MsMarmitelover

Glade

2008-07-22T15:32:00.013+01:00

inSpiral Lounge, inSpiring!

...sitting on the hard shoulder of the M1. Brake caliper blown. We lost a wheel. It's a miracle we are alive. Why didn't I listen to the Brazilian murderer and replace the brake fluid?
Just finished cooking at Glade festival, an off-shoot from Glastonbury. God preserve me from dance festivals.
It's a thankless task being a cook at a techno event. Nobody eats. They are all on the E-plan diet. Well people start to eat by about Sunday afternoon when they have used up all their drugs. I have never seen so many people on ketamine. It's like Night of the Living Dead. My teenager and I sat in the beautiful white sculptural space of inSpiral Lounge, with nylon spectres floating like luminous jelly fish. We watched one man huddled in a foetal position on the floor, gurning in his private world. Another climbed an invisible staircase. A third staggered zombie style. I saw one woman fall over head first in the mud. She just stayed there like that, bum in the air. A k-hole they call it. It is growing in popularity. Why? It is so not a good look. You couldn't pull on it.
The other drug du jour is Nitrous Oxide or laughing gas. Balloons litter the grass. Teenagers sit in circles holding dispensers, sucking on balloons. I tried one. I felt ill as if I was emerging from general anaesthetic. It costs £2.50p a pop.
Costumes are extraordinary: restoration dandies, robocop, psychedelic robin hoods, flamenco dancers, plushies and of course every other person has dreadlocks. Another snapshot: people trying to row a dinghy across the grass.
My kitchen crew are diverse: a Kurt Cobain lookalike whose Israeli girlfriend worked for the Israeli mafioso who owns Camden lock. Her building and all her belongings were destroyed in the fire. She was compensated in cash by her boss, as was everyone else in the building, which housed staff. Strangely no one was killed. Everybody was 'out'. The boss had sought planning permission for a casino. The Israeli girl whispered about the fire: "Don't ask".

It got quite serious between Kurt and the Israeli girl, her parents wanted him to convert. Trouble is, Kurt said, I had nothing to convert from...
Also in kitchen crew were teenagers from North weezy, my neck of the woods...North West London. Post code gangs...
M, a mixed race kid from Harlesden told me about his mum, who is a tough single muvver. "She even threatens people at work, yeah, if dey annoy her, yeah, she slices 'em up. Crip."

"Where does your mum work?" I enquire.

"Marks and Spencers."

Teenagers are not allowed at Glade, 13-18 years olds are banned. A good idea as the drug usage is so heavy. My teenager was kitchen crew, frying eggs in her ball gown.

One morning I heard shouting behind the kitchen where the bosses no-neck teenage monster is stood nervously.

"Don't go out there" warned the staff "a ketamine lecture".

"We care about you" I heard "You are 14 years old. These are adult drugs which are dangerous. Do not try them. You cannot navigate your class A's. Don't think that you can!".

Teenagers nowadays are surrounded by drugs. What does the responsible parent do? It's unrealistic to think that they are not going to try a bit of spliff. I've tried to be open and honest with my teenager about drugs and sex. In this way I hope that I can better track what is going on. But I would be distressed if she tried anything harder.
L, the flame-haired waitress, lives in Hebden Bridge, lesbian capital of the world, although she isn't. It's a hippy haven, the Glastonbury of the North.
The oldest member of the team is the strangely the one who looks the straightest but has caned it the most. She is a veritable walking encyclopaedia on drugs.
She explained that there were two reasons why the toilets were so bad at festivals:

the drugs
the sudden switch to high roughage vegetarian food.

I chatted also to an older woman who is severely 'lichenoid' that is, allergic to compound metals. It was initially diagnosed by her dentist and she has lost most of her teeth as a result of the lesions. She had to paint her mobile phone with enamel paint, but a bit rubbed off and she now has a huge seeping welt on her texting finger. She can't go in cars or planes. She is allergic to the modern world. Gold and silver are fine, it's the compound metals she can't handle and nowadays everything is made from cheap aluminium.

I drove to the local town of Basingstoke to do some shopping. For 30 minutes I drove around trying to find it. Then I realised that the industrial type buildings with air vents sticking out the back was Basingstoke. The pedestrianised High Street faces inwards, invisible to the outside world. There is a town hall styled like a downmarket Disneyland Main St. The shops are all chains. Fine dining is restricted to a MacDonalds, a Café Rouge and a pub chain. Walking through, I felt the hope drain out of me. It was the town planning equivalent of a Dementor.

from my iPhone.

This guy made his own robocop outfit...

Amazing installation which had different faces projected onto it...

Trippy...

Balloons ...

The Oxygen bar, 3 quid a go.

A typical punter...

I wonder what level 4 does...

Cussin

2009-11-30T11:12:00.005Z

In the bathroom. My daughter was putting on foundation in the mirror. Her skin is perfect.

"Why do you wear foundation?" I asked. "At your age?"

"Because I've got skin like an old woman" she said "everybody teases me about it at school. I've got those things...that old men get when they drink ..."

"Thread veins?"

"Yeah, that. I've got tons of blemishes and I have to cover them up"

I looked at my face in the mirror. I had crinkly bags under my eyes. I pushed at my skin, it doesn't spring back into place as it would have a few years ago. Even a year ago.

I seemed to have aged enormously since starting The Underground Restaurant. In fact I haven't properly looked at myself for a while, being so busy. I've neglected any 'beauty routine'.

Next to me was my teen...her perfect heart shaped face...

I sit on the toilet and sigh: "So apart from your weight, your height, the little bump on your eyelid and your old ladies' skin...what else do people at school criticize about you? It seems, according to them, you are absolutely hideous"

"Look that's how it is. Everybody cusses everybody else." my daughter says patiently as if speaking to a retard.

"Do you?"

"Yeah. 'Course. Probably."

"You slag off other people's looks?"

"Well my friends and especially S."

"Why S?"

S. is particularly beautiful, tall and slim with almond-shaped eyes and great hair. She's been spotted by model agencies.

"Everybody has a go at S" snorts my teen "because she's so perfect".

"Does she get upset?"

"Yes, sometimes she cries"

"So you are all making each other feel bad? I mean you come home and cry too" I state.

My teen shrugs.

Cussing, that is, the art of putting each other down, does seem to be worse than it was in my youth. I wonder if it comes from 'freestyle rap battles'. It must be hard, though, for teenagers to build up any self-esteem when every imperfection is ruthlessly targeted. Or does it toughen them up?

Butters

2009-11-17T01:41:00.012Z

"I'm butters" said my teen.

Now I know I'm biased but my teenager is the most beautiful girl in the world. Bar none. Actually I'm not biased, this is pure fact.

"You are gorgeous" I say soothingly.

"No I'm not. I'm fat. And I'm short".

There's no point lying. She is short. But she's not fat. Not yet anyway. She probably will be later on, just like me. To be honest, I don't think I'm fat, but other people do. I look at all the women we are told we are supposed to look like and think 'Where's the rest of you?'. They look like half people.

She talks about the teasing at school, because of her height.

"Basically the deal here is that you aren't average. You want to be average. There's such an emphasis on being average, but it's boring." I say

I try to think of someone short, not too great looking but with such personality you don't even notice. I hit upon...

"Look at Danny Devito! He's short but I don't think he's ever turned in a bad performance" I tell her.

"But has he got a girlfriend?"

"Yeah. He's married and everything" I say

The teen thinks for a bit.

"I expect that's cos he's famous. I'm not famous. No one is ever going to like me. I've been single for two years."

"You are 15! Someone is going to like you. Of course they are!"

"No never. No one's ever going to like me. I'll be a virgin when I die"

This conversation was provoked by the fact that she liked a boy. He seemed to like her. In fact she started liking him because she thought he liked her.

She thought they were close. He would text 'I love you'. Even today, when 'I love you' and relentless hugging is common currency between friends (not the seldom uttered tight-lipped words that slipped out by mistake, of my youth), texting that phrase to the opposite sex means something.

My teen talked to me about this as we drove...

"I didn't know what was going on, so I took the plunge and texted him: 'Are you into me?'" Tears trickled down her downy cheeks. "He said 'No. We are just friends'."

I recognised this feeling so well...

"I really hate that. When blokes you fancy just want to be your friend. When they flirt and confuse you." I commiserated. "They are power tripping"

"I know" she sniffed.

"I mean my attitude, in the words of Jayne County, is: 'If you don't wanna fuck me, fuck off'" I joked.

"Me too."

We drove in silence, bonded in mutual misery.

Nick Cohen's book launch

2009-02-27T08:50:00.009Z

A selection of Nick Cohen's articles in various publications to the present day 'Waiting for the Etonians' is fucking brilliant. Leafing through it this morning, I have not yet come across a sentence I disagree with.

The book launch was last night at Daunt's in Marylebone High Street, London. It was filled by the usual suspects plus writers such as Suzanne Moore and Ian McEwan. I was told due to high numbers not to bring anyone. So I didn't. And felt like a bit of a twat on my own. I did chat to Jack of Kent, who for a right-wing Tory lawyer is about as far to the left as you can imagine. Never thought I'd find myself agreeing with a Tory. He introduced me to a couple of other Tories. I mentioned my Underground Restaurant. One guy from Demos said:

"Brilliant! That is sooo Tory. I've got to come."

Surprised I said "Really? How is it Tory?"

"Well it's all about you taking your own resources and using them to start a business. Refusing to kowtow to government regulations. And it's sharing, community. Toryism is all about loving nowadays." he replied.

His friend is in Hackney Conservatives.

"Are there any conservatives in Hackney?" I ask.

"Oh yes. More and more. Have you not heard of the Queenbridge battle? Where we trounced Labour?"

This Tory is a militant vegetarian. I tell him about Pogo vegan cafe in Hackney. He is excited. I say it's Anarchist, the clientele sport Mohican haircuts and are laden with piercings while sitting on sofas sipping their mango soy shakes, that sort of thing. Not very Tory. He still wants to go.

He explains: "We are 'red' Tories as opposed to blue. Who legalised trade unions? Us! We were opposed to Whig policies. We believe in community."

He expands:"Trouble was the Conservatives have fetishised Margaret Thatcher for the last decade. She was great. But monetarism doesn't work. All the surrounding men put her on a pedestal rather like they worship the Virgin Mary in Southern Europe. Now with Cameron leading us, that is in the past..."

I interrupt: "But he's a lightweight isn't he?"

The Scottish Hackney Tory lowers his voice and says: "Well after yesterday, it's all different. People will perceive him differently..."

"You mean, the fact that his child has died will give him..." I search for the right word "gravitas?"

The Scots Tory looks genuinely shocked. He stammers something about going to the toilet, turns on his heel and leaves me standing there on my own.

Even though Mr Cameron's son was disabled and there was a certain inevitability about his death, there is no worse pain than losing a child. I truly sympathise, from the heart. But it doesn't mean I will vote for him.

Bad libel

2009-10-20T23:18:00.019+01:00

Singh, Goldacre and Cohen enjoying a pint at the Westminster Skeptics meeting.

