What's The Time Villain?

Weird how it's a word I use multiple times every day but it wasn't until yesterday that i found out what it actually means and why we say it.
The word is o'Clock and apparently it has nothing to do with the dial or ticking hands part of the clock to start with, it was the bell that told us what time it was.
According to a time historian, when mechanical clocks replaced sundials around the 1300's, they were named Clocc's from the Old French word for Bell as it was this which told them the time, ringing out on the hour alerting townsfolk so six chimes would mean it was six of the clocc, later Clock as the English bastardised the French word.
Over time the 'of the clock' part got shortened to 'O'Clock' and was cemented into the language in the 16th Century by Shakespeare in his plays and 'o'Clock' quickly replaced the longer phrase and so today we use a 14th-century word which means something different to what it does now which made me wonder, any other words from then we still use which actually mean something else?
According to Medievalists.net, there are plenty such as 'silly' which started out meaning 'blessed' or 'fortunate' and nice which was used to mean someone who was foolish or stupid, a villain was a farm worker and Hell was just a place with a cover over it while all females were wives regardless of marital status and Meat was any type of food.
If we ever manage to go time travelling, the 14th Century would be a minefield and it would probably be best just to stay quiet as telling someone to have a nice day could see you in the stocks with all types of rotten meat being thrown at you.  

Special Guest Blogger: Frederick Forsyth

People, bless their optimistic cotton socks, often asked about the "creative process." but i didnt write about feelings and fairies, I wrote about how a man, with sufficient ingenuity and a well-placed contact, might blow something up, or, more likely, prevent it from being blown up. My books weren’t born of artistic angst, they were born of a meticulous adherence to plausible reality and the pressing need to meet a deadline. One has bills to pay, after all.
Take The Day of the Jackal. Everyone goes on about it. The detail, the suspense! Frankly, I was just trying to write a believable story about a professional killer. I spent weeks researching French police methods, weapons, passports. Not because I’m some kind of literary martyr, but because I didn’t want some retired Gendarme writing me an angry letter pointing out the flaws in my fictional police cordon.
As for my life, it’s been a bit of a kaleidoscope. Pilot, journalist, spy  and then, rather unexpectedly, a best-selling novelist.
My younger self, clattering away on an old typewriter, probably wouldn’t have believed I’d still be writing decades later but then to be fair, my younger self was mostly concerned with finding a decent pint and not getting shot in some godforsaken corner of the world. Simpler times.
I did have some controversial views, like that time I vociferously supported Brexit The EU, bless their bureaucratic cotton socks, just didn't understand that some chaps prefer their tea, brewed exactly how they like it, without a thousand directives on the exact temperature of the water or the acceptable angle of the teabag. Common sense, you see. A rare commodity, it seems.
And then there's this climate change brouhaha. All this talk of the planet boiling, the ice caps melting, the end of days just around the corner, delivered with the grave pronouncements of a particularly gloomy vicar.
Now, I’m not saying it’s not getting a bit warmer, but the sky isn't falling, and frankly, I suspect the planet has seen a good deal worse than a few extra degrees. It's a rather resilient old thing, Earth. She's been through ice ages and volcanoes, and I suspect she'll manage perfectly well without us all running around in a panic, banning perfectly good cars and eating laboratory-grown steak.  
So, will histoerians mention the geopolitical thrillers or the fact that I thought leaving the EU was a perfectly sensible decision and that all this climate hysteria is a bit overblown? Probably both, knowing my luck.
Ultimately, I suppose, I hope they remember the stories. The ones where the good chaps, usually British, occasionally French, used their wits and courage to prevent some monstrous injustice. The ones where research was king, and a well-placed fact could be more devastating than a missile. The ones that, for a few hours at least, took people away from their own particular drizzles and worries, and plunged them into a world of genuine peril and cunning.
As for the rest of it, my opinions on the price of milk, the state of modern manners, or indeed, the baffling complexities of the European fishing policy well, those are just the ramblings of an old chap who’s seen a bit too much of the world to take much of it seriously anymore.

