puff 524 Mon 20th

Here is my list of the top 12 health myths, none of which CNN bothered to mention:

1: Cardio is One of the Best Types of Exercise
In recent years, researchers have begun to realize that conventional cardio, such as jogging, is not all it’s been cracked up to be, and that you can actually improve your health and increase fat burning by making slight modifications to your cardio routine.

The problem is that traditional cardio only works on the slow twitch muscle fibers in your red muscle, completely ignoring your white muscle super-fast twitch fibers.

“Peak 8” refers to peak exercises done once or twice a week, in which you raise your heart rate up to your anaerobic threshold for 20 to 30 seconds, followed by a 90-second recovery period.

To perform these properly you will want to get very close to, if not exceed, your maximum heart rate by the last interval. Your maximum heart rate is calculated as 220 minus your age. You will need a heart rate monitor to measure this as it is nearly impossible to accurately measure your heart rate manually when it is above 150.

Researchers have found that interval cardio produces a unique metabolic response that is in large part responsible for its superior benefits. Intermittent sprinting produces high levels of chemical compounds called catecholamines, which allow more fat to be burned from under your skin and within your muscles. The resulting increase in fat oxidation is thought to drive the increased weight loss.

It is also the only type of exercise that will increase growth hormone levels. This becomes especially important after the age of 30, when growth hormones steadily decline. It is much safer and far less expensive to have your body make growth hormone naturally though Peak 8 type exercises than inject it like many athletes do to the tune of $1500 per month.

2: Vaccines are Safe and Effective and Prevent Disease
I completely understand that for many this issue is not debatable as they believe that vaccines are one of the greatest gifts to public health in the history of civilization.

If you believe that, then let me encourage you to open your mind and explore other views held by many well respected physicians, scientists, clinicians and pro-vaccine safety educators.

You might want to review the article Read This Before Vaccinating for Anything, to help you start your exploration process.

When it comes to vaccines, there are three primary questions that need to be considered.

•First, is the vaccine in question safe?
•Secondly, does it effectively prevent disease?
•And third, which vaccines can safely and effectively be given together or in close succession?
Unfortunately, these issues have not been sufficiently studied for most vaccines, and those vaccines that have been studied frequently show that they are either unsafe or ineffective, or both!

Pro-vaccine-safety educators have long been saying that vaccines can over-stimulate your child’s immune system, sometimes causing the very disease it’s designed to protect against, or worse. And, when several vaccines are administered together, or in close succession, their interaction may completely overwhelm your child’s developing immune system.

This is one of the primary problems with vaccines in general – their detrimental impact on your body’s primary, natural defense against ALL disease.

Now consider that if your child is vaccinated according to the CDC's recommended schedule, by the time your child starts kindergarten he or she will have received 48 doses of 14 vaccines. Of these, 36 doses will be given during the first 18 months of life – a time when your child’s body and brain is undergoing massive development!

Public health officials have NEVER proven that it is indeed safe to inject this volume of vaccines into infants. What's more, they cannot explain why, concurrent with an increasing number of vaccinations, there has been an explosion of neurological and immune system disorders in American children.

This issue covers so much ground, it’s impossible to even try to summarize the many hazards and the lack of efficiency data for all the vaccines currently being given, in this article.

For more information please visit our vaccine section at http://vaccines.mercola.com/

3: Fluoride in Your Water Lowers Your Risk of Cavities
The theory behind the introduction of fluoride in your water supply initially seems beneficial – to reduce the incidence of dental caries in children. However, the health dangers of fluoride are so numerous; they far outweigh any benefit to your teeth, and that’s IF water fluoridation actually did what its claimed to do.

Today, even promoters of fluoridation concede that the major benefits are only from topical applications; fluoride works from the outside of the tooth, not from inside of your body, so why swallow it?

Statistics tell us that water fluoridation is ineffective for preventing caries. There is practically no difference in tooth decay between fluoridated and non-fluoridated countries, and no difference between states that have a high- or low percentage of their water fluoridated.

Meanwhile, fluoride can cause significant harm, from dental fluorosis to thyroid damage to reduced IQ... and much more.

I’ve joined forces with the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) to help end water fluoridation poisoning in Canada and the United States.

For more about the dangers of fluoride, and information about how to get involved in this campaign, please see this recent article, which also includes an excellent interview with Dr. Paul Connett, who created FAN and is one of the foremost experts on this topic.
4: GMOs Crops are Safe, Well Tested and Economically Beneficial
GMOs may be the greatest health disaster in the American diet. Within 9 years of their introduction in 1996, multiple chronic illnesses jumped from 7 percent to 13 percent of the population, food allergies doubled in less time, and many other ailments have exponentially increased with the introduction of GM foods.

Millions may already be suffering health problems caused by genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in their diet. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine has already urged doctors to prescribe non-GMO diets for all patients, citing studies that show how GMOs cause disorders such as vital organ damage, gastrointestinal and immune system problems, accelerated aging, infertility, and dysfunctional regulation of insulin and cholesterol.

But not only are GM foods a health disaster, they also pose a significant environmental threat, and industry promises of financial benefits have turned out to be false as well.

