"Message in a Bottle from a Crazy World"

Under the sub-title "message in a bottle from a crazy world", this is the first of 11 chapters that intertwine around the main narrative of both the men's and ladies Ashes Summer of 2023 and an offbeat take as I describe beautiful Ironbridge (as seen in the video!) visiting the cinema and spending time with my son as well as an awkward, sideways glance at a maddening world and the witchcraft that is the internet!

All of which comes from a cricket book I'm immensely proud of and an extract from this chapter follows a link to this self-published book and other ways and means of supporting me, if you are able, to thumb the eye of traditional publishers who refused to read my original manuscript!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CF4FRKSH

https://www.patreon.com/TheBlackfordBookClub
https://www.paypal.me/TheBlackfordBookClub
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/steveblackford

"The world of social media and those twin sisters of devilry Facebook and Twitter sure is a crazy old world and quite frankly I’m relieved to know it just isn’t true and can only be the creation of a master tactician and architect of a larger electrical internet encompassing this one, or an electrical and digital Matrix if you will. In the stub your big toe and you’ll hop around like a wounded, squealing animal real world, I ventured to beautiful Ironbridge with my equally beautiful son for company, fussed over an English pug dog by the name of “Bear” and watched the world go by for an hour beside the River Severn. The sweet sound of the bells of St Luke’s Church signalled our departure for the cinema with pockets full of “Old Fashioned Sweets” from the tiniest shop in the tiniest of English towns, a perfect accompaniment to a musical based on the songs of Take That which rather pleased the not so secret admirer of those Mancunian musical maestros, and what a sheer pleasure it was to watch and see my son singing along with songs some of which I’ve held dear to my heart for nearly a quarter of a century. Naturally my favourite song, “A Million Love Songs”, reduced this curmudgeonly old cricket fan into tears and there’s a story behind the obvious question of why, but we don’t have time for such a maudlin dive into the matters of a lovelorn heart.

Not now anyway.

The remainder of our afternoon and evening was spent doing what we do best, hanging out together, my son in his gaming world, me sat cross legged at a small coffee table sucking on the end of my pencil and occasionally writing in between bouts of either annoying him or trying to make him laugh.

Treasured times indeed.

With my son safely back into the homely comforts of his incredible mother I treated myself to some late night highlights of the day’s cricket from the ladies Ashes before booking myself another treat and a return trip to the cinema tomorrow. Then I made the fatal mistake of plugging myself into The Matrix and for fear of repeating myself, I am so glad that the world presented to me via social media isn’t real and is just a flash of graphics, texts and images from a created world that simply can’t be true.

You could sit me down and painstakingly detail, in slow methodical baby steps, how the internet is and how it arrives, undersea cables, modems and routers, passwords and megabit speeds, and I’d still veer toward it all being the work of witchcraft. I’ve been lucky enough to yet again wander around a beautiful toy-town beside the River Severn, go to the cinema and spend the rest of the day with the light of my life, and then I venture into the dark hole of wizardry and witchcraft and as usual, I don’t know if I should be bemused or bloody annoyed.

We have the coming spectacle of two of the world’s richest men clambering into a boxing ring for some personal, down and dirty fisticuffs and whilst Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg plan for their heavyweight versus bantamweight shenanigans, five more incredibly rich souls are feared lost at sea deep in search of The Titanic.

The Titanic!"

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