“Live fast die young,” they tell me.

“Live for the future,” they contradict, “if you plan for the future it won’t catch you out.”

They preach and they prophesise. They have no intention of practicing the religions they produce, unaware even of there existence.

“You must look for security for in it lies happiness.” Where do these evaluations come from? From what hypothesis are they derived? Who sets about teaching these clichéd little numbers?

“Learn from your mistakes,” there is a good one. But if you make a mistake you have committed the sin. Is it not true that to learn not to drive too fast by your mistake means having an accident? On another level, a religious mistake is a sin. But to learn from that you must sin in the beginning? Is it not much better to learn from the mistakes of others?

The bible sets out rules for its believers to follow. But in this day nobody wants to follow rules they want to live merely by parameters and break the rules. It is these parameters which set the limits which in turn determine the mistakes from which we must learn. A race driver sets parameters all the time. Every time he takes the corner one mile per hour faster a new parameter is born. But when he loses control and disappears into a concrete wall, then he has found the limit. Others then keep within this limit. Until one day the limit is exceeded and thus a new parameter is born once again.

We need a bible for the twenty first century. A book not holy but practical. It demands no worship for it knows Sundays are for lying in bed or playing golf. It makes no martyr of any man for no one likes a kiss ass or a do good. It places no individual, entity or otherwise at the top of its VIP list for no one likes the boss. With him he brings envy and fear and greed. He sets a limit of power which others will instinctively try to break. All we need is a book of mistakes, not of do’s but of don’ts. Every second of every minute of every hour of every day somebody somewhere thinks ‘Shit’ and we should all try to cash in on this. A book that brings the benefit of hindsight right to the front and into your hands. This book will be written by every being ever to walk the earth because we are all, in essence, the same. All feeding off each other. So learn from the mistakes of others. Watch everyone and question no one. See the limits and don’t push them. You will not be a dull person you will be alive and well. You will get your excitement from watching others push limits and, when you learn how to, from pushing others into finding limits.

I am a freelance journalist and I make a living from others who do not know of my book and try to push limits too far. I taunt, provoke, and incite the naïve to take the limit one step further until bang… they lie dead or ashamed or frustrated because the limit is there for a reason. It is exists purely because it cannot be broken or if it can, it makes fucking good news. My office bursts with file after file of stories of the foolish that tried and failed and made me a star. Or tried and succeeded and made me a star anyway. My office is an archive of biblical stories that should be collated and published so others can fear them and learn from others mistakes. Understand I have not always been so deep and in search of life’s answers. There was a time when I wrote of everyday happenings. A day now long gone when I sought pleasure only from reporting the good of the world. I studied long and hard at University to change the way news was reported in my own special little way. Looking back I was just a kid with ideas that would one day prove to be worthless and unreachable. I wanted so much to see a newspaper of good news. I wanted to be the one who found a day where no news was bad news and reporters told of happiness and achievement. I worked long and hard at the Oxford University, trying desperately to fine tune my journalistic skills so that one day I would be main stream. I have always known my goals as air headed as they may be. I have always had targets big and small and I have always done all I can to achieve them. My longing to be a journalist pleased my mother and father very much. They were happy people who lived in the house built by my great, great grandfather at the turn of the century. It was grand in its interior decor but understated form the outside, much like my family it was filled with style and grandeur but just too insecure and self conscious to let it show to the world. My old room looked out at the gardens to the rear of the house. It was these gardens which supplied me with the inspiration for many of my early stories. They always looked so happy and peaceful. Surrounded by tall evergreens only a small breeze ever forced it’s way into those gardens, lifting the flowers’ petals and drawing their sweet scent before carrying it away to the house or the fields beyond. I had positioned my desk by the window so I was able to look out over these gardens as I wrote. It was almost impossible to tell tales of horror and misery when you had such serenity a mere glance away. It was on returning to University after a holiday visit to my parents’ home that the darker side of my writing came to the fore. Here I was left to create sensational pieces from the blandest of facts created by our lecturer. Had I been in my old room looking out over those gardens the brief notes would have shown signs of optimism, the old ‘up from the ashes come the roses of success’. But here in my single room at University or in the dull and musty library, I couldn’t see such hope. I saw only the dismal facts. Coupled with this, in the latter stages of my study, was the stress and tension I felt. As the course came to it’s climax more and more work had to be completed. The stories took on a more and more important role as they were part of the final mark I was to be awarded. I resented the pressure on me to write these pieces as it took the enjoyment away and writing, like all the other arts, is at its best when it is enjoyed or written with feeling and emotion.