For a quick introduction, I recommend reading the article 10 Reasons to Avoid Genetically Modified Foods, which delves into everything from the health problems associated with eating GM foods to the evidence against GM crops as a sustainable, economically and environmentally viable alternative to traditional farming.

5: Sun Causes Skin Cancer
There are many misconceptions about melanoma – the most dangerous type of skin cancer that accounts for more than 75 percent of skin cancer deaths. But despite all the bad press linking sun exposure to skin cancer, there’s almost no evidence at all to support that stance. There is, however, plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Over the years, several studies have already confirmed that appropriate sun exposure actually helps prevent skin cancer. In fact, melanoma occurrence has been found to decrease with greater sun exposure, and can be increased by sunscreens.

In my interview with vitamin D expert Dr. Robert Heaney, he explains how the conventional recommendations are in fact causing the very health problem they claim to prevent.

How does sunlight prevent, rather than cause, skin cancer?

In short, it’s the vitamin D formed in your skin from exposure to sunlight that provides this built in cancer protection.

The vitamin D goes directly to genes in your skin that help prevent the types of abnormalities that ultraviolet light causes. Unfortunately, if you follow the conventional recommendation to avoid sun exposure or always use sunscreen, your skin will not make any vitamin D, leaving you without this built-in cancer protection.

Statistics confirm the truth of these findings, as melanoma rates have increased right along with sun avoidance and increased use of sunscreens. If avoiding the sun actually was the answer, then melanoma rates should have decreased exponentially over the past couple of decades...

Instead, sun avoidance and the excessive use of sun screen are actually the two primary reasons for the rise in melanoma.

6: Saturated Fat Causes Heart Disease
As recently as 2002, the "expert" Food & Nutrition Board issued the following misguided statement, which epitomizes this myth:

"Saturated fats and dietary cholesterol have no known beneficial role in preventing chronic disease and are not required at any level in the diet."

This dangerous recommendation, which arose from an unproven hypothesis from the mid-1950s, has been harming your health and that of your loved ones for about 40 years now.

The truth is, saturated fats from animal and vegetable sources provide the building blocks for cell membranes and a variety of hormones and hormone-like substances, without which your body cannot function optimally.

They also act as carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K. Dietary fats are also needed for the conversion of carotene to vitamin A, for mineral absorption, and for a host of other biological processes.

In fact, saturated is the preferred fuel for your heart!

For more information about saturated fats and the essential role they play in maintaining your health, please read my previous article The Truth About Saturated Fat.

7: Artificial Sweeteners are Safe, Well Tested and Help Promote Weight Loss
Most people use artificial sweeteners to lose weight. The amazing irony is that nearly all the studies that have carefully analyzed their effectiveness show that those who use artificial sweeteners actually gain more weight than those who consume caloric sweeteners.

In 2005, data gathered from the 25-year long San Antonio Heart Study showed that drinking diet soft drinks increased the likelihood of serious weight gain – far more so than regular soda. On average, each diet soft drink the participants consumed per day increased their risk of becoming overweight by 65 percent within the next seven to eight years, and made them 41 percent more likely to become obese.

The reasons for this ironic reality are still being investigated, but there are several potential causes, including:

•Sweet taste alone appears to increase hunger, regardless of caloric content.
•Artificial sweeteners appear to simply perpetuate a craving for sweets, and overall sugar consumption is therefore not reduced—leading to further problems controlling your weight.
•Artificial sweeteners may disrupt your body’s natural ability to “count calories,” as evidenced in studies such as this 2004 study at Purdue University, which found that rats fed artificially sweetened liquids ate more high-calorie food than rats fed high-caloric sweetened liquids.
In the end, the research tells us that artificial sweeteners are NOT a dieter’s best friend, because contrary to what the marketing campaigns claim, low- or no-calorie artificial sweeteners are more likely to help you pack on the pounds than shed them.

There are also a large number of health dangers associated with artificial sweeteners and aspartame in particular. I’ve started compiling a growing list of studies pertaining to health problems associated with aspartame, which you can find here. If you’re still on the fence, I highly recommend reviewing these studies for yourself so that you can make an educated decision.

For more information on aspartame, the worst artificial sweetener, please see my aspartame video.

8: Soy is a Health Food
The meteoric rise of soy as a “health food” is a perfect example of how a brilliant marketing strategy can fool millions. But make no mistake about it, unfermented soy products are NOT healthful additions to your diet.

If you find this recommendation startling then I would encourage you to review my Why Soy Can Damage Your Health, which contains links to dozens of articles on the topic, and a video I recently did.

On the contrary, thousands of studies have linked unfermented soy to malnutrition, digestive distress, immune-system breakdown, thyroid dysfunction, cognitive decline, reproductive disorders and infertility—even cancer and heart disease.

Not only that, but more than 90 percent of American soy crops are genetically modified, which carries its own set of health risks.

Here is a sampling of the detrimental health effects that have been linked to soy consumption:

•Breast cancer
•Brain damage
•Infant abnormalities
•Thyroid disorders
•Kidney stones
•Immune system impairment
•Severe, potentially fatal food allergies
•Impaired fertility
•Danger during pregnancy and nursing
I am not opposed to all soy, however. Organic and, most importantly, properly fermented soy does have great health benefits. Examples of such healthful fermented soy products include tempeh, miso and natto.

