The Frontline Club

Last night my friend Marcus Berkmann, the Spectator columnist and quiz master from the Prince of Wales Highgate pub quiz (the toughest one in London), held a quiz at The Frontline Club in Paddington. I've been wanting to go to this journalist's private club for a while, for they have interesting events, talks and film showings. 

Opposite St. Mary's hospital, the club is upstairs from the restaurant. Entering a room with tall windows and red leather sofas, Marcus found a place for me on a team led by Jonathan Foreman, a literary PR. Jonathan immediately demanded £20. Taken aback, I asked why.

"for a bottle of wine" he replied jauntily

"but I will only drink a glass. I'm driving." I managed to respond, feeling wrong-footed. I'm old fashioned enough to expect to be bought a drink by a gentleman.

That was the right response.

He back-tracked "oh I suppose you can buy a glass then."

A glass of Chardonnay was £4 and very nice too.

I sat down with the team. Foreman demanded £5 for the quiz. Suspicious of him now I said "but I am Marcus' guest".

"Doesn't matter" he insisted and pocketed the fiver. 

The rest of the team 'The foremen' ( I quipped that we should be called 'The foreskin' but they didn't go for it. Maybe I'm a little rough for this club) consisted of a woman and 3 men. The woman, Helen Castor, was pretty and smart. She is writing a book on medieval queen's tentatively entitled 'She-wolves' which will include Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Lady Jane Grey and Mary Tudor. Elizabeth 1st is technically an 'early Modern' era Queen and will not be in the book. I hope she finishes soon, this is exactly the sort of book that I love. I mentioned the historic British tolerance of female leadership and the 'salic law' in France, which did not allow a female to become Queen in her own right.

"Oh they just made that up, the French. They had a choice between a 4 year old girl, direct line to the throne, and an older man who was already running the country and they just made up this law, pretending it had been around forever" said Helen.

The men in the team were Jonathan and two of his stable of writers whose names I have unfortunately forgotten. They were older and one of them, very charming, looked just like Australian cultural attaché Sir Les Patterson.

Writing a quiz is an art.

"A good quiz" says Marcus "is when anybody feels they have a shot at answering the questions. At the Prince of Wales I aim for the lowest score to be about 40% and the highest 80%"

"Do you change the quiz depending on the audience?"

"Yes. I knew the teams here would be well-travelled and well read. The range of scores here is between 50% and 85%"

Our team won by one point. It was hard for me to be taken seriously at first by the rest of the team. They didn't know me, plus I look younger than my age, which can sometimes be a disadvantage. Older men assume I'm a young flippertygibbet! Helen was shit hot, particularly at the 'books of films and their authors' round. Sir Les Patterson also managed to pull a few great answers out of the bag. I excelled at the French 'text speak' round, a lucky one for me, as I have spent so many years in France. The perfect quiz team, one that can answer general knowledge, is gender balanced with a wide age range. You could say it's a practical exercise in democracy.

Our prize was a book on the Middle East and a drink each. I ordered a Baileys. When I went to collect it from our table it had been drunk. The team told me that Jonathan had handed it around to others. I asked him and he denied it.

Marcus bought me a replacement.

Bellaphon

The food blogger Bellaphon has a secret life. Despite going to Oxford university he, like Nick Hornby's protagonist in 'Hi Fidelity', has always wanted to be a shopkeeper, specifically of a hi-fi shop. Walrus is round the back of Marble Arch.

Upstairs you see cluttered and dusty 'record players'. (I got told off for calling them that. It's 'turntable' or 'hi-fi' stupid!). One of them looked just like the red leatherette mono record player I got from Woolworths on my 16th birthday. I think it cost about £7, all the money I'd saved up from my National Savings certificates. I was so proud. Drove my mum mad playing the same record over and over again. I'd get in from school, light a joss stick and play 'heroin' by Lou Reed on repeat. I'd close the curtains and feel vaguely dangerous.

Downstairs at Walrus is an adult version of that atmosphere. A sofa at one side, for lounging. Stacks of vinyl. 

