I will leave this site as is for people to enjoy but won’t be updating it anymore. I was doing quite a few blogs and copying and pasting between them. Google penalizes you if you do this & gives you a lower rank in their search engine. I will only be maintaining 7 blogs which are all on different subjects. The sites are:

computing – http://scratbag.me

technology – http://scratbagroberts.com

history – http://scratbagdave.com

business – http://melissaball86.com

arts & crafts – http://claireabella29.com

health – http://daveroberts69.wordpress.com

fiction books – http://oldscratbag.com

Please give them a visit.

I am reviewing the film The Bourne Legacy which is an excellent thriller. It stars Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weiz, Edward Norton & Joan Allen. This is the 4th in this series of films which are based on books by Robert Ludlum & more lately Erich Van Lustbader. This installment is based on the book by Lustbader. The earlier films featured Matt Damon as a spy with amnesia who failed his mission & as a result faced danger from the secret service he worked for. In this film the department he worked for has been shut down & all the operatives are being murdered by their former masters. Jeremy who plays Aaron Cross has been infected intentionally with a virus and requires medication. He gets this through Weiz who plays a doctor in the same department. They face danger at every turn. This film doesn’t feature Jason Bourne who was played by Matt Damon in the earlier films. It features some brilliant scenes like Cross firing a nail from a fire extinguisher like a low powered gun. It’s the kind of film certainly gets the adrenaline going. There is a happy ending. Also the budget must have been huge & there are some brilliant chases.

I am reviewing the novel Black Market by James Patterson which is a very good thriller which I bought from a secondhand bookstore. The plot centres on mercenaries who work for a middle eastern terrorist organisation and intend bombing & causing mayhem to Wall Street. The idea is to damage the American economy. They’re also hoping the middle eastern economies will be relatively unaffected. Of course the army, CIA and police are hot on their heels. This book was an early book by Patterson & unlike many of his books is a standalone thriller. He does appear to release 1 standalone thriller each year amid a huge workload. This book is quite gritty with little quarter shown to the terrorists. I think the part where they show the aftermath and how it affects other stock exchanges is well researched. It’s worth reading.

The book I read to research this post was The Lives of John Lennon by William Goldman which is a very good book which I borrowed from a friend. This book depicts a pretty grim picture of John Lennon especially towards the end. Apparently Cilla Black & Paul MacCartney dissaprove of the book. Cilla Black’s first hit single was written by the Beatles. Some of the things in the book are that he was a bit of a primadonna, used to wander around his home naked, he was quite grumpy through drug use & appeared to have anorexia. One thing I think is definitely true is he would wander around Central Park without bodyguards & people could freely go upto him. This was a bit unfortunate because as you probably know he got assasinated. I think Paul Maccartney is more gifted musically & I think his body of work is more consistent. Nevertheless John has written a lot of great songs but a lot of what he has written especially when he & Yoko Ono were doing half an album each like with the Imagine album he has written a lot of rubbish. Also despite modeling himself as a working class hero he was never really working class. He had a problem upbringing and was frequently naughty as a child which I think a lot of people identify with. I saw an interview with George Martin who was their producer. He said they were really nice lads but weren’t exceptionally talented. He said they played one of their songs for him and he told them if they picked up the tempo they’d have their first No 1.

The book I read to research this post was A Stitch In Time by Betty Park which is a very good book which I bought from Bewdley Museum in Worcestershire, England. I think this book would be difficult for most people to obtain. It’s about the clothing industries In Bewdley in the days of the canals when it was the 2nd biggest inland port in England. Gloucester was the biggest. Bewdley is a small market town on the River Severn & many things were sent to and from Bristol and then abroad. Bewdley had a thriving clothing industry. In the schools in those days dress making was considered a more important skill than reading and writing. If a lady was married she could make some much needed cash by being a self employed tailor. Most clothes were specially made by a tailor or dress maker or you made them yourself. This was the case until the mid 20th century. It was considered a huge shame if you had to go in the workhouse. Also if you died you had to have insurance to meet the cost of your funeral & most people paid a penny a week for cover. It was a humiliation if the parish church had to pay for it. If a funeral or wedding was coming up the tailor or dressmaker would be particularly busy making the outfits & they would need drapes for the coffin and hearse. The drapes were often rented out. With a funeral they would only have a few days to get everything ready & it would be particularly stressful for the clothesmaker. Many of these businesses were essentially one person affairs with maybe an apprentice to do the simpler jobs. They would typically work longer hours than the employees at larger businesses. In fact the only limiting factor would appear to be daylight as gas was very expensive. Also the gas lighting wasn’t very bright and you had to pay a lot of money per light so this was limited. The lowliest trade was shirtmaker as these often had there prices undercut by the workhouses and schools. There weren’t many of these in Bewdley.