Too Much Money For Corrupt Politicians To Tackle Climate Change

With at least 675 confirmed deaths and 2,500 people missing following the devastation of Nepal caused by a glacier collapse due to global warming, Nepali Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal has called on the world to embark on: 'A global effort to tackle climate change'.
The first warnings that the CO2 emissions were damaging our environment came in 1824, an amazing 102 years ago, so it isn't as if it suddenly reared up unexpectedly but over the last century despite the warnings, we have carried on and even upped the damage so despite an overwhelming scientific consensus and increasingly visible ecological devastation, wealthy nations have consistently failed to implement the policies needed to halt climate change so you have to wonder why is that?
It could be that the leaders we have had over that period have been devastatingly incompetent (very much an option) but unfortunately I can think of other reasons.
There could be a fear that countries historically liable for causing the worst of the warming climate (USA, China, India, Germany, United Kingdom) could face admitting fault and open the floodgates to lawsuits and demands for climate reparations.
Due to burying heads in the sand and not doing it over time, the bill to transition away from fossil fuels would be immense and no Government wants to lose their grip on power by putting up tax to pay for it and have been happy to kick the can down the road to ensure their own short-term political survival.
All of the above is certainly in consideration but i would pin the blame squarely on lobbying by the high emitting industries.
Fossil fuel corporations, aviation giants and heavy manufacturers spend billions of dollars annually on lobbying, political campaign contributions and public relations campaigns designed to delay strict regulations, water down carbon taxes and even sow public doubt about climate science which unfortunately there are enough soft headed people around to believe it.
The administration of Donald Trump, who has rolled back over 100 environmental rules and regulations despite being the second worst polluter, received tens of millions from oil, gas and coal executives, alongside ultra-wealthy donors heavily invested in fossil fuels and they didn't pay this money out of the kindness of their hearts, hence the roll backs they literally paid for.
In the UK, the Conservative Party have received £3.5 million in political donations from fossil fuel interests, high-pollution industries and funders linked to climate science denial groups and have now pushed back against net zero have argued that they would roll back green policies.
Reform have received £2.5 million from those who would be affected by any change to environmental laws and are now actively promoting dangerous climate denial and dismissed the consensus on man-made climate change as: 'A con trick'.
With the devastation which environmentalists have been warning about since before i took an interest in the mid 80's now arriving, time is running out to avoid the worst of what Mother Nature has to throw at us and the people to blame are the ones who have taken money over saving the lives of the people on the planet and until we get proper leaders.
This is only the start but at least we know who to blame, 100 years of greedy, corrupt World Leaders so sorry Nepali Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal, a global effort to tackle climate change isn't going to happen anytime soon, too much money to be made by some to blatantly ignore it and instead just say how sad it is when 675 Nepalese souls are snuffed out by a collapsing glacier. 

Hope It Hurt Mladic

We can only hope that Bosnian War criminal, Ratko Mladic, died in absolute pain for his part in the Bosnian genocide in the 1990s.
Mladic was reported as terminally ill in July 2025 and tried to obtain compassionate release to die outside prison which was refused and when he then tried to secure agreement to be hospitalised outside the Hague, that was refused also.
Mladic slaughtered ten thousand Bosnian's and was known as the Butcher of Bosnia for the thousands of innocents he ordered killed and if there is a Hell, you can only hope he is being used as a test subject for his fellow Genocide committer, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who will also arrive one day with his current death toll of around 95,000 and a 34th place ranking in the 'Who Has Killed The Most People In History' list between Vlad the Impaler (100,000) and the Central African Republican Jean-Bédel Bokassa (90,000).