Studded around the room, spotlit, monolithic, are 'turntables'. Each one is about 6 inches thick. You can't pick them up. They weigh 40 kilos. Bellaphon put on a classical record. I could have sworn the orchestra was actually in the room with me. Each turntable is driven by a belt, not a motor.

"Why?" I asked.

"So that there is no wobble, no tremor" 

A typical turntable costs £15,000. Yeah, just that bit. Annie Lennox and Jimmy Page are customers. Although musicians are not good customers says Bellaphon, they have strange tastes, funny ears. Best are gay men and Australians. 

Soul food

The Moot with No Name, Devereux pub, Strand. Subject: Sin-eaters by Shani Oates.

Intrigued by this subject I took a friend, saying the people at the Moot with No Name are some of the most interesting and knowledgeable people I have met in London. 

Unfortunately Shani read her 'talk' from a large wad of papers using complex and academic language. It was hard to follow. You could see the packed room's attention wandering. 

I only started to make head or tail of it when we were allowed to ask questions. Steve Wilson, the MC of these talks, announced that Shani was the first person from the Robert Cochrane tradition to speak at the moots. Steve Wilson ominously requested that people not ask about 'lineage'. The room, full of the usual assortment of tricoteuses, witches, Shakespearean speaking frog-like creatures, long haired tailors, beady-eyed astrologers and other marginals, grumbled in response.

Robert Cochrane, originally from a strict Methodist background, claimed to come from a line of hereditary witches. He practised from his council home in London and elsewhere. There seems to have been some inter-coven rivalry with Gerald Gardner another hereditary witch (who spent much of his life studying local traditions in Malaysia) before returning to England to work eventually with Aleister Crowley. He started an affair with one of his coven, in front of his wife Jean, and grew fond of 'witches potions' (psychedelic drugs to you and me). He eventually committed ritual suicide, drinking belladonna, at the summer solstice of 1966.

The celebrated witch Doreen Valiente(1) one of his followers, became disenchanted saying

"cease to have silly bickering between covens, because they happen to do things differently from the way we do them. This incidentally is the reason why I eventually parted from Robert Cochrane, because he wanted to declare a sort of Holy War against the followers of Gerald Gardner, in the name of traditional witchcraft."

One of the main problems for Gardner, and is no doubt still an issue, is that the OTO was gender imbalanced, 80% to 20% women. The women were frequently reluctant to participate in the 'Great Rite' (sexual intercourse) on the altar. Spoilsports!

So with a little post-lecture research I have managed to make some sense of the talk.

Shani talked about the relevance of Sin-eaters to 'the craft', how sin is ritually dealt with via confession, expiation and purification.

"Sin" states Shani "has long been recognised as undesirable. No one can be responsible for the sins of somebody else but this is exactly what Sin-eaters do". 

Traditionally each village would have a Sin-eater, often beggars, who, by eating food and drink placed on or over the body of a corpse, would consume/remove the sins of the corpse. They, along with other professions such as tanners, were pariahs, untouchables kept on the outskirts of society. 

Adam Dilwyn Vaughan was the last known Sin-eater, living in Hereford in the 1960s. Richard Munsloe, a Sin-eater in Shropshire, enjoyed as his payment warm cake and spiced ale.

Soul-caking(2), funeral biscuits in Shropshire, corpse-cakes in the Balkans, the Dutch dead-cakes, burial cakes (still made in Lincolnshire and Cumberland) all derive from Sin-eating. Similarly in Cornish custom, children were encouraged to kiss the corpse. In the Andes, we see Tlazolteotl, a purification goddess,"eat the filth" of a corpse.

Salt and smoke would be used in the ritual, denoting healing and absolution. Fire and candles feature heavily in funerals, and the word derives from the Latin 'funeralis' meaning torch. It is taboo to light anything from a corpse candle. All attendees must carry salt in their pockets.

