- Most pernicious
- Be careful what you wish for...
- New Page
- New Page
- Homeric hymn to Pan
- New Page
- Home
- What the hell. I have nothing to lose
- My Adventures
- My Story
-
Essentials
- The earth is not flat
- The abolition of mind
- Things that only need saying once-one e tel
- Manners makyth man
- Coal in the bath and the victim culture
- The withdrawal of love and forcing oneself on others
- So some guys had the really freaky idea that we should love one another
- Jesus!
- 'Judge not that ye be not judged'
- Goo
- The way we were: Anglican England
- 'Avatars of living grace'
- Ditching the theology of love
- Reality >
- PANTHER: the argument
- Moi
- The new Marxism
- Dill's World (blog)
- New Page
- The collapse of education
- The Anile Heir
- For Katie: Harry Secombe: 'The Lord is my Shepherd'
- For Katie: He who would valiant be
-
'And now Amanda is seriously ill.'
- Otting
- THAT AM I >
- Medicine: the joke
- It's like this, Doc >
- Medicine: the continuing joke
- 'By Tummel and Loch Rannoch'
- The laughing-stock of the civilized world
- And be damned to you
- In the garden with Mummy
- Transforming the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- Blair: the icing on the cake
- Expecto patronam
- Scarlet battalions
- My family: any colour so long as it's red
- Back to the freaking juniper-tree (1)
- Back to the freaking juniper-tree (2)
- Our grandfather who art in heaven (though I doubt it), Howard be thy name
- So you have a problem with my family, fucker?
- 'Jew-Communists'
- Margaret, my great-grandmother, an Irish tart
- The FUQs
- Dear Wannabe Nemesis
- Shall we try again, Bobbles my sweet?
- Evil
- Dixi (that's Latin, you know, Father)
- The cultural use of the lamp-post
- A home from home
- All times are now (1)
- All times are now (2)
- For Katie: All times are now (3)
- For Katie: All times are now (4)
- For Katie; All times are now (5)
- For Katie: All times are now (6)
- Non serviam
- This colour doesn't run
- The balance
- Civilization - the balance
-
Gallery
- And be damned to you
- Catholic Encyclopaedia 1912: Obedience
- Voltaire and Jesus
- Tertullian, Women in Canon Law (1912) and Mulieris Dignitatem (1988)
- Padding through the Vatican archives
- The Vatican State
- Extra ecclesiam nulla salus: go to hell, go directly to hell, do not pass 'Go'
- A short history lesson
- A phrase-book for monkey-nuts
- Summary: the abode of the loon
-
Translations from Voltaire (mine): Concerning the Church of England
>
- Bukharin and Preobrazhensky: Communism and Religion
- Translations from Voltaire (mine): Freedom of Thought
- Translations from Voltaire (mine): Transubstantiation
- Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason
- Lenin: Socialism and Religion
- Marx: 'So much for the social principles of Christianity'
- The Horcruxes and the illusion of power
- 'And death shall have no dominion'
- Led Zep: Kashmir
- Buddhist meditation music: Zen Garden
- Karula
- Summary: the love way or the power way
- Flashtest
- The worst university in the country
- Just finishing off, Dolores
- Miss Smila's feeling for snow
- Death of an expert witness
- Interesting, those trips to Moscow
- 'His single hand portrayed it'
- Of course no-one pays any attention to poets
- The desire of the moth for the flame
- The Hospital
- The ghost in the machine was riled
- I am the very model of a medical practitioner
- I am the very model of a modern faith apologist: reprise
- I am of course reminded of a little list (of a little list)
- In the garden with Mummy when the Nine turned up
- Grow the fuck up, comrades
- Thin red line
- 'The Party', 'The Regiment'
- Once upon a time there was a big red giant
- Britain's not very secret weapon
- The headlines
- The waning of the age of aquarium
- Letter to MI5: Playing The Patriot Game
- Those in peril on the sea
- The Patriot Game (song)
- Country matters: 'Elf and Safety
- The Matter of Britain
- Marianne
- Riders on the storm with soundtrack
- The rat-catchers
- 'And gentleman in England, now a-bed, shall think themselves accurs'd...'
- The evidence no-one asks for
- England
- My father when young 2
- A few of my books
- The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism
- Barry's book-plate (evil grin)
- Barry: 'demob' if only from the MOI and redeployment at JWT
- Barry: publishing contracts with Curtis Brown
- Barry's funeral service
- Family album
- Barbara's 100th birthday
- And Nigel's funeral: read by Saul on the whale-backed Downs
- Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
- Class mum lives in a field with Dinge: the intellectual Left
- Within you, without you
- Because the world is round, it turns me on
- More Lattic and other incredibly cool stuff
- Hass and Venga
- The Lover of Jalaluddin Rumi and some things you never wanted to know about translation
- Love IS the law
- Shahriar's sites for sore eyes
- Islamic art and civilization
- Abu Nuwas
- Fisking Warsi
- Harry's Place v. Scumbag College
- Henrietta wondered if HP was too soft on Sparte-Smythe
- Koorosh Modarresi of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran
- Rumy Hasan of the Birmingham Socialist Alliance
- Sharia socialists
- ComSymp, ShariaSymp: plus ca change....
- Illustrations of the Rubaiyat
- Hell, objectively speaking: St Catherine of Genoa
- Joe Stote
- Katy Kianush
- 'Brothers, if you hear...'
- L'Internationale
- A Lioness's Quest
- The Battle of Evermore
- Rosa Luxemburg
- Love in a time of cholera
- TEKEL: Religious, guys? Doesn't that mean shit?
- Please do not feed the god. He really doesn't appreciate it.
- Instead of God eating people, people eat God. Seems a good swap
- Herstory
- Ultramontanism
- Multiverse defined by the sexual equipment of the human male
- Civis romana sum?
- Sunday School, 1913: 'THE GATES WILL BE OPEN TO ALL MANKIND'
- Huxley
- Consciousness 101
- Jesus Christ the apple-tree
- WE DO NOT KNOW
- Trial before Pilate
- 'For the sake of the nation, this Jesus must die!'
- Much how I feel about doctors and other forms of intellectual pollution in the University, really
- Jesus, a human being
- By all means get us wrong, Father
- 'They turned to Rome to sentence Nazareth'
- Buddhism: frightful threat to the Church, you know
- Dharma the Cat and the Barefoot Doctor
- Non-duality
- Exo, eso, balance, Balrogs et le Parti Communiste Francais 1939-1945
- ComSymp, ShariaSymp: Fit the Second
- Printing and the Reformation
- Glossary
- Early chess: more, er, gentlemen (and ladies)
- The Crusades: it's good to look at dates
- Richard and Saladin: perspectives
- Richard and Saladin: perspectives
- Nathan the Wise
- Portly and the Piper at the Gates of Dawn
- Otters return to Thames (maybe)
- The Ottery, TW9
- Spring: rain and shine
- Problems with numeracy: cardinals, generals and rock 'n' roll
- Franny and Zooey
- The tail does not wag the dog
- Try again? I think not: finale
- How many deaths does it take till they know that too many British Muslim women have died
- Who killed Banaz
- Sexism, racism, Islamophobia, Marxophobia and a rather interesting school
- Aaargh! The Terrible Tonge-Monster!
- Just hammering the stake a little further in
- A second English Civil War: women against women
- The vorpal sword goes snicker-snack
- You were saying...
- Of course I've slain the bloody Jabberwock
- Chapter One - Stalinism is just so yesterday
- The rightful heir, the usurper and the usurper's bloody wife
- Wiping excrement off the sole of one's boo
- Fascism victorious, gloating and spurious - for the moment, certainly
- Six counties (sob, the horror of it) lie under John Bull's tyranny
- Calling Lord Haw-Haw
- Cool Britannia
- 'Hell is just as properly proper as Greenwich or as Bath or Joppa'
- 'Any old iron, any old iron, any, any old iron...'
- The Front Line
- Taking it from the top...
- Happy birthday to m
- Extract from The Anile Heir including Lattic
- My body my self
- Culluket, Kastanessen and of course Coulter
- The Girl Who Talked to Otters
- Notes, some of which are Caroline's
- Our revels now are ended
- Pallas Athene
- More notes
- Pan pipes - conclusions - allegory
- Shit, man, they won't even state their problem in the Agora
- Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad
- Poetry in motion
- Ain't no use in looking down!/Ain't no discharge on the ground!
- Queen - We will rock you!
- Queen - Killer Queen
- The wrong shaped body, inferior product
- What a friend they have in evil, all their sins and griefs to bear
- In sum
- 'Building a remedy for Kruschev and Kennedy'
- Classic Islamoballs (and of course pure Stalinism)
- Deja vu
- Really, there are more important things to think about....
