Lockdown was/is like a surreal vipassana meditation. Ok so the details are slightly different but it gives great insight into yourself and those you choose to surround yourself with.
What are you like without the trimmings in life you take for granted? How do you spend your time? How do you treat yourself and others?
All valid things to reflect upon. Ultimately the question leads you to what do you want from life. So many have expressed a wish to make changes they’ve procrastinated about for some time. Others cling on to what they know refusing to accept any change or growth.
Each to their own. No judgement from me. I only know and concern myself with what I need to do to better myself. Self-improvement for my health and well-being so I can enjoy life and continue to meet likeminded people who understand me and my approach.
I move on from the things dragging me down, darkening my sunny skies. I take who I am and my compassion and understanding and apply it where it will make a difference.
I choose to do things because part of the mission of life is to be of service to others. The other part is to find bliss and enlightenment. I renounce all things, all relationships of the past that hinder either one of these aims.
Ajoobacats Blog 
The Sound of Silence – by Patrick Brigham
For some reason during my lockdown in Greece, I have not felt like writing fiction; especially about murder or mayhem. The dark world of “thriller” writing, has been severely curtailed by the reality out there in the real world. I know that people are reading more during these troubled times, which is good news for us writers, but somehow I don’t feel like doing that either. Although, last week something odd did happen to me; I simply could not get the theme of a pop song out of my head.
It just wouldn’t go away. But, what was it and where did it come from? Well, it turned out to be part of a song I wrote twenty years ago, with my late co-composer friend Robert Jelmer De Groot, which I had somehow forgotten about until now. I got out all my old notebooks – I have written loads of songs in the past – but it finally it turned up in a computer junk file, unfinished, neglected and forgotten.
In the past, isolation and having time on my hands has made things happen unexpectedly and I know from past encounters with music you need time, no interruptions and a deafening silence.Well, I have got that in bucket loads here on the fringes of a Greek village in Evros, and I have now returned to something I had almost given up. Music!
Perhaps I’m a poet and don’t know it? But I was certainly a fairly busy lyric writer in the 70s and 80s, although by then popular music had changed a bit. The Boom Town Rats, Ian Dury, Madness somehow changed the face of pop music in the 80s and together with a lot of shouting and spitting it was when I invented my then then new fictional antihero pop idol and singer, called Sid Snot.
“My heart is not a clockwork train, Can’t wind it up, and let it go again.”
Regaling his audience with various forms of spitting shouting, and occasionally even synchronized regurgitation, by then I had turned my hand to short story writing. Because, if this was the new face of music , I concluded that it was time to give it all up and to get a proper job. To stop talking to record producers who wanted me to write crap, like the garbage littering their record portfolios at the time, and the would-be yob performers who couldn’t sing or play their instruments properly. I do, however, still like Madness and the late and great Ian Dury!
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Sid sounds very punk. There are more songs waiting to be written by you and true voyage of rediscovery.
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I like writing short little vignettes, but last year I did publish The London Property Boy at Amazon, and I just wondered – if you haven’t got completely fed up with me – if you might like to review it. Its a very English story, well, until the end.
BR
Patrick
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Patrick, if you look at my blog posts for the past 3 years you will see I have not posted any book reviews. Unfortunately after the break up of my marriage and having to return to work I don’t have the time to post reviews anymore.
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https://www.wattpad.com/story/205278136-the-london-property-boy have a quick read!
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Sorry about the breakup, been through it myself! Do you have any friends or colleagues who are available right now? I get the impression that reviews are more difficult than before, and I am marooned in Northern Greece and have to do everything at arm’s length. Have a sunny Sunday, I am.
BR
Patrick
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Thank you. I unfortunately have not been mixing in book review circles for some time but try https://rosieamber.wordpress.com/rosies-book-review-team-rbrt-booklist/
It’s not likely to be sunny here today. Enjoy.
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Already done, but thanks for the kind thought
BR
Patrick
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We really should be mindful of the people we surround ourselves with. Unfortunately, it’s hard to manage that during this quarantine. Nonetheless, we can always change our perspectives by reading books that can inspire us and posts that inspire us. ❤
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Very true. It’s a golden time to make choices that benefit us mentally, physically and spiritually. Keeping a balance has never been so important and pat of that balance is reading. Thank you for reading.
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