Salt represents many things: 

• a symbol of Man's labour
• incorruptibility (it is extracted intact from nature)
• sterility (makes all living nature barren)
• friendship and wisdom. To eat another man's salt is to make a bond. To eat the salt of your King is to owe him fidelity.

Salt is used in all the higher magical orders. But it is rumoured that some witches reject salt.

Other techniques used include 'dry retching' into a cleared ground, to suck out energetic debris from places of congestion in the body, to get it out of the system. 'Corpse silver' is given over the body, silver being a powerful conductor. The face of the Sin-eater is covered in black ash.

At the end of the talk Shani rejected the idea that eating sins had any deleterious effect on the Sin-eaters health. 

"What is sin for you?" asked someone

"Sin is not following your purpose" replied Shani "Crowley said sin equals restriction".

(1)Doreen Valiente also believed that the future of paganism and the craft in "the age of Aquarius, lies in feminism and Green issues associated with the environment" (quote from http://www.controverscial.com/). It seems to me that Stawhawk et al, with their activities at the anti-G8 camp, are pursuing Valiente's legacy.

(2)"Soul-cakers would go to each house, singing either a begging song or a plea for prayers for the dead. They would put on a mummers play for the residents of the house, which would consist of a challenge, a battle, a death, and a magical revival. Specially-made cakes were given to the Soul-cakers at the conclusion of their performance. Soul-caking is still the custom at Antrobus, in Cheshire, but there has been a change or two. Instead of going house-to-house, the Soul-cakers go pub-to-pub, by car! Leaving cakes and wine out for visiting ancestors is also an old custom that has carried over into many British households, even today." From Cyberwitch.com

15

Some girls at my daughter's school are having sex before they have even started their periods.

Another girl, just 15, has been sleeping with a 28 year old illegal immigrant. When she was 13 years old, she had an abortion. Her mother, middle-class, well-off, is fine with it.

One girl never uses contraception, relying purely on the 'morning after' pill.

"These girls are trying to be adult. But they don't act like adults" I say to my teen.

She tells me that many pupils go through the school day high on coke or 'e'.

I'm restrictive. Over-protective. I ask to speak to the parents if she is going to a party. I want to know where she is, where she is going. Some of her friends can go out whenever they want. 

"This girl C. can just go out at midnight. Her parents say yeah, no problem, do you want cab fare? Everybody lies to their parents" my teen says. 

But she came home tonight complaining that she was being hassled by men on the street. 

"Twice this evening, on the way home from school. I told one to fuck off"

I look at her. "I know  I know" says my daughter. 

When I was her age, I got pestered all the time by men in the street. Once I told one who wouldn't leave me alone "hey baby baby baby" to fuck off and he punched me in the face. Hard. 

"Careful" I say "these men are not nice. One minute they want you they next they are hitting you. Nice men don't pester young girls in the street."

Manifesto for a New Great Britain

1. Stop all production of new cars unless they use alternative energy.Then we will look like Cuba in 20 years time, with lovely old cars everywhere.
2. Pull out of Iraq, Aghanistan and every other theatre of war. Keep our army for peace keeping duties only.
3. Retain the Queen as head of state. But she will be leader of the new Anarchist Britain. (I like to mix the old and the new. Vintage and modern). Once a week the Queen will have a meeting with the people via a lottery system.
4. Make all public transport free immediately. Start collective taxis 'collectivos'.
5. Ban all private and religious schools. Make university free again.
6. If people want to home educate, give them a subsidy, the amount it would cost the state to send them to school (about 4k a child). However they will not be allowed to indoctrinate their kids with extreme religion. Make sure they do a certain amount of sport/art/music.
7. Encourage the repair of old things. Give tax breaks to manufacturers who make products that can be fixed and maintained at a reasonable price. At the moment it is often cheaper to throw away a product and buy a new one.
8. Invest in alternative energy for every home/government/office building. Give subsidies and training for people to build wells in their gardens, keep chickens, grow their own vegetables.
9. Pay one parent in every family to stay home and look after their children. Do not fetishize the world of work. Encourage integration between family life and work life.Do everything possible to boost the status of home workers ( in which I include people who bring up children).
10. Legalise drugs.
11. Leave the European Union. We are not European. But stay mates with them.
12. Dismantle the freehold/leasehold system. It is medieval.
13. Ask each and every newcomer to Britain, whether they be individuals or businesses, what can they do for the community? What can they contribute to the New Great Britain? Concrete proposals.