- Sleeping Pan by InertiaK
- Hymn to Pan by Faun
- Pan pipes
- Dirty old men
- For Katie: 'And death shall have no dominion'
- The Stone Table cracked
- 10 intellectual frauds of the orthodox religious and their slaves
- A Miracle of Exmoor: a Christmas masque
- WE DO NOT KNOW
- Intelligent women
- 'Tales of brave Ulysses'
- Coursera
- Free
- Milburn
- A fifth column
- Ain't there nuffink wrong with my back, apes?
- Gunfight at OK Corral
- Gunfight at OK Corral: the movie
- Harmonica and Frank
- Captain's Log: Star-Date Whatever
- Women, the US election, the President of the United States and other cool stuf
- The fury of a woman who has been raped
- "Are all American officers so ill-mannered?"
- The grand-daughter of not-quite-the-founder of the Labour Party
- Meanwhile...the lamp-post
- 'Sarat's little joke': the Economic Liaison Officer to the Anile Throne
- Where have all the SovSymps gone, long time passing...
- Roots and reductionism
- 'At anchor here I ride...'
- 'Against all things ending'
- New Page
- Verstehen Sie?
- Memoirs of London medicine
- 28th August 2010
- Irreducible evil
- Irreducible evil
- Just for you: Anthea Turner - and the python
- Goose-stepping morons should try reading books not burning them
- Just call me Serafina Pekkala, or possibly Lady Godiva
- A few reminders
- More? You want more?
- Grand finale
- It even has a pretty cover
- Bambi
- C'est nous qu'on ose mediter/De rendre a l'antique esclavage!
- A reminder of who is Marianne
- Voici Noel!
- Vicar of Bray
- Spanish Ladies
- Meanwhile back in Scilly....Song of the Western Men
- Twenty years behind enemy lines
- Family tree
- Pavarotti: Little Drummer Boy
- Walking in the air
- 'So you think you can love me and spit in my eye/So you think you can love me and leave me to die'
- Aw, come on, Doc, you're such an academic
- Je suis allee voir dans sa tete
- 16 chants de Noel
- 16 chants de Noel
- Talking of sheep...
- The distancing of Jesus from the churches
- So this is how it is to be
- And....And Stafford....And
- A limp prick and no balls
- Excuse me while I dress my hair with vine leaves
- Excuse me while I dress my hair with vine leaves
- Other notes
- Other notes
- Blair
- No?
- 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?' Pt One
- 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?' Pt Two
- If you're going to Acton Vale, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
- The truth about medicine
- Getting nowhere fast
- Bird in the bloody wilderness
- As I have so tiresomely repetitively said
- Untitled
- That which sustains
- Therefore, Vice-Chancellor
- The lies they tell and the drivel they spout
- Rising above the evil reptilian kitten-eaters
- We too do not do cowering
- What the papers say
- The closed (sealed/wounded/stunted/practically non-existent) mind
- Dust and sparkles: child of Dust and Light and Lenin
- Just screaming
- More ridiculous womanish screaming
- Look, children, do look, it's a Five-Year Plan
- Fictionally speaking...The House that Keir built
- The heavy mob moves in: "We're Ancient Greeks. We do reason. And of course democracy."
- What did New Labour achieve?
- Apollo speaks
- Physician, heal thyself - or not
- Wholly unnecessary footnote
- Ah, the dirty underbelly of medicine
- Artemis' arrows
- Dear Apollo, I think the mind-itch needs to be stronger
- A few hymns
- Rhinoceros!
- Begging them to sue me for 15 years
- 'Now that I lie here/My body all holes/I think of the traitors/Who bargained and sold'
- Of course, if anyone has a spare atom bomb
- Whatever it takes
- Shit on the sole of my boot
- Shit on the sole of my boot
- You will see me dead rather than support me
- Vultures waiting for the flesh that dies
- Would you like to see the state of my mattress?
- 'When you've shouted "Rule, Britannia!"...
- 'I vow to thee, my country...' Aw, come on, you know it makes your skin crawl
- The Fixers
- The prince, the cardinal, the duke, the politician and the professor
- The Enforcers
- Me charm. You just strange
- So what exactly am I saying here?
- Pussy Riot: Yet another day in the destruction of Ivana Denisovich
- Untitled
- Pussy Riot (2): no pasaran
- Just smile for the camera, fuckers
- PANTHER: the animations, though not yet the videos
- Theme music
- So-o-o
- Just a stupid woman screaming
- Just a reminder of the Miracle of Exmoor
- Mess with the best. Die like the rest
- The essential paradigm
- No-one wants me to survive. No-one wants me to succeed
- "Are you still laughing, Sarat?"
- You have heard of the University, Doctor?
- PANTHER: The Manual, out now on Scribd
- Going back to work tomorrow
- The gift of speech
- Point counterpoint
- To cut a long story short, therefore
- To cut a long story even shorter
- A few things you need to note
- Death rather than dishonour
- In brief, therefore
- Start of first draft - what do you think of it so far?
- Let me tell you a story, Jackanory, Jackanory...
- Phase II
- Thus we see the great esteem in which London medicine holds the University
- Washed down the drain
- Raped, butchered, destroyed means what?
- "I invoke Artemis"
- I invoke Artemis (II)
- The closing-down sale. Everything must go
- Murder by remote control
- Insufferable
- Befehl ist Befehl
- Order of play
- The Broadmoor annexe
- I say, don't they shoot collaborators?
- You pay them
- Dear British Public
- Graphically speaking.....
- I have taken a lead
- Endsum
- The good news and the bad news
- The education suitable to the masses prescribed by the C19th industrialist, therefore
- 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?/Medicine: the joke
- I shit on you daily
- It is fact
- A new continuum...Watch this space not
- Lady Sybil's swamp-dragons (footnote to the above)
- The Age of Aquarius
- But of course your usual Christmas present, little sick-bags
- 'Sing as you raise your bow, shoot straighter than before'
- There's just one huge and enormous difference, isn't there
- Shall we just highlight that bit?
- Untitled
- Untitled
- Off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz
- Untitled
- 'Don despicable, don of death' Could I leave it out?
- Finish with a summary of the facts
- Roll bloody up for the greatest show on earth
- Just thought to start to make a couple of videos
- Killer Queen
- It is concluded
- A short note
- I need help
- Get out of my university, animals
- Bluestockings
- Oh, when is this going to end?
- Go for it, fuckers, go for it
- Fnords, Jesus and the gerund
- Corsin and coradium
- TAH: Chapter One
- The cancer that is medicine
- The Petri dish
- Hanging them is good. Exposing them is better
- Lattic....
- Female = non-person
- That which sustains reprise
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- Non, c'est pas ca
- Quod erat demonstrandum
- To move on, therefore
- So there you have it
- The script
- Ars longa vita brevis
- PANTHER: the movie
- Animal Farm: the midden
- The word is psychopath
- If you prefer, a septic tank
- And the rest
- Twin cores
- Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit
- Here the matter rests at present
- So just what is this bloody nonsense?
- My knowledge of Photoshop has increased by leaps and bounds
- Question One
- Words and pictures
- Etched in acid
- Dear fucking world
- More
- Caniba and Hokabi
- I think - class (Lancashire A, puh-lease, rhymes with gas)
- What is the point of what you are saying? What is it intended to achieve?
- PANTHER was created in 2008
- Happy Samhain
- Profound concern
- The Road to the Isles
- And of course Andy Stewart
- 'Banks on every finger'
- Don't tread on me
- A Miracle of Exmoor: a Christmas masque
- Untitled
- Pretty much a classic, wouldn't you say
- Goose-stepping morons should try reading books not burning them (2)
- There is no reasoning with them
- A little give and take
- Extraordinary irresistible find
- Music
- So there it is, part solution, mostly not
- Reprise: 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?'/Medicine: the joke
- Mireille
- Espèce de pute!
- Etched in stone
- Hate Fal the most?
- Or Shav?
- Or is it Dill?
- Or is it Dill?
- Reminder: Ars longa vita brevis
- Reminder: PANTHER: the movie
- 'If you cannot make up rhymes/There are always the columns of The Times'
- Jarring blast: letter to my father 19th February 2012
- Vermin made simple
- You were saying
- And so, dear MI5, dear Labour Party, dear University...
- I who might as well be fucking dead
- Death rather than dishonour
- Strands
- Dolls on music-boxes wound up by a key
- Beyond death
- You can fit a lot into a five-minute video
- Je suis Charlie
- Marble Arch? The Brandenburg Gate? The Colosseum?
- Sort of cross between Athena and Artemis, really
- OK, lemme be rational
- Meanwhile...
- Meanwhile...
- As if: cui bono?
