped off!
I don't know what the plans are for Cardiff Central bus station but Bridgend's got a new one, Swansea's got a new one but the Capital City has got one that would embarrass the 1970's.

Cats at sea: 7 famous seafaring felines | MNN - Mother Nature Network

Cats at sea: 7 famous seafaring felines | MNN - Mother Nature Network

Empath or Bipolar?

Some of the Shark Fisherman's blog post readers or confidantes as I prefer to call you might have noticed that my most recent offerings have been reaching towards the esoteric realms, the spiritual.  I am constantly looking for answers and because I am somewhat 'hermitically sealed' I have no way of knowing whether these are universal questions. The medical model refers to my experiences of 2005 as a Psychosis. I prefer to refer to it as my Shamanic Trance Journey. For about a month I experienced an alternative reality which was at the same time exhilarating and frightening but ultimately better than the day to day reality that I experienced up until that point and anything that I have experienced since. I shed skins, I became re-born. I am the same person visually but internally there have been shifts of consciousness. What I have to do now is decide what to do with this shift in consciousness? It doesn't pay the bills and I don't really want it to, but convention and conditioning suggest that we should work for a living. Creating the work that is your passion whilst assisting and empowering others and making a few sheckles on the side.

But what to do? What to do?

(Answers on a Postcard from either Porthcawl or Llandudno please)

Six years since the medical model diagnosis have elapsed but I just cannot deny the Spiritual, faith based aspect to the experience which included purchasing a toy plastic microphone and attempting from memory to recite the Reverend Martin Luther King's speeches on a corner, opposite a church in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Playing Mahalia Jackson's 'We shall Overcome' at huge decibel level through the open window of a hotel room in the same city. Reading the Koran, the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and the Bible to try and make sense of the Bombings in London on 7th July 2005.  So many questions and no answers and what worries me is that if I sign on the dotted line again for a conventional life with all its glory, the shopping, the 2.4 children, the car on the drive, just as I do so, the answer will present itself to me but which will probably be poo-pooed by the medical model as a delusion or hallucination. The Shamanic Trance journey continues in rather impoverished Cardiff surroundings but I'll cheer myself up with some Talking Heads.

Thanks for reading. 

Whispering Grass

Doesn't time fly when you're having fun! You're having fun aren't you reading about Shark Fishing in Wales and about my loss of libido? Too much information? You should know me pretty well by now. You, who read this are my confidantes. So what have you learnt so far? That the Shark Fisherman has Bipolar Disorder, that I believe that Cardiff is a poor Capital City, a reluctant Capital City. I do not have an alternative suggestion. I hope that Cardiff improves. That I am passionate about the Welsh Language but that the wrong people speak it. It is useless for Middle Class people to speak it because their value system lends itself to the Capitalist System. Welsh is or should be 'Iaith y Werin', the language of ordinary, common, poor folk. I had a conversation on the phone with a friend from London and I said that if Harriet Tubman lived in Cardiff, she would run the Railroad from London and teach Welsh to young Black and Afro carribean youngsters so that as Bob Marley would say there would be 'a movement of the people'. I would like to see more Black people learn and speak Welsh. We are both ethnic minorities. There would be more opportunities and it would provide an opportunity to escape the 'Ghettoe' in South East London. When I lived and worked down there I felt that it was only a matter of time before something went off. It took longer than I thought but off it did go. 
The National Eisteddfod will be in the Vale of Glamorgan this year, a prosperous part of the country but if last year's festival at Wrexham is anything to go by it will be yet another gathering of well off, middle class white Welsh speaking people going round and round the field in wellingtons with push chairs. 
Shark Fishing in Wales is 3 months old today. It has been helpful to me. Cathartic, that is why I write but what I should be doing is rocking and rolling with my Theatre Company but it is as if I have a mental block. I can't seem to get cracking and motivated. Again the Theatre world is full of the wrong type of people. Fuck the Luvvies I say and forward with Theatre for Mental Health and Social Justice.  I'm just a bloody misanthrope, that's why I write.    