14. Ban all farming methods that are cruel to animals. Encourage vegetarianism.

In fact I will be adding to this list as I go along. Then I'm going to start a political party and run for government. But I will be rubbish at diplomacy, will always tell the truth. I'm also quite shouty.

Good Hair Day

My teen had her hair done on Saturday. She now has a short blonde Pixie Geldof type coiffure. It looks great. £75. 

Why am I telling you this? Because she has cheered the fuck up.

The National Health Service could dispense with anti-depressants and therapy sessions if they just prescribed free hairdressing. Hair makes a tremendous difference to how you feel, especially if you are female. 

It makes sense doesn't it? Hair is the stuff that covers your head. Your head, your brain, your mind. If the 'covering' doesn't look good, then what's inside won't feel good. 

Old ladies used to go to the hairdressers every week. They knew a thing or two.

In my punk days in the 70s my hair progressed through every colour of the rainbow. The first time it was blue with a pink fringe. People screamed as I walked past. As buses went by, I would see all of the passengers heads whip round in shock.

Another time I had my hair dyed green and blue to match my WH Smith uniform where I worked on Saturdays. 

The first day at school after having my hair done blue, I arrived in break. Ever had 2000 kids simultaneously laugh, gasp and point at you? That, along with the day I wore a Union Jack plastic carrier bag as a mini-skirt to the Queen's Jubilee street party, was a highlight of my youth. An old lady went up to my mum who was hanging red, white and blue bunting and said:

"Have you seen that? Disgusting isn't it?"

My mum replied:"Yes."

Old lady: "I wonder if she even lives in this street. Any idea who she is?"

My mum: "She's my daughter."

I left early to go to see The Damned and The Ramones at the Roundhouse.

Work Experience

Year 10s, that is 14 to 15 year olds in the UK, have to do a week of work experience towards the end of the school year, in June.

My teen goes to a private school. I can't afford it. We go without basic necessities (new shoes!)in order to pay the fees. Why have I done this? Several reasons, not all of them decent.

• She's half French. Her French father not being around, the only way I could ensure she would speak fluent French is by sending her to a French school which just happens to be private.
• I want the best education for my child. I feel she is disadvantaged in some ways and I want to give her a chance.
• I don't want her to go to the local comprehensive. And here's the rub. It's an inner city school. 50% of it's pupils do not speak English as a first language. Many of them are refugees from war zones and have severe mental health problems as a result. The teachers are over-worked, physically attacked and have to please a government obsessed with targets and paperwork. But the educational goals are low, in an attempt to cater for everybody. In a country where accent is everything and peer pressure is the single most important influence on a teen, I don't want her to speak 'street' talk. The police patrol outside every day. I know some of this first hand because I sent my daughter to the local state primary for a year, reportedly the best in the borough according to league tables. It was awful. The teacher could not spell. When my daughter told me that some kids (in uniform and easily identifiable) were nicking from local shops naturally I told the head. The head teacher clumsily made it clear to the rest of the kids (despite pleas from me) who had 'grassed' them up. My daughter's mobile phone was stolen that afternoon. The head did nothing. Bullies and naughty kids were constantly appeased with rewards. Good/quiet kids got scarce attention.

So, for the above reasons, and contrary to my political views, I chose private.

However this work experience at her private school makes me sick to the stomach. Evidently many of the parents are well-off and seriously connected. The children of these parents get to work for the BBC, top fashion designers, pop stars, film directors...and who can blame them? They, like me, are trying to give their kids a head-start in a tough world. Who am I to complain about privilege when I have 'gone private'?