- Dark satanic mills
- Work in progress
- Welcome to sewer NHS
- Over my dead body
- Beam them up to the Great Prick in the Sky
- So there it is, part solution, mostly not
- That which sustains finale
- Messing about on the River: Lattic, Sarat and Shavli too
- Christ, it's a mad monkey
- Lots of nuffink
- Led Zep: Kashmir (2)
- The pillars of the West/By all means get us wrong, Father
- Evil reptilian kitten-eater
- Cockroach Protection League
- Happy Easter
- The very models of a medical practitioner
- The Act of Desecration
- No is the answer. What is the question? Loony alert, therefore
- The Grand Plan
- Go for it
- Waste of oxygen
- Prologue
- Intermezzo
- Just the time for a brief reminder
- Mess with the best - die like the rest
- Wailings of sick Trots not
- Heavy metal
- 'Allow me to introduce myself...'
- Freddie and Peter
- How to depict one of the most powerful men in the world
- Moog
- Anyone for tennis?
- Hair
- Hairier?
- Hairiest?
- Untitled
- Python and Allen
- Prepared for any eventuality
- Bad moon rising with soundtrack
- Riders on the storm with soundtrack
- 'Sing as you raise your bow, shoot straighter than before' encore une fois
- Not one foul animal among them will uphold freedom and democracy
- Flower power
- Meanwhile there's really only one song for Ardeshna (and Blair)
- Thin red line - the third of the set
- PANTHER: the movie - nealy there
- Do you like my channel art?
- Couple more soundbites to choke on
- Home movie
- Damaged goods
- How is Virginia these days?
- The Hunger Games
- Now on YouTube
- Second vid
- The Mutts
- The Mutt Pit
- The video I shall make
- Kindly therefore display all the wit, creaivity, intellect, education and intelligence you don't have
- The last picture show
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- The Last Picture Show 2: female eunuchs
- In tg
- New Page
- New Page
- New Page
- In
- In the heat of the night
- In the heat of the night
- Not a complicated image
- Vermin
- 'It is a slave's lot thou describest, to refrain from uttering what one thinks'
- Won't that be fun, Fitter?
- New Page
- Nous sommes tous P:aris
- Meanwhile back at the ranch
- You may remember the Squelch?
- DIXI
- I laugh at you daily
- The end
- Fuck your lies, your cowardice, your hypocrisy, vermin
- Got it all sewn up
- I am Dill
- PANTHER: the movie - a reminder
- And of course the manual
- They deploy
- New Page
- Traitors and would be murderers
- And the other video
- Yes, there are, aren't there.
- Zopiclone
- Hell
- No answer is a very clear answer
- For Katie: All times are now (1)
- For Katie: The Lord of the Dance
- For Katie and m: The heart will go on
- If it's the last thing I ever do, whcih I suppose it might well be
- My fine body twisted, all battered and lame
- Reflections
- For Katie: The trumpet shall sound
- For Katie: Hallelujah Chorus
- For Katie
- The service
- Reading from 'Burnt Norton'
- Going Back
- or in other words
- I need help
- Time past and time future
- Tomorrow
- How many other lives have you destroyed?
- Arundel
- After such knowledge, what forgiveness
- Let it be said - it will be said
- Information governance
- So----
- Sitting in their tin cans far above the world...
- Another shit-filled weekend
- The Cull
- Society has the right to require of avery public agent an account of his administration
- The laughing stock
- 'Sing while you raise your bow...'
- Simple questions
- For fuck's sake they're all vermin
- Functionally illiterate
- Of no significance to me whatever
- The best story
- Mess with the best. Die like the rest
- The visible difference
- Drop the dead donkey: UCH imploding
- It remains the case
- Oh, and it remains the case
- What matters
- Salvat regina!
- Nancy Wake
- Nancy Wake 2
- 2016: your annual treat - A Miracle of Exmoor
- Dunscreaming (shortly, anyhow)
- Any normal person
- Malice
- Keep your loving brother happy
- Surprised by joy
- University Challenge
- Meanwhile back at the lamp-post
- Except to speak of the absolute horror
- And in particular
- Because I screamed I needed help
- QED
- Sredni Vashtar
- The wild and wacky world of the Waffen SS
- Think I'm a bloody servant, do you
- Irrationality
- Literate, literary, educated, intellectual England
- Refinements
- Doesn't the University see the joke?
- The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
- On the whole, I think....
- Ain't taking it from a woman
- A great and mighty wonder I'm still standing
- The zenith of human possibility
- ' pilot of the storm who leaves no trace'
- 'Sing while you raise your bow. Shoot straighter than before'
- In the face of the evidence
- Watch this space
- Brennt Paris?
- 'I vow to thee, my country...' Aw, come on, you know it makes your skin crawl
- Within you, without you - especially without you
- Ain't I got no respet
- Goose-stepping morons should try reading books not burning them
- The Matter of Kadun: physics and metaphysics
- Cartoons
- Over-arching significance not
- They just wouldn't list
- 'And now that I lie here/My body all holes'
- Photoshoot
- I saved about half the books
- I just don't understand
- Fnords
- Pigs in clover
- See you in hell, fuckers
- Attempted murder
- Bog-rats
- Person or persons unknown but very guessable
- All you need is love
- One more time
- More
- Depict them in bondage
- In sum, Mr Benn's questions
- 'Arnold Lane/Had a strange/Hobby...'
- '...Doors bang/Chain-gang...'
- Etx
- Shoot straighter than before
- My moon and my wand
- My college, my university
- Inevitable and not
- painfully slow on the uptake
- This too you may stuff up your arse
- And of course this
- Pout
- TTFN
- Wiping excrement off the sole of my boot
- A West End comedy, perhaps
- Fascism
- I really don't think so, no
- For Katie: He who would valiant be
- For Katie: He who would valiant be
- For Barry: Danny Boy
- Epitaph: it's your funeral
- Yea, though I work in the Land of the Valley of the Shadow of Death
- Do learn to read, Doctor
- The crooked road the English drunkard made
- By Oak and Ash and Thorn
- Can't un read plain words of English
- I get the gist, I surely do
- The world of perversion
- The Ottery has moved to the banks of the Arun
- Snapping my claws at the foeman''s chants
- Yes, the crash of the waves on the foreshore
- The even longer march of Everywoman
- You tried so desperately hard to destroy me
- Evil reptilian kitten-eaters
- The five most evil men in England
- Love does not drown in corruption)
- Like something out of Hieronymus Bosch
- Harry Secombe: The Old Rugged Cross
- The Drivellers
- Insolence is so very vexing, is it not
- Protected by the faith of my fore-fathers
- Lost causes
- Solid Soviet steel
- 1
- Murderous vermin who jeer at disability
- Clarity
- De profundis clamavi
- Reprise: Nancy Wake 2
- Generals gather in their masses...
- Cry foul and bloody murder
- Tumour
- New Page
- Ludicrous
- I think I said get me out of there
- This is not life
- All bets off, fuckers
- New Page
- Dearest darling Katie and Barry
- You think you impress me?
- Manners, ladies and gentlemen, puh-lease
- I suppose the exact charge would be
- No-o-o I don't thik you should forget about Lattic
- Boys having a bit of a larf
- I thnk, you know, dear Artemis...
- Sttill drooling, are you
- 'Thou shallt not suffer a witch to live.;
- My YouTube channel
- Education is what is left
- New Page
- To su
- To sum up
- The endless road traversed (nearly)
- It's a mandala, stupid
- Happy New Year
- Keep your loving brother happy
- Not with a bang but a whimper
- I, however, have outstanding questions
- Feline groovy
- Suitable cases for treatment
- I have spoken
- Nothing taxing to the sane
- I have of course the utmost...
- Doctors and nurses cannot cope with quantum physics
- Addended: Etched in acid and have been for years
- The psychology of medicine
- No outcry
- A very simple question
- To which task I shall now..
- RIP the Labour Party
- First things first
- I a woman
- The Howard lion
- Lest we forget: I don't
- New Page
- Pat me on the head and tell mee not to be a silly little girl
- I a woman of over 60
- A hanging matter
- The gross falsification of history
- 'The writers by their presence...'
- One more time just for the hell of it
- Lastly...
- The answer is no
- So that was the Universiity that was
- Hey you, get off of my cloud...
- Off. off, off of my cloud...
- A right waste of make-up
- So what?
- Footnotes to the above
- So where - ?
- What is the name of - and can't they - ?
- The glorious first of June
- Why has the door not been smashed down/?
- Your professors, Vice-Chancellor
- Anti-dialogue
- Shall we finish with a quick...
- They don't want the Jabberwock slain
- ABOVE THE LAW?
- So - I think -
- "Sentence first = verdict afterwards."
- DA and TM
- Post mortem
- Everywhere I go people are collecting bloody food
- how many people are on PAYE?
- I am naturallly reminded...
- Where was I?
- Where was I (2)?
- Welcome to the NHS
- Let's play doctors and nurses
- 'Senior members of the University'
- These are {{DOCTORS}}} and {{{NURSES}}}
- The girl who talked to otters
- How you hate intelligence
- And you always get away with it, don't you
- And you always get away with it, don't you
- The Hundred Flowers Movement
- New Page
- In one line
- Belloc, Apollo and May
- While readiing The Four Men
- Golgotha, place of a skull
- Troll toes
- So go for it
- PUT-DOWN
- New Page
- The required result
- Sex and mind
- Their mommas told them...