9: Whole Grains are Good for Everyone
The use of whole-grains is an easy subject to get confused on especially for those who have a passion for nutrition, as for the longest time we were told the fiber in whole grains is highly beneficial.

Unfortunately ALL grains, including whole-grain and organic varieties, can elevate your insulin levels, which can increase your risk of disease.

It has been my experience that more than 85 percent of Americans have trouble controlling their insulin levels -- especially those who have the following conditions:

•Overweight
•Diabetes
•High blood pressure
•High cholesterol
•Protein metabolic types
In addition, sub-clinical gluten intolerance is far more common than you might think, which can also wreak havoc with your health.

As a general rule, I strongly recommend eliminating grains as well as sugars from your diet, especially if you have any of the above conditions that are related to insulin resistance. The higher your insulin levels and the more prominent your signs of insulin overload are, the more ambitious your grain elimination needs to be.

If you are one of the fortunate ones without insulin resistance and of normal body weight, then grains are fine, especially whole grains. It is wise to continue to monitor your grain consumption and your health as life is dynamic and constantly changing. What might be fine when you are 25 or 30 could become a major problem at 40 when your growth hormone and level of exercise is different.

10: All Plant Based Supplements are as Good as Animal Supplements
The primary example here is that of omega-3’s. It’s very important to realize that not all omega-3 fats are the same, and that the type and source of your omega-3 will make a big difference in the health benefits it provides.

There are three types of omega-3 fats:

•DHA (Docosahexaenoic Acid)
•EPA (Eicosapentaenoic Acid)
•ALA (Alpha-Linolenic Acid)
Many people do not realize that most of the well-known health benefits associated with omega-3 fats – such as mental health, stronger bones and heart health -- are linked to the animal-based omega-3 fats (EPA and DHA), not the plant-based omega-3 fat (ALA).

ALA, which is the type of omega-3 found in flaxseed and nuts, is converted into EPA and DHA in your body, but only at a very low ratio.

So even if you eat large amounts of ALA, your body can only convert a relatively small amount into EPA and DHA, and only when sufficient enzymes are present.

This does not mean plant-based omega-3 fats are intrinsically harmful or that they should be avoided, only that you ideally want to include an animal-based form as well. Personally, I regularly include omega-3 (ALA) plant-based foods, like flax and hemp, in my diet, but these are always combined with animal-based omega-3 fats.

But in order to reap its most important health benefits, your omega-3 needs to be from an animal source. For more information on this topic, please read through my previous article, Are You Getting the Right Type of Omega-3 Fats?

11: Milk Does Your Body Good
Can milk do your body good?

Yes, if it’s RAW.

Unfortunately, this myth insists that conventional pasteurized milk has health benefits, which is far from true. Conventional health agencies also refuse to address the real dangers of the growth hormones and antibiotics found in conventional milk.

Please understand that I do not recommend drinking pasteurized milk of any kind, including organic, because once milk has been pasteurized its physical structure is changed in a way that can actually cause allergies and immune problems.

Important enzymes like lactase are destroyed, which causes many people to not be able to digest milk. Additionally, vitamins (such as A, C, B6 and B12) are diminished and fragile milk proteins are radically transformed from health nurturing to unnatural amino acid configurations that can actually worsen your health.

The eradication of beneficial bacteria through the pasteurization process also ends up promoting pathogens rather than protecting you from them.

The healthy alternative to pasteurized milk is raw milk, which is an outstanding source of nutrients including beneficial bacteria such as lactobacillus acidophilus, vitamins and enzymes, and it is, in my estimation, one of the finest sources of calcium available.

For more details please watch the interview I did with Mark McAfee, who is the owner of Organic Pastures, the largest organic dairy in the US.

12: Low-Fat Diets are Healthy
The low-fat myth may have done more harm to the health of millions than any other dietary recommendation. Again, just as the recommendations to avoid sunshine has increased melanoma rates, the low-fat craze led to increased consumption of trans-fats, which we now know increases your risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

To end the confusion, it’s very important to realize that eating fat will not make you fat!

The primary cause of excess weight and all the chronic diseases associated with it, is actually the consumption of too much sugar -- especially fructose, but also all sorts of grains, which rapidly convert to sugar in your body.

If only the low-fat craze had been a low-sugar craze... then we wouldn’t have nearly as much chronic disease as we have today.

For an explanation of why and how a low-fat diet can create the very health problems it’s claimed to prevent, please see this previous article.

Final Thoughts
As you can see, there’s no shortage of health myths out there, and it only seems to be getting worse... The 12 myths reviewed above are but a sampling, because there are still many more.

If you want to review a number of additional health topics that are fraught with misinformation, please see the three-part series listed below in Related Articles.

As opposed to the nonsense offered in the CNN article above, these health topics are all essential to get “right” if you want to protect your health, and the health of your loved ones.4
Vegas























































On the plane from New York to Los Angeles the acrobats were talking their own private language. It wasn't exactly a language alhough they both spoke several. It was a mix of what people call body language, expressions which they understood between themselves and he odd word or phrase from this language or that. What made it quite unusual was that they spoke in clipped lines, spoken notations from this language or that.