I simply don't have those kind of connections. I cannot provide that opportunity for my daughter. I feel terrible about that. But also what should be simply a chance to learn about the world of work has turned into oneupmanship amongst the pupils. 

I pay the school fees but I can't keep up. 

My daughter doesn't help of course winding me up with statements like:

"When I leave school I'm going to be on the dole"

Facing the financial winter...

Astrologer Maggie Hyde in conjunction with potter/astrologer Jack Kenny who has been following the financial markets for years, gave a fascinating yet terrifying talk last night at The Company of Astrologers in Hampstead.

I came in to the packed room just as Jack Kenny was talking about the 9.5 trillion dollar bailout that the US has given to the banks. He was trying to give some kind of indication of just how bad things are...I took notes and Tweeted the talk. 

"The dollar is up but everything else is suffering. Confidence in money is beginning to slip. A European holiday is 40% more expensive this year than last. The government is spending more, trying to reflate the economy but with unreasonable credit.

"The kroner is massively devalued. The news has been bad for 18 months now. The September to December period last year will be known in 100 years as the 'panic of '08'. The last banking crisis on this scale was not 1929 but 1907...

Counter-trend rallies are very violent. Everyone buying stocks and houses...

House prices have dropped 25% in the U.S. They will bottom out at 75% of their peak value. Start to recover in 2020.

Stock prices will drop to 90% of former value, some have already dropped that far.

Unemployment will peak at 30% by 2017. It will shoot up dramatically. But the stock market will start to rise in 2012.

Western government bail outs...governments are merely taxpayers so they are merely bankrupting us. 

No mature economy can devalue it's currency to become wealthy.

A normal recession...things a bit out of balance...a stimulus package can bolster. This is not a recession. This is a generational positive clearing out. 

Any government reaction to the contrary will delay the problem.

We owe 30 times the world GDP.

This nonsense of Brown going to see Obama and saying together we will solve the world's problems...Brown knows the truth. He's just delaying [the melt-down] which will make matters worse.

Quantitative easing is the only option...printing money. Inflation will hit 20 to 25%."

Someone in the audience asks:"Will we be buying bread with wheelbarrows?"

Jack smiles: "No."

Maggie Hyde takes over to show a few charts on the overhead projector. The charts she is working with include:

•  The Coronation of William I, known as the 1066 chart, which is the usual chart for England
  
• The Sibley chart for the USA.
• The Fed chart
• Obama's chart (because never before has a president had to take office in such perilous times)
• Brown's chart (but he's really a bit-part player).

"Looking at the 1066 chart, it's the Saturn return for the UK. A Jupiter/Saturn opposition is coming up. The UK is very Capricornian, with the Sun in Capricorn trine a Saturn/Jupiter conjunction.

The problems last autumn, there was no major signature in the charts. "

Jack interjects:"The British banking system was within 3 hours of total collapse. 100 billion dollars of foreign currency was being withdrawn from the UK. They were trying to slow down this exit. Lord Myners admitted this. (1)There were no funds."

Maggie:"On the 14th of October we had the first of our Saturn returns, the second and third hits will be in March this week and in July.

"This year Jupiter/Neptune conjunction in Aquarius. Well, that's got to be inflation, hyper-inflation. Jupiter equals bizarre fantastic growth. These conjunctions will occur on the 27th of May, July and December this year.

"The Saturn/Uranus opposition will happen five times. The first was on Obama's election.

The Jupiter/Saturn opposition will happen three times starting May 23rd 2010 (this time in Virgo and Pisces). This combines with the Moon at 29º Pisces square Uranus at 28º of Sagittarius.

In mundane charts (political charts) the Moon represents the common people. You can only interpret these aspects as restlessness amongst the people.

But by August Saturnian principles (square Pluto on the Midheaven) will gain the upper hand (Saturn exalted in Libra, Jupiter in Aries weaker). "

Someone speaks from the audience:"Does this mean we will see revolt in Spring and government clampdown in the summer?"

Maggie:"Yes."