- Greece or Rome
- The new normal
- Isn't this interesting?
- New Page
- Ruthless vicious evil old men
- The charge is atteempted murder
- The C-List
- Q&A
- Ludicrous propositions
- Chained to the oars
- Footnotes
- 1095 and all that
- The Anglican garden
- Or of course a Kabbalist
- I have some time ago...
- Cult, Death-Eaters
- Not forgetting Nathan the Wise
- Cultural exchange
- And of course not forgetting...
- In short, in my young day...
- Contemplating this Matter of Kadun
- Nearly there
- I detect, therefore
- 'That government by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.'
- Tingle
- Follow-up
- Cave-meen
- Not ancient history
- I have indeed graphically
- 'By their deeds'
- So maybe you'll also like this bit
- Just to be exact
- Which?
- Oh, all right, just for you
- Left something out, didn't I
- Didn't quite finish that off
- Ciletij
- Ritawa
- Shav and Zik
- The party
- Spetzi
- senoki
- Punching the pixels
- Reality
- More tails from the riverbank
- The Sarat and Maya Show
- Perverts
- If we may now...
- In short
- progress
- A national joke
- The Spetzi Effect
- Quanta
- Who owns me if I do not own myself? Reprise
- Who owns me if I do not own myself? Reprise
- Boys having a bit of a larf
- You really have....
- And they all just sit there
- So exactly what - ?
- Hostile fascist foreign powers
- Personal, very
- Rubber dolly
- Essentially
- Fana
- LLLLOLLLL
- Unnatural, innit
- It's over, monkeys, over
- You might learn something but probably not
- So now Blair will tell us all
- Spetzi and Qine
- RL
- Qine and Spetzi
- Fucktards united
- Capital
- Well, didn't I just hand myself the short straw
- Do they actually understand?
- Quotable quotes
- 3D printing
- Ah, but can you print fluffy cushions?
- Taking an intelligent interest
- Vaudos 1
- Vaudos 2
- Vaudos 2.75
- New Page
- Anniversary Waltz
- Automation: ostrich land
- The Kirit and Micaela Show
- New Page
- Cookery time
- What are they like!
- Until we meet on camera...
- And just because I know you love Homeric hymns
- New Page
- Dear Artemis, Athena, Apollo and Pan
- Baz and Paw on the loose in Van-Senok
- Back to the fermions
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- A crude, vulgar, ugly, insolent, mad and evil little man
- RIP English Christianity
- And the outstanding question is...
- Foxes, fruit, fermions and fuck you where you breathe
- Varna's Wall
- Particularly working on
- From the Shrine to the Viledeen
- Spring
- Fisking Welby
- New Page
- And how is the great penis in the sky tonight?
- After-thoughts: don't forget Isis and her pal Sobek
- The cat I don't yet have
- The Greater and Lesser Lunacies
- To whom it may concern....
- New Page
- Frank
- Cock-suckers
- Should you not be a movie buff...
- Marked as property
- Questions, questions....
- You will publicly answer those questions
- And this was Margaret
- Reprise: Our grandfather who art in heaven (though I doubt it), Howard be thy name
- To remind you...
- England the poem
- Back to the Viledeen
- Come on, I just want you to...
- So this is the story
- New Page
- Theme from The Water Margin
- Turn off the bloody Horst Wessel Lied
- Is it -10 yet?
- Chesterton - and Belloc
- New Page
- So what have I proved?
- Mock you incessantly
- No problem, no problem at all
- They have only one interest
- Misa and ban-Razit
- Rowley and Saunders
- HARD WIRING
- Bad science
- Dereliction of duty here, comrades
- Taking it from the top..
- New Page
- Dot the i. Cross the t
- More Fal
- Maya's assassination
- So-o-o
- Well, hi there, Sar-fenan
- And the third reason
- Ysabel Belinda Felicity Jehan Howard
- 'And now that I lie here...'
- Ain't they really
- And so
- 'Of course she has to do this on her own.'
- Who the fuck are Bonnie and Clyde
- How the cards fall
- And don't forget Dill
- And Shav and Dill
- Squishy, Archchancellor: not a healthy diet
- Back to you, Sar-Fenan
- This is not a physics textbook
- e=mc2
- A NON-EVENT
- woo hoo
- Her story
- Oi, you, Sar-fenan!
- Bloody kitten-eaters
- HHGG 1
- HHGG 4
- HHGG 2
- Reprise: It reallly is...
- Dave Allen
- Some psycho schizoid freak
- So absolutely insolently irreducibly evil
- This site
- Under the block
- Do you not understand?
- Gee, it's so wonderful to know
- Parameters
- I might go so far as to say
- I might''ve finished losing my temper
- Archaeopteryx flew like a pheasant
- I am not a child. Children are under 16
- New Page
- Blair, Corbyn, WCPI
- Smile for the camera
- 'Labour'
- Nothing you won't surrender
- HTF do I hitch a lift to Betelgeuse?
- "We are the Daleks."
- Back as ever to the Viledeen
- Scream quietly or the neighbours will hear
- The products rejected out of hand
- ComSymp ShariaSymp Fit the Third
- How to defend England
- If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you...
- National Museum Wales
- Why is this continuing?
- My mission I seem to have been landed with
- Dixi
- Go it alone, suffer alone, what's new
- Deep breaths
- New Page
- Gratis
- Justt to complete the set
- About that grave
- Damn!
- About that clock
- Oh pilot of the storm that leaves no trace
- Last but by no means least
- After which
- Or in short
- Notification...
- I think perhaps tomorrow...
- C17th England
- Je suis comme je suis
- Whatever you do, take pride...
- Selfies
- There remains of course my mind
- If you failed to get the gist
- Alice's Left Hip Esquire
- Limp pricks and no balls
- New Page
- Never ask them to strip
- You, off my planet
- If they absolutely won't...
- Achilles' heel
- Oh just do begone
- No-one on Planet Normal
- Welcome to Labour's England
- Democracy...
- New Page
- Bringing back the dark
- The best story
- Is there one single point?
- To come up to date
- Evil
- The destruction of the intellectual basis of the free world
- The mad relations in the rafters
- Let this be my contentment
- Results
- None of which of course
- A purely indigenous evil
- Here the matter rests at present
- New Page
- New Page
- A toss-up
- Blair
- New Page
- Reality 105
- The wearing of the green
- Recently come to light
- Growly snarly wolf
- New Page
- Five years later...
- Bobbles
- OK, assume.
- A flight of fancy
- So long as we understand each other
- Footnote
- Fisking Warsi reprise
- Why was nothing done?
- Job well done, filth
- Being a galactic mail from me to Zaphod
- Beyond evil
- In the 61st minute of the final hour
- Doo-be, doo-be, do
- English Christianity until....
- New Page
- 'I AM KING AND GOD AND LAW#
- So I get this
- Bad mood
- Another book for you, Blair
- One should always write things down - in some form or another
- All cleared up in five minutes
- Of course I have worn such a hat
- Thus, bloody thus
- No pasaran
- I continued...
- You prefer Misa and Ban-razit
- The 3D printer in the town centre
- Labour's apotheosis
- Selling women by the pound
- Why, my own mother and father wouldn't recognize me
- And the punchline is
- Do just go and fuck yourselves
- Fruit Loop
- Only one interest
- The price of a woman's body
- Eris
- Just can't hear you
- VR
- Not as exciting as Hokabi
- 'Unfortunate'
- Oh look what they're saying about me
- Should one really not...
- I am intelligent.
- From the archives: fisking Warsi
- Do MPs entirely grasp what they're there for?
- Our servants not our masters
- New Page
- Or you could say the reverse
- The problem is that there is no problem
- Irrelevant
- From the archives: who killed Banaz
- From the archives: ooh, we are so sensitive
- From the archives: wondrous multiculturalism
- From the archives: Banaz' sister spoke out
- Neither right nor honourable nor gentlemen
- The carrion chorus
- And so
- New Page
- Can hear you from here, animal
- Forgot it at Christmas
- 'Blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain'
- So golly gosh
- And I laugh (2)
- What else can we talk about
- Thus
- Spare ribs
- Mene mene tekel upharsin
- And of course...
- Matthew 7: 3
- Blair
- This exchange
- Because it's a horrible way to die
- Peter
- Those convictions
- A purely pernicious twist
- The open mind
- They took away the post-its
- First part of Fal 2
- Sarat at the Shrine 1
- Sarat at the Shrine 2
- To continue...
- Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 1
- 2. Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 2
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun
- Of course
- Ridiculous and viie
- From the archives: obedience (1912)
- I should imagine...
- From the archives: And who kept this bubbling?