They shared a lot between themselves and nothing with others. Only they really knew why they had left North Oxford and England. Why they were in America. Why they were going to Vegas. And why they were not telling anyone else.

As far as they were concerned they had the plan within the plan.The last secret. Between the two of them. Always. They had come up against a lot of circus entrpreneurs who had been wily, unsavoury, downright wicked even. In fact the shady front of house and the dodgy ringmaster were par for the course, a occupational hazard for an acrobat.

In Bogota it was hot.

Juan, the Man on the Ground, the man known as Do-the-math trained in a park. It was humid enough for him to have difficulty seeing with the sweat in his eyes.

He thought of the other man based in Bogota. The man sitting by the cool fountain. Sweaty as he was he did not want to trade places. Animals made him nervous. Living in a zoo? Not for him. He liked to control, to know numbers, to count and to control what he had counted.

Soon, he knew the call would be soon.

He counted press-ups.

Juan lived in a world which was constantly being de-centred. Julio's systemm of cutouts meant that he was always shifting. He'd got to know Julio years before in Guatemala when a group of them worked together. Most of that group were now dead and Julio was the one who had made the money.

Juan had persisted but at the cost of living in places that he did not like. He had a lover in the caribbean. His family were in Miami. He'd forgotten where he was meant to live.

The decision was made to leave stencils at key points along the river, Little messages that only Esme, Bella, Leo, Simon Two and the Tramp understood.
This was a way of showing who was around and the usual suspects as Simon Two called them were well stencilled- Sam, Simon, the Don, the Tramp...

Simon Lodge himself was not the one to figure out that the twins had left the country. Jacques, another Roma person, saw them at Heathrow airport. He had been working the crowd, looking for loose bags, anything to turn a quid whe he saw his relations in the distance acccompanied by two men and about to board a plane.

Jacques had a number of functions at the airport or in crowded places like railway stations and being a pickpocket was the main beard. He saw things that other people did not, made connections that seemed unlikely until he described meetings he had seen between the strangest of bedfellows.

Not wanting to be compromised, the pickpocket kept quiet at the time but let people know later and within two days the Roma of North Oxford were building a picture which had the teenagers in another country.

But Simon did find out that they might have gone to America. He went to Heathrow and met the pickpocket. Simon established that the acrobats had been walking to a stand where America bound tickets were dealt with.

And the racing and the chasing went on. It was 3am in Los Angeles.Outsde a church in the barrio a man went to ground and died. Knifed.

The phone rang in Bogota. It was picked up in the marsupial hut.

Certain things on the ground were being cleared up, prepared for the action that was to come.

Julio, the Man by the Fountain thought about ringing Juan, the Man on the Ground.

He walked to the monkey cage.

At thirty two Juan had the body of a twenty two year old. His reflexes were finely tuned, he could throw a knife with accuracy and he never made a mistake in a physical encounter.

Juan was solo, his partner had gone two years earlier. She disappeared and he had never been able to find out where she went.He'd tried to have a dog as a pet but he was away too much.

He liked any sports with numbers and statistics hat meant that he would follow any sport at all. He could talk American baseball all night.
Juan liked Bruce Lee films.

He preferred motorbikes to cars. Bush track riding was his specialty. Juan liked the unpredictable aspect, no even surfaces, no assumptions at all. Reactions made in the moment.

Denim and leather were his favorite fabrics. Jeans and fairly heavy leather. With light boots, boots like running shoes. Juan could not see why people used heavy boots. The slowed you down and made movement cumbersome.

Juan's best colours were blue and white. He liked the challenge of his job which involved him walking through airports and bus stations and not sticking out. That meant that he could wear any shade of clothing and look comfortable in it. Brights in Mexico City. Subdued colours in Paddington Station.

The hawk was his favorite bird. He liked the way could hover and wait, and wait for the longest time before moving. Juan also like the way the hawk could move so quickly once its mind was made up and the target determined.

He liked reruns of films on television such as Fast and furious but not Tokyo Drift. This was partly because his world was a Latin American one. South America, some of the Caribbean and some cities with big Hispanic populations in the USA.

He was introspective with a compulsive need to count things. He was like a sea diver with big lung capacity, he could stay still under severe pressure, weigh things up and then take decisive action.

At school he was good at tennis and of course maths. His nickname which had stuck at least in some quarters was 'Do-the-math'. The teachersleft him to it at the back of the class. There was always something about his isolation, it was not to be taken lightly by others.

His schoolmates did not pay too much attention to him.That suited Juan. He learned early that he could fit right in and plan something way outside his immediate circumstances.

Simon called his Dad, the retired rock star, in Los Angeles. Paullie Lodge was, of course, on the freeway. He took the call on his mobile without pulling over which would have been impossible anyway. Not that Paullie liked to take precautions. He'd joined up. Paullie was American now and by that he meant that aggresssion beat discretion hands down.

Paullie had swished silver hair and a tan. He looked, in a George Hamilton kind of a way like a fit, mature man. At forty eight he could have been someone's uncle on a day time American soap.

He had a bit to do with a sister who'd moved to Australia but Simon was his family really, Simon and Sam. He liked Sam and thought she would do well in the States. In fact he had plans for her should the couple decide to join him there.