Special Guest Blogger: Brian Wilson

It all started, as these things often do, in a garage. Not because we were cool, rebellious teenagers with leather jackets and a profound message to deliver. No, we were just three brothers, a cousin, and our friend Al Jardine, making a racket. That’s probably the most rock-and-roll part of our origin story. The rest was just trying to avoid hitting Dennis with his own drumsticks.
Then came the "brainstorm." Surfing. Hot rods. Girls. The quintessential California dream. The funny thing is, none of us were exactly beachy types. I mean, I liked the beach. From a safe distance. With a hot dog but Surfin' it was. And people loved it. They bought the records. They wanted more. So, we gave them more. "Surfin' Safari," "I Get Around," "California Girls." Lots of songs about things we barely did, but made sound like the greatest thing on Earth. It was genius, really. A brilliant marketing scheme disguised as pop music. Who knew? Not us, probably.
Then things got... interesting. My brain, you see, it wasn't content with just three chords and a catchy chorus. My brain was like a mischievous toddler who discovered the entire toy chest and decided to throw everything in the air, just to see what kind of glorious mess it would make. I started hearing
sounds no one else seemed to hear. Layers. Textures. It was all there, in my head, shimmering and begging to be put on tape.
Schizoaffective disorder and mild bipolar disorder they called it although the bucketfuls of LSD, cocaine and marijuana probably didn't help and after a nervous breakdown, I withdrew from regular concert touring to concentrate on songwriting and recording.
This is where Pet Sounds comes in. Everyone talks about Pet Sounds but it nearly broke me.  I spent so much time in the studio, conducting my little orchestra of session musicians, trying to translate the chaos in my head into something tangible, something beautiful. I was trying to capture the feeling of watching a sunset while simultaneously experiencing the dread of a wormhole opening in my living room. You know, everyday stuff.
The guys, my bandmates, they weren't always on board. Mike, bless him, was usually the first to raise an eyebrow but I just knew. I felt it. It was the sound of something new. Something pure. And a lot of very complex chords.
I did try to stop the drugs but by then I was hanging out with people like Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop so that's like being a vegetarian while living in McDonald's.
And then Smile. That album was going to be my grand opus. It was going to be the sound of God, as channeled through my slightly frazzled brain. Or maybe just a really confused Brian. We had fire engines and horse whinnies and a track called "Barnyard" that sounded exactly like what you’d expect.
My brain, you see, was always been a busy place. Like a hyperactive amusement park, but all the rides are playing different music simultaneously, and the clown is also trying to explain quantum physics. Sometimes it's a symphony, sometimes it's just a lot of honking and shouting. For a while there, it
was mostly shouting. Loud, insistent voices, telling me all sorts of interesting and occasionally terrifying things. It made trying to write a simple pop song quite the adventure.
Through it all, the drugs, the suicide attempts, the mental hospital visits, the music kept coming. Sometimes it was a trickle, sometimes a flood.
Sometimes it was just a strange little tune that I'd hum to myself for three days straight until it finally found its way onto a piano.
My brain was finally silenced after contracting COVID and the later effects of that which was respiratory problems but I wrote a bunch of songs about cars and girls and surfing, a few albums that apparently changed the world, a good noise and I managed to put a smile on a few faces along the way
even if my own face was often contorted in a mixture of concentration and sheer bewilderment most of the time.

Special Guest Blogger: Dolly Parton

Hello there, darlin’, It’s your old pal Dolly and i'm here sitting in Gods waiting Room (thank you Cancer) and thinking back on the mountain of hairspray and glitter that could probably be seen from the International Space Station, and I'm thinking, how on earth did a little girl from the dirt-poor mountains of Tennessee end up so goddam' famous?
At age 18, I packed a suitcase, a guitar, and a few weeks’ worth of canned beans and drove to Nashville, the city with the neon honky‑tonk signs and that was the start of a beautiful ride with an aim to make the world a little brighter, just like my stage outfits.
Now, I know some of you might only know me because your mama played 9 to 5 while vacuuming on a Saturday morning, or crying into your pillow to I Will Always Love You, the Whitney version obviously.
Speaking of that little tune, I wrote it as a dramatic farewell to my long-time musical partner Porter Wagoner but back in the day, the King himself, Mr. Elvis Presley, wanted to record my song but his Colonel manager said Elvis would get half the publishing rights so i said no thank you and boy, am I glad I did! Years later, Whitney Houston blew the roof off the world with her version in The Bodyguard. That song made me enough money that I could have bought Graceland lock, stock, and barrel so thanks, Whitney. I will always love you, indeed!
I’d written over 3,000 songs but I don't just want to be remembered for the high notes, the big hair, or the outfits because you see, I started out dirt poor. I’m talking twelve kids in a two bedroom cabin with a leaky roof kind of poor. We didn't have two nickels to rub together, but i said if I ever got in a position to help others, I was going to help.
That’s why, way back in 1988, we started helping local schoolchildren stay in school. Then, in 1995, I started the Imagination Library because I wanted kids to have books of their own and when disasters strike wildfires, hurricanes, floods, well, a Tennessee mountain girl never forgets where she came from.
I even tossed a million dollars at the Moderna vaccine research back in 2020 during the pandemic. Who knew my little ol' country songs would turn me into a vaccine-funding Rockefeller?
I wore heels that defied the laws of physics, and spread as much joy as I possibly could because at the end of the day, wigs tangle, makeup melts, applause fades but kindness is a rhinestone that never loses its sparkle.