- From the archives: Voltaire on the CofE
- From the archives: Extra ecclesiam nulla salus
- From the archives: The Vatican archives 1
- From the archives: the Vatian archives 2
- From the archives: The Vatican archives 3
- 2000 years making most of it up
- Proud Archbishop of York conducts his own daughter's wedding ceremony
- New Page
- Nothing may be said. Nothing may be done.
- It seemed a good idea at th e time
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa reprise
- Aren't they gorgeous?
- A precedent has been set
- Something else for the animals to gloat over
- Let's play doctors and nurses
- Women beware women
- How best may we accommodate you, o master
- The Agora
- New Page
- Violence power coercion desecration
- BOURGEOIS MORALITY
- New Page
- Once more from the top
- So what do I think?
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet
- To conclude: to whom it may concern
- Sarat and Hass
- THis is what I look like, Vice-Chancellor
- Sonderkommando
- The balance of probability
- Can I keep this up for ever?
- How you hate intelligence 2
- Et freaking cetera
- Honestly, darling, that mantilla
- The prince, the duke, the cardinal, the politician and the professor
- The Fixers
- The Enforcers
- By the balls of Apollo!
- Cernunnos
- Burunda
- Solidarity
- About that new sofa I printed...
- A position it is entirely easy to understand
- Yes. Yes, you are ridiculous
- Yes. Yes, everything I have said about you is an understatement
- Meanwhile back at the ottery
- The flawed concept of Islamophobia
- Oh rats!
- The revolving door
- Ah yes, my future
- Explicit liber
- So now....
- Deep breaths
- Thanks awfully for the suggestion, old boy
- A list, therefore
- Previous reflections
- Ah, culture
- Ah, here you have the nub
- New Page
- Tropes
- Letter to my dead parents
- New Page
- These they left me
- Don't forget Lattic
- Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
- Song of the Western Men
- The new national anthem
- Wanna see the Deeds
- New Page
- Another very fine song
- Shamima Begum
- The perfect citizens of a fascist state
- Grease
- Love, Serafina Pekkala
- To whom it may concern
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Also to whom it may concern
- So what happened then?
- New Page
- New Page
- Who has no authority in England
- I shall now potter off
- La trahison des clercs
- 'Those who cannot remember the past...'
- A little intellectual exercise...
- The view of the Labour leadership
- Take it from the top, Karl
- Is Abbott a feminist? We shall see
- Ooh, we are so sensitive
- Death before dishonour
- Listen very carefully. I shall say this only once
- Of course certain lines here
- Hide the Secret. Hide the Weakness
- The very model of a modern faith apologist
- Models of modern health practitioners
- Meanderings
- Negation
- Bloody certifiable
- Convert, comrades, convert!
- Found the articles
- Dangerous animals
- I name you the Duke of Plaza-Toro
- New Page
- New Page
- Christchurch 1
- New Page
- New Page
- To May, whom it concerns
- Shouts and whispers
- Hic jacet
- Hyde Park, London, England
- Condition of the Working-Class in England 1845
- Thus ComSymp ShariaSymp
- Ooh, you guessed
- You are so obvious
- In detail
- Hard wiring
- If mind does not exist., democracy is unnecessary
- Th Age of Reason, 1794
- Fisking Cantuar
- Danger: profoundly esoteric image
- The seer and that which he sees are one.
- Meanwhile hats off to the Guardian
- Letter to MI5 in case you missed it.
- Fucking Pollyanna
- The Greta Garbo Home for Wayward Boys and Girls
- Perhaps in five year old English
- Non serviam
- The 7 principles of public life. Pix too
- Tor and Tonge
- Barking moonbats
- Herr Hitler, I presume
- A rich joke, Blair
- Eire in the 1950s?
- Cold shower
- By definition 'God' has to know what a lepton is
- Ah, the Yorkshire Ripper
- Parallel government
- New Page
- You will not look at them
- The magic migraine
- From about a year ago
- La nausee
- Yes, it's Operation Mindfuck
- Book review
- Happy bloody Easter
- A little quiet attempted murder
- Fal 2
- The curse of the killer zombies
- So the next logical step would be...
- Don't my silly little arts degree mean nuffink?
- Oh dear I have upset someone(s)
- New Page
- A few questions
- There are no great ones
- Gets so horribly in the way
- Violence against women, it's what you pay your taxes for
- 'Bring me the head of Alfreddo Garcia'
- Just don't forget Lattic
- The House of the Rising Sun
- The initiation of force
- Yes, that's right, I said Bentley
- Turning now to this Matter of Kadun I
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Shav, Petrush and the Matter of Kadun 2
- Do admire your handiwork
- Marche funebre
- Misogyny
- On this 75th anniversary...
- The Enchanted Forest
- If you should confront these filth
- Encore une fois
- Impertinent evil filth
- A successful outcome
- Therefore...
- Which end is up
- I shall create it
- PANTHER: The Manual, out now on Scribd
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Indeed there are many interesting people to talk to in my mind
- Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof
- To dig a little deeper
- Of food-banks and reprographics
- No dark
- Just remembered another spectacular waste of money
- More about Tories
- And more...
- This and that and some of the other
- Or in short
- Don't forget The House That Keir Built
- Memo to the Senate of the University of London
- Turning now to this Matter of Kadun I
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- The fur does settle...
- Models of medical practitioners
- HARD WIRING 2
- Strange things happen in the quantum universe
- Strange things happen in the quantum world
- "Are you still laughing, Sarat?"
- Falsity
- Je ne regrette rien
- Of course you could always check the facts
- 'Do you recall what was the deal/The day the music died.'
- The family handbook
- Goose-stepping morons
- Riidiculous
- Welcome to the diverse and plural real world
- Does it not sound sweet?
- This half-wit waving her degree...
- O tempora! O mores! O mayhem!
- Sexism is a crime
- ''I can't be treated like this.'
- And here the matter rests at present
- J'ai vecu
- Extreme unction
- The free movement of peoples
- The rules
- The witch must burn in hell, he trumpeted,
- You can always ask Google
- Monsters
- Just think, then you can add murder to your CVs
- New Page
- No dark
- In sum
- Give them everything they ask for
- Good for a laugh
- The end. Full stop.
- Just grow a pair
- Bad moon rose
- To whom it may concern
- And?
- And don't forget Lattic
- The Hall of Mirrors
- Because of course
- How to murder a woman
- Bwahaha
- They gave them time
- My big brown eyes
- A n all-party statement from the House of Commons
- Fat pig
- Always remember...
- Always remember...
- The whole lot of them
- Clear and present danger
- Note to Jackson, Hughes and Ardeshna
- So...
- Oy, you
- They did not like the New Marxism at all
- Irritable Owl Syndrome
- The drivel show
- Oh, you know, Woodstock
- Aqiuarius
- One more time and once again...
- Anglican England
- Since I feel bloody annoying
- At cock crow
- Civilized behaviour
- New Page
- 'Thirty pieces of silver'
- 'I look for truth and find that I get damned'
- Found the quote
- Carrion
- Books
- Singer to my clan in that dim red dawn of man
- Five Prime Ministers
- The victory of the Tuatha de Danaan
- A briefer response
- Bonfire Night
- Conjecture
- Or as I said more lucidly...
- They really didn't like my poems at all
- Denis Diderot
- The Age of Reason
- Some years later...
- We the people
- Side-dishes
- So do tell
- Facts
- Reality
- Because I know you hate it even more
- So perhaps
- Termites
- So you go right on..
- I even told them about the SOE
- Transforming the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- Oh and this
- I think Hafiz would have liked Bunyan's hymn
- Fisking Warsi
- Welcome to Brighton, a plural and diverse community
- An 'All Party Parliamentary Group'
- Oh, when will this end?
- QEbloodyD
- To return to civilization.
- Fal continued
- Fal and Tet
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Maya's assassination
- They stripped
- For monkey-nuts: dixi
- Fisking Malik: Preamble
- Melodrama
- Fisking Malik: Part One
- The end is Nye
- Aberfan
- New York Mining Disaster 1941
- Resonances
- Don't talk to me about the law
- And so...
- And the other thing...
- you so love lies, don't you
- Writing things down
- I am the very model of a medical practitioner
- PAINLESS BUT PERMANENT
- Love from Serafina Pekkala
- A difference of opinion
- Just a theory
- What the hell do you think I am, you ridiculous little pieces of shit
- This will do for the time being
- This colour doesn't run
- The desired result
- No balls, 'Frank', just no balls
- Just call me Harmonica
- Hokabi
- In his tin can, far above the world
- Bloody psychopaths, in short
- Berchtesgaden, 1935
- You are so obvious, Blair
- So what happens next?
- So what is the matter with you
- End of the road
- Happy New Year
- Meaningless
- Kinky boys
- A sick joke
- So:
- Bottom-feeders
- New Page
- So why are you here?
- There, isn't that just so cute
- The Lizard of Oz
- And stuff this...