Paullie liked soccer which he did not get much of in the States. He'd never taken to gridiron or baseball but he was usually getting up in the early afternoon anyway. Sport was something that he'd left in England.

He liked the odd landscape painter but was cynical about art markets. He'd seen too many jack ups, too many inflated reputations and inflated prices. He liked drawings and lithographs.

His favourite car was of course the Stutz bearcat. For some reason he had rejected English cars. A Bentley seemed to him now like a curiosity, interesting but not to be taken seriously.

He could not dress like a star of the seventies any more so he settled for loose chinos and guccis. Very light leather jackets, dark but easy to sling around were part of Paullie's style.

Purple was his favorite colour. But mostly he settled, these days, for pastel shades, very flat hues that sat in the background of some chrome chairs hung with black leather.

When it came to animals Paullie liked deer. It was probably due to the toons he watched as a child. Whatever, he was always put at ease by deer and had the odd linocut featuring them in his flat.

CSI Miami was his favorite television show. He liked the light and the pastel colours that the camera picked up. He like people being cool and not losing it. He likes the water so close to the buildings.

Paullie's moods were steady and he had a sense of humour. Anger really was not his thing. He's seen too many breakdowns spun on into destruction by rage.

At school he was good at art. He had a tidy pen and a wicked wit which made for minimal and sometimes surprising cartoons. A bit of a lost art now but occasionally he'd do something on a napkin and surprise people.

He had a quick wit respected by his schoolmates. He could always organise people and that helped him later on as he got his band into shape and then over the years of recording and touring.

So Paullie sat back in the Stutz, moved from the outside into the middle lane and told Simon to go ahead. He might have even said, 'Shoot'. In fact he welcomed a call from Simon, it broke the tedium and, when he thought about it America, incredible as it might seem, had become a tad boring for him.

Simon described the Trapeze Twins and their disappearance. The idea that they might be in America. At this stage it was a mattter that Simon had to deal with in England. The thing now was the next step, Simon didn't have the faintest...

Paullie resorted to shrinkspeak which he sometimes did when he, also, did not have a clue. Look at those close to the Trapezoids he said. As with broke marriages and domestic murders those closest usually had the answers. CAF, Condider All Factors, Establish Priorities for which he'd forgotten the acronym if there was one but of course there was one.

This was problem solving on the freeway in Los Angeles. There had to be an acronym, a code to unlock and then solve any given problem. The first thing, thought Paullie, was to define the problem itself.

In the country at the edge of the Caucasus a woman in her late forties was crossing a street.

A car screeched to a halt beside her. She whirlrd around and began to run. But a man with a beard ran at her from behind, caught up to her and bundled her back towrds the car.

Two men jumped out and grabbed her forcing her into the back seat between them.

The insurance package is in hand they told the Man by the Fountain later that night on the phone to Bogota.

The woman's name was Vera and she was in her early fifties and had class and elegance.

Vera liked going to art galleries and reading good books. She liked reading about fine wines and liqueurs, especially of the French kind.Vera also had a passing knowledge of architecture.

She liked the ballet. Dance was her sport. And playing the cello. This meant that expeditions to the theatre were loaded with things Vera knew about which made her, in turn, good company.

Her favourite painter was Turner. In various ways Vera was an Anglophile. Like a lot of people educated in Russia, Vera had a taste for things European.

Vera did not like cars and preferred trains. Well appointed carriages for good long trips to see things and people that mattered. Vera had been on the great train rides of Europe and to the East as well.

Vera was a Russian bluestocking when it came to dress.High sweaters with cheekbones just as high. Flat heels interspersed with high heels when it suited her.

Red and silver were her favorite colours. Something of a Cossack at heart she ventured to herself but really Vera was a pacifist. And a socialist in her own way.

Vera liked foxes. She could not say why that was but it may have been that hey were survivors in a difficult world. And they looked good, especially in snow. And they were very quick

Vera liked watching dance on the television and not much else. Television was a suspect media she thought, always used by newsreaders to push political points of view.

At school she was good at mathematics and formal logic. Vera was good at languages as well and Vera saw languages as a means to an end whereas she really enjoyed maths and logic. Sports were not her thing but she played a good game of tennis.

Vera had a wry sense of humour. She'd needed it after she took up with a gypsy and became alienated from her family. Having a child out of wedlock hadnt helped. Vera was, of course, the mother of Benjamin, one of the twins.

Being a retired rock star in California had its moments. Paullie had developed a personality which made it diffficult to recognise him as the person who left the UK. Paullie was rich.

But Paullie was usually bored. He liked America and it put up with him. His band had done well and then broken up but not before some of their music had become the theme tune in a daily soap. Paul did nothing but live off royalties really. Two of the band had died fron drug overdoses and a manager had gone through natural causes but Paullie and two others remained to pick up the cheques and spend them.

Out of necessity, in the bands early years in Reading Paullie had got used to living frugally. He kept records of all his spending in a small notebook where he once also kept records of sexual encounters. Long story short, Paullie had invested and then retired in America.

In the mid West a senator was campaigning. His name was Jake Stephens. They said he was a born politician. He smiled as though he'd been taught in a television charm school, as though he'd been a child actor.