Loss of Libido

I'd never thought I'd say it but here it is: I am glad that I am experiencing loss of libido. I can't say that it is a side-effect of Bipolar Medication because I'm not taking any. I presume that it's because I'm now 46. I have lost interest or am losing interest and its great. To lapse into the vernacular 'I am glad that I have shaken the monkey off my back'. I presume, that that means I am glad that the overwhelming surge of testosterone and lustful thoughts that haunted me in my twenties and thirties, no longer do so. I was so desperate to cop off or have sexual intercourse as a younger man, that quite frankly, it was embarassing and frustrating. To have sex you need a sexual partner and I haven't had one of those for a very long time and no I am not advertising. I don't want one. As I get older what I seek is a friend and a companion. Sex is a problem, it always has been. Rather, relationships are a problem and sex without love is shit. So whether its because 'Mr Sausage' has been out of practice for so long, now reverse psychology has kicked in. Rather than being involuntarily celibate as I was for many years for a whole raft of reasons, I am now voluntarily celibate and it feels 'fucking fantastic'.

Here's to many more years of not having sex.

Stay Bipolar and Fucking Awesome

So I am back in the Diff and I am still Bipolar and I am feeling fucking awesome. Will I be feeling like that tomorrow? Probably not because at some point this evening I will have a thought and the thought will turn into an intrusion and then other thoughts will join it like parasites attaching to a host.

"Depressive Rumination"

To be fair, these thoughts are not as damaging as they once were but now I actually use them to level myself out because if I am feeling awesome it is a danger signal to one who has been given the diagnosis of 'Manic Depressive'. In my experience when I was happy and high, then I was actually still depressed but something had tilted and put a shit eater's grin on my face and given me the energy to try again. My mind was still questioning the arid and depressing reality but when artificially happy and without insight into your condition you do not realise that you are still ostensibly depressed. I read somewhere that 'Bipolar' was the moste extreme defense mechanism of the mind because up until your diagnosis you have been swinging high and low with periods of stability but you are fragile and extremely scared, paranoid and anxious about everything and anything. You daren't discuss this with any friends or family because it's not the done thing old boy. So your face becomes frozen, the tears of a clown dry on your cheeks, you carry on carrying on till the next crisis or episode. You are emotionally wired and any substance illegal or otherwise can tilt you into a stratosphere which is extremely entertaining to so called friends.

"He/She is crazy, wild man! Did you seem them at the club last night? Fucking Mad Man!" You are held in awe and are somewhat revered for your exciting, charged personality but they do not share the withdrawal that you experience behind your shutters on a Sunday when you just want to cry and cry and cry. But men don't cry! No they Fucking don't and they fucking should! These Gender Sterotypes in Society are killing us. The strong silent man who then goes and tops himself! "Well I'd never have thought it". Can we start talking about Mental Health please? In a very relaxed and open fashion with no guilt, no shame, no taboo. Let's stop feeding our beasts and our demons! Let's share them. We might stand a chance then. We might stand a chance of being able to compete with the normal people!  Normal People, Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!

Virtual Revival

Can there be a Spiritual Revival in this Materialistic World? Do we need one?


One thing is for sure! It cannot be buildings based. It will be in the open air. It will happen outside.


It will happen in the Parks and on the Mountains and down by the river side.


It will be advertised and promoted through Facebook and Twitter.


It will be non-denominational and it will be Interfaith.


It will be an out-pouring.


What happens when it is over? Will we return to Consumerism? Capitalism?


Maybe


But something will have changed!


There will have been a shift.


Amazing what a good sing song and an outpouring of grief will do!


So don't be surprised if in 2014 you chance upon informal gatherings, impromptu Theatre, Dance and Play.


It's all good. Nobody will ask you to sign on the dotted line.


Just believe in something.


Have Faith.