- And they have never heard of...
- Of course I'm a fucking witch
- Just getting out my tunic of skins
- Erudite, that's me
- In short...
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- So, as ever
- It is a slave's lot thou describest
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Medicine: the joke
- Are you five-year-olds?
- The Directorate
- Murderers and traitors
- Books....
- Books, filth, books
- Since I have no intention...
- Oh, how they stripped.
- Indeed, it is like this, Doc
- Thus...
- And the fuss is about what?
- This and that
- And don't forget Lattic
- Lemme set the scene
- Diversity
- This matter of Kadun: (inner and eso) 1
- The matter of Kadun (inner and eso) 2
- They are the Daleks. They are Masters of the Universe
- I however do not remotely think that
- 'See how I die. Just watch me die.'
- A simple case of attempted murder
- The final act
- Our story
- So why did they not support PANTHER?
- Love drowned in Corruption
- All times are now (1)
- Transforming the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- 'The Father took from him the Keys and the Sword'
- 'That government by the people....'
- Ir's a fucking doddle
- The smoking gun
- Read all abaht it
- Woo-hoo, it's a full moon.
- Carrion
- 'All you need is love'
- Just not macho
- So what precisely - ?
- so when England's answer to Indiana Jones...
- And you filth at UCH
- 'When Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald...'
- More history (after a bit)
- Exodus 32 (well, loosely)
- A 99% confidence rating
- Something of the kind..
- Come to my funeral, Blair?
- Do anything for them, anything to feed them
- Forgot to repeat the Bobbles letters
- England in the C21st and the C12th
- In the event of.
- My head held firmly under water
- The most basic standards
- Miscellany
- The primate pecking order
- Cancer Ward
- Locke, Hume, Kant, Mill, is there anyone they didn't ban
- Farce
- The Tories' own quest for ideological purity
- 'opium of the people'
- Blair's New Model England
- In English not Latin or Arabic
- Because no-one stops them
- The thin end of the wedge
- Intellectually sickening
- And don't forget Lattic
- Sickboy
- From the Shrine to the Viledeen
- The company of civilized people
- The care of the penis
- So you're happy now
- Unlikely
- I hope...
- So very much more interesting
- Astronomy for Kids of all ages
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun
- In sum....
- Shit
- And I laugh
- Feeesh
- And be damned to you.
- Avatars of perfection
- New Page
- Marked for extermination from the start
- i'm helpless and desperate and alone so just fuck you
- So just go and
- Wouldn't it be lovely to be in hospital
- Alice's adventure in hospital
- The NHS does not live by bread alone
- Just say cheese
- Clear and present danger to women
- There are those who despise being able to spell....
- I remain, yours sincerely
- Do you think I don't know what you are
- Thus troll toes
- Achilles
- Complete barbarians
- Bloody rings of power
- Lady Sybil's exploding dragons
- Mesdames, messieurs, faites vos jeux
- A societal archetype....
- Sascha doing his renowned impression of a baby zebra
- Pog ma thoin!
- The continuum
- Good to see the young people out in the fresh air enjoying themselves
- Look once again at spite-ridden lower-middle-class women
- So the hell with you
- Mr Morgan, Mr Paxman
- Ah, you're going to sue me?
- Or perhaps
- So which particular set of ludicrous and obscene lies?
- The opium of the people
- Throw them my body, throw them my life. Can't do enough for them
- The hell with all of you
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Fal and Tet
- All any of them want, my destruction, the destruction of democracy, destruction of the University
- Maya's assassination
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- Vultures
- They had one chance
- Monsters
- So the fuss is about what?
- Unrectifiable harm done with malice aforethought
- There was, you will recall, a bad moon rising
- Cool stuff
- Just what is your fucking problem?
- So now Emglishwomen are destroyed at the command of sadists
- Aggravating factors: adding insult to injury
- Selfies
- Evidence
- Bonnie and Clyde
- Chinese whispers
- Beyond evil
- Evidence
- They jumped from 40,000 feet without a parachute
- Kindle and things
- Bloody Operation Mindfuck
- What to do when they push Chinese writing under the door
- The word you seek is brainwashed
- The bloody cosmic laughter.
- I thought you might like to see...
- Women's bodies break easily
- They were told and they were told and they were told
- Not on the whole given to Schadenfreude
- Do they actually have IQs or do they flatline?
- Wouldn;'t it be funny if Bobbles were Francis
- All times are now, yet again
- Shame
- What you need to do...
- So all of it a right bloody waste of make-up
- 'There is nothing you can't buy'
- And of course I told them what would happen
- The sub-species woman
- Le quatorze juillet
- Oh and this bit, comrades
- 'Tell all the boys I'm back in the city...'
- Time for a wash and brush-up
- And, and, and
- Verse 5 of the Red Flag and don't forget Lattic
- New Page
- But of course
- Fill in a few gaps
- Merit
- Homo sapiens sapiens stands erect
- Bunch of boobs
- The required result
- Lower than vermin, much lower
- And another one
- The Wizard of Oz
- And the only outstanding question
- Cooking the books
- so come on....
- Hell and tarnation
- You did go to school, Blair?
- New Page
- New Page
- Sick-boys
- Pscyho-sexual cripples
- Understanding
- Oh and because I know you're thick...
- Another scalp for the sick-boys
- So, pig-bitch
- Pig-bitch 2
- Pig-bitch 3
- Functionally illiterate
- How you hate human
- The ghost in the machine was riled
- Dear MI5 person
- Or perhaps Linch and Goldstone prefer...
- Yes
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Fal and Tet
- You, Blair
- This site will self-destruct...
- Left out repeating the juicy bit
- Hi to the University of Witwatersrand or wherever
- You are really very funny
- You are really very funny
- How very funny
- As if
- If...
- Can it be more obvious>
- Conclusion
- The initiation of force
- A busted flush
- Shall we have that again?
- The sum of the ravings
- This meanwhile
- But of course
- Point-blank rejection of the governing system of the country
- What part of fuck off does the Vatican not understand?
- Please save the crackling
- Happy Hallowe'en
- This bit's fun too
- Time it was
- Oh you know, like this
- Screw you....
- As if
- NHS bureaucracy strikes again
- More asses
- Show's over
- My body, my self
- New Page
- Hate intelligence, hate better
- The Library at Alexandria (and things)
- HARD WIRING A
- Hard wiring B
- Hard wiring C
- And of course they ain't fucking illitrit
- Index Librorum Prohibitorum and things
- New Page
- Jesus, look at them!
- So take a walk on the wild side
- But your Achilles' heel remains
- Addressing an empty crisp packet
- Empty crisp packets
- So here's to you, criminal vermin
- Only 4000 variants
- So they sat there jerking themselves off
- And on no account forget Lattic
- So, Mr Benn's questions
- The contents of the septic tank
- Lizard men
- Playing with my dolls
- Ah, yes, the funny farm
- Hic jacet 2
- New Page
- This was Anglican England
- I really understand
- First part of Fal 2021
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet 2021
- Trash
- The horoor
- The Reformation
- Uncle Joe and the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- Dixi@ I have spokwn
- And govenment is for what?
- And here is picture of Jesus with his beloved pet ferret
- Your Christmas favourite
- Peter
- And this is what happened
- Les Eleutheromanes
- I repeat, just for the hell of it.
- So I'll just go on thinking my own thoughts
- All times are now (1)
- All times are now (3)
- 'Be careful with that axe, Eugene'
- La Ballade des Pendus
- We do not know
- Banal
- The wrong kind of snow
- Oy, monkey-nuts
- Lizard-men
- And of course they all know too
- Fiver in the Death Warren
- And lo it came to pass
- One way to deal with sexual fuxk-ups
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun 2021
- Frauds
- Complications
- Yes, but I know who I am
- Today satirized as
- Dill, the bit in the middle
- Question
- Ah, but
- What can be wrong with that?
- So what have I done
- And this is the state of my body
- Absolutely insolent, absolutely evil, absolutely degenerate
- Dangerous wild beasts
- Cowardly, contemptible cock=suckers
- Farce
- Thus, m'lud, it is clearly demonstrated
- An offence against law, fact, reason, sanity
- So we go through it all again
- The empty swimming-pool
- So I have questions
- One more bloody time
- It remains the best way
- Get real
- Two to the power of 75000 to one against and falling
- Along with Oolon Colluphid
- Head honcho
- So why - ?
- Civilized behaviour
- 'Be careful with that axe,Eugene' (2)
- Deep Thought
- England in the C21st
- So what's next?
- I do understand
- Right bloody waste of make-up
- An aggressive cancer
- A question of degree (not the academic kind)
- McDonnell's little friends in Iran
- Ah, yes, McDonnell
- Everything was perfectly normal
- Blog
- So when did you hear - ?