At fifty eight Jake Stephens was remarkable. Tuned and tanned he played a useful round of golf and kept in shape. They liked Jake's smile in the clubhouse where he shook hands and kept things light.

He had three children and Giselle, a toothy wife who seemed to be there for photo opportunities but not for much else. In fact she did a lot in the background and it was impossible for people to tell whether she was flirting or scheming.

Gridiron was Jake's passion. He liked most American sports but the Superbowl was the high point of his sports year. He wanted to be part of it in some way some day.

Jake liked Norman Rockwell paintings. One day he'd like to retire with Giselle at his side to a farm somewhere in the mid-west. After he'd done it, after the big one...

Chrysler was Jake's kind of car. Japanese cars were the elephant in the room and he did not talk about them. You could sit in a Chrysler and feel at home he thought.

Jake liked blazers but he was as prone to sharp suits as the next politician. He had a silky wave to his hair which he had used to advantage again and again in campaigns.

Blue was his best colour. It stood for the political hue he liked and he could not get it out of his system. He was blue. All his mental images, all of his visualisations were against a blue background.

Jake liked buffalo. He liked prairies and pretty well everything in them. That included gophers and big skies. He liked big game parks and had taken lots of photo opportunities when on senatorial jaunts in Africa.

Jake liked business television. He like the urgency of it all. He was an adrenalin junkie. Stocks and shares racing up and down were his kind of thing. To say he was a political creature was not to overstate things. There was nothing else.

He really did not have time for moods. He could tell you in a monotone what others might shriek. He never broke down. There was always an upside, something to be pulled out of a fire, a silver lining in any cloud. And this was his job. And he was alright at it.

At school he was good at civics. He knew all of the Presidents that there had been and he could imagine himself as any of them, some rather more than others but he walked with them all in his mind.

He was into all kinds of committees. His schoolmates knew he was good at the committee stuff and left him to it. He'd become an expert at being on a committee but never acknowledging it. He recognised that it was better if people thought you'd been chosen rather than schemed to get something.

Paullie knew people, knew who they were. He had what people call a photographic memory. He remembered faces from television, what people were wearing. That type of thing. After his fling with Simon's mum who was doing Tripos at the time Paullie never partnered seriously: he was a serious serial dater for a while and then got bored.

So Paullie seemed to have all the luck and then none. He and Simon got along automatically. Simon's mum had forgotten about him. The Don hated him on sight as he did a lot of people in their age group, especially those who had made it and left the country. Why hadn't he put up with it all in England like everyone else?

Isis: the days of the voles- continued
4
Vegas
On the plane from New York to Los Angeles the acrobats were talking their own private language. It wasn't exactly a language alhough they both spoke several. It was a mix of what people call body language, expressions which they understood between themselves and he odd word or phrase from this language or that. What made it quite unusual was that they spoke in clipped lines, spoken notations from this language or that.

They shared a lot between themselves and nothing with others. Only they really knew why they had left North Oxford and England. Why they were in America. Why they were going to Vegas. And why they were not telling anyone else.

As far as they were concerned they had the plan within the plan.The last secret. Between the two of them. Always. They had come up against a lot of circus entrpreneurs who had been wily, unsavoury, downright wicked even. In fact the shady front of house and the dodgy ringmaster were par for the course, a occupational hazard for an acrobat.

In Bogota it was hot.

Juan, the Man on the Ground, the man known as Do-the-math trained in a park. It was humid enough for him to have difficulty seeing with the sweat in his eyes.

He thought of the other man based in Bogota. The man sitting by the cool fountain. Sweaty as he was he did not want to trade places. Animals made him nervous. Living in a zoo? Not for him. He liked to control, to know numbers, to count and to control what he had counted.

Soon, he knew the call would be soon.

He counted press-ups.

Juan lived in a world which was constantly being de-centred. Julio's systemm of cutouts meant that he was always shifting. He'd got to know Julio years before in Guatemala when a group of them worked together. Most of that group were now dead and Julio was the one who had made the money.

Juan had persisted but at the cost of living in places that he did not like. He had a lover in the caribbean. His family were in Miami. He'd forgotten where he was meant to live.

The decision was made to leave stencils at key points along the river, Little messages that only Esme, Bella, Leo, Simon Two and the Tramp understood.
This was a way of showing who was around and the usual suspects as Simon Two called them were well stencilled- Sam, Simon, the Don, the Tramp...

Simon Lodge himself was not the one to figure out that the twins had left the country. Jacques, another Roma person, saw them at Heathrow airport. He had been working the crowd, looking for loose bags, anything to turn a quid whe he saw his relations in the distance acccompanied by two men and about to board a plane.

Jacques had a number of functions at the airport or in crowded places like railway stations and being a pickpocket was the main beard. He saw things that other people did not, made connections that seemed unlikely until he described meetings he had seen between the strangest of bedfellows.

Not wanting to be compromised, the pickpocket kept quiet at the time but let people know later and within two days the Roma of North Oxford were building a picture which had the teenagers in another country.

But Simon did find out that they might have gone to America. He went to Heathrow and met the pickpocket. Simon established that the acrobats had been walking to a stand where America bound tickets were dealt with.

And the racing and the chasing went on. It was 3am in Los Angeles.Outsde a church in the barrio a man went to ground and died. Knifed.