Readers will know that I have been following the case of missing Madeleine McCann. I've been perturbed by the actions of their lawyers, Carter Ruck, who menace with libel anybody who questions the parent's story. They have managed to ban Goncalo Amaral's book 'The Truth of the Lie' and sent threatening legal letters to various websites and discussion forums. I recently spoke to a Sky News journalist who told me "Any news comes in, we are told to write it from the point of view of the McCanns. But you will notice, we never say 'abducted' Madeleine McCann, we always say 'missing' or 'disappeared'".

Whatever you think about this case, most people would agree that free speech is important. Particularly in Portugal which only recently became a democracy.

On the 12th of October, around 8.30pm, I saw a tweet from @guardianmedia. They were being gagged from reporting on Parliamentary proceedings in apparent contravention of the Bill of Rights. Checking the story it was clear that Carter Ruck were up to their tricks again. But this time they went too far. Myself and many other twitterers RTed and spread the word wide and far. One blogger found out the story was regarding toxic dumping by Trafigura. Soon the words #carterruck #trafigura and #guardiangagging were trending all over the world.

The night after I attended a talk at a new branch of Skeptics in Westminster, started by lawyer David Allen Green. Tonight's star speaker was Simon Singh, fighting a libel action brought by the British Association of Chiropractors; and guest speakers, journalist Nick Cohen, and science writer Ben Goldacre.

Newsnight were there too. In fact I could be seen on the news clip that night, taking pictures and jotting down notes.

David has an interesting history...when I met him over a year ago he was a Conservative. But it was clear when talking to him that he was no ordinary Conservative, in fact many of his opinions were as far left as mine. In contrast to Winston Churchill's (1) dictum that...

"If you're not a liberal when you're 20, you have no heart. If
you're not a conservative when you're 40, you have no head."

   ...many people I know, myself included, seem to venturing further left as they grow older. Perhaps this is the Thatcher generation growing up? Green wrote a brave blog post earlier this year, in which he describes how he is no longer a Tory. 
  The mood in the meeting room that night was triumphant. Twitter had overturned the injunction by Carter Ruck on the Guardian, perhaps things were not as bleak for Simon Singh as previously thought?
  David Allen Green thought that the court hearing could have been "the most important constitutional case of our generation". But Carter Ruck blinked first.  
  Simon Singh was going to face a similar ordeal the day after. He's a science writer who wrote in the Guardian that chiropractors made false claims as to the efficacy of their treatments, specifically in relation to curing asthma in children. He used the word 'bogus'. Whereas the rest of his article may have been fair comment, the use of this word provoked the British Chiropractic Association to sue for libel. Unusually they did not sue The Guardian, the paper that published the article, but Simon Singh personally. 
  Nick Cohen spoke to the meeting about how London has become the centre for libel tourism, where the international rich can seek redress in our courts, even if the supposed libel has not taken place in this country. He cited the example of Roman Polanski who sued the magazine Vanity Fair for libel, for they had suggested that he had made sexual advances to  a Norwegian woman on the way to the funeral of his murdered wife Sharon Tate. Cohen is scathing: 
"Polanski was a fugitive on the run from justice but he won against Vanity Fair. Polanski does not have a reputation to uphold, he's a self-confessed paedophile rapist." British justice bent over backwards for Polanski, enabling him to testify via video link form Paris, for if he came to Britain, he risked being extradited to the United States for his rape of a 13 year old girl thirty years ago.
  The judge found for Polanski saying we must not judge him on morals.
  Cohen finished by joking that since the Simon Singh case, he was staggered by the sight of geeks in arms. "The thing about scientists" he said to laughter from the room full of beards and specs "don't make an enemy of them. May the force be with you."
  Ben Goldacre spoke next. He fought a libel battle not so long ago and knows exactly what Singh is going through. He said that health was a particularly important area for freedom of speech. Peer review, criticism from others in the profession, is an essential part of medicine. The most popular and referenced medical papers were generally critical of certain drugs.
  Speaking frankly, Goldacre owned up that what Singh said may have been unfair. But that was not his intention, it was a "slip of the pen". But for this he is being persecuted through the courts. 
"It is ridiculous and dangerous for a discussion about the  pros and cons of a treatment to be held in an atmosphere of fear.
 
  
Simon is lucky, he isn't alone and  has fought the action. But with the libel laws at present, people are basically being told to 'shut up'. 'Shut up' is the argument of people with no arguments"
  Simon Singh stood up to speak to a huge cheer. He talked of the expense of libel in Britain; it is a hundred times more expensive here than anywhere else in Europe, meaning only the rich can afford to sue for libel. Another worrying aspect of our libel laws is that the United States are having to change their laws to cope with our  libel laws.  The Americans reformed their libel laws in 1964, during the Civil Rights movement. 
  One of the issues is that along with the fact that Singh is being sued personally, he is not being sued by an individual but an association with all the structure and support that bestows. It 's David versus Goliath. We saw this in the Mclibel trial, the longest ever in British courts, lasting two and a half years, which was a PR disaster for McDonalds,  backfiring badly.
  As a lawyer from the city, David Allen Green explains, clients come with complaints. They don't know the technicalities, they just want someone to shut up. Some times it's copyright, sometimes it's contempt of court. It's ridiculously easy to sue for libel.
  The Lords say that companies which have shareholders can sue. 
  There are four degrees of libel, Green explains:
  
Being Sued
Articles being spiked
Articles heavily lawyered
and perhaps the most worrying, articles which are not written at all, the result of self-censorship.
           'Just as politics cannot be separated from life, life cannot be separated from politics. People who consider themselves to be non-political are no different; they've already been assimilated by the dominant political culture--they just don't feel it any more.' Pramoedya Ananta Toer

The situation now, with bloggers, Facebook and Twitter, with everybody writing and reporting, harks back to the 17th century fashion for pamphleteering. As Cohen says "The net makes hacks of all of us. The law sees all of us as publishers."

The campaign for libel reform is not just about science. We are not getting good journalism as a result of libel law. It is a maxim that you can say what you like about politicians, mostly they are fair game. But The City, which has collapsed this economy, has been untouchable. In 2008, a Danish newspaper investigating Icelandic banks, received a writ, preventing them from reporting what they found. We all know what happened to the Icelandic banks.

Singh gets up and answers questions: "Is the Guardian supporting you?"

Singh: "The Guardian were helpful for the first six or seven weeks. They offered the right of reply or clarification to the BCA. But they wanted a full out apology. The Guardian agreed. However I can't apologize for something that I believe is true. I can't have my wiki page saying that I caved."

Ben Goldacre: "Three months my life was dominated by my libel case, sitting in the dock. It cost £535,000 for my defence. We won but still after costs we were £175, 000 out. It took a year and a half of my life altogether."

Singh:"I've kept in touch with The Guardian. The problem for them was they were not actually being sued, I was. I understood their position: If they backed me, even if we won, they would lose at least £175k. They thought 'If we lose, we lose a million. This is during a time when we are laying off journalists.' How could they justify that? At that time they were being sued by Tesco, Elton John, Ben's case, too much going on at that time. If the Guardian helped with the defence, they could be implicated."

Local newspapers don't even bother writing about anything controversial anymore. They can't afford it.

More news on the Simon Singh case and Superlibel can be read at the JackofKent blog.

Personally I don't find it a particularly outrageous claim that chiropractors can help childhood asthma with manipulations of the body and massage. In France kinesitherapists do this all the time, paid for by the French National Health. I'd certainly rather that than an inhaler which is what British GPs hand out at the drop of a hat. But then I'm not a scientist, I'm just a mother, who relies on her own instincts, knowledge, observation and connection with her child to determine what is best for her health. In the past, I've found I am generally right and the doctor is generally wrong.

(1) Although looking further into this quote it appears it might be a mistake to attribute it to Churchill.

Battle of Hastings

2009-10-18T15:10:00.003+01:00

The teen went to Hastings yesterday to do geography coursework on tourism. She got up early on her day off to get the train there.

"Did you have a nice time on the journey with your friends? "I ask

"Oh stop sounding so homosexual about it. Soooo gay. 'Did you have a nice time with your friends?' "she mimics in a smarmy mummy voice.

I continue: "Well how was it?"

"It was jokes. We had the two most liberal teachers come with us, they slept the whole journey but made sure they were in another carriage. In our carriage you could see how annoyed all the adults were. I swear every time my friend laughed I could see this guy sighing. She's got a really loud laugh.

"and Hastings? What did you think of it?" I asked.

"It's a shit hole. Nothing there, just some shops and the sea. We spent our whole time in Macdonalds then bought some beers for the journey back"

"Did you manage to ask the questions for your coursework?"

She'd spent days preparing a questionnaire. They were supposed to ask tourists what brought them there, where they stayed, what they did. I said she should ask whether tourists would appreciate a home restaurant in Hastings.

"No way!" she said, staring at me with incredulity

"NO way"
she repeated just in case I hadn't understood the first time.

"There were only residents, no tourists. And the couple of tourists we found when we asked 'could you spare 5 minutes to answer this questionnaire?' refused to talk to us"

I think about this. Of course, what tourist will visit Hastings in October? Really the teachers should have thought this through.

" It would have been better to do it in London, at least there are tourists here. But my teachers said it would be good for us to see another town. Hastings has got the highest suicide rate in Britain or something. The funniest bit was when someone's dog shit in the middle of the tourist office floor. When we went back a couple of hours later, they were still trying to clear it up"

Party

2009-09-21T08:38:00.008+01:00

The teen had a bit of a party while I was away this weekend. It's the first time I've ever left her alone for any amount of time. I gave extra keys to the neighbours and asked them to keep an eye.

I knew she'd have a couple of mates over...but when I arrived home, she sighed and said "I'm so tired"

"How come?"

"From all the tidying up..." She looks at me regretfully but continues bravely "they were really messy"

"Didn't your friends help you?"

"No. I had to clear up all the sick." She brightens "It was cool, we got three bottles of vodka for £15 down the road. They knew we were underage."

"Then my friend made out with one of the boys in the shed."

Internally I gulp.

"What exactly does 'making out' consist of?"I ask gingerly, imagining phone calls from the parents...my daughter lost her virginity in your shed...

She groans "Well first you have snogging, then making out, then fingering, then blowjob, then full sex, then licking out."

We've always been quite open about sex but even I was a bit taken aback by this hierarchy of sex territory gained. I'm also interested that fellatio is higher up the scale than cunnilingus.

"So making out is restricted to kissing and tits?" I pry, drawing an imaginary triangle between my mouth and breast area.

My teen rolls her eyes.

"Is this over the bra or under the bra?"

Now she's looking annoyed "Oh for god's sake mum... "

She won't tell me how 'far' she has gone but I don't think it's beyond the 'making out' stage.

But I feel uncomfortable at the idea of some spotty lank haired youth getting a grope of my baby daughter's intimate parts. It doesn't seem right somehow. Them getting that for free. I briefly wish I lived in a culture when I could lock her up in a tower, cover her in a veil and charge a king's ransom for the privilege of marrying her. I also start to feel unaccountably angry, I'm not even sure why. When I lost my virginity, quite late actually, I was almost 18, my mum and dad were horrible to me, calling me a 'slut' for weeks. I now understand that impulse. Your children having sex, even if it's just kissing or petting, feels like a betrayal, almost infidelity. It's like they are no longer your children. There is a raw feeling that they have been besmirched.

