Wise one

A wise man sees they are blessings,

...one wiser sees they are not in disguise 
posted: Sun 03 Feb 2008

Please God Listen to This! Interview/ BBC Radio Stoke

At last Lamont Howie of BBC Radio Stoke gave me my break. Here the interview with him and post your comments in the forum.

 

Click here

posted: Sun 16 Dec 2007

Die Happy
Blokes Don't Get Ill - They Just Die
posted: Wed 28 Nov 2007

TAKE EFFECT
WHY JUDGE A LIFE BY ITS LENGTH WHEN IT'S SO EASY TO JUDGE BY ITS EFFECT?
posted: Mon 19 Nov 2007

I love to think
Death has one true friend - reason
posted: Wed 14 Nov 2007

Dying to Live
There equal reasons for living and for dying. It's just that we only study the reasons to live.
posted: Wed 14 Nov 2007

Claytonism
AT THE OFFICE YOU MUST BE A SUCCESS, WHEN AT HOME YOU ARE ONE
posted: Wed 07 Nov 2007

Work It Out
Last night I went to the gym. How impossibly boring you say. Well everything is boring until you look at how ridiculous we all are. When I arrived I noticed that everyone was driving round the car park, just to get a space near the main entrance to the gym. Presumably so they didn't have to walk that far? But the same people then went into the gym to run on a machine for 5K. Are they completely mad? Why not just run to the gym or take the car parking space furthest from the door ? It doesn't work like that though does it? We have mind sets and engraved ways of doing everything, we must always park nearest the door, no matter how many times we drive about. There are too many things that I will never understand.
posted: Thu 25 Oct 2007

Twinkle Twinkle Little
Last night I opened the door of the car after having been to a heavily tar-black-beamed English pub to make the delicious discovery of an unusually clear night. It was one of those awakening evenings when you feel that you should be doing all those things that you thought about doing in life. Moreover, when you really look at the sky you feel that it could almost all be possible! You have that feeling that the entire universe is there for you and you are part of it. I had this feeling that I really could do the things in life that I chose on the menu before I was born.

I gazed into the sky looking through my steaming breath in the cold and saw three particular stars. Have you read the Gospel of Judas? I thought not. Well, to save you having to read it all, because it’s quite heavy going and slightly boring, it says that we all have our own guiding star in a round-about-2000-year-old-ridiculous-way. Well it’s a bit more complicated than that. But I looked up and saw a distinct triangle of three stars. I decided then and there, after having read another book on Cosmic Ordering that I should wish upon a star and give it a go. And I wonder, why are we called a star when we become one anyway? Does that mean we are beaming with light and have connected with our stars like it said would happen in the Gospel of Judas? Why is one of the most famous nursery rhymes that we learn in fact called, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star? The final line of this innocent verse is even more telling. How I wonder what you are. What a line, c’mon think about it! I lost a lot of sleep over this one line for weeks on end, I still do. How indeed we do wonder what they are? Because what are they? What are we? What do the stars really do for us? Well this night, I wanted to know.

I chose three stars that I claimed for myself and made a wish. A single wish for each star. On the left of the triangle I decided that this wish would be the first, in the middle, the next wish and then the final wish, which would represent my nirvana. What would you wish for if you had three things? When you gaze up at the stairs your legs start to play games as if you are on a ship. You neck goes but you keep gazing because you feel that there really is some meaning. I had to wish for three things there and then and place my cosmic order. You may ask rightly, ‘well, why on earth is this banana telling me all this?’ Well you see, it’s that just-in-case-thing again. What if the things I wished for came true? You would not have believed that I had asked for them and like this. Me the Universe as one having a chat and asking for a result of my miniscule and rather dull uneventful life.

I asked for Wealth, Health and Happiness. Why? I will testify next time but I only have 500 precious words tonight. What would you ask for? I mean if you really thought it might happen like I did on that October night in Kent. Watch out what you ask for!

posted: Thu 18 Oct 2007

I don't want tomorrow - I think it wants me?
I want to be younger, slimmer, more beautiful, faster, less wrinkly, I want what tomorrow isn’t going to bring me. I don’t want tomorrow. I want dark hair again, big muscles, no aches or pains in my back at night and no memory losses. I want the women to look at me in bars. I want my youth back! I don’t want to use the excuse that I am too old any more, even though I have been using it all my life. Please give me youth again.