The book I read to research this post was Law & Order in Bewdley by Alan Staplehorn which is an excellent book which I from Bewdley Museum. Those of you who read my blogs regularly may remember I did a post on Bewdley Gasworks a while back. I live in Birmingham, UK, & Bewdley in Worcestershire is only 20 miles South West of there. It’s a quaint small town on the River Severn & yesterday they had a festival so I visited. This book is probably difficult to buy from anywhere apart from Bewdley Museum. Anyway I’ll tell you a little bit about what’s in the book. In Edward the 3rd’s reign an act of parliament allowed a Justice of the Peace to be appointed for each county. This was later extended to each borough. These Jp’s had the power to deal with minor offences without it going to court & they locked people up for serious offences until they could be dealt with by the courts which met 4 times a year. Gradually the JP’s were allowed to appoint constables or assistants & gradually this became the police force. It’s interesting that at one point they had a foot and mouth disease outbreak & the JP visited the affected farms every day which probably helped it spread. They had a small gaol in Bewdley although there was a larger county jail at Worcester. There used to be some stocks at Bewdley & anywhere that couldn’t afford some stocks had to call itself a hamlet. If you commited a minor offence you would normally get a fine & if you didn’t pay up you were put in the stocks where people could throw things at you etc. It was quite a humiliating experience. The stocks were phased out in the mid 19th century but some places still had them as late as 1870.

I am reviewing the novel Hide and Seek by James Patterson which is an excellent thriller which I borrowed from a friend. This book is copyrighted 1986 & I think was probably written prior to him becoming famous. His first successful novel was Along Came A Spider which was made into a film starring Morgan Freeman. Hide and Seek is a standalone thriller about a country singer who always falls for the wrong kind of man. She has married twice and both husbands have beaten her. Her first husband was drunk and tried to kill her and she luckily shot him dead. She had a partner when she met her second husband and he murdered her partner and in the aftermath started a relationship with her. Her 2nd husband was a premiership soccer player in England who played for the USA in the world cup but considered them amateurs & couldn’t be bothered playing for the national team. He also drinks heavily. He got a leading part in a film & had an affair with the lead actress and has disappeared. The police have put 2 & 2 together & made 5 & accused her of 3 murders. Her 2 husbands and her partner. I think the point of the book is some people keep falling for the wrong kind of person & it’s not chance they end up having to defend themselves. The police idea that if you shoot 2 partners you must have commited 2 murders may be false. I know someone who is a bit like the lady in this book & she has been going on courses with the Womens Aids in Britain & also fundraising. It seems in her case to have done a lot of good because they help her identify the signs of an abusing relationship so she knows what to look for. It also gives her an interest & she was interviewed by BBC local radio recently about her fundraising which is nice. Anyway getting back to the book there is a happy ending & there is a good scene where she has been found guilty and taken back to the prison & that night the screws are gathering at her cell & she thinks she is being shipped out to another but actually the judge wants to have a word with her. Definitely worth reading.

The book I am reviewing in this post is Going Back by Simon Weston which is an excellent book which I bought from a secondhand bookstore. Simon Weston is a bit of a celebrity in Britain. He was on board the Sir Galahad during the Falklands War & when it was bombed he received horrific burns & half his skin was burnt away. He has written a book previous to this about the horrible incident & the terrible time he had coming to terms with it. He very nearly died. This book is about him returning to the Falklands & meeting the pilot who bombed the Sir Galahad in a bid to come to terms with what happened. Incidently now he is married to a beautiful young lady and has a son. This book is dated 1992 so hasn’t got the most upto date information on the Falklands. They made a BBC television programme about him doing what is in the book. One thing it does say is that Galtieri shot himself in the foot invading the Falklands because the islands almost certainly would have been given to Argentina a few years on. Simon does very much think it was a just war. He does also say he and the argentine pilot could have argued all day about the rights and wrongs of the war. He had a few questions for the pilot whose name was Carlos & did make it clear he didn’t go there to upset him. He did also tour around the various monuments on the Falklands & the battlefields. At the end of the book he does say a lot of the anger about what happened has dissipated.

The novel I am reviewing is The Bat by Jo Nesbo which is an excellent thriller. This book was the first in the Harry Hole series and although it has only been released recently in Britain it is quite an old novel. It’s set in Sydney, Australia before the Olympics there. Jo is Norwegian and most of this series is set in and around Oslo and thriller writing in general in Scandinavia is very popular with english audiences especially with the success of The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo & The Killing. The plot is a minor celebrity with Norwegian audiences used to host a childrens show a couple of years ago. She has since moved to Sydney where she has been raped and murdered. The killer used a condom and strangled her with his hands & there is little in the way of DNA evidence. Harry is quite upset by the murder and gets his boss to give him the assignment of helping the Australian police with the case. They basically just want him to keep out of the way. The story takes you into the seedier side of Sydney’s varied population. It has a population roughly the same as the whole of Norway & has a bigger gay population than any city apart from San Francisco. It does have a happy ending.

The book I read to research this post was The Brain A Very Short Introduction by Michael O’Shea which is an excellent book. The brain has over 100 billion neurons and has over 100 trillion interconnections. By comparison a bee has a million neurons & is probably the most intelligent insect. The sea slug has neurons you can see with the naked eye. The human ones are microscopic but practically all animals have some form of neurons. The human brain has a large frontal cortex which gives it powerful thinking abilities. The earth is 4 1/2 billion years old & has only had life for 3 1/2 billions which is more or less how long it has taken the human brain to develop. Pre historic man had a slightly bigger brain than modern man but had a less developed frontal cortex. One thing we don’t know is why whales & dolphins have such large brains. We do know they can communicate so obviously some of it’s used for that. The brain isn’t an isolated organ and extends threw the spine & even the eyes are a part of it. Your nervous system is an interconnected part of it. In fact in some organs like the heart there are cells similiar to brain cells. I saw a programme about some people who have had heart transplants have taken on aspects of the former owners personality but that only happens occasionally.