Murmurs around the room. I think about Capricorn and authority. I think about Tiananmen square. I also think about when I travelled in South America 1989-90. Being in an Argentinian supermarket and hearing the announcement "from now on all our prices are double" as people rushed to the tills. Seeing shops crowded in Brazil on the 23rd of each month because that was when people got paid. If you waited any longer, your wages became worthless and you could not buy food. During this trip, I only ever changed $20 at a time. No point changing more, it was worth half the next day.

Maggie continues:"The events of the next three years are tied in with the Jupiter/Saturn cycle. But there is hope in 2010, a progressed Sun trine Jupiter in the US chart and Obama's chart.

For Obama's 'first' inauguration the Jupiter return is cazimi. Obama may be able to pull off some Jupiterian trick for the USA. Not the case for the UK though. Brown is the wrong leader for these times, he has no earth in his chart and a stellium in Pisces and Uranus will be on his Venus in April. You need a Leo leader which is what Obama is."

Jack takes over with the financial hard stuff: "Money is harder to get hold of the UK. The pound is collapsing. The dollar is rising so in the US you have deflation. 

"Toyota cut salaries today. You can't have inflation if you have no money to spend. But the deflation phase will finish this year. 

Food prices are up in supermarkets. Anything that requires credit will lose value.

Hyper-inflation is self-feeding. When normal inflation goes above 25% it spirals.

As governments behave irresponsibly our currency becomes worthless. Commodities such as food, paintings, gold become worthwhile.

All Western currencies will lose value. 

Inflation, as interest rates rise, there will be problems selling government bonds. Quantitative easing won't work and will lead to severe destruction in the stock and housing markets.

In 2012 Pluto will conjunct the UK Sun."

"What about the Olympics?" I ask.

Jack nods: "Yes exactly. The Olympics will require money."

He continues:"The banks will be fully nationalised. Then when interest rates are high enough people will start saving, they will spend again. China is bailing out its economy from savings. "We are bailing out ours on credit.

"Taxes will go up. A quick way to raise taxes is on housing. You can't run away from houses. Pensions will be severely affected."

"Already have" retorts one older woman in the audience.

Jack: "Bank controls will come in."

"What's that?" asks an astrologer.

"The banks will limit access to your own money. They are already doing this in Eastern Europe. Banks will say 'you can have £100 or £200 a day'."

An audience member:"I remember in the 70s when you went abroad you were only allowed to take £30". I remember this too.

"We will see more scams, Madoff type scams and draconian government measures to combat them which will limit freedoms. Pakistan has an on-going civil war, is a nuclear country and I think Russia will have to invade.

There will be protectionism. Brown is saying there won't be so we know they are thinking about it. And a new concept 'commodity chauvinism'..."

Baffled looks all around...

"That is when countries who have resources, who have stuff to sell, will refuse to. The UK only has banking and insurance service to sell. We are running out of oil.

"There is a story about a Roman legion who with an ounce of gold could buy a new suit of clothes. An ounce of gold is now worth approximately £700...in other words a new suit of clothes.

"Buying gold is not easy. It works on price rise and is priced in dollars. An ounce last August sold for £450. Today it's £660 but with commission it is £718. If you had bought gold last August your money stayed safe."

"So are you suggesting we keep lumps of gold in the house?" I ask.

Maggie:"Well I bought gold and yes they post it to you in a jiffy bag. Where to keep it is another problem"

Another lady complains: "Diamonds have devalued. And gold can go down."

Jack:"In 1999, 2000 Gordon Brown sold all our gold at a knock-down price." 

Sighs of dismay in the room. My father sent me an email saying "New Labour sold our gold at about $265 an ounce".