- Time for a wash and brush-up
- Time for a wash and brush-up (2)
- So calming
- The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
- Google Images search
- Am enthusiastic amateur classicist
- It only remains therefore
- Aum mani padme hum
- New Page
- WHen everything fails
- Jackson
- Thus
- Tsk, tsk, tsk
- If I may translate...
- Perhaps you prefer - ?
- Roast aurochs
- Totally synbolic, totally not
- Just doesn't matter, does it
- Base details
- History, should there be any
- Libro de los juegos
- Yuck! Kitten-eaters!
- Sea-changes: writing the 60s out of history
- So do just tell
- The end of the world is nigh
- New Page
- The party of law and order
- Thank you, Prime Minister, that will be all
- Fit for human habitation
- Aw, Dimitri!
- Yes? And?
- Ah, bon, les putes
- Indicting Tories
- Poor Mr Sunak
- Falsity
- RL
- Untitled
- The D-word
- Nye, wouldst that thou wert living at this hour!
- Sp gp fpr ot
- Fortunately there are more elevated things to do than contemplate infected shit
- The parable of the respirator
- Arbeit macht frei
- Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
- It's the grapes that come from Chile
- Untitled
- The actual social principles of Christianity
- The social principles of Christianity as observed by Marx
- Bananas and eggs with your polio
- The hallmarks of the age
- Gilead
- Spinal tap
- Purr
- An atypical population
- New Page
- Leche-culs
- The Woman with the Book and the Woman with the Bow
- RTFM
- The ceding of democratic control
- I shit on you daily
- The ceding of democratic control pt 2
- Fortunately there are civilized people to talk to
- This is how to deal with pervert monkeys
- Pink stars and burquas
- Ditching the theology of love: reprise
- A happy communist life
- Or you prefer Nigel?
- Our papa
- My turf, bubba
- Guarding the pigs
- Just a little obvious
- New Page
- BDSM
- The deeds, Naylor, the deeds
- So Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- And the hunt continues
- Jesus!
- Question for those with daughters
- So what has happened to Jesus?
- New Page
- All on prime-time television
- Lest we forget: I don't
- You know, like at Hokabi and Caniba and so on
- Until they learn
- Vaudos 1: so it's a walking fence
- Vaudos 2
- Vaudos 2.75
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet
- New Page
- Don't forget they ain't fucking illitrit
- There when it gets shitty
- Luke 23:46
- Of course he argued with himself about it.
- Democracy: a system devised to cage and contain power
- If there are any future historians
- What to, the Higgs boson?
- Maya's assassination
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun 2021
- 1. Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Astronomy for Kids of all ages
- 1. Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 1
- 2. Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 2
- 2. Shav, Petrush and the Matter of Kadun 2
- Who are pensioners?
- Party political broadcast...
- Look at all the little lungfish
- Unfit to govern
- Protozoa capering in the primeval soup
- Have you managed to be human?
- Life in a fact-free world
- And of course our dear friends the anti-vaxxers
- The wrong kind of Muggle
- Just put this on Twitter too
- Precisely how - ?
- Aroint thee, Muse!
- Death by government
- Cruel and unusual punishment
- It is, I think, the creation of Vernon and Marge
- Gee, isn't it just the market?
- There would not therefore seem to be an real difference
- The goose that laid the golden eggs
- The gifts that kept on giving
- Only 37.9 million tourists a year
- The Big Squeeze
- All the same gig
- Lolling insolent evil
- So now I walk with a rollator
- So, I deem
- Terror-tactics against a medically vulnerable woman
- New Page
- There is no dark
- Me
- The issues facing my grand-parents
- Don't forget the house that Keir built
- The desire of the moth for the flame
- The way through the woods
- Bit late for me and my steed...
- Art is individualism
- Magdalene laundries
- I told you not to put all the stars out
- Indeed the animals have a big problem with my family
- In the garden with Mummy
- ComSymp
- Chanctonbury Ring
- Doubtless too busy
- Light reading
- Reality 102: reprise
- Reality 103: reprise
- Reality 103a: reprise
- Reality 104: reprise
- Religious census of 1851
- Mortal sin
- If Twitter is anything to go by...
- The 1945 Labour landslide
- So just look at them all, Vice-Chancellor
- And of course an offence to UCL
- Time for a wash and brush-up
- The new Marxism
- Coal in the bath and the victim culture (2)
- Nice bit of bedtime reading
- Christ, you are so boring!
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- And of course this
- Just don't forget Lattic
- Thus Bobbles
- Fal and Tet
- Mr Benn's questions.
- Mr Benn's questions. A good clear message. The IRA
- Just so - so - so
- None of this of course is subject to discussion
- Therefore, ain't I got no respect
- Nor do I tug my forelock
- Book of Common Prayer
- 'I know that my Redeemer liveth'
- Meanwhile an offal-fest on Twitter'
- Spine
- This is what they expected me to push
- What? Oh, the picture Jesus mentioned
- Our servants not our masters (2)
- His Majesty's the model of a modern major-general
- The withdrawal of love and forcing oneself on others (2)
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa reprise
- Journey to the edge of the universe
- Oh they do get so antsy
- I am the very model of a medical practitioner: reprise
- I am the very model of a modern faith apologist: reprise
- Quid agas
- Balrogs
- C10th architects
- Truss and Braverman
- Imbeciles
- As for the rest of it...
- So:
- Totally ordinary Brits
- The corruption of history
- 'Imagination has seized power!'
- So, you, Blair
- Without fear or favour
- So a special round of applause for
- The Anglican garden: reprise
- It is remarkably tedious
- All times are now (1) reprise
- All times are now (2) reprise
- All times are now (3): reprise
- All times are now (4): reprise
- All times are now (5): reprise
- All times are now (6)
- Maya's assassination: reprise
- Lizard-men: reprise
- Doth it not say in the Book of Pious Crap
- That government by the corrupt and inane for the corrupt and inane shall not perish from this earth
- And answer Mr Benn's questions
- Thus the dirty shit-filled hierarchical fascist brains
- PANTHER...
- 'And now Amanda is seriously ill.'
- You might also enjoy Sredni Vashtar
- Girls. You were saying? About girls?
- 'And gentlemen in England, now a-bed, shall think themselves accurs'd...'
- This happened in RL
- Ooh
- HMQ
- How to lose operations other than war
- There, isn't that just so cute:reprise
- Ah, the sub-species woman
- How do you dare?
- Oh look what they're saying about me: reprise
- 'Blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain': reprise
- A lemur speaks!
- Welcome to London, Mr President
- HMQ (2)
- Gee, guys, what might have happened
- Neither benefiting from nor obsesssed by
- In sum, then
- The succession that matters
- In sum, therefore
- It has therefore been established
- And be damned to you: reprise
- Who did impose on a subject of Her Britannic Majesty
- How the cards fell
- Prefer high crimes and misdeameanours
- Time for something else
- Couldn't finish without your favourite song
- The Abbey
- The end of the world is nigh: reprise
- Men don't get it
- 'In order to rightly judge these efforts known as the "woman movement"'
- I'm sure Mr Kwarteng believes in equality
- Get real fast
- Roast aurochs: reprise
- It didn't work last time, peeps
- Doctors
- Ants
- Bellatrix
- Vaudos 1: so it's a walking fence
- Vaudos 2
- Vaudos 2.75
- It's like this, Nurses
- Letter to MI5: reprise
- And you do not make me into a porter
- I do so understand
- How you hate intelligence
- How you hate intelligence; reprise
- So how many people has Medicine destroyed?
- Don't you like my DNA?
- So you're going to sue me?
- I understand
- Hmm, so I guess...
- Yes I understand
- This is how it should be? Reallyy?
- Special mentions
- The wayside
- My country. Took seizin
- To whom it may concern
- Do tell
- A blank wall
- Democracy is so yesterday
- Nothing is too low
- https://www.coursera.org/learn/our-earth?
- No interest to me, old boy. No interest whatever
- Burn the witch at the stake! How much money we shall make!
- One quick question
- And something for Bobbles
- If...
- 'MI5's mission is to keep the country safe.'
- Reality reprise
- Reality reprise 2
- Your life in their hands, Episode 923452
- New Page
- New Page
- Never trust, never assume sanity will prevail
- New Page
- So in short
- The University in its death throes
- Narrow focus
- The absolute insolence, therefore
- In shorter
- Same old
- Same old (2)
- So there it is
- So they just couldn't possibly
- Ringleaders
- Encore une fois the manual
- Butchers and would-be murderers
- Nor of course response to my vid
- Or the second one
- The closed (sealed/wounded/stunted/practically non-existent) mind (20
- Please don't forget The House That Keir Built
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet
- So who knows
- As if I were capable of caring
- Above the law
- Depict them therefore in bondage
- Money talking
- Pure BDSM
- Please don't forget Lattic
- Meeee
- 'There is no dark'
- Hellenismos, tau-neutrinos, hanging
- Vita brevis ars longa
- True targets
- I a woman
- Boring
- Therefore, Vice-Chancellor
- Thus I refer you to...