The phone rang in Bogota. It was picked up in the marsupial hut.

Certain things on the ground were being cleared up, prepared for the action that was to come.

Julio, the Man by the Fountain thought about ringing Juan, the Man on the Ground.

He walked to the monkey cage.

At thirty two Juan had the body of a twenty two year old. His reflexes were finely tuned, he could throw a knife with accuracy and he never made a mistake in a physical encounter.

Juan was solo, his partner had gone two years earlier. She disappeared and he had never been able to find out where she went.He'd tried to have a dog as a pet but he was away too much.

He liked any sports with numbers and statistics hat meant that he would follow any sport at all. He could talk American baseball all night.
Juan liked Bruce Lee films.

He preferred motorbikes to cars. Bush track riding was his specialty. Juan liked the unpredictable aspect, no even surfaces, no assumptions at all. Reactions made in the moment.

Denim and leather were his favorite fabrics. Jeans and fairly heavy leather. With light boots, boots like running shoes. Juan could not see why people used heavy boots. The slowed you down and made movement cumbersome.

Juan's best colours were blue and white. He liked the challenge of his job which involved him walking through airports and bus stations and not sticking out. That meant that he could wear any shade of clothing and look comfortable in it. Brights in Mexico City. Subdued colours in Paddington Station.

The hawk was his favorite bird. He liked the way could hover and wait, and wait for the longest time before moving. Juan also like the way the hawk could move so quickly once its mind was made up and the target determined.

He liked reruns of films on television such as Fast and furious but not Tokyo Drift. This was partly because his world was a Latin American one. South America, some of the Caribbean and some cities with big Hispanic populations in the USA.

He was introspective with a compulsive need to count things. He was like a sea diver with big lung capacity, he could stay still under severe pressure, weigh things up and then take decisive action.

At school he was good at tennis and of course maths. His nickname which had stuck at least in some quarters was 'Do-the-math'. The teachersleft him to it at the back of the class. There was always something about his isolation, it was not to be taken lightly by others.

His schoolmates did not pay too much attention to him.That suited Juan. He learned early that he could fit right in and plan something way outside his immediate circumstances.

Simon called his Dad, the retired rock star, in Los Angeles. Paullie Lodge was, of course, on the freeway. He took the call on his mobile without pulling over which would have been impossible anyway. Not that Paullie liked to take precautions. He'd joined up. Paullie was American now and by that he meant that aggresssion beat discretion hands down.

Paullie had swished silver hair and a tan. He looked, in a George Hamilton kind of a way like a fit, mature man. At forty eight he could have been someone's uncle on a day time American soap.

He had a bit to do with a sister who'd moved to Australia but Simon was his family really, Simon and Sam. He liked Sam and thought she would do well in the States. In fact he had plans for her should the couple decide to join him there.

Paullie liked soccer which he did not get much of in the States. He'd never taken to gridiron or baseball but he was usually getting up in the early afternoon anyway. Sport was something that he'd left in England.

He liked the odd landscape painter but was cynical about art markets. He'd seen too many jack ups, too many inflated reputations and inflated prices. He liked drawings and lithographs.

His favourite car was of course the Stutz bearcat. For some reason he had rejected English cars. A Bentley seemed to him now like a curiosity, interesting but not to be taken seriously.

He could not dress like a star of the seventies any more so he settled for loose chinos and guccis. Very light leather jackets, dark but easy to sling around were part of Paullie's style.

Purple was his favorite colour. But mostly he settled, these days, for pastel shades, very flat hues that sat in the background of some chrome chairs hung with black leather.

When it came to animals Paullie liked deer. It was probably due to the toons he watched as a child. Whatever, he was always put at ease by deer and had the odd linocut featuring them in his flat.

CSI Miami was his favorite television show. He liked the light and the pastel colours that the camera picked up. He like people being cool and not losing it. He likes the water so close to the buildings.

Paullie's moods were steady and he had a sense of humour. Anger really was not his thing. He's seen too many breakdowns spun on into destruction by rage.

At school he was good at art. He had a tidy pen and a wicked wit which made for minimal and sometimes surprising cartoons. A bit of a lost art now but occasionally he'd do something on a napkin and surprise people.

He had a quick wit respected by his schoolmates. He could always organise people and that helped him later on as he got his band into shape and then over the years of recording and touring.

So Paullie sat back in the Stutz, moved from the outside into the middle lane and told Simon to go ahead. He might have even said, 'Shoot'. In fact he welcomed a call from Simon, it broke the tedium and, when he thought about it America, incredible as it might seem, had become a tad boring for him.

Simon described the Trapeze Twins and their disappearance. The idea that they might be in America. At this stage it was a mattter that Simon had to deal with in England. The thing now was the next step, Simon didn't have the faintest...

Paullie resorted to shrinkspeak which he sometimes did when he, also, did not have a clue. Look at those close to the Trapezoids he said. As with broke marriages and domestic murders those closest usually had the answers. CAF, Condider All Factors, Establish Priorities for which he'd forgotten the acronym if there was one but of course there was one.

This was problem solving on the freeway in Los Angeles. There had to be an acronym, a code to unlock and then solve any given problem. The first thing, thought Paullie, was to define the problem itself.