You Can Close Your Eyes (For 7 Hours)

There is an advert on the TV which uses the song  'Lucky, Lucky, Lucky Me' to explain how the singer works eight hours, sleeps eight hours which leaves eight hours for fun and i have always assumed that eight hours of shut eye is some sort of scientific fact to allow our brains to do whatever brains do when we are sleeping, but turns out that the sweet spot is less than that.
A report by Sleep Specialists have narrowed it down to between 6 hours 24 minutes and 7 hours 48 minutes and anything more or less than that is linked to poorer brain, heart and immune health.
There is a gender factor because women need 15 to 20 minutes more sleep than men which i assume is due to ladies have bigger, more complex brains so we need those extra minutes and to be fair if length of sleep needed was due to how much brain there was to rearrange, i know some who could happily get by with a 10 minute nap but i'm no scientist so i may have made that bit up.   
The report does then go on to complicate things by saying that the actual correct amount of sleep varies depending on factors such as season, workload, stress, illness and safety but a rule of thumb is aim for about 7 hours sleep and you will be in the pink although the lyrics for that song may need to be rewritten because 8 hours kip is doing no favours to your brain, heart and immune system.    

USA No1 For No 2's

American's must feel like crying over what their President is doing to their weekly shopping bills but they maybe should hold back the tears because his latest tariffs on it's neighbour Canada would mean that wiping away those tears has just become much more expensive for them.
The nice North Americans hit back at the Tango Tyrants tariffs and Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, has vowed to match US tariffs dollar for dollar and unveiled a list of nearly 900 American goods that will face up to 50% and specifically mentioned 'toilet paper and face tissue stock' .
American consumers must not be feeling flushed with success that a trip to the bathroom is going to cost them 50% more because though American toilet paper and tissues are often made domestically, they rely heavily rely on lumber from Canada for the raw materials and the US imported $328m worth of toilet paper from Canada last year.
For some reason, the US accounts for more than 20% of global tissue consumption and the average American uses 141 rolls of toilet paper per year, making them No 1 for No 2's globally so maybe cut back on the fibre Americans because you got another 2 years of this mayhem before an adult takes over again.