I guess you get used to it.

This was a warm up for the real party she is going to have in a couple of weeks.

Parent's evening

2009-09-23T07:55:00.003+01:00

Tonight I have to go to the parent's evening at the school. My teen has given me strict instructions.

"What are you wearing?" She demands anxiously.

"Um, that black knitted dress I bought in Italy..." I reply

"Ok." Then "What shoes?"

I look down. I'm wearing comfortable black leather open toed sandals from M & S.

"NOT those" she says "something nice"

"Hair?" I continue, slightly sarcastically "Makeup?"

"Makeup. Wear some. But NOT lipstick" I am instructed.

"Then if you arrive early, do not speak to me"my teen commands "if you do see me, just do this..."

She juts her chin up in the air, a brief acknowledgement.

I splutter "So I'm supposed to act like I hardly know you?"

She continues "and DON'T talk to my friends. Don't ask them their names. Don't ask how they are. Don't tell them off for smoking or bunning"

"Bunning?"

Her eyes roll.

"You are sooo old. Bunning is smoking a joint. It comes from the word 'burning' said with a Jamaican accent" she explains patiently. "At the rond point(a small square outside the school), everybody is bunning. Even adults bun. You see them coming after work, sitting down on the wall and bunning up."

"That rond point seems to be the most popular meeting place in London" I remark archly.

"Yeah well our school is popular innit. Kids from other schools come to hang out, cos they finish earlier than us. Boys from local schools come to chat up girls"

It's the age old thing of boys trying to pull posh totty from the private schools.

"One boy, he's slept with like 50 girls from our school. But he is gorgeous, really buff"

('Buff' means good looking, readers. 'Butters' means ugly as in 'butt ugly')

She's not finished...
"When you are in the meeting with other parents, do not ask questions. I know you, you are always asking questions."

I look doubtful.

"Try to blend in mum" she says, softening a little.

Tropezien tarts

2009-08-18T19:36:00.004+01:00

The famous 'tarte tropezienne'.

Some call them 16/61's , a friend of mine dubbed them 'Don't Look Now's' after the Nick Roeg movie in which a child's figure in red suddenly turned round and was in fact a wizened dwarf. I call them Tropezien tarts, in part a nod to the famous cake created in St. Tropez but also a tribute to the world centre for women who, from the back look young and from the front look, well, their age.
Femmes d'une certain age in France don't just settle, British style, into elasticated waist bands and comfy shoes. They write books like 'French women don't get fat', live on a mix of caffeine, slimming suppositories and steak tartare. They obsessively 'maintien leur ligne'.
The women of St Tropez all look like Brigitte Bardot. Now.
When you get pregnant in France, the doctor spends his whole time exhorting you not to put on weight, you must 'fait attention'. You are allowed to put on a kilo a month only. Most British women put on three stone, more than double.
French women may not get fat, but they aren't much of a laugh. There ain't no sistahood in French culture, despite boasting such luminary feminists and forward thinking women as Simone de Beauvoir, Colette and Chanel.
If your man is unfaithful to you in France, everyone will shrug 'et alors'. You will get scant sympathy.
I do admire the fierce determination not to age gracefully however. My favourites are the one's that dye their hair bright red, in the style of Edith Piaf or 70s nightclub owner Regine, as if to say "I'm not grey!"

Below: not before and after, but back and front.... Click on the photos to see close-ups

My 15 year old daughter has a dress like this...

Shoes from the lady above. Hmmm.

After 30 you have to be careful with frou frou skirts and lace.

Pushing that 'yummy mummy' look a little too far...

The top half Parisian chic, the bottom half, St Tropez bohemia!

She looks chic, this one.

You feel naked without a little doggy in St. Tropez.

Lovely sun hats only 15 euros

The world's poshest car park is in St Tropez

Piped music and a floor so clean you could eat off it...

Even the homeless in St. Tropez are tanned and happy! Oh yeah.

Sailors from the yachts that line the bay

The conversational

2009-08-04T17:02:00.005+01:00

Neil Boorman on the right.

The conversational 'menu'

Michelle on the left

Thought provoking cards on the subject of luxury

I love talking but would I like an evening of 'guided' conversation? This is the aim of Michelle Newell, a young Australian woman who has started The Conversational, a monthly event in Soho.

The theme of the night that I attended was 'Luxury', particularly pertinent in today's recession. We were asked to write on a little card something we desire that we would consider a luxury. Answers were varied from 'an endless supply of cashmere', 'a private library with a view of the Welsh coastline' to 'a husband' (er, that was me).

The author Neil Boorman who wrote 'Bonfire of the Brands' attended, giving a little talk on why he burned all of his luxury branded goods in Trafalgar Square.

He described his addiction to brands, how a purchase made him feel good "little confidence pills", but this was a 'high' that didn't last.

We asked him "How do you shop now?"

"No Prada, that's for sure, just simple generic goods. Vintage, although of course that has it's own chic, it's own 'brand'"

"But what about quality? Don't good brands give you goods that last?"

"That's a myth, luxury brands are often made in the same Asian factory as Primark for instance. 'British' brands like Burberry aren't made in Britain. I once spent a fortune on some fashionable flip flops. After two weeks they broke. I took them back, they were replaced. After two more weeks, the new pair broke, again they were replaced. This happened again. In the end the shop staff said to me 'well they aren't really for wearing'. Brands form identity. If I wanted to feel confident for a business meeting I'd wear Christian Dior. I had different brands for different situations."

I think of Cath Kidston. Her designs are a nod towards the nostalgia of the 1950s housewife. In an era of 'juggling' and 'having it all' working women love the fantasy of a simple life in which all you had to do is keep yourself nice with a cocktail ready for hubby when he gets in from work. Cath Kidston plays on all of that 'surrendered wife' stuff, which is why it is so successful. Again sites like Etsy, which sells home-made goods by individuals, is an example of this backlash against branding. (In Neil's book, he points out that 'branding' has an older meaning, something that you did to slaves and animals).

Neil again: "My mother made her own clothes. You didn't need to rely on brands, people had the confidence to throw a look together. We need to return to craftmanship"

I ask Neil: "To what extent is it a class thing? The working class tend to ape upper class behaviour, as if by buying the same brand you will become acceptable in that class. That's why chavs buy Burberry"

Neil: "Absolutely. In London smokers tend to buy American brands of cigarettes like Marlborough. If someone in London buys Benson & Hedges you think, do you live on a council estate? Are you from up North? I come from working class background in the Thatcherite era. All the pikey kids had the best stuff: the Star Wars lunchbox, the Pringle sweaters..."

"It's a vicious circle: you spend more time at work to earn more to buy brands. Time is not a luxury, it's a neccessity because it's finite. Brands are the consolation prize for working."

Somebody says "there is no replacement for glamour though.."

Neil interrupts "Glamour is a cold, lonely place to be...look at Victoria Beckham, she never smiles, her skin is too tight."

I ask: "So warmth is the opposite of glamour?"

This is a subject worth thinking about. And that's the aim of The Conversational, to inspire, forge new pathways of thinking...

Next to me a man sums up class in a nutshell:

"My mum's butcher said if a woman bought streaky bacon, he called her 'love'. If she bought 'back' bacon, he called her Madam"

I wonder about class, branding and food.

Neil adds:

"The whole Fairtrade Organic trend is a middle class guilt trip. Being green is a status symbol. We don't have the luxury to grown our own food."

Epicurus, a philosopher who lived in 341 BC, who has become synonymous with excess, luxury, indulgence, actually recommended escaping the idea of status with a frugal 'self-sufficiency' life style.

The roots of the word luxury are discussed here. From the 13th to the 17th century luxury was a perjorative term. It changed when monarchical courts became public and everybody aspired to flat plates and salt.

"We all live in a civilisation of kings now. We don't eat in season, we are all fat" said Neil.

Another question:"Who would break the law to achieve their luxury?" A few hands up.

Andy Warhol once said "Nobody can buy a better coca cola" Modern brands can mean either democracy or homogenisation depending on your point of view. I once met a Coca cola executive who explained that the company aims to provide coke at affordable prices in every country of the world.

Then ensues a discussion on how Mexican coke is better for it uses real sugar cane.

Afterwards I ask Michelle why she set this up:

"I missed the sort of conversations you have when you are a student where you exchange ideas not just talk about mundane everyday things.
It's a salon des idées, but also an opportunity to come together and talk about meaningful things"

I say that it's very un-British. One of the things I liked about living in France is their lack of embarrassment in talking about philosophy and politics. British people are funnier, but any sort of intellectualism is frowned upon here.

"It's very un-Australian too" says Michelle "But I believe the time is right for this kind of thing, anything that promotes community spirit, like your underground restaurant"

Free: the talks will take place monthly at 23 Romilly Street in Soho. To attend contact Michelle for these stimulating evenings at www.theconversational.co.uk

Ma vie en rosé

2008-08-07T17:51:00.017+01:00

I spent the year 2005-6 living in Provence. I think everyone has a South of France dream at the back of their minds...
I came here because I was determined not to put my teenager into the local 'sink comp'.(1) So I was prepared to move country. I enrolled her at the nearest French comprehensive which was brilliant. In France everybody puts their kids into the local school. Private school costs peanuts, around a £100 a month, and is chosen for religious reasons, as they do not teach any religion in French State schools (separation between church and state very important here).So unlike Britain, particularly London, where the sole subject of conversation between parents of 8 to 11 year olds centres on what secondary school can you get your kid into...France has a comprehensive system that works... Lots of lovely well brought up children. Good teachers. Good facilities. School bus.
School lunches were a bit of a problem. There was me thinking all the kids would have tiny pîchets of red wine with lunch, hors d'oeuvres, plats principals, cheese course, dessert and mini expresso coffees. That is, more or less, the menu except for, disappointingly, the wine. How many English schools serve goats cheese and crackers with lunch?