OK you got it! There, done. Imagine though Clayton, you are now born on the very day you would have died. Each day that you now live, you get smoother, stronger, no greyer hairs, you now grow a day younger every day that you live until you die on a set given day. There you are, the magic wand has descended. You have all you ever wanted. You have exactly 78 years left to live, as that’s when you would have died, so all is revealed, you now know. You are happy, so you think, eternal youth, what bliss for you.

Now you know that you get younger each day you also know you are on a countdown to your death. You know exactly how many seconds hours days and years that you have to go. You know all you have learned in life as you go backwards, you know that you don’t grow any wiser as you beome more naive. You know that you can achieve no more as you are born with your old age having achieved all there is to achieve with your life. You are counting away the days that you live, nothing more, going backwards. Just so that you can be younger, is it worth it? What is the point in living if you have achieved all you need to in life just so you can be young again?

Who wants to learn the same lessons of youth again that were so hard to learn? Now you find pleasure in things that you would not have been able to find pleasure in and you want to throw that all away. There is a reason for getting older just as there is reason that we are not born old and grey with the knowledge of when we die. Life is perfect.

You may not need tomorrow but it needs you.

posted: Tue 09 Oct 2007

Book a Pint
Just when you think it’s all over you realise that it’s only just started! Things are picking up at an unexpected pace. I have been invited to read a chapter of my book in the local pub on national poetry day. The pub's called The Grape Vine, we have also just struck a deal to have a copy of the book in every airport in the country and it will be featured in The Tonbridge Courrier next week. The real biscuit for me was the brilliant review that Mr Books the local bookseller gave Please God I Want To Win The Lottery on his Tonbridge Town Blog see http://www.tonbridgeblog.com/ that says it all. Mr Books also sold his only copy that he was reading for himself in his shop! OK, one copy, big deal, but it was a sale, and I am a salesman and I know that one sale means another. The book isn't even officially out yet and they are buying the proofs. He’s asked for 10 more. That’s not bad- I am new to this but selling a book in a few hours of it being in a shop means something.

Now it’s time to talk to the Tonbridge Courrier who have agreed to run a feature on it next Friday and a number of journalists and TV producers are now circling. Little steps at a time, I do believe in this really, I am just frightened to admit that it is good in case it isn’t, as I would be so disappointed. It’s a kind of self-protection system I have built against failure over the years as I have failed so many times. Its the kind of situation when you know you really love someone and you are frightened to tell them in case they don't love you and run away in horror. That's my affair with my readers. I want to love them. I do. But let's face it, writing a cult book is one of the hardest things to achieve. I am off to the Ivy House Pub on Tonbridge High st. Kent to read a chapter tonight (04/10/07), so if you want to see me I’ll be there, especially if you are a journalist or TV producer! Yes that was a joke. Let’s talk books. We are now sold out of all proof copies - all gone. New delivery on Tuesday of the big web press run and then you can buy online next week.

If you come down to the pub, I’ll bring a few dead friends to introduce you to, they are simply dying to meet you.

posted: Thu 04 Oct 2007

The Chariot
I was just thinking that it was all over, really, I lay in bed last night and said, enough is enough, I wondered how will this book ever make it. What can I do? I contemplated that I had made a terrible mistake. I still do in some way. I wish I had picked something easier like goat rearing or something. But I remembered that before Hugh Grant made it, he was about to give up on his whole acting career but decided instead to go to one last interview and that was the very one that kick started his success, he got the part. He had decided to knock it on the head but went just one step beyond the final act of giving up and this was all it took.

I have officially given up, but I am still here with my last act. But what is it now? Is it merely the fact that even though I have given up, I am still trying? But there are no interviews or big breaks for me. You have nothing but your own energy to fight for a goal in this game, the drive for success requires more than trying hard. We must keep charging ahead without ever stopping to look at the reality of how insanely impossible it actually is. If I stop, I will see that I am trying to achieve the impossible. I must ride forward and triumph over all the obstacles in my way. I must find inner strength through being wise and by not using any more force. Only then will I succeed.