Jack:"This year then, rallying markets, dollar down, inflation, silver will beat gold. Here is my advice for the future:

• keep your job. Stick with your dreadful boss. Remember if you change, last in, first out.
• get out of debt.
• if you are in debt, tie into a fixed rate. Don't worry if it looks like a bad deal at the moment, interest rates will go up.
• limit cash in banks
• have cash and food stored if there is a hiccup in the system
• look to building local networks
• put 10% of your assets into gold and silver
• invest in gun stocks
• invest in agricultural farming products (ETF's), fertilizers, pesticides, organic farming
• invest in alternative energy
• invest in conservation
• invest in Uranium. I know I said that last year and it has gone down but I still believe it. It will be needed for nuclear power plants which are being built everywhere.
• invest in commodities; metals, (copper), oil, anything real. China bought 18% of Rio Tinto zinc.
• don't invest in insurance companies or banks
• don't be complacent. It won't be alright. Rallying won't last, the debt structure is still there. There may be a feel good this year (Jupiter/Neptune) but next year...all government actions are screaming something's wrong. Stock markets are down 50% since 2007.
• look to what has real value for you personally.
• Counties I predict will do well are 1)Norway 2) Canada 3) Australia. Why? Because they are resource rich.

Buying silver is difficult in the UK because it's VAT rated. 

Paul Volker and Warren Buffet think life is terrible. They know."

At the end of this talk people sat slumped, seemingly stunned in their chairs. I tried to talk to Jack Kenny afterwards but was interrupted by a woman who demanded to know what I had been doing with my iPhone. When I explained I had live tweeted the talk, she became agitated, suspicious.

"Why are you telling these people this? Do you know them? You are telling everyone our secrets. You are a spy."

"Well this is part of my community" I tell her "I feel I should spread the word."

Finally I lose patience with her and tell her to back off

"You are not being very Aquarian about this" I say.

In the pub afterwards I sit with my astro mates.

One says "What I don't understand is if this guy is a financial wizard then how come he is not wearing a Saville row suit?"

"So you think he is being a bit of a doom merchant?" I ask.

People don't want to believe him. Many astrologers are quite spiritual, and prefer to think positive. I'm not so sure. All I know is I have had more reactions from Twitter than ever before although some say:

"You've really depressed me."

Others said "I'm off to buy gun stocks and Uranium."

One said "I heard from a government source that the UK will be locked in 2010. Nobody in, nobody out."

How does that Chinese curse go?

 "May you live in interesting times".

(1) See also this bloggers view.

2009 The Aquarian year

This year Jupiter, which traverses a sign each year, will transit Aquarius. Neptune is already in Aquarius and has been for a few years and Chiron is there too. You could argue that the Age of Aquarius starts this year, or at least you get a bit of a taster.

What is happening this year? Social networking sites are exploding. Facebook are having problems with their terms and conditions, they tried to change them giving them rights in perpetuity over any material (text, messages, notes, photos, videos) you may have posted up. Twitter is all over the press...a global text conversation. 

Social networking via the Internet, communication without intimacy, without commitment, is about as Aquarian as it gets. "I love you all just don't get too close!" 

Dating via the Internet is no longer a source of shame and embarrassment. I've done it loads this year. It doesn't seem to work. I have the ability to fall in love with a pixel, but the reality is crushing. My experiences with internet dating are worthy of a whole blog in itself.

Neil Spencer, the Observer astrologer, who is helping me develop an astro-menu for the 28th of March, gave a talk at the Company of Astrologers last week. 

Most astrological gatherings do tend to be populated by "women of a certain age, wearing purple". Neil is a rare breed, a male astrologer. (Of course, like chefs, they tend to be more visible professionally but the vast majority of astrologers are women, just like most cooking is done by women). 

The Company of Astrologers is no different; row upon row of hawk-eyed witches stroking their hairy moles whilst peering into the future. Forget girl power. Hag power!

Neil is a stand-up comic of astrology...he does accents, jokes and impersonations in his talks. Here are my notes on his talk:

In the Age of Aquarius, everything will be great, we will all be hippies, it will be a new age of enlightenment. Well it won't be. It will have it's murky side too. 

• Nazi Germany is Aquarian, the chart of the third reich is 30/1/33 at 11.15 am. The shadow side of Neptune conjunct Jupiter is catastrophe and death. Saturn in the 10th of this chart...meaningless orders...from Adolf Hitler.
  