Trouble is my teenager is a vegetarian, always has been. She was coming home starving. They mix everything with meat, she complained. I stomp up the school and meet the hefty cook. She comes into the school office wiping her hands on her apron, ready to do battle. Sweetly I ask if she can put aside some of the pasta or the rice or whatever...without meat so that my teenager gets something to eat. "We don't do all that religious stuff here" she declares "just like we don't allow veils or crucifixes". In France, vegetarianism is a kooky religion.
The mothers outside the school gate, being near to Saint Tropez, are stunningly good looking. High heels, hair coiffed, full make-up (brown lip-liner a particular fave), colour co-ordinated outfits are par for the course here. So unlike our own dear England where most of us mums rock up bleary eyed, in trackie bottoms and hair (Croydon facelift style) in a scrunchie.
The kids are pretty chic too. No uniform in France. The girls are wearing the latest fashions, jewellery, make-up, heels, tiny skirts over long brown legs. Plus there are school yard fashions. My teenager soon learnt that to wear your backpack high up your back was the ultimate nerdy thing to do. You have to wear the back pack with the straps so long it is hanging down by the backs of your knees. Thereby removing any advantage one might gain from a backpack. This is important in France because all the kids have to carry all their textbooks, exercise books ect in every day. There are no lockers. The bags weigh a ton. French school kids have terrible back problems as a result.
Surreal waiting outside the school leaning next against a palm tree. Hard for the kids too, trying to concentrate on academia while outside there is beautiful weather, a beach, tennis courts, horse riding etc etc.
My teenager was very brave, starting secondary 'big' school in a foreign country. The first term she was terrified, by the second term she'd gained enough confidence to start being naughty at school. She even grew used to kissing everyone she met on both cheeks which made getting on the school bus quite a lengthy process.
She settled in just fine. It was me that had the problems. Being a single mum in a foreign country in the countryside is no fun. I was bloody lonely. The French were not friendly even though I speak French. France is not a 'mates' culture. They hang out with their family. The ex-pats were not in general the sort of people that I would mix with in London. Many of them were a bit 'Del-boy', absconding fathers or worse, actual criminals on the run. There were hardly any women (2).
It's an ex-pat cliché but they did all drink loads. After a couple of months my kidneys hurt from drinking so much rosé. I grew to like a lethal short called a Slippery Nipple: Sambucca, Baileys, with a Grenadine nipple on top.
I was obliged to spend time with the bored British mums, none of whom were single (3). A typical day would be taking kid to school then meeting at the bar opposite Leclerc. You'd do your shopping and then order a few rosés or kirs. Cocktail hour started at 11. All they ever talked about was plastic surgery, diets and how much their husbands annoyed them. Next thing you knew it was tea time so you'd drive home gingerly, quickly tidy up the house so it looked like you'd done something productive, brush your teeth and make dinner.
Some days though I was so depressed and lonely I didn't even bother to go to the shopping centre (which was basically the only place open in winter...off-season is deathly dull). I just switched on the TV which had Sky. I would watch all the medical and legal dramas and then start on the True Movies channel. I knew I'd watched too many True Movies when they started to repeat the same ones a few months later. I could have pretty much written the script for one myself. A typical storyline would have a psychologically disturbed mother/brave divorcee, who met with Prince Charming/axe murderer who would then steal her child and she would spend the rest of the movie overcoming the illness/beating the odds in some way. It appeals to housewives' worst fears.
In the evenings, on non-school nights, aching with isolation (for there was no work off-season), I'd drag myself to the only place open, an English pub. It was clear that I didn't fit in. One Liverpudlian said to me, you'd get on with M, he's your type, he's got a bookshelf, like, full of books.

I met with this guy M. I saw the famous 'bookshelf' which was singular and measured approximately 15 inches.M, however, informed me that he didn't believe in fiction and would only allow reference books such as dictionaries on this famous bookshelf.
Sometimes you'd meet someone, get on quite well and then further along in the conversation discover that they'd killed someone back in England and could never return. Nobody was who they seemed.

One of the British mums, whose son was grown up, kept talking about her boyfriend. I saw a picture of this boyfriend and he was very good looking and much younger than her. Over the months she continued to talk about him. I asked why he never visited. She said he was working on a building project in England. One day though, to prove his love for her to me, she showed me a long hand written letter from him. Suddenly the penny dropped. I asked a mutual friend if he were in prison. How did you guess? she asked. Well, nobody writes hand written letters anymore, especially not 'successful' business men. The lack of visits now made sense(4).

1. So called because it is a 'sink' comprehensive school, the standard State education. Other parents also contort themselves to avoid sending their kids to a bad local school. They buy studio flats in the catchment area of a good State school if they have the money, sometimes pretending that they have split up. It is a mark of shame if you have only gotten your kid into a bad school. Other parents pretend to be religious. It's amazing how many children suddenly start attending church at the age of 10. This is to get into a church school. I knew one Jewish mum who got a job at a Church of England school in order to gain entry for her daughter. This whole subject is worth a post in itself.

2. This was because there is no work for women off-season, that is, mid-October to beginning of May. There is only cleaning. The men however have plenty of well paid work... building. For mothers it is particularly difficult because French summer school holidays last 10 weeks from the end of June till September, so effectively you have to work, not see your children and pay for child care in order to work the season. Hence dearth of women in winter. You'd think that'd be good for pulling purposes but let's face it, French prime minister Edith Cresson was right, British men don't really like women, and have a marked preference for football and beer.

3. Many of them came from up North so they were quite old-fashioned. Their husbands didn't like their friends coming over in the evening. If I was round their house, I had to vacate the premises before hubbie got home for tea which of course had to be on the table as soon as he got in or they'd get in trouble. A culture shock for an independant London mum.

4. A similar incident: I was talking to a very glamourous lady at a baby shower. She bemoaned her life since her recent divorce. I was feeling sympathetic until another woman told me that the reason this lady was divorced was because she'd had an affair with the pool boy and decided to get rid of her now inconvenient husband by shopping him to the police for hawking fake Louis Vuitton handbags. He was now in the local jail. All very Desperate Housewives.

First day at 'Work Experience'

2009-06-08T22:30:00.013+01:00

My teen was a nervous wreck this weekend. She wanted to 'practice' the journey to the record shop where she will work this week. I'm quite proud of her actually. She got this work experience all by herself. Just went into the shop and asked. Her best mate is doing her work experience with Sir Paul McCartney but then the best mate's mum works for Stella.

Before going, my daughter was worried...

"They are going to expect me to know everything about music. Mum. Tell me everything you know about music."

"Of course they aren't going to expect that. They know you are only 15".

This morning though I gave her a lift.

"You are NOT coming in" she commanded.

"Of course not".

I know the score. She's got to look grown up in front of them.

At the end of the day...

"How was it?"

She looks tired.

"It took me until 3pm to get up the courage to ask if I could go for lunch. I was told I could have an hour. Of course I was back in five minutes. I got a sandwich but my hands were so dirty I couldn't eat it. So I'm starving."

"Why were your hands so dirty?"

"The job they gave me, in the back room, was to sort out a huge pile of Cd's, match the case to the Cd. They'd been laying around for a year. And I really wanted to go to the toilet but I was too nervous to ask if they had one. When I found it, the sink had no soap".

"How were the people?"

"Well I was expecting 'Hi-fidelity'. I got 'Hi-fidelity'.(1) They are all men and they are quite fat. One of them asked me who Ernest Hemingway was. I thought he was joking but said 'he's a writer isn't he?". Turned out he really didn't know. They only know about music."

"Today a customer came in and asked for a record by the Rolling Stones before they were the Rolling Stones. The assistant didn't know what they were called. The manager said he should be sacked. But I think it was a joke." She pauses "He was surprised I like Morrissey."

"What did they expect you to like? S Club 7?" I ask.

Then she sighed "I'm sick of listening to music. Had to listen to it for ten hours".

She continued:"Groups send in their Cd's hoping to get stocked. The manager spends every day listening to these Cd's. He is always screaming. All day. Saying stuff like 'These groups are shit. Why don't they give up?'. He chucks their Cd's in the bin after half a song. Then I hear him phone the group and say "I'm afraid your work isn't right for us'."

More..."but one group I liked, so he gave me the Cd and said he would stock them. That was the best bit of the day."

She thinks again "I bet my friend doesn't have to do this for Sir Paul McCartney".

(1) The book by Nick Hornby revolving around men working in a record shop.

Game

2009-06-19T23:17:00.003+01:00

Another day, another TV researcher asking
"Do you think we could pick your brains? Come film? Find out everything you know?"

"Sure. What's the fee?"

"Oh I'm afraid we don't have a budget."

Why the fuck not? They are getting paid aren't they? To send people like me, people who actually know what they are talking about, begging emails.

Or maybe not. One I spoke to today said, when I suggested that he book for the restaurant if he really wanted to know what it's like, said
"Oh I can't afford it"
You work in TV and you haven't got 25 quid to book a place? What's that about?

At least four TV companies are doing a show...all of them variations on the theme 'Home dining'."We get couples to open a restaurant in their living room" the researchers announce gleefully, reinventing the wheel.

'Come dine with me' is a huge success. They want a different but similar concept. Really similar. Nothing too different. It's like a scene from The Player.

Nobody has actually done a show on (newly) established home restaurants. You know why? Because authenticity is not the name of the game here.

"haha I'm not a documentary maker" said the impoverished young 'producer' "I make entertainment. In fact you probably wouldn't be very good for our show. You are too professional. It's all about the journey you see. We want viewers to engage with the journey. You are further along the journey. We want tears, frustration, panic. 24 hours to turn your home into a restaurant. That kind of thing".

The journey? I inwardly groan. Do none of these people have an original thought in their heads?

You want a journey? I'll give you journey. I'm a single mum. A real one. No hidden bloke. No training. No money. This recession? Don't make me laugh. I've spent years without money. I've also spent years making my flat nice by picking up furniture off the street, crockery from flea markets. I learnt to cook because I couldn't afford to go to restaurants. A year ago I took out an extra mortgage to fulfill a long held dream...an Aga. I thought, how old do I have to be before I can have what I want? Just do it.Find the money somehow.

In 2000, the year I moved into this flat, fleeing my Camden studio flat for a larger space in which to bring up my child, I turned on the TV one night. I'd been clearing the jungle-like garden all day. My hands were like claws, dirt ingrained in them.

Exhausted, I numbly flipped channels. On Channel 4 there was this weird programme. A bunch of young people, some in bikinis, sitting about in a house.

One of them was coming out with this story about his wife dying in a car crash or something. He was sweating.

Cut to another scene. The young people go to a little room, in turns, sit on a big chair, talk to the camera. They are unselfconscious, natural. And even when they are unnatural, they are natural. They talk about their problems with the others, about boredom. It's sunny outside.

At first I was tempted to turn over. The pace was slow. It was all a bit dull. But it grew on you. Watching it was a Zen experience. You were watching nothing, minutiae. It was rather soothing. One of the guys had a guitar. One of the girls flirted. One woman, who turned out to be a lesbian nun, came across as thoughtful and intelligent, a rare thing on TV. Another of the boys was Northern, with an impenetrable Newcastle accent.

I found myself watching it every night. I started to feel sorry for the Northern boy. He was 'nominated' to leave every week by the housemates but always kept in when it came to the viewer's vote. He seemed nice but was obviously irritating to live with.

The sweaty guy continued to lie. He got caught. There was a confrontation. He said to the camera in the diary room, memorably "if you live by the sword you die by the sword". It was a bravura display of 'Je ne regrette rien'.

Along with me, the rest of the country had also gradually become interested. In fact, bit by bit, we were all watching these young people. And what was so delicious about it is, they clearly had no idea. At one point helicopters, paid for, I believe, by The Sun newspaper, flew over the house, trying to get a glimpse into what was happening inside. The 'housemates' inside, remarked upon the circulating helicopters, oblivious to the fact that they were the story.

This was great TV. It was never as good afterwards. These contestants were virgins. Every following series included inmates that had had their TV cherry popped, with all the knowing and degrading complicity that goes with that.

I stopped watching.