But I AM STILL TRYING, I can’t believe that! Eight years on and still at it. This must be a form of modern insanity. Perhaps if you invest so much of your life into something that you believe in, you just can’t throw it away. You are throwing away a part of your heart.

Giving up on a product or a hope is only a reality when you stop trying, even if you do a miniscule thing like wait another day or write another letter, or add to a blog, you are still trying.

Somewhere, someone, somehow might notice you so you must never give up on what you believe in. In this case I believe in myself. I believe I can do this. I believe I will be a great writer but I may be the only one who does right now so I have to be prepared to soldier on to another step of who I am. It’s good to be at your limits and I face mine like a snarling dog. Don’t stop Clayton. Crack the whip and drive the horses one last furlong. That may be the last thing you need to do. Surely we must be nearly there? Surely the sun will shine on the chariot soon and they will see the rubies sparkling down the side. Soon the sun will rise and light up the night.
posted: Mon 17 Sep 2007

Do you believe in hope?
One month before my book is published and I am a dark void where even emotion is breathing its last breath. Hope exists, but only for those fools who choose to nurse it under their wing and propagate it. Hope for me is a spark that flicks on and off and as I near the end of this vast and exhausting project that has drained 9 years of my life, there is plainly still no sign of success. In fact, the harder I work on this, the higher the tower I build and the greater it will crash and the less I will have achieved of doing anything else. I now contemplate my acceptance of failure. I lay my neck on the block with my white collar open and warm skin against the iron. Finish me! I tell them I have written a book and they are so pleased and impressed. It’s wrong for me to accept praise for something that no one may actually read. You see, that’s the thing about book writing and publishing. It’s plainly posible that no one will ever know or ever read what we write. I now write from my dark void without good reason now to believe there are any readers at all. That’s the hardest bit now, writing and knowing that you may never make it. It’s nearly over now, thank you God, don’t keep me hoping and expecting any longer. I have no money left, no energy, no readers, I have nothing left to give. I have given all I have and now I give my hope away in this blog. Please finish it all quickly and let me go back to never expecting a dream to come true. It’s a cruel trick and we all fall for it every day of our lives. We all hope for the impossible and because we hoped for it, we are disappointed. It’s not worth it. Not long, just nine months. I don’t believe in miracles or faith and now hope is gone. It takes some real thinking to find something else. Now it’s up to the world to believe in me.
posted: Tue 04 Sep 2007

I need a miracle!
I need a miracle for my book to hit it big time. But by saying that I am merely claiming that I need something that is unlikely to happen to me, given the life I have lived and the actions that I have taken to get to this day. So, if I need a miracle to happen, I had better start changing rather radically what I do. There was a time when I used to believe in miracles. I thought that if I asked the right ‘God’ or a fairy, an elf, whatever, then it would really happen. I could just sit back and let it all unravel when I sank into the sofa with a good book in front of the log fire. I can’t be blamed, I did after all, ask Father Christmas for things. I even went so far as to write my prezzy list on a piece of paper and throw it into the fire so that he could read the ashes as they flew up the chimney.

What is a miracle anyway? The Universe is one but only when you think of it as a whole. Most miracles exist already but we see them every day and don’t call them miracles. A miracle for us is something that cannot exist so what’s the point in believing in them or asking for them when we can’t have them? Is part of the problem that we never ask for miracles that exist already like ourselves living?

Miracles, dreams and things we yearn and hope for are useful up to a point, but they instantly become unobtainable when we say ‘I need a miracle for this to happen’ like I did just then a desperate moment of non clarity. I have to create one and GET ON WITH IT. A miracle achieved is a process of placing one stone after the other methodically, rhythmically and with determination and faith so that one day our mountain rises high into the clouds. Every action we take must contribute to our dream; I cannot give up now, so close Mr Caine. I herewith lay another stone.

Tomorrow my miracle is more probable as I realise more that it’s less of a miracle. It’s when you see that what you want is not a miracle at all in fact that you know you are on the right track. Please forget about them!