• The French Revolution 10/8/1792 Pluto in Aquarius at 22 degrees in the 7th house. The dark side of equality. 
  

The world wide web has an affinity with Aquarius. Every corporation in the world is saying 'how did we not spot this coming and control it all?'.

The world wide web has revolutionised our world. (Look how many billions were lost last week when googlemail went down. We are totally dependant.)

Neil presented a list of famous Aquarians...lots of scientists (Galileo, Copernicus), politicians, writers (Lewis Carroll, Dickens, Joyce, Miler, Greer, Woolf, Chekhov, Verne) playwrights,  but few popstars(and of course the genre is punk... John Lydon/Rotten and Malcolm Maclaren ) or poets (Byron).

 Aquarius is also the sign of psychology...dispassionate analysis, voyeurism. 

This is Darwin's year, another Aquarian. But Darwinism is a tremendously cynical doctrine which has led, arguably, to eugenics.

The United States has an Aquarian moon. More of it's presidents are Aquarian than any other sign...Reagan, Lincoln, Roosevelt. Nixon and JFK had Aquarian moons. 

Oprah Winfrey is an über Aquarian as is Sarah Palin. 

In fact the U.S. constitution is Aquarian in itself...the whole idea of human rights had never before existed prior to the discovery of Uranus, the ruler of Aquarius in 1781, the same year as the final American victory over Britain.

Neil goes into an aside about the links between Sagittarius, Science Fiction and space travel.

Mars is also transiting Aquarius. 19.32 Aquarius is the degree of Flight. Has anybody noticed how many plane and helicopter crashes there are at the moment?

The Conservatives have their Jupiter return this year (perhaps why they are feeling so expansive and community minded? see post below)

The discovery of Neptune heralded the arrival of photography, the telephone, the phonograph, the age of sewers. 

Interesting note: the moon was in Scorpio at the discovery of all three outer planets.

This year will be about Obama, public service and corporate criminals. 

The 'Madoff' scandal is very Pluto in Capricorn and he will not be the last to be exposed.

Questions:

Is Obama a tyrant? 

Neil: No I dont think so. I think he is actually that rare thing 'a good man'. An extraordinary politician. 

Neil continues: There are only six signs. The first six. The rest are versions of the first six. For instance a Libran is just an Arian with better manners.

While Leo are me, me, me....Aquarius is us, us, us. But within every Aquarian there is a Leo trying to get out. Neil also remarked that Aquarians often have big wavy hair. 

The Pluto/Neptune conjunction in the 1890s through to World War I. produced artists such as T.S.Eliot, Tolkein, Nash and Spencer, who were all in the trenches. The Germans on the other side, took that same experience and made a hell of it.

Another thing to watch out for this year is inflation with the Jupiter/Neptune conjunction.

Atheist buses...very Aquarian. Obama is a believer. You cannot have an American president that doesn't believe in God.

I remark that Obama included non-believers in his inauguration address. Somebody else in the audience remarked that in contrast Blair had to hide his faith from the British public. 

"It's not the done thing to believe in anything here" she said.

The astrologer Adam Smith notes that "Lincoln and Darwin were born on the same day of the same year. Both have Saturn conjunct Neptune in Sagittarius. Time twins."

Neil: There is also Chiron in Aquarius this year. There is always pain with Chiron.

My advice to Aquarians is that ethics count this year. Behave and you will prosper. Put your ideals on your sleeve.

I can't remember how it happened but somebody noticed that I was sending messages on my iPhone.

"Yes I am twittering this talk." I admit.

Crone heads swivel towards me looking inquisitive and curious. I explain what I'm doing.

 "You are pirating my talk" Neil says with an amused glint in his eye, for he used to be the editor of the New Musical Express.

"No I'm publicising your talk. Sharing it, globally".

This roomful, constellation of astrologers looks pleased. Despite their age, they are intensely interested in the future. 

"I'm so glad you brought Aquarius into the room" remarks one older lady to this particular Aquarian "very appropriate".