Special Guest Blogger: Pope Francis

People looked at me and saw the white cassock, the skullcap and the heavy responsibility of 1.3 billion souls but before I was His Holiness, I was just Jorge from Buenos Aires, and let me tell you, the path from the streets of Buenos Aires to the chair of St. Peter is less of a straight line and more of a chaotic tango.
Long before I was hearing confessions in the Vatican, I was wearing a lab coat as a certified chemical technician and being a chemist taught me that everything is a reaction. When I talked about the environment i was looking at the Earth as a closed system. We’re all in the same test tube, my friends and the Bunsen burner is being turned up way too high.
People often forget the most glamorous part of my CV as nightclub bouncer. Yes, the Vicar of Christ used to spend his Friday nights folding his arms over his chest and telling guys in shiny shirts that they weren't getting in as they were not on the list.
In the club, you have to spot the troublemaker before they start throwing chairs. In the Vatican, the chairs are 500-year-old gilded mahogany, so the stakes are much higher.
Being a bouncer taught me about human nature. It taught me that everyone, the drunk kid in the alley and the billionaire in the velvet booth, is looking for the same thing but my final job was just a much larger version of that. Except instead of keeping people out of the club, I was trying to drag everyone in.
Living in Rome was a constant struggle, it is very hard to be the Universal Father when  San Lorenzo de Almagro is playing. I try to pray for everyone, but I think the Lord understands if 51% of my spiritual energy goes toward a winning goal in the 90th minute.
If history remembers me as the guy who spent too much time talking about the poor, I’m okay with that as I want people to look back and say, Remember Francis? He was the one who told us we didn't have to look like we were at a funeral to be holy.
I want to be remembered as the Pope who reminded the world that God is not a cosmic judge with a clipboard and I opened doors, making the Catholic Church more acceptable of the LGBTQ community and blessing same-sex relationships and pointed out that Capitalism was not a good thing and climate change was an upcoming catastrophe although i did get some heat for saying that Mauro Inzoli, an Italian priest accused of child sexual abuse, could remain a priest as long as he submitted to  a life of prayer and humble discretion, especially when he then went on to abuse more children and got sentenced to prison.
Once upon a time you knew where Catholics stood on their beliefs, circa 1450, but I did at least try and drag them into the modern age by not only saying that the Church needs more women involved, divorce is okay, abortion is a decision for the mother not the Church and Atheists can get into Heaven as God would forgive their unbelief.
I did have to deal with some real modern day tyrants, one of my last visitors was that strange Orange American President and his wife and daughter who decided to dress up like something from the Addams Family, when he asked me for a private sitting to confess his sins, I said that he was only there for 24 hours. The chairs were not reinforced either and they were expensive chairs as i said.
I look at the world today, and it’s a bit of a chemistry experiment gone wrong. There’s a lot of volatility. There’s a lot of acidic rhetoric but i am a firm believer that as i went from a Nightclub bouncer to the top authority on God, nobody should ever give up because today you may be emptying the office bins of some dullard who doesn't even acknowledge you or serving drinks to some obnoxious man who clicks his fingers at you and calls you Sweetheart but one day you may be in a position to decide whether they get to sit at Gods right hand or not, and that is a real ego trip. 

Special Guest Blogger: Richard Chamberlain

For decades, I was America’s handsome, earnest, perpetually swoon-worthy leading man. The epitome of heterosexual charm, the knight in shining armour who always got the girl, or at least looked awfully conflicted about not getting the girl. And all the while, I was… well, let's just say my internal monologue during those passionate embraces was less Oh, darling, my heart aches for you and more Did I remember to turn off the coffee machine?
The audience, bless their innocent hearts, always assumed I was a lady killer but keeping my secret, dear readers, was pure genius, if I do say so myself.
It all started for me with Dr. Kildare. Suddenly, I was America's sweetheart, the poster boy for wholesome, strapping masculinity. Every woman wanted to marry me, every mother wanted me to be their son-in-law but I was just trying not to blush when the male nurses walked by.  It was the acting
challenge of a lifetime and so convincing that  even my character wasn't even aware of it.
If anyone ever questioned a lack of a visible girlfriend, i'd mumble something about being too dedicated to my craft. Which, technically, wasn't a lie.
Crafting an entire public persona around a lie is rather demanding work.
Then came Shogun. A whole new level of manly man. Stranded, alone, fighting for survival, falling in love with a beautiful Japanese noblewoman. Talk about a test of one's acting prowess! I had to learn Japanese, ride horses, sword fight, and simultaneously project an aura of rugged heterosexuality so
convincing it could fool a polygraph.
And then The Thorn Birds, Father Ralph. A priest torn between his sacred vows and his forbidden love for Meggie Cleary and for years, it was a delicate dance. A performance within a performance. The character on screen, and the character I had to play off screen. Always charming, always polite, always
vaguely unavailable.
My dates were always with lovely, understanding women who were either in on the secret or simply didn't mind a dinner companion who talked extensively about gardening.
It wasn't always easy, of course. There were moments of genuine loneliness, moments of frustration with the elaborate charade. But there was also a perverse kind of pride in the sheer scale of the deception until a French magazine outed me but by then i didn't care and i lived out my life in Hawaii until a stroke claimed me.