I used to believe in so many things that I do not now. But I still believe in me and that I might just make it! The only way this can happen is by me helping you realise yours. This is a brand, an experience of breaking free. Long live freedom! Try placing a small stone, precisely shaped, carefully selected, and no matter how small it is lay it in the right place. You never know what may happen.
posted: Tue 21 Aug 2007

Grave Concern 13th Aug 2007
I have already had a number of emails from people asking me why I was lying upside-down on a gravestone (a really wet one too I remember) for my blog photo. It’s a good question. Well, you know what? I am never really that far away from my grave so I thought I should get comfortable with the idea and try a rehearsal when I had a choice. It wasn’t that bad really, quite a peaceful experience. If I think about it, and this depends entirely on how you look at it of course, but each day I edge inexorably closer to my grave. OK, no cancer science, I know, but it is hauntingly certain that I am nearer to my grave tonight than I was yesterday when I was consuming my nasty regular tuna and sweet corn sandwich in the office. Life towards my death just goes on in a certain and almost mothering manner. I can now rely on something in such an uncertain world, my good wise teacher- death.

But if I do think about it, like tonight, then I should be at least mildly concerned. My time is finite and there are only so many hours that I will have to write books, blogs and magazine columns to get the message over and see my purpose through before my time is up. So how can I be sure I will not die before I have said what I have to say? How will I know if my job on earth is done when I do die? How do we know if we have a good reason to live anyway? We could all be living for no reason apart from the fact that life is pure existence to ‘enjoy’. It doesn’t have to be that serious. I wish my brain just said to me ‘life really is fun so enjoy it, you twit’. But there’s too much to think about. It’s probably better not to think about what we need to do with our lives isn’t it? We might realise that there’s not enough time to do it all anyway because we have these nasty little things that get in the way called jobs and bills.

So it’s a good thing to do, you know, lie on your grave when you are living and not dead. I did it for a bit and decided that I wanted to get up and walk home and get writing again and have a large plate of spaghetti bolognaise. My stomach needed satisfying and so did my mind. And because I lay on that grave it made me think about my purpose and that’s why I did it. It made me think about the purpose of the person in that grave too. Purpose in itself is almost inescapable. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t found mine, it found me, as my grave will when my time’s up. So here’s to making a difference to the world when you are alive, you sure as hell are stuffed if you want to do anything about it when you are dead.
posted: Mon 13 Aug 2007

Actually you know what? I don't really like pigeons
Actually you know what? I don’t really like pigeons, especially when they make that dreadful mating sound at 5am and wake me up before the kids get up at 6.30 am. But I do like pigeons that can talk and the experience of sitting on a tube with a talking pigeon would be far preferable than most of the humans I see lodged on the central line on the way to work each day.

Pigeons are very fortunate, they don’t really think a lot. I wish I could be a pigeon and then I would not care to think about why I buy things that were made in China that last a week and then end up in the bin. Thinking can really be a problem.

So, if you want to think, don’t read my blog or books. Stay on the M25 in the number to bumper hell and DON”T THINK! If you want to dream, start thinking. If you want to wait, start hoping and if you want to want, heavens start anything but wanting. But do something! I write because the feeling of doing it is driven by a real passion. So I confess that there is going to be a lot of my writing around. And you know what? I am happy when I write so you are experiencing a true pleasure. I wonder if you feel that? A true love for something. I wonder who you are? A word has no meaning until it has a reader. The two unite, reader and writer and it creates something that has been caused by my love for doing it. We all think different things and understand in different ways. Thank goodness we are unique. But why do we all try to do the same things like being richer than each other?

I think I have the answers to why we exist. Actually I know I do, but if I said I knew, you wouldn’t read on so I'll say I know nothing. You decide what is true or false, thats the whole point, don't listen to anyone. I plan to take you to areas of your mind that you never thought you had and the only way I can do that is buy exploring mine.

A Bientot- I have work to do and I have to get this book on the shelves, so if you are a TV producer, you must contact me immediately through the contact page on this web site. That’s what I need and want. There’s a difference. That’s the next dream. But without belirving and acting on it you will never know if your dream will ever come alive. So if you are press, don’t waste a second. I am the philosopher extraordinaire that knows nothing is really known. I promise I will not disappoint my readers .

Let me know if you see a talking pigeon.
posted: Mon 23 Jul 2007