In 1999 Danny Boyle directed The Beach, a film adapted from Alex Garland’s novel of the same name which was published in 1996. Leonardo DiCaprio starred in the film and was set on the Thai island of Koh Phi Phi. I cleaned a beach on Koh Phi Phi in the early 90’s.

Perhaps we can make a severely inspirational film called The Beach (clean). The Beach had a budget of $50 million dollars. According to wikipedia the box office took around $144 million. Just think how many beaches we could clean with that sort of money!

I was walking on the French GR223 footpath today. It’s about ten kilometres east of Cherbourg and follows the whole of the Normandy coastline, (by the way I saw the lightening storm in the UK last night from here!).

I did a bit of litter picking. Through my binoculars I spied something that looked like a couple of rolls of bank notes on the beach, (ever hopeful). I found a conveniently placed rope, scaled down the short cliff face using it…and found that what I had seen through my binoculars…was another pair of binoculars! They were sadly broken.

I am staying in a campsite set on a small headland built on the remains of a two hundred and fifty year old French fort. It has a great vibe to it. I bought a wind breaker in a second hand shop yesterday for five euros, the pitch is 6 euros, a very hot and long shower is 30 cents, and wifi is cheap too. I could stay here a while and write…but I might get the ferry back to Poole tomorrow. Getting the ferry ‘makes sense’ but I’m up for the Universe pointing me in a better direction, if it wants too.

I am keen to do a survey within the Migrant Population that lines our borders, in France, Greece, Italy and others. I would like to ask as many of these people as possible whether they ‘might’ be interested to potentially help us clean up our European coastline of trash. I put a comment to that regard on this evening’s BBC write up of the recent Channel Tunnel ‘storming’.

The trash is on the coastline as we know but my idea will not be classed as a potential ‘good’ idea if no one actually wants to take part in it!

I lived in eastern Crete on and off for four years seven or eight years ago and their beach litter problem is terrible.  I did several large clean ups and told one Greek friend of mine that one day I would come back with loads of people ‘to really clean the beaches’. The way their economy is going at the moment, hundreds, (thousands) of jobs could be made available to clean up the Greek coastline. Where will the money come from? To be honest, from the public I believe.

If we started our film off right now, think of the route the film could take. How exciting and creative the whole process could be, and think of all those clean beaches.

As I left the UK, blimey, it was only yesterday, I heard a reporter on Radio 4 say ‘how can we find the best way of tackling the Islamic State?’, and the potential answer from our politicians was ‘more air strikes’.

The Islamic State seem to believe in a God that advocates violence and horror. I believe in a God that wishes to heal his/her World through love, non violence and co operation. ‘My’ God doesn’t say, ‘bomb the hell out of them, that’ll solve the problem’.

We fell silent for a minute yesterday for the victims of the Tunisian Massacre. It was a powerful and peaceful minute for healing.

What about having a minute a week set aside by our Government for just that. Set a fixed time for us all to say ‘please World, let’s heal ourselves without all this horrendous killing’.

A minute a week. I bet it would make a difference. I bet you one hundred and forty four million dollars it would.