THE FOREST OF DEAN - NOW

In the moonlight the river Severn snakes through the valley like a silver ribbon.
I spend time here in contemplation - the closest I can get to immortality - a practice that deserves a worldwide resurgence.

CONSPIRACIES
I blow hot and cold about conspiracy theories and I would love to uncover one. There are hosts of websites purporting to reveal the most insidious conspiracies and one of these covert exercises in mind seduction appears to be the Bilderberger Society. This association, for want of a better word, takes its name from a hotel in Amsterdam and has a fairly innocuous public face. Behind the scenes, however, world leaders including George W Bush and Tony Blair are said to be planning a 'new world order' distinguished by an inexorable and determined move to reduce our civil liberties to just about zero. A galaxy of power brokers are claimed to be members and are behind the consistent spin messages designed to create fear of other cultures, world terrorism and militant politicised religious zealots, ID cards, constant observation (is the UK the most watched country on Earth - thoughts?) inequitable world debt, erosion of legal rights and quango-driven legislation.

I shall delve further into Bilderberger.

PROPHECY
Look into SuperIching (www.superiching.com). I became transfixed by this different methodology of interpreting the I-Ching. It is quite remarkable and astonishingly accurate. The man who developed the system based on ancient Chinese wisdom is Alex Chiu - a Chinese/American living in San Francisco, I believe. He follows the movements of stocks and shares and sporting events as well as using it to shed light and wisdom on profound philosophical questions.

LITERARY AGENTS
I have had a number of literary agents and when trying the backbreaking job of trying to interest them in my work was more than amused to find that literary agents appear to have developed an insider notoriety with websites devoted to discussions about honesty, dealmaking, performance tables. A good agent is worth their weight in rejection slips but there are as many time wasters out there as in any other business. Anyone got a favourite agent story they would like to share?

SCIENCE AND RELIGION
Unlike the huge schism there appears to be between science and religion, I see no conflict between scientific discovery, metaphysics and religion. I explore these themes in my book 'An Angel On My Shoulder'. There is a link to the synopsis and first chapter on my home page. What is that old aphorism? What is the definition of reality? Reality is that which cannot change. Think about it.

THE REAL GRAIL
The phenomenon of the Da Vinci Code has probably sent writers scurrying to their word processors to jump on the bandwagon. There has been reams written about the Holy Grail, Opus Dei (just one of many Catholic fraternities) and Mary Magdalen being the wife of Jesus. I grew up as a very strong Irish Catholic (wearing scapulas - mock hair shirts - White Fathers, Franciscans, retreats and endless confessions). Dan Brown clearly got something right despite the welter of experts and sceptics rushing to debunk the main tenets of the book.
I once wrote a script with my old colleague David Chitty which was based on the other Grail story . That is, that the Grail appears on Earth every 400 years and was last here during the Cathar rebellion at Mont Segur in France. It is reputed to have been discovered in the Pyrenees by one Otto Rahn, who worked as a fixer for Heinrich Himmler (the Nazi occult master) and taken to join all the other occult paraphernalia in his remote Schloss. This stash of artefacts is, it seems, being discovered bit by bit. A few years ago a landslide in the Swiss alps uncovered a number of magical Reich objects.

David Callinan