Four hours is devoted to each of my weblogs. Today I wrote two so blogging took up a hefty chunk of my day. I take care over weblinks. These get added after saving the link-less first post to the blogsite. This week I will try to do all forty of the week’s links in a single session over the weekend. I work to a rigid one-page format, writing my 900 words and then copying and pasting to the web. I have to concentrate. I would not fancy having people around. And only Bach, Beethoven or Mozart will do as background music...and not from Classical FM with its intrusive upper crust advertising.

Today I worked on Friday’s weblog from 0700 to 1200 and on Saturday’s from 1230 to 1530. I have delivered a daily weblog for two weeks and made fifteen postings...the first one...What People Do All Day...setting the scene. I have found it immensely satisfying. So yes Virginia you could say that I write for myself. But this means I will continue to write 900 words a day for the rest of the year...to prove I can.

My time I will always have. We use a tiny portion of the powers the gods give us. To sacrifice a fifth of my daily waking time to art (and science) for an eightieth part of my life is hardly excessive...equivalent to a day of my life averaged over a lifetime. This is heartbeat economics. I am counting on three billion heart beats...70 per minute for 100 000 beats a day multiplied by 365 days in a year and by the 80 years of my life...if I am not cut down at the height of my powers (between 60 and 80 when wisdom sets in).

But my health? Aye, there’s the rub! People get struck down without warning. Why should I be spared? Already I have claimed fifty percent more than the gods allotted to Mozart. Surely I am well above quota? For a writer health is not just the absence of disease. Writer’s block is complicated. A writer needs the active presence of wellness. Without it creation is impossible. Wellness nurtures the muscles in the brain that direct the attention and lock in the creative force...see Arthur Koestler’s Art of Creation and Colin Wilson’s Outsider.

I matched my double helping of weblogs with two films...and too much pizza. I need to share meals to keep slim. I buy the same amount for one as for two.I should make the food last for two days. The arithmetic of calories-in by eating to calorories-out by exercise is alarming. On the credit side there is half a chocolate bar in the fridge. You guessed. I forgot about it. Garfield would be ashamed of me. Confessional over. Now films.

It was a filthy day. Bucketing down all day. My diary said ‘Private 2000’. The entry had been made several weeks ago. I hadn’t the foggiest idea what it meant but the time suggested Theatr Mwldan. I was right...a showing of an Italian film by Saverio Constanzo about a Palestinian family whose home is forceably occupied by Israeli soldiers. This type of docudrama is worth a thousand newspaper articles to me. I like the anecdotal.

George Galloway’s book ‘I’m Not The Only One’ had got me interested in the Palestinian issue. My daughter found it heavy going and couldn’t finish it but I liked what I read enough to send a copy to Toni Pinschof remarking that Benn and Galloway were the only MPs that seemed to have much idea. Heidi had also inadvertently raised my consciousness. She has a map of the West Bank on her kitchen wall.

But driving thirty miles in the pouring rain in the middle of the night was not something to relish. So it was with relief that I saw there was a 1730 showing...at least this meant I could drive one way in the light. I may be showing my age here but I no longer enjoy driving at night. So off I went just as the rain finally stopped.

Private taught me a lot...and it was cleverly done. The menace of violence hangs over the film...personal violence that is...there is plenty of violence off stage...gun fire...helicopter gun ships etc. I was bracing myself for it...but personal violence never actually came to the screen or into the script...the menace sufficed. This is a theatrical trick Hollywood has forgotten...applies to sex as well. This thought lay behind an earlier weblog remark that battles would be more effective on film if reported Shakespearian fashion instead of shown.

Personalising the political...as Private does...is one key part of Peace Party strategy. Mockery of the War Party is another. Both are necessary but not sufficient. Others can go to Palestine and Iraq and get themselves killed just like an earlier generation went to Spain in 1936...see Arthur Koestler’s Darkness At Noon and George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. I admire and respect them. But this is not for me. My focus is to understand the root cause of the War Party’s ascendence and then work with others to create strategies for its demise.

The Sane Alternative by James Robertson has been on my recommended reading list for 25 years. It has the right approach to strategies for moving from a Hyperexpanionist future to a Sane Humane Ecological future. I dislike the gender implications but that discussion is for another day. Back home to Penny Serenade and pizza...with a couple of glasses of red wine on the side...a bottle of wine I can leave half-finished.