Last week another series started. We are now post-Jade, the ignorant girl who made a million, ruined her reputation in public and resussitated it by dying.

But they cranked it up again. My daughter turned it on for the opening episode in which the chosen housemates enter the house. Once assembled, Big Brother called a male contestant into the diary room.
"If you want to become a housemate you must find someone who is willing to have their eyebrows shaved off and have glasses and a moustache drawn on them with an indelible pen. You have three minutes."

He ran out of the diary room, breathless, explained. One girl, an attractive black girl, volunteered. He shaved her eyebrows, drew on the funny glasses and moustache. Except it wasn't funny. It was Abu Ghraib. Degradation. Exploitation. Removal of identity. In this era of economic difficulty, when young people are most likely nervous about their future, the dreadful prospect of working very very hard for very very little money in boring jobs, Big Brother was laughing at them for aspiring to be something more. And encouraging us to do the same.

Hahaha. Aren't you ridiculous? We are supposed to think. How desperate are you?

I don't feel that way. I feel cringing embarrassment, shame. These young people, some of them little older than my daughter, exposed and ridiculed. Forever known as 'that Big Brother contestant'.

It's 'They shoot horses don't they?' the book by Horace McCoy in which depression era couples, starving, must dance for days on end, the rules preventing them from proper sleep.

And now every TV programme is like that. Competance, grace, talent is not enough. TV wants "the journey". Ask Susan Boyle.

Our Madeleine

2009-05-03T22:00:00.014+01:00

“We want a big event to raise awareness that she is still missing (...) It wouldn’t be a one-year anniversary, it will be sooner than that” (Gerry McCann on June 3, 2007, one month after Madeleine's disappearance.)

It is two years since Madeleine McCann went missing. From the very first interview with her parents, something struck me as peculiar about the official story. Generally I avoid news stories of missing and abused children. It's too painful. I don't want to know.

This time however, my antennae went up. Kate McCann did not act...sincerely... Some of her early comments regarding her 'missing' daughter were inappropriate "Whoever's got her, Madeleine will be giving them a piece of her mind". Asked to talk to Madeleine, after all, if abducted, she and the kidnapper could be watching TV, Kate looked down and said "she knows we love her". Not the behaviour of a mother seeking her child, more like the behaviour of a grieving frightened mother.

I have lots of theories about why the press have not properly reported on this 'abduction', why the McCanns have been treated with kid gloves. Several female TV presenters supported the McCanns. I believe this is down to working mother guilt; they saw themselves in Kate McCann, a professional woman who found it hard to cope with the loss of status entailed with becoming a stay-at-home mother. They wouldn't want to criticize another middle-class mother who relies heavily on nannies and paid help to bring up children. These exhausted mothers may also have had occasion to play fast and loose with the rules of wise parenting in the interests of having a break. It is little known but the McCanns left their children alone not just that fateful night, but every single night of their holiday. This is unheard of.

Two years ago I travelled around Mexico and Guatemala with my then 13 year old daughter. One night she had fallen asleep in the hotel room. I was hungry, I wanted to go out to find something to eat. But I didn't. There is no way that I would leave my 13 year old daughter alone in a hotel room in a foreign country. Some may call that over-protective.

I made mistakes when I was bringing up my daughter. I was alone. Unlike Kate McCann, I did not have a husband, several friends, the money to pay for creches when I went on holiday with my child. Once I fell asleep on a beach while my child, only three, played on the edge of the sea. She was wearing one of those swimming costumes stuffed with polystyrene, so she wouldn't have drowned. But I still feel guilty about that lapse to this day.

Bringing up children is a series of near-misses. Most of us get lucky.

I don't hate the McCanns. I feel sorry for them. I believe there was some kind of accident which they couldn't admit to, especially being abroad. I do wish they would put everybody out of their misery, themselves even, and especially the Portuguese, by telling the truth.

There are rumours of political pressure applied by Gordon Brown on the Portuguese government to drop the investigation into what happened to Madeleine McCann. Another black mark for Gordon.

Goncalo Amaral was the detective in charge of the case. He believes that Madeleine McCann died in the flat on the 3rd of May and her body was hidden. He was pulled off the case after he made the McCanns into 'arguidos', a Portuguese legal term which implies that they are not exactly suspects but hold sensitive information regarding the case. Here is the film he has made: he may be wrong, but it is certainly of interest:

A clearer case of child neglect, this time from the 'underclass', and this time gloves off from the press...The killer of baby P, it turns out, has also raped a two year old girl, most likely baby P's sister. Appalling though this is, I yearn to read a more nuanced report on the truth of this situation. Why did the mother, from some accounts a perfectly loving mother before she met her boyfriend, the killer, put up with his abuse of her children? What's the background of the killer? Was he abused as a child? Or is he just evil?

I came across a website in the last few days which talked about Baby P's mother in the most abusive terms. I've seen Facebook groups that want to form a lynch mob to kill Baby P's mother and the social workers. Do they think this is helpful?

I know social workers who will not work with children because of the pressure and the flak they will receive if they make a mistake. Social workers do not get enough funding. They are handling too many cases. Some of them are ham-strung by political correctness it seems. But whatever they do, they get criticized. In the Cleveland scandal of a few years back, social workers and hospital doctors were hounded for putting children into care, as suspected victims of sexual abuse. The young inexperienced social worker, Lisa Arthurworrey, from the Anna/Victoria Climbie case has been suicidal and house-bound for years since her mistake was exposed.

Now social workers are scorned for not removing children from families soon enough.

We feel frustrated and upset when we hear that young children are tortured and abused. We want to take it out on someone.

Bad things will always happen. Ultimately, if someone is determined to commit a crime, there's not much anybody can do about it.

April Fools

2009-04-02T07:53:00.014+01:00

No comment neccessary.

Vics telling 'em how it is.

The street kitchen.

Trying to reason with the riot cops. Things kicking off.

A sea of tents.

The entrance to the Climate Camp

Tentage decorated with slogans. Bicycle powered sound systems.

Workers above, looking down. 'Why do we have to pay' sign in front of line of riot cops.

Climbing on buildings.

Trying to reason with the riot police.

This kid was hit by truncheons, has bloody face.

Good vibes at the Climate Camp early on.

Grime artist 'Riddum'.

Wheelchair protestors were everywhere.

Yesterday I went down late to the G20 protests, missing the action at the Royal Bank of Scotland, to the Climate Camp pitched on Bishopsgate street near Liverpool Street Station. I've done one of these before a few years ago, when we all pitched tents in Trafalgar Square, to protest against the Iraq invasion. I remember it being very cold and noisy with local drunks constantly harassing us.

Coming out of Liverpool St. station I noticed several very clean-cut looking men with suspiciously casual clothes. Bankers were advised to dress down for the day in case they got set upon by protestors. At the same time protestors were told to 'dress like a banker for a day'. All very Saturnalia, the Roman festival where the masters dressed as slaves and served them for a day.

Climate Camp had taken over a whole block, with maybe a hundred pop-up tents, each spray-painted with slogans. There was a kitchen, baked potatoes with baked beans for a suggested donation of £1.50p, and a compost toilet.

My friend Chris Knight, University of East London professor and Radical Anthropologists guru (see link in sidebar) had already left, hoping to galvanise people to descend upon the university campus to protest his suspension. He'd made a few inflammatory remarks on radio "hanging bankers from lamposts". I'm amazed that they suspended him. He's been fermenting revolution in his classes for years. It's not exactly news. An alternative summit was supposed to happen at UEL but the university was shut down for two days. I'm also surprised that Barking Bateria, the UEL samba band has not protested more strongly at this.

Chris' colleague Steve, just back from studying chimps in the Congo, was at Climate Camp.

"What's going to happen about Chris?" I asked.

"I think the university will quietly drop the whole thing once this protest is over. Chris is a chapel leader. They won't want the hassle. But it must be said that anthropology (Chris' dept) has only nine students this year. There used to be a hundred. It's become too expensive to study any 'non-essential' subjects now. All the students want to study business."(1)

I found the samba band, RoR, decked in their usual colours of pink and silver. Ms Canal Explorer had been outside the Royal Bank of Scotland when it was smashed and admitted that the samba band was in some way a catalyst for the protestors at that point. Ms CE and myself are both Space Hijackers (myself less frequently). They'd all been arrested outside News International with their tank 'disguised' as a riot squad van. (Facebook group: Free the SPA)

They are now bailed away from the Westminster/City/Newham area for a week as they refused to take a caution.

The camp was peaceful with a party atmosphere. Student types were sitting around drinking beer. Some workers were looking down from the tall buildings surrounding us. (There were reports of bankers waving tenners at protestors). A bicycle powered sound system was cranked up. Rythms of Resistance were backing a 'grime' vocalist called riddum when the call went out to strengthen the southern perimeter of the camp. Riot police vans were parked all down the side of the camp and they had been picking off protestors (probably ones they recognised from the earlier fracas at RBS) and arresting them. We stopped playing and moved down the other end. I could see hundreds of protestors with their hands up chanting

'shame on you, shame on you'.

A young man had blood down his face.

"What happened?"

"I was just standing there when a policeman started hitting me with his baton".

Film by Rikki Blue, friend of mine. Don't believe the mainstream press.

Suddenly a row of riot police were closing in all around the camp. Somebody texted that fires were being started around the City, that sporadic rioting was occurring elsewhere. Protestors were standing eye to eye with the riot police, hands up in a peaceful gesture, asking for explanations of their behaviour. The samba band started to play again. This strengthened the mood. I've said it before but I'll repeat it. The drumming is a powerful weapon. The samba band is key to controlling the crowd. We can push it forward, rile it up, calm it down. (I'm not always sure that the samba band are aware of their own power, that at times the fact that they keep playing can prolong a situation such as outside the Israeli embassy (link to story) which would have fizzled out naturally.)

Excellent video reportage by SuperSan, a member of Barking and RoR.

I twittered everything best as I could. There was another twitterer@climatecamp, but whose tweets seemed to be all about how happy/organised the camp was.

One guy started fitting on the ground. Later a man was reported to have died, stopped breathing in a police van. I wondered if it was the same guy. In a Guardian report police claimed that protestors prevented medics from helping him. There is no way this could be true. Who do people think protestors are? One twitterer whose husband works in the city was worried that he might get beaten up. Protestors are generally incredibly idealistic and peace-loving. Who else would spend hours of free time trying to make a statement, most likely with no result?

Around 9pm I went to the North perimeter to try to get out. A line of riot police were resolute. Nobody was leaving. Which is odd because the police were happy to let people walk into the Climate Camp in the first place. I talked to a Scottish policeman who explained that it was kicking off elsewhere. So we were 'kettled' in a Section 41 because the police were afraid the protestors here would link up with other protests. Eventually I sweet talked him into letting me out. Ms CE tried to get out a little later by saying she had her period. It didn't work. As I walked towards the tube I saw tattered news stand posters moving in the breeze "Obama's big day ruined by violence". I spoke to the news stand guy.

"It's pointless all this. The MP's can claim 40 grand expenses for second homes. The government can do what they want. We can't. Nothing is going to change".

