Driving up to Prague this evening I was thinking a lot about my Dad. Parents love their children unconditionally. Or at least – they should. I got to thinking that my Dad was special because not only did he love his kids unconditionally but he never ever asked for anything in return. Unconditional love isn’t just about loving some one for who they are – warts and all – but, its also about not asking for anything back. I think that’s actually quite a rare thing.

Life grows in stages
It has been the same through all ages
I grew in an era of naivety
Mellowed in the eighties to the sounds of punk
Too soon it was over
Wasted years full of fear and living to expectations
Midlife washed over in ignorance
An established pattern, no real challenge
An abrupt realization just in time
A change so fundamental
So that Life lost its rhyme
Face to face with myself
Who the hell am I?
I threw off the mantle of normalcy
I challenged the role of life
I grew up
Now I have a clue
Try for something new
The past, the now, the future
All are one – the threefold nature
Of reality not actuality
What fun!

Well I am more than two weeks post operative and feeling quite good. Some of you may be aware that I had a benign tumor removed from my colon. For those interested it was 4.5cm in diameter and essentially a fatty growth but it was causing me some issues. The surgery was laproscopic, took 6 1/2 hours and removed about 10cm of my colon. I count myself fortunate that the tumor was benign and that the Czech’s could do the procedure laproscopically. I now have five healing holes in my abdomen but the stitches came out yesterday.

This was pretty major surgery by all accounts and so I want to thank all of you who held me in your thoughts, prayers and meditations – don’t stop just yet though – another couple of weeks or so and I should be fully recovered. I am getting more active and trying to return to normal life…. though a beer is still a few weeks away!

Once again – many thanks to you all for your thoughts, wishes and love.

Finally reprinted this is a true classic. At one time, this book used might sell for $500! Sent on a mission deep into the forests of pagan Anglo-Saxon England, Wat Brand, a Christian scribe, suddenly finds his vision of the world turned upside down. The familiar English countryside is not what it seems: threatening spirits, birds of omen and plants of power lurk in this landscape of fallen terrors and mysterious forces. With Wulf, a sorcerer and mystic, as his guide, Brand is instructed in the magical lore of plants, runes, fate and the life force until finally he journeys to the spirit world on a quest to encounter the true nature of his own soul. I can truly recommend this book.

I remember one day a few years ago looking around a cemetery with Dad. We were researching our family name together. I heard my Dad say something like ‘Oh my God” and looked up to see him appearing very pale and shocked. He was looking at a headstone that read “Charles Neville Vasey”. What was astonishing was that this Charles Neville Vasey had been born in the same year as our Dad but died quite young. Dad was shaken but I know he was also very happy to have lived so much longer than his namesake.

I can truly say that I have never met anyone like my Dad. He somehow found a way to develop and share interests with all three of his sons no matter how different we were. Whether it was walking down the beach together looking for stones, digging medieval pottery from old sand pits, or looking for old Roman roads – all of these things created and developed an interest in geology and history that has, in the end, shaped my life and I know that my brothers can find many similar examples specific to them. He was a true mentor who always encouraged, through example, each of us to attain to the best we could be and then, in later life, became our best friend.  Read more... (864 words, 1 image, estimated 3:27 mins reading time)