When Willy the Bard first wrote those (not exactly) words, he probably did not think they would be bastardised in such a frivolous manner . Well, get with the project Mr Willy , if you are listening, time moves on…

Neither would he have tolerated plagiarism, well once again move on , it’s all the rage. so that what I am going to do . I will ‘plagiarise'(felt a Gloria Gaynor song coming on, but soon stopped as I can only ever remember first lines), myself or an article written by myself for a trade publication,a couple of years ago. So much of what we see, hear or do is subject to perception.

‘….what we believe is based upon our perceptions….what we perceive depends upon what we look for….what we believe determines what we take to be true…what we take to be true be our reality…. ‘

Gary Zukav (American spiritual teacher, former Vietnam special ops vet and advisor to the American security services)

I return to it , not Gary, ‘cos I don’t know him, but perception itself as it invades every aspect of our lives and never more so.

You get up, go to the bathroom, and, invariably, stare into a mirror. What do you see? In my case , it is a ‘gormless dork’. Should Julia be passing by she might see an extraordinary specimen, she might not, but at that moment in time it is down to how she perceives me. Throughout the day everything you do will be affected by perception. So how is that entire sections, commercial, personal, religious, play, health and everything else from cradle to grave, of society seem to ignore that. A very simple example is you go into a rubbish shop ( not one selling rubbish, and not one I ‘perceive’ as being rubbish, but a bloody awful shop, plenty around just look) and think what is there about this place that the owner thinks makes it an attractive environment for a consumer to come in and buy stuff. Only this weekend we were both in Brick Lane , East London. In this street there is a very famous Beigel shop. There are actually two, only two doors away from each other . One was empty, the other had punters , literally, queing into the street. I am not suggesting one is especially bad , indeed reviews say there is little difference, and that they are owned by the same family members. The only apparent differences are the colour of the signage,  one is one hundred years older and one is open 24/7 but at 2 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon that if pretty irrelevent. My suspicion at this stage was thatthe queue created a perception that this was the best shop ??

We are plagued by the phrase ‘fake news’ but essentially most of it is about how each of us perceives a piece of information. Of course organisations of all shapes and sizes know this and manipulate that information to convince us about the message they wish to convey. Whether it be the mighty Apple, Coke Cola, BMW, Macdonalds, through every democratic political party ( even dictators use perception manipulation, its just they are less bothered about it), the worlds major faiths through to your next door neighbour (who you think are a really nice family ‘cos that’s what they want you to think, but behind the scenes they are criminal masterminds).