And there we have it. Frustration and impotence. Anger and disgust. One set of rules for them, another for us.

(1) I have since heard that Chris Knight did go to UEL, with Tony Benn MP and continue the alternative summit.

NB: As we all know, the MP's expenses story blew up in their faces in May '09. This is a seismic change. I get the feeling that the British, for once, feel revolutionary. It won't take much more to spark them off.

Also Chris Knight is now fighting to keep his job at the University of East London.

tongue piercing

2009-05-27T08:21:00.004+01:00

I haven't been spending much time with my daughter recently. I've been busy. One night, when I was going out, I'd been out several nights that week already, she said to me:

"I feel like I live alone".

Last night, I catered a gig. It was work. Badly paid. But work. I got home at midnight and, as usual, went into my daughter's bedroom. I saw her sleeping form, the soft pale skin, her little head of tumbled blonde hair, the slender hands ...I kissed her, breathing in her still child-like smell. I love her I thought. This is all that counts. I must spend more time with her. And more importantly, be present when I'm with her. Because even when I'm home, I'm not. My mind is elsewhere or I'm on the computer. Or I'm worrying. Or thinking. Or planning.

She asks me questions nowadays, interesting questions...

"Explain proportional representation."

We go through it. At first sight it looks like a good idea.

"Der" she announces, in her teenage way "of course it's better. Der. Why don't we just do it?"

And then I explain further. That with PR you also get the BNP...and the Greens and lots of little parties. They then have to form coalitions to be able to wield any power. So you end up with a big messy compromising party anyway.

Then, switching subjects rapidly she asks:

"Can I have my tongue pierced?"

I look at her. I feel stupidly anxious. I don't want her to have her tongue pierced. I want her to have brown long hair again, untouched by hair dye. I want to see her in her ballet outfit again. I want her to curl up in my arms at night. I want her to think I am the bestest most important fantastic loveable human being in the world again. Like she used to. I want to be called 'mummy' rather than 'muuuuum' or when she's annoyed, 'mother'.

I say lightly, a little cruelly: "If you let your hair go back to it's natural colour, you can have your tongue pierced."

It was a joke. I then attempt a weak excuse like:

"Isn't it dangerous? Can't you get an infection?"

And even more weakly, grasping at straws...

"What if you get in a fight? They could, like, rip your tongue out".

She laughs:

"You said that about my pierced ears mum. And I've never been in a fight".

This morning she was leaving for school.

"Right Saturday afternoon my mate and I are dying my hair brown."

I'm still only half awake.

"Is it a good idea to keep dying it?" I ask gently "it will end up frizzy".

"Well I'm doing what you said."

I look non-plussed.

"I'm dying my hair brown so I can have my tongue pierced".

I gasp. "What? That was a joke".

Her expression changes. She mutters something. It sounds like 'bitch'.

"What did you say?"

I'm thinking I've got to put a stop to this. The disrespectful way she talks to me.

She explodes:

"You are TOTALLY evil. Oh my god you are a LIAR. You said I could have my tongue pierced. LIAR"

"It was a joke. You knew it was a joke!"

She slams out of the front door, cursing, upset. She's got GSCE tests today. I'm worried. I don't want her to be upset. I'm also thinking, why do I want to control her appearance? You are only young once. Let her experiment.

Skeptics in the pub: Nick Davies

2009-02-22T14:21:00.001Z

"Turn off your mobiles or you will be put into a small room with Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail"

warned Nick Davies, author of Flat Earth News who was giving this month's talk at the Skeptics in the Pub, London. Clearly considered a fate worse than death, everybody duly turned off their mobiles.

"...Paul Dacre calls people 'cunt' so frequently that his newsroom have named him 'the vagina monologue'."

Nick, a jittery man in his late 50s, breathlessly sped through his lecture as if he had too much to say and too little time to say it.

He launched straight in with " The reason I'm 'telling on' other journalists is because of WMD. When it became clear that they didn't exist, every journalist in the world blamed the government but no one talked about the media's role".

There are so many false stories... Y2k for instance; the Clinton scandal- all false. The children's home in Jersey - false. There are thematic falsehoods. The sex trafficking scandal right now- I can tell it will turn out to be false."

He breaks off to remark that he has never been to a meeting with so much alcohol involved. People cheer. The pub actually runs out of glasses and people are exhorted to bring back their empties so that more alcohol can be served.

"Before, say 30 years ago, false news was down to proprietors of newspapers. That is still a problem. Almost all local newspapers are owned by four corporations. There is a profit/cost culture. The logic of commercialism has taken over from the logic of journalism."
I got a grant from the Rowntree trust and gave it to academics who physically measured the space available in newspapers that journalists have to fill. Today the average journalist has to write three times as many stories, fill three times as much space as in 1985. What does this mean? Well, the average journalist has a third of the time to spend on each story."

In other words each journalist has less time to research, verify and check up whether the story is true.

He continues:"Only 12 % of the raw material that goes into newspapers is generated by journalists. The rest is from second hand sources such as press agencies like Reuters or, the likes of Alistair Campbell, PRs. News now is mere recycling."
Before in Sheffield there were five local press agencies. Now there is just one, 'Whites' and they have a much smaller staff, not enough to have a presence in the courts or in council chambers."

My father ran several press agencies. He trained up generations of journalists and photographers, many of whom are now at the top in TV and newspapers. His agency covered all the local courts. My father retired in the 1990s, exhausted by trying to get newspapers to pay up. Newspapers were only interested in celebrity news, not crime, not what was going on in your local borough, not in what the local council was doing with your money. With the closure of my father's agency, journalism lost a valuable resource and training ground.

"Nowadays to get court news, journalists check the local police website for cases, download the details, effectively only getting the prosecution's side. Big corporations use PRs, everybody does. Al-Qaeda is primarily a media manipulation organisation and very good at it too.
There are loads of phony grassroots organisations out there "astroturf groups" they are called in the U.S.A."
Hill & Knowlton, one of the biggest in the world, are unscrupulous. They will work with anybody. After people were shot in Tianamen square, who rushes in to help the Chinese government repair their reputation? Hill & Knowlton. No PR agency represented the oppressed. Last year they worked on the Chinese Olympics.
PR chooses the truths that they want us to have.
PR has this expression...a 'Forward note' is what you tell the press...
So it seems like if we get rid of Rupert Murdoch instead we get Rupert the bear. Stories are picked that will sell the paper, not the important stories.
Even the quality press has to cover [celebrity trivia] stories otherwise people will not be able to join in with the Great National Conversation."

Nick is referring to 'water cooler' stories, a US expression describing the things people in offices will discuss whilst at the water cooler. Here it should be 'photocopier' stories or maybe even 'fag break' stories. But, back to his point, this is why a serious paper will feel compelled to discuss Jordan or Jade Goody (although the latter has turned into a real subject of interest).

"Another example: the Queen Mother's death. She, inconveniently for the Daily papers, died on a Saturday. The Observer cleared the front page and devoted ten pages to her death and the 'national grief'. Except in reality there was a rather a shortage of grief. But...souvenir editions add 20% to circulation "
Barack Obama. Journalists think we want to feel hope. But Obama's policies are actually of the Kenneth Clarke wing of the Conservative party. He believes in God and Capitalism. If you really want to write about race in the United States you look at unemployment and prison statistics of which a huge percentage are black."

(Toby Young complained on his facebook status update about Obama getting a 'free pass' from journalists.)

"Today" Nick Davies concluded,"newspapers are in crisis, journalists are losing their jobs. There is the electronic model, websites and bloggers, but we can't earn a living from it. There is no financial model to keep us afloat in the future. The mass media is dying. Mini-media is non-profit."

We had a little break. My sister arrived and showed me the results of that day's shopping, holding up a massive bra.

"What size is that?" I ask out of the corner of my mouth.

"34 double H!" she announces unabashed.

The bearded ones surrounding us certainly look skeptical about the existence of such a bra size but are defeated by sheer physical evidence.

Questions from the audience.

Jack of Kent: Will bloggers replace journalists?"

Davies snorts:"Citizen journalism will fill the gap? Bullshit! It can help. Er...Tweetering... (he pronounces it slightly wrongly)... an editor told me, with the recent plane crash in the Hudson, he saw it reported on Twitter within 2 minutes. Within 4 minutes he had pictures [from Twitpix]. Reuters took 34 minutes to send the pictures.
Bloggers are recycling facts, commenting on stuff. They do not have the skills and resources necessary for investigative journalism. And bloggers have their little communities, everybody in their ghettos"

Question: "Why don't investigative journalists set up their own websites?"

Davies: "A group of us had a meeting about that in a Soho pub 3 weeks ago. Trouble is there is no precedent for a news website paying for itself. The Guardian has a circulation of under 400,000 a day. It's website has 26 million users a month. For no money. What do you do? Adverts? Become cocaine dealers?"

Nick Davies also talked about the Amazon invention of the electronic book the 'kindle'. "We need a mobile waterproof version of that."

"Murdoch is using his newspapers to undermine the BBC, wants to push it into a corner like public television in the United States. But hopefully it will survive with the license fee."

Somebody brings up the MMR scandal as an example of false news:

"30 kids died as a result of that."

Davies:"The P.C.C. (Press Complaints Commission) are slippery and dishonest. Look what happened to the McCanns. But they sued. Trouble is in this country you cannot get legal aid to sue for libel."

Davies then, consciously or not, plays up to this skeptical audience:"2012!"as further examples of myth making. "The illuminati! The world is controlled by Margaret Thatcher!" The audience jeers and laughs.

Somebody calls out "It's true!" to more laughter.

Davies reminisces about working for World in Action. "All those programmes gone. Serious journalism. Now we have that awful News at 10 with Trevor McDonald. Harry Evans, when he was the editor of The Sunday Times, it was the best newspaper in the world. They exposed Thalidomide, Kim Philby 'The spy that betrayed a generation'."
"I don't respect Andrew Neil but he stood up to Al Fayed. PR nowadays doesn't even have to pay, they walk straight in the front door and plonk their message on the news editor's desk."
"Do any of you remember the story about Hilda Morel? A 84 year old rose grower found naked, raped and dead in a field? I reported on that. Even Tam Dalyell said in the House of Commons that she was killed by British Intelligence because of, variously, her nephew, the fact she was due to give evidence about Sizewell, the nuclear plant...
In 1994, ten years later, I reviewed the evidence in a piece for The Observer. It was a burglar. I made mistakes too. I'm not just pointing the finger at others."

Another questioner mentions urban legends and how he sees them reproduced as fact in the media.

Davies:"Oh like 'Baabaa black sheep' being replaced by politically correct schools as 'Baabaa coloured sheep'? Almost every story of the 'politically correct gone mad' genre is false. Not true."

Question: "Aren't the readers the problem?"

"The Daily Mail is feeding the prejudices of their readers. So yes."

One man interjected with "So your position is...the majority of modern media is a bit shit."

At the end another man brought up the McCanns again and also the Joana Cipriano case in Portugal. I'm afraid yours truly got very annoyed and passionately spoke out about media falsehoods but in complete opposition to Nick Davies' stance.