What is Transpersonal Psychology? | Explore the field of transpersonal psychology

What is Transpersonal Psychology? | Explore the field of transpersonal psychology

Spiritual Counselor | Learn about careers in spiritual counseling

Spiritual Counselor | Learn about careers in spiritual counseling

Cas gwr na charo'r wlad a'i maco

'Cas gwr na charo'r wlad a'i maco'

or

"The native of any area or country who does not love the land which nurtured him is unworthy and to be reviled"

Or so it says on page 13 of this week's Carmarthen Journal. 72 pages of cut down trees and 1 page in Welsh 'Y Dudalen Gymraeg' which compares to the 1/2 page in the 56 pages of cut down trees of the Cambrian News this week. It shares column inches with Sudoku and Crosswords. I thought this was meant to be a Bilingual country. I blame the Industrial Revolution and the laziness of  first language Welsh speakers in accepting the status quo. I thought Kairdiff was bad. Well it appears that already we have the Welsh language version of the Gaeltacht where it is spoken in pockets. My dream of a Welsh Speaking Socialist Utopia is a fair ways off it seems. I'm wondering what I can do as a single middle aged male about the situation. For a while now I have not conformed to the nuclear stereotype. I have been a volunteer tutor of Welsh a few years ago and I have completed an Improver's course in written Welsh at Cardiff University. There are obviously no quick fixes for a situation that has been deteriorating for over a century and a half, since the Industrial Revolution and the influx of Labour and Monoglot Speakers. Saunders Lewis told us in 1962 'Dim byd llai na chwyldroad' nothing less than a revolution will save the language and that Welsh must become an official language before we have self government.
Apart from my impotence and indecision as to what to do for the best I also have a problem with the fact that most Welsh Speakers are now middle class and 'comfortably numb'. Many have made their salaries on the back of the language. Perhaps this is their idea of Revolution. I have Bipolar Disorder and I feel that it is this frustration with something that I cannot control that has contributed to my madness. I wonder if in the future the corridors of the Mental Hospitals of Wales will be filled with people walking up and down in espadrils, mutterring to themselves in Welsh and English about the fact that they did nothing to save the language. There won't be any professionals to hear them. "I'm sorry I don't speak Welsh" will be boomed out in loudspeakers along with the music 'Charmaine' from One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest'. I have to ask the question "What is Wales without its Language"? A very impoverished version of its next door neighbour with towns full of McDonalds and Starbucks. It appears that our media is in the process of selling its soul to the 'diafol' and we are lapping it up, along with our dorritos.

 'Couch Potatoes Cymraeg myn uffarn i' 

In defence of Gavin Henson

The sharks are out this morning! Team Wales are having a field day feasting on the rugby playing corpse of Gavin Henson. His crime, throwing ice cubes around an aeroplane. "It's not the first time, burn the witch" For goodness sake, it's because he's not a team player, it's because he is an individual. He thinks outside the Prince of Wales feathers. He is a Non-Conformist. There are plenty of Rugby pundits in Wales. The air waves are red hot, the 'Wasted Mail' are revelling in it. Sacked screams the headline, front page and back. People have been waiting for this to happen. We build them up and we knock em down. Does Charlotte Church v the News of the World bare any responsibility for her ex-partner's and the father of her children's celebrity demise? What will happen to the immature non-team player now? Where is the Psychological Intervention? I've got loads of questions I have. I don't want to see him propping up the bar in the Old Arcade spinning yarns of yesteryear and then catching the bus up to Llandaff North to dry out in a flat. Wales is responsible! Team Wales is responsible for his talent and his behavior. Step up to the Mark the W.R.U. and Cardiff Rugby Club. You took a risk, you took a gamble.
You are sponsored by an Alcohol Magnate. What was the substance implicated in 'Ice Cube Gate'? Alcohol. Gavin Henson is a scapegoat because he doesn't toe the line in Team Wales. I would have done the same, thrown a few ice-cubes about the place to wake up these Committee Men! He has been set up to fail. Mike Phillips saw the writing on the wall when he fell the wrong side of the Bouncer outside the Ronald McDonald Emporium in surprise, surprise 'St Mary Street' the street of a clock and alcoholic shame. He buggered off to France sharpish because he knew that Trinity Mirror would be out to catch him again. I wouldn't be surprised that it was a 'Wasted Mail' journalist who handed him the ice-cubes.