In the country at the edge of the Caucasus a woman in her late forties was crossing a street.

A car screeched to a halt beside her. She whirlrd around and began to run. But a man with a beard ran at her from behind, caught up to her and bundled her back towrds the car.

Two men jumped out and grabbed her forcing her into the back seat between them.

The insurance package is in hand they told the Man by the Fountain later that night on the phone to Bogota.

The woman's name was Vera and she was in her early fifties and had class and elegance.

Vera liked going to art galleries and reading good books. She liked reading about fine wines and liqueurs, especially of the French kind.Vera also had a passing knowledge of architecture.

She liked the ballet. Dance was her sport. And playing the cello. This meant that expeditions to the theatre were loaded with things Vera knew about which made her, in turn, good company.

Her favourite painter was Turner. In various ways Vera was an Anglophile. Like a lot of people educated in Russia, Vera had a taste for things European.

Vera did not like cars and preferred trains. Well appointed carriages for good long trips to see things and people that mattered. Vera had been on the great train rides of Europe and to the East as well.

Vera was a Russian bluestocking when it came to dress.High sweaters with cheekbones just as high. Flat heels interspersed with high heels when it suited her.

Red and silver were her favorite colours. Something of a Cossack at heart she ventured to herself but really Vera was a pacifist. And a socialist in her own way.

Vera liked foxes. She could not say why that was but it may have been that hey were survivors in a difficult world. And they looked good, especially in snow. And they were very quick

Vera liked watching dance on the television and not much else. Television was a suspect media she thought, always used by newsreaders to push political points of view.

At school she was good at mathematics and formal logic. Vera was good at languages as well and Vera saw languages as a means to an end whereas she really enjoyed maths and logic. Sports were not her thing but she played a good game of tennis.

Vera had a wry sense of humour. She'd needed it after she took up with a gypsy and became alienated from her family. Having a child out of wedlock hadnt helped. Vera was, of course, the mother of Benjamin, one of the twins.

Being a retired rock star in California had its moments. Paullie had developed a personality which made it diffficult to recognise him as the person who left the UK. Paullie was rich.

But Paullie was usually bored. He liked America and it put up with him. His band had done well and then broken up but not before some of their music had become the theme tune in a daily soap. Paul did nothing but live off royalties really. Two of the band had died fron drug overdoses and a manager had gone through natural causes but Paullie and two others remained to pick up the cheques and spend them.

Out of necessity, in the bands early years in Reading Paullie had got used to living frugally. He kept records of all his spending in a small notebook where he once also kept records of sexual encounters. Long story short, Paullie had invested and then retired in America.

In the mid West a senator was campaigning. His name was Jake Stephens. They said he was a born politician. He smiled as though he'd been taught in a television charm school, as though he'd been a child actor.

At fifty eight Jake Stephens was remarkable. Tuned and tanned he played a useful round of golf and kept in shape. They liked Jake's smile in the clubhouse where he shook hands and kept things light.

He had three children and Giselle, a toothy wife who seemed to be there for photo opportunities but not for much else. In fact she did a lot in the background and it was impossible for people to tell whether she was flirting or scheming.

Gridiron was Jake's passion. He liked most American sports but the Superbowl was the high point of his sports year. He wanted to be part of it in some way some day.

Jake liked Norman Rockwell paintings. One day he'd like to retire with Giselle at his side to a farm somewhere in the mid-west. After he'd done it, after the big one...

Chrysler was Jake's kind of car. Japanese cars were the elephant in the room and he did not talk about them. You could sit in a Chrysler and feel at home he thought.

Jake liked blazers but he was as prone to sharp suits as the next politician. He had a silky wave to his hair which he had used to advantage again and again in campaigns.

Blue was his best colour. It stood for the political hue he liked and he could not get it out of his system. He was blue. All his mental images, all of his visualisations were against a blue background.

Jake liked buffalo. He liked prairies and pretty well everything in them. That included gophers and big skies. He liked big game parks and had taken lots of photo opportunities when on senatorial jaunts in Africa.

Jake liked business television. He like the urgency of it all. He was an adrenalin junkie. Stocks and shares racing up and down were his kind of thing. To say he was a political creature was not to overstate things. There was nothing else.

He really did not have time for moods. He could tell you in a monotone what others might shriek. He never broke down. There was always an upside, something to be pulled out of a fire, a silver lining in any cloud. And this was his job. And he was alright at it.

At school he was good at civics. He knew all of the Presidents that there had been and he could imagine himself as any of them, some rather more than others but he walked with them all in his mind.

He was into all kinds of committees. His schoolmates knew he was good at the committee stuff and left him to it. He'd become an expert at being on a committee but never acknowledging it. He recognised that it was better if people thought you'd been chosen rather than schemed to get something.

Paullie knew people, knew who they were. He had what people call a photographic memory. He remembered faces from television, what people were wearing. That type of thing. After his fling with Simon's mum who was doing Tripos at the time Paullie never partnered seriously: he was a serious serial dater for a while and then got bored.

So Paullie seemed to have all the luck and then none. He and Simon got along automatically. Simon's mum had forgotten about him. The Don hated him on sight as he did a lot of people in their age group, especially those who had made it and left the country. Why hadn't he put up with it all in England like everyone else?