"I think the Portuguese and their police were maligned by our press. Tony Parsons called the Portuguese police 'Sardine munchers'...I have looked into these cases quite a bit..."

At that point I was literally booed into silence. I was the sole female voice to pipe up. I felt as if I were in the House of Commons. Nick Davies tried to hand me the mike and gracefully admitted to knowing little about the McCanns case.

Two women came up to me afterwards to mutter agreement and were pleased that at least one woman's voice was heard. I had the same situation on facebook recently when I talked about the MMR jab. Women messaged me privately to say how much they agreed with me but were anxious about voicing it privately.

There does seem to be a gender divide on certain subjects.

I think, after my gobby display, a man I slightly fancied wasn't interested anymore. A female with opinions and the cojones to state them in public is a contraceptive device!

Brown bottom

2009-05-07T09:30:00.004+01:00

In 1999, just as the solar eclipse was about to hit Britain, the first eclipse visible in this country for years, Gordon Brown, two years into being Chancellor of the Exchequer of the New Labour administration, decided to flog Britain's gold reserves. The announcement was made on 7/5/99.

Nobody in the treasury could understand it. World leaders advised him not to do it. Still he pressed on.

This Times article, written in 2007, describes the efforts the journalist has made to have the details of this decision made public, with no result.

Brown sold the gold at public auctions, driving down the price of gold. Perhaps he wanted to buy euros. Some rumours say that he was bailing out friends at Goldman Sachs.

Astrologer Maggie Hyde, talking at The Company of Astrologers, puts up Gordon Brown's chart on the overhead projector. We also look at the chart of the Bank of England.

Gordon Brown, I think it is now evident, is not leadership material. His chart backs this up. Nor, it emerges more and more plainly, was he Chancellor of the Exchequer material. His chart has no Earth in it. Earth is the element that rules material, earthly goods, such as money. Brown has most of his planets, a stellium, in the 12th house, the house of confinement, hospitals, prisons, spirituality and self-undoing. Brown's view of himself as a leader comes from his Moon in Leo. I am the king! His many years in waiting must have been very hurtful. His failure to cope with the leadership position must be even more so. Be careful of what you wish for...

Tony Blair actually would have made a better chancellor being a Taurus, the sign most associated with money. Coincidentally most of the major stock markets in the world were set up while the Sun was in Taurus.

The Bank of England chart is interesting. There are contacts between it, Gordon Brown's chart and the 1066 UK chart.

In one sense it's an ideal chart. Fit for purpose. On the other hand this institution is based on fiction and fantasy. It's worth remembering that usury is a sin in the bible and remains so in Islam.

Transits coming up to hit sensitive points in the Bank of England chart will bust this illusion wide open. Times they are a changin'

Facing the financial winter...

2009-03-12T13:58:00.008Z

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.

Car crash date

2008-12-02T10:36:00.020Z

Later that night I was supposed to meet a man for a date. When stopped at traffic lights I left him a message to say I would be late. As I pulled away from the lights, something flashed, I glanced down momentarily, then piled into the back of a black taxi. It all happened so quickly. I think he may have stopped. I wasn't paying sufficient attention. Anyway, it will be my fault as it always is when you crash into the back of a car. So eventually I got out of my car. The taxi driver emerged. He had a black eye.

Did you just get that? I gasped.

He admitted that he didn't. But then he moaned that he had a bad back. I started crying. My mind was partly still rushing to the date. I called the date, let him know what had happened. He said he would cancel the restaurant and come to where the accident was. I couldn't stop crying and apologizing to the taxi driver. But the taxi driver kept scowling at me. He called the police and the ambulance. My head hurt. I called the RAC, who peppered me with a million questions which I had great difficulty in answering. The RAC man was unsympathetic and insensitive. He refused to send a recovery truck until I answered every question. I put the phone down. The ambulance people told me to sit in the back of the ambulance.

You aren't in any trouble, they said.

They kept asking questions. The police came and asked more questions. I couldn't remember anything... my address, the name of my insurance company etc. The date kept calling...where is your car?

Then I confessed to the ambulance and police that I was supposed to be on a blind date. They found this hilarious. I'd made their night.

We thought you looked all dressed up they said.

They asked more questions...how did you meet him? I felt so tired. Another policeman got in the ambulance and said with an air of finality Well you are obviously a very unlucky person. I looked at him. If this was humorous I was, well, just not in the mood. The ambulance people intimated that the taxi driver was pretending to have a bad back.

The date called I'm outside, just next to your van.

I got out to look. I didn't have my glasses on. I just saw a man looking angrily at me next to my van. I gulped and went closer, I saw it was the taxi driver. Then, a little further away, I saw my date, waving at me.

The taxi driver hissed at me accusingly: You said it was all your fault but your statement to the police doesn't say that.

I did say it was my fault I wailed.

Fortunately the date stepped in and put a stop to the taxi driver's bullying behaviour.

That's what insurance companies are for. He said. They will sort all of this out. Anyway the fact that she went into the back of you means that technically it's her fault.

The date took me for a much needed drink. It was freezing cold. I hadn't eaten. I drank 5 glasses of port on the trot. I could have drunk the whole bottle. I went to the bathroom. I saw in the mirror that my eye make-up was streaked down my cheeks. I tried to lick it off with a tissue. The date had mentioned in an email, that his wife had died. I asked when and he replied evasively. On returning to the table, he mentioned his wife...

When did she die? I asked.

He hesitated: Two months ago.

TWO MONTHS AGO? I thought in my head.

What did she die of?

Er, sudden adult death syndrome...

I looked at him quizzically thinking: does that even exist?

Yes, I was on a bus with her and we were talking and then suddenly her head went back and she was a strange colour. Naturally my training kicked in. I laid her flat on the floor, tried to resuscitate her but by the time the ambulance arrived she was dead.

I stayed silent. For once I didn't know what to say.

He continued: There has been an autopsy but we are waiting for the inquest. It takes ages.

I looked at his hands. He was still wearing his wedding ring.

Then, the RAC man called: I'm at your vehicle where are you?

I'm in the pub, I'll be there in ten minutes.

I put my coat on and got up.

Fifteen seconds later, the RAC man called again: Well! Where are you? We have lots of customers waiting you know.

I'll be there as soon as I can. But it was freezing cold waiting and I needed a drink after the accident.

The date and I walked to my poor little van. It's nose was all crushed up.

Well goodbye said my date, handing me a packet of licorice.

I got in the RAC man's van and we drove home. After manoeuvring the crushed up van into my driveway, I went indoors and told my daughter what had happened. During the description, she never once moved her eyes away from 'I'm a celebrity get me out of here'. She then started laughing at something that happened on 'I'm a celebrity'.

Monday night I went to the Astrological Lodge. When the astrologers heard about the accident they each immediately asked the same question: did you get the time of the accident?

When I got home from the lodge last night, I checked on my daughter in bed. It was half past eleven. Her 'boyfriend' called.

Why is he calling at this time on a school night? I ask.

My daughter sullenly says: So what. I can't sleep. Nor can he.

I ask for her phone. She refuses to give it to me. We have a tussle and I manage to get it.

It's my phone! she screams.

I text the boyfriend saying: Do not call my daughter after 9.30 pm on a school night.

My daughter is screeching: I HATE YOU. You are using my minutes.

It's not your phone and not your minutes I say. I paid for it. You will do as I say.

The boyfriend texts back: 'Hey I'll just make sure I don't get caught next time, yeah. Cos it doesn't count then. lol.'

I text: 'Don't be so cheeky. I will tell your parents and the school if you continue. You can call later at weekends, not on school nights. I always follow through on my threats'.

I hand the phone back to my daughter. She says:

I wish you had died in that car crash yesterday.

Sohemians:Old Gay Soho

2009-04-17T01:55:00.003+01:00

The Sohemian Society in its own words "exists to promote greater awareness of the characters and events associated with the history of Soho covering areas such as the arts, crime, sex, and politics.
A space free of kill-joy and culture-death pre-occupations such as anti-smoking campaigns, obsessive risk avoidance, concerns about diet, pubs with sofas and fear of 'offensive' statements."
The Sohemians regularly hold talks in the top room of the Wheatsheaf pub in Fitzrovia, or North Soho. Dylan Thomas and George Orwell used to hang out here in the 30s. In fact the Fitzrovia area was stuffed with bohemian types such as Aleister Crowley and Quentin Crisp.

