Sunday, 31 October 2010 Sierra Oscar I’m back…
How to write a blog…
Start with a title:
Halloween and international Dreamless Day.
Next, do a list of things to write about:
Shari Weiss
Halloween
The dreamless ones
Witches
Doctor Hawley Harley Crippen (famous murderer)
Poison (as used by Dr Crippen)
The battle of Hastings,
Princess Ethelfleda
The letter from my doctor
Anything spooky
The Vikings
William the Conquerer.
Viscount Maynard
The clueless ones
Saving daylight
Social networking
That’s enough, 16 things to write about should be enough.
We of course celebrate the beginning of darker nights and Halloween when all things spooky happen and we tell small children dressed in masks and saying trick or treat to “sod off!” 
It is also International Dreamless Day when to remind us that the world is full of the stupidly dreamless, we all alter our clocks and put them back 1 hour to try in vain to save daylight; this has been done many years and never works but the dreamless ones persist. It is done earlier in some dreamless countries and in China and the Philippines it isn’t done at all because they think it is dreamless…
Shari Weiss like me had two parents, four grand parents, eight great grand parents and sixteen great great grand parents. I know, I hear a clueless one thousands of miles away saying, “I come from a one-parent family,” tough…
We now go back over 1,000 years, and we keep doubling the number of ancestors we have with each generation; so we have thousands to choose from if we go back 1,000 years and most lived in England or Europe. Viscount Maynard is sharpening his sword ready to take to the battlefield with his brother, who spookily enough was my ancestor. They are going to support William the Conqueror and invade England. Meanwhile, Princess Ethelfleda, the teenage princess is in the north of England killing Vikings… (You can’t make this stuff up). They have only just got rid of the Vikings when William the Conqueror launches his invasion and King Harold takes his knights to Hastings (1066) and tries in vain to fight off the invasion. He gets hit by an arrow in the eye. The moral of this tale is to keep up with the times.
Technology advances and you have to keep up, yesterday it was the long bow and arrow – today it’s social networking and trading stocks and shares virtually. Anyway, Viscount Maynard and his brother take to the battle field leading a modern army of peasants, dreamless ones and clueless ones that they have trained to become archers and invade England and the viscount’s brother settles in England. He has children and the rest is my family history.
Meanwhile…
In a small village somewhere in England, a woman; one of Shari’s ancestors is giving birth and shouting for her sister who’s taking her time getting there. Her sister, is returning from her meeting with her “tribe” and has been doing a little social networking. They didn’t have computers in those days and would meet in person and exchange information on botanical herbs and drugs. They called these groups covens and they were witches because they understood this mystical use of botanical drugs. One such drug was hyoscine, which is still used today as an anti- spasmodic. The witch was a bit slow getting to her sister, but the labour pains were getting bad and so the hyoscine was most welcome. The reason the witch was slow was she had trouble with her bones and was hunched up because of back problems. This was common and any older women who suffered like this risked getting burnt at the stake or even making their heads chopped off. There are people who would like this brought back today… The dreamless ones… T
he witch, who you may recall was Shari’s ancestor’s sister lived in England and even though they shared many secrets in the coven, they could not save daylight. The dreamless ones tried even in those days, they were always messing with their sundials. Anyway, the labour pains were much better after the witch had administered hyoscine, a very small dose. Hyoscine as you may know was the poison used by Doctor Hawley Harley Crippen (famous murderer) to poison his ‘wife,’ Cora Henrietta Crippen and the dreamless ones hung him for it on the 23rd of November 1910. He was of course innocent, in 2007 nearly 100 years later DNA testing of the body found it wasn’t his wife Cora; she was probably lying on a beach somewhere listening to rap music and getting a tattoo.
Meanwhile…
Shari’s ancestor was having her baby in much less pain thanks to hyoscine, not too much it’s a deadly poison… Her sister rests her weary bones but helps with the delivery when the time comes. Now why are her bones so bad? Unlike Shari who lives in sunny California; the witch, who risks a hot stake or a cold chop to carry on her craft, suffers from vitamin D deficiency. This is caused by a lack of sunshine and is getting worse as the days get shorter and the dreamless experiments to save daylight continue to fail. Vitamin D is essential for the absorption of calcium; a deficiency leads to weak bones and fractures. I had a letter from my doctor only this week advising me to take vitamin D and calcium now the days are getting shorter; I’ll add that to my prescription tomorrow.
920 words and I have done all the keywords on my list; outsource that to some country where they don’t celebrate Halloween and international Dreamless Day. We are of course celebrating because the Viscount’s brother wasn’t killed at the Battle of Hastings; as one of my ancestors it’s just as well or I wouldn’t be writing this. Shari’s ancestor didn’t die in child — although she would have preferred a hot stake to a cold chop! She continued her social networking meeting her coven in a cave every week and exchanging social networking skills and dreamless one avoidance skills with her contacts. They also came up with useful hyoscine recipes that could be used to poison any dreamless ones who became a bloody nuisance. Witchcraft of course is derived from Wicca, there was a revival of Wicca in the 1950’s and 1960’s that continues today. These wicca fans have nothing to do with the witchcraft of a 1,000 years ago and is practiced by dreamless ones. They wouldn’t know if I dropped a few of my hyoscine tablets in their tea and poisoned the whole lot of them. I’ll take a couple of those with my lunch, I tend to get cramp pains after lunch.
I have gone over 1,000 words, ran out of keywords and my mind has gone blank… spooky…
I’ll be back…