Last night David Thompson gave a talk entitled 'Old gay Soho', one of the best delivered and most interesting talks I have ever attended.
The area in the 17th century: Oxford St. then known as Oxford Road was open land, full of highwaymen. Covent Garden, its arcaded piazza influenced by Roman architecture, perfect for cruising, was a well known red light district, full of brothels and mollyhouses.
Soho as a name was first used in the 17th century. It became a centre for Huguenots, French protestants. But it was never as rich as the surrounding areas. Soho was a destination for poor working class men from the East End going up for 'trade' and transvestitism. Straight prostitutes lived next to gay men, a strange coalition. Some of the famous streets are named after grand families: the Wardour family, the Frith family, the Comptons, all of whom were landowners of the area.
Michel Foucault in his 'History of Sexuality' noted that up until the 19th century people weren't defined by their sexuality. They weren't called homosexual, a term invented in the 19th century. Rather, you'd say he's a man who likes sex with other men. In semiotics and semantics words become things, concepts become a labels: common terms of the era included 'buggeranti', 'catamites', pederasts (still used today in the French 'pedé' for homosexual).
Thompson talked about how homosexuality was often blamed on foreign influences...in the 18th century gay men, dandified men, were called 'macaronis' part of The Macaroni Club (in Italian 'macaron' is slang for 'buffoon', in Spanish 'maricon' means 'queer'). Sodomy was seen as a crime imported from Italy.
In France, interestingly, homosexuality is known as 'the English disease'. Prime Minister Edith Cresson controversially suggested that English men were all homosexual for they barely looked at her when she visited.
Horace Walpole, the writer and art historian, wrote about the goings on of young men on the grand tour 'which is composed of all the travelled young men who wear long curls and spying-glasses'
There was a general fear of sensitivity, a quality regarded as feminine and Italian. The 'Penny dreadfuls', the tabloids of the day, said all homosexuality was all down to immigrants,
In 1772 Captain Jones was convicted of sodomy, penalty death, but he received a royal pardon. It's unproven but David Garrick, the theatre impressario, was having an affair with the dramatist Isaac Bickerstaff a 'powdered fop'.
Mrs Connelly from Vienna was a courtesan who rented Carlisle house, the scene of much cruising and bawdy behaviour. Entrance was a shilling and it was classless in that duchesses would be squashed next to paupers.
D'Eon de Beaumont, the chevalier d'Eon was a transsexual who at the same time achieved political importance; he/she was a spy for Louis XV, sent to Russia as an envoy to the Empress Elisabeth. When he/she arrived in London, there was a French edict that he must be addressed as 'Madame'. De Beaumont concocted a fanciful story that he was born as a girl but disguised as a boy by his parents in order to inherit some money, but on his death in 1810 doctors confirmed that his genital organs were masculine, at least on the outside.
Today the transsexual society of Britain is named the Beaumont Society.
Another man that managed to evade some of the predujice against homosexuals was William Beckford, one of the richest men in England. Stridently gay, he was extremely learned and cultured. He wrote a gothic novel 'Vathek' a thinly disguised autobiography.
It cannot be underestimated the danger of being homosexual. In 1533 Henry VIII introduced a sodomy law punishable by death. But proof was not easy: evidence was needed that the man had ejaculated into another man.
Beckford built Fonthill Abbey where it was rumoured that orgies took place. Few people got in, but Nelson and Lady Hamilton spent three days there (the 'Posh and Becks' of the day quipped David Thompson).
Richard Payne Knight who started the Society of Dilettantes, and wrote a book about ancient phallic cults 'The Worship of Priapus', had a house in Soho square. Ironically, his house is now the British Board of Censors.
In the Victorian period there were two characters: Frederick 'Fanny' Park and Ernest 'Stella' Boulton who used to cruise the Burlington Arcade and the Alhambra music hall dressed as women. 'Stella' even married Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton MP (son of Lord Newcastle) and was known as Lady Clinton. These 'ladies' were arrested at the theatre. Full and amusing details of their trial are here. Their defence was that they were dressing as women for a laugh, but the report dryly notes: "if they were merely acting in this way for "a lark", it must be said that the lark was one of a very long duration".
Simeon Solomon was one of the greatest pre-raphaelite painters. One of his private works is entitled 'The bridegroom and sad love' which tells you everything you might need to know about a homosexual man being forced to marry. In 1873 he was arrested with a stable hand in a urinal off Oxford St. Simeon left, like Wilde, for Paris. He was arrested again in a Paris urinal. Returning to Britain, he spent 20 years in the St. Giles workhouse and died a penniless drug addict and alcoholic in 1903.
Probably the most famous homosexual of the era was Oscar Wilde. When he met Bosey, the young man that led to his downfall, who was in his 20s, Wilde was in his 40s. The Portrait of Dorian Grey had been published, and the gay sub-plot was the subject of debate. In 1895 Wilde dined with Bosey at Kettners in Soho, a private dining room. He was convicted after two trials, but sodomy was commuted to gross indecency.
Wilde was not an aristocrat and therefore did not have the protection of some of the other well known homosexuals. For instance in 1889, the police busted a male brothel in Cleveland St. and arrested the Prince of Wales. Charges were dropped.
The Criterion bar in Piccadilly by the evening was exclusively male. One can guess what went on...
The Victorian era also saw female to male drag artists such as Vesta Tilley whose most famous song was 'Burlington Bertie from Bow', a song which talks about the East End boy coming to cruise the West End.
Radclyffe Hall lived an open lesbian life, dressed in male attire. She called herself a 'congenital invert', a term coined by sexologist Havelock Ellis. Hall wrote the lesbian classic novel 'The Well of Loneliness'. Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West who were in a lesbian relationship disliked her. It has been suggested that this was because they lived behind the facade of marriage and objected to her upfront lesbianism. The Well of Loneliness was banned in England but sold very well at Calais. By the time of her death in 1957 Radclyffe Hall had sold nine million copies.
Hannah Gluckstein, the Lyons Corner House heiress, was a successful painter, living at Studio House in Hampstead. Lyons Corner House, now Planet Hollywood in Leicester square, was a gay cruising joint on Sunday afternoons, where 'nippies' the black and white attired waitresses would put gay men in adjacent tables.
Quentin Crisp was, in the 1930s, a Soho rent boy hanging out at the Black Cat café.
David Thompson actually got the opportunity to draw Quentin Crisp, who often worked as a life model, while he was at art college in 1973. It was still unusual in those days to have a male nude model. Thompson was taken aback by the sight of this nude man in his 70s with a violet bouffant hairdo wearing a monocle and carrying a copy of The Times.
The Caravan club in the 1930s attracted a huge gay clientele. Within six weeks it had 445 members, over 2000 visitors. It was raided by the police. Other clubs included the 'Careless Stalk' 'The Sphinx' 'The A&B', run by Jeffrey, who acted as a matchmaker and wore a bizarre selection of hats.
'Fag Hags' and lesbians: Talullah Bankhead was a member of the Gargoyle Club. Muriel Belcher ran the The Colony rooms. Elsa Lanchester was Charles Laughton's 'beard', that is a wife married to a gay man. Francis Bacon was kept on a retainer by Belcher at the Colony Rooms to attract drinkers. He was surrounded by young boys.
The word 'bohemian' was a euphemism for gay.
In the 1950s Kenneth Williams of Carry On fame used 'polari' the gay slang in mainstream comedy...it was very risqué.
In 1976 the Astoria opened the first gay disco 'Bang'.
Today Soho is still a refuge for gay men. It's a place where they can walk down the street hand-in-hand with no fear of reprisals.
The pub 'Admiral Duncan' is about to have the 10th anniversary of the bombing which killed three people, ironically none of whom were gay. There will be two minutes silence at 18.37 on the 30th of April at St. Anne's churchyard.
Thompson finished on a sad note. The serial killer Dennis Nilsen picked up young homeless homosexual men at The Golden Lion, Dean St., Soho. These vulnerable men, often runaways, must have felt they were coming to a place of safety, an area which accepted them, but met a horrible fate at Nilsen's hand.
Talks and walks around Soho are given by David Thompson every Sunday at 2pm meeting outside the Admiral Duncan pub on Old Compton st. Highly recommended.

Less than zero

2009-04-05T14:03:00.004+01:00

My teen delights in provoking her teachers with her unconventional views. On Thursday one of her teachers asked if she had been at the G20 protests. My teen couldn't come, partly because we had the French exchange student staying. Not sure what this student thought when I texted:

"Probably won't be home in time to make dinner, held in kettle by police, might be arrested".

Shockingly some of her classmates, many of whom are incredibly straight and have views straight out of the Daily Telegraph... straight out of their parents mouths...were against any protest. We call them 'Abercrombies' because they all wear the same Abercrombie & Fitch clothes. One said that

"protesting should be banned!"

How very democratic. My teen went mad.

My daughter tells me that she manages to slip anti-capitalism into almost every subject, even biology.

"Biology?" I exclaim "how did you do that?"

"There was this test question on the necessary elements for plants to grow. I answered it correctly, sunlight, water, etc but then I put 'This is not scientifically proven but another component helping plants to grow is love'. The teacher gave me zero even though I had everything right."

"Zero!"

"I told him I thought it was unfair. He said that it irritated him so he gave me zero".

Soul food

2009-03-26T09:48:00.010Z

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

Probe Ufo conference, Blackpool

2008-03-31T01:45:00.016+01:00

Having been rudely let down (not even one of his customary glacial emails that I get frostbite opening) by my original 'date', the Prince of Mordor, for the conference, I decided to go it alone. This decision was encouraged by a series of delightful emails that I received from Matthew Delooze, one of the speakers at the conference, all of which referred to me as "mate" or "lad" and repeatedly expressed concern that I possessed sufficient capacity to drink enough Northern ale. Eventually I timidly admitted that I am in fact a girl (and rather a cheap date at that! Two drinks normally being my limit). He thought that my name was a boys name as

"girls up here tend to be called Irene or Carol".

Drove up at the crack of dawn Saturday, took 5 hours but the weather was fine, and listening to Goldfrapp made the journey pleasant and dreamy.
First impressions: how old everyone was! Uranian third agers... Jean, the white haired organiser, was at the front desk wearing a pair of alien gray earrings, plus there was an 'alien' in purple greeting people.
Around the hall at the YMCA, stalls sold crystals, incense, alien dolls (costume and appearance based on true sightings), crop circle outings and books. One goth mum and her whey-faced chav daughter sold dvd's.
Quickly a young man named Ben Emlyn-Jones introduced himself. He writes a blog called Hospital Porters Against the New World Order.

A couple of women sat next to me and told me about Dean Warwick who apparently died on stage whilst giving a lecture at a probe conference just over a year ago. Controversy rages about the cause of his death but the general consensus is that he was shot by an ELF (extremely low frequency?) weapon on the orders of the military. Amazingly the conference continued after this...
These women chatted noisily throughout the lectures, adding asides and comments like a Shakespearian audience.
Jean gets up and announces that Chris Everard who now lives in France, cannot give his lecture, because he could not get a passport. He believes that he has "trod on a few toes with his new dvd". Behind me, the grey-haired ones were murmuring agreement and disapproval. Justified or not, a collective paranoia permeates the whole event.
First up was a balding pony-tailed man, Dr Jeff Merrifield (or Buster Merryweather/Uncle Albert from Only fools and horses...as Matthew Delooze called him), who showed slides and talked about an amazing place in the Italian Alps called Damanhur. The slides and the story were fascinating but his lecture was poorly presented and prepared (apparently he was a last minute replacement)..
He went to this area originally because he wanted to visit CERN (the world's largest particle physics laboratory) and also there were reports of spontaneous combustions going on.
Damanhur is a solar temple. In 1978 Oburto Airaudi had a revelation and started to dig at the back of his house. It took 16 years to dig out a space larger than St Pauls, and 3 months for the first chamber. The diggers were not builders, and it was all done by hand, dug out of mountain rock, using buckets. The whole operation was undertaken secretly and any visitors were blind-folded. One guy in the village guessed and grassed them up to the authorities saying they hadn't paid tax on what they were producing. The Italian authorities at first reacted by wanting to close down the temple as planning permission had not been sought but eventually welcomed the place, seeing it as a tourist's attraction. Nowadays the catholic church are trying to get in there (watch this space for a Marian sighting?). There are no tourists there only "seekers".
Dr Merrifield showed slides and film of this extraordinary place: different caverns/rooms representing different elements, with secret staircases, mosaics, glass work, a cupola. There were painted Egyptian symbols and menhirs with serpents. Sacred language is built into the design.
Some of the chambers: a hall of metals in which copper and brass and chrome are applied to terracotta; a hall of mirrors; an earth room with stained glass panels depicting the 7 ages of man(often portraits of the Damanhur inhabitants); a water room.
One has intense experiences inside the temple, and children in particular react to the energies and go crazy there.(I've seen this manifested in my daughter when we go to Avebury).
People who are part of the community after a while take an animal name then a vegetable name. The community follows moon phases and solstices. They partake in drumming and various creative workshops.
An important element of the temple is "Selfica": which are energy captivators using spirals/ copper a bit like Reichs' orgone accumulators, and there are 300 tons of selfic technology built into temple.
This "[gigantic] 'battery' has been constructed according to the science of 'Selfica', which, say the Damanhurians, is 'an ancient science derived from the basic form of our universe, the spiral. It was known to the Egyptians, the Celts, and the Arabs, who utilized it up to the 8th Century B.C."
Outside as part of the landscape, stone spirals are traced on grass which people walk around and meditate in.
The Damanhurians paint their houses with butterflies and suns and flowers.
A local Olivetti factory been bought by them. Adriano Olivetti believed in maintaining rural communities so he built several of his factories in the country. This factory now houses several craft workshops.
I must visit this place.

Manifesto for a New Great Britain

2009-03-23T07:24:00.008Z

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.