- Break the stupid cunt's back
- So there it is
- irreducible evil
- Oversight
- Mock, yes, crawl, no
- All the things you haven't changed
- Cute family picture
- You can check it out on the DTIC site
- Eagles are rare in WC1
- High crimes and midemeanour
st not macho, is it.
Love, leaving people alone. Not forcing yourself to the forefront. Oh the capering male monkey needs power, control, force, needs to inflict its pathetic miserable sick animal on others, oh you have to believe such-and-such or do so-and-so, and of course you gotta obey, the sad little monkey feels really threatened if you don’t obey; it has to have confirmation it controls you, you won’t do or say or be something it doesn’t like. But the little monkeys don’t actually need its power and authority, because so long as they to a really very modest level love their neighbours they won’t do anything that requires controlling because it infringes the equal rights of others.
It’s not complicated. If individuals are modestly capable of controlling themselves and not inflicting our beastly little selves on others, we are jog along reasonably. Naturally since people aren’t perfect, there is the law for when we cock up.
I am cheering myself up re-reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Yes! Things could be worse!
The Sixties Revolution: an anti-box revolution easily dismissed, bewildering to elders; they might not like Marxism but they could see, a body of thought they could box up as Marxist-Leninism, What on earth was this about? Trivial, kids. No intellectual roots. That is of course bollox. It’s just the thinking had been done either roughly 2000 years ago or roughly 200 years ago. A reality check on the stuff you teach us about loving our neighbours and all men being equal.
It was a lot of things. I recall rooted objection to Mutual Assured Destruction did come into it, the sheer madness of the world as it was. Post-war Britain was a drained and exhausted place. Rationing ended only in 1954 and Britain was ready to kick up its heels and live a little. Shortly afterwards, Rock Around the Clock became the first rock and roll recording to hit the top of the American record charts, a feat it repeated on charts around the world.
'Time it was and what a time it was and what a time....'
In my young day a poster was nailed to the doors of the Sorbonne ending, 'Imagination has seized power!' In my young day Paolo Leonni wrote:
'To the Queen:
(1) that poetry, as an artistic extension of language, is a concrete alternative in the spiritual vacuum of every day life…
(4) That we feel the following to be problems in reality not sufficiently or satisfactorily dealt with in the tacitly accepted structure of politics, diplomacy and finance: …
(H) The refusal to grant poets their rightful Periclean role in modern democracy….
(K) The blind spread and acceptance of atheistic and dialectical materialism.
(L) The potential of the spoken, sung and written word to change the surface and substance of life
(M) The need to alleviate pain and raise all men to the highest possible level of human health in their minds and bodies….
(O) That we are bound by and can attain both individual and collective liberation through our first common wealth as poets - the English language….
(Q) That love need not remain a banal cliché but is and must be a constantly original divine verb….
Jeff Nuttall remarks in Bomb Culture: 'The squares exploded.' Yes, there was, in my young day, a lot of craziness, but there was also verve and vision, passion, curiosity, imagination, pizzazz and depth. Instead of building on them we have buried them
It's all about control, isn't it guys. It didn't happen because you lost control of just about everything. Now you use a sickly veneer of modernity to try to regain control of speech, of ideas, of moeurs and mores, pathetic little inadequates that you are.
And of course in retrospect it is also something else: a blue-print for a generation being non-violently extremely difficult. Of course there was the To the barricades! stuff, not to mention Baader-Meinhof, but it really happened that hippies handed flowers to cops who were moving them on. Should the situation deteriorate, there are always love-ins around Westminster Cathedral, gay, straight, trans, black, white, brown. I am fond of the following idea. The area of East London that had the impertinence to declare itself a gay-free zone, should such a thing reoccur – you’ve all seen the poppies falling on Remembrance Sunday. Should the RAF not bombard them with paper flowers until they were knee-deep. Of course they’d be awfully unwise to ignite any spark.
Then of course there's the creative use of synthesizers, amplifiers and the enormous range of sounds available on the Web. Technology has somewhat moved on since Victor Lazlo said, "Play the Marseillaise." The roarings of lions would be good.
The tools people most need to be taught to wield are the one between their ears called mind and the one so to speak in their chests called heart that controls their behaviour to others, enables seeing others as separate and equal, the tools cunts of all kinds religious, Nazi, Stalinist decry as evil, demanding people be empty vessels filled with their Troof, on no account think independently and of course no account empathize with those deemed ‘unacceptable’, the Jew, the gay, the non-compliant female, the ‘enemies of the Soviet people’, etc, etc.
And of course there is that cornerstone of observance, seedy sycophantic litanies about how squalid we are and how great is God. That most of us are a bit squalid, some of us are definitely squalid and some of us are very squalid was not a condition rectified in the vast proportion of western history when power was in the hands of the religious authorities, particularly if one were poor and/or female and thus a particular target of the squalid. This is no way detracts from the efforts of individual religious people who worked to make lives that bit better. I do but invoke reality. To listen to them one could quite believe and perhaps if one is sufficiently ill-educated one does believe that the first 1700 years of Christian history represented paradise lost.
If we consider the great minds of the past, anyone from Plato to Ibn Arabi to Lao-Tze to Caesar, we shall not instantly think that the heights of human intelligence have increased dramatically in the last 150 years but rather that only when rational people had shaken free of religious authorities was medicine able to develop; there would not seem to be an intrinsic reason why modern medicine could not have developed many hundreds of years earlier. Ancient Greek and Classical Arab alike were profoundly interested in medicine. Thus at the door of theocracy, dogma and superstition may be laid centuries of avoidable death and suffering.
Anti-human: the enemies of human. The tools people most need to be taught to wield are the one between their ears called mind and the one so to speak in their chests called heart that controls their behaviour to others, enables seeing others as separate and equal. That they do not want, only obedience to external edicts.
Liberty is a function of love; control is a function of self-will. From love follows civilized behaviour; from self-will follows criminality. The morally and intellectually castrated fascist religious are simply criminal, as their religion is simply the criminal behaviour of animals tweaked a bit and then given divine approval: of course you want to hit people, but you can’t hit everyone and here’s a list of people ‘God’ thinks you can hit.
Let us assume Jesus existed. It is questioned, but let us assume there was a man with a life and an agenda. It is frankly evident from the story of that foreshortened life that neither cowardice nor the withdrawal of love, the forcing of his will on others, was part of that agenda. I have mused upon how Jesus would have been expected to behave before Pilate under the current dispensation. What he did not do was begin to babble, retract, recant, plead, beg for mercy. Doubtless he would also have kept his marf shut if he knew what was good for 'im. The notion that he may not propagate his views lest he upset Authority is markedly absent from his ministry. I mean, you just don't do that, tell them they're whited sepulchres and that, you just don't do it. Nor of course do you lose your temper and start throwing tables around. No-o-o, I don't think he was the Son of God, just refreshingly normal.
Love and how far if at all it may be withdrawn is at the heart of all freedom, all women's and gay rights, despite the sleaze and corruption of priests that these represent modern corruptions - only, darlings because you are desperately sick - all human rights, and perhaps particularly prisoners' rights, which is among many other things why the devout Catholic Frank Pakenham,7th Earl of Longford, who undoubtedly could have had an extremely pleasant life far distant from society's rejects, was a founding member of New Bridge, an organization dedicated to keeping prisoners in touch with the outside world and integrating them back into it. This was in 1956, some ten years before the Moors murders, some 20 years before he became embroiled in the issue of the repentance or otherwise of Hindley.
We do not need lectures on the good religious people do. We need frank acknowledgement of the evil they do.
The withdrawal of love consists in - look it up - those of us who can still read are able to read Fowler - how far one may treat another as if he or she were one's property, an object with neither will nor thoughts nor feelings of his - or of course her - own, no personality, no individuality, no being of his - or of course her - own, no regard for another as distinct, separate, equal, different, but only as an extension of oneself, at one's disposal for the fulfilment of one's desires, no matter how depraved those desires be, the sorry perverted justification being that since one has asserted independence of being, one is evil and thus anything may be done to one.
Such withdrawal extends centrally to the treatment of prisoners and torture and degradation thereof. One may not either crudely physically torture or attempt humiliation for instance by ordering another to walk around fully dressed from the waist up but naked from the waist down.
One may only regard another as a creature of one's own will to the extent of forcing one's will on him or her if he or she has first forced his or her will on another. Thus underpinned is the principle of initiation of force, wherein force may only be used against those who have initiated it, amazingly enough. Thus someone may only be deprived of his or her liberty if he or she is proven beyond reasonable doubt of an offence against the will and integrity of another, whether by criminal assault or by depriving of goods.
Thus the refusal to withdraw love meant there could be no burnings at the stake, no Spanish Inquisition and we inched forward.
To deny a women any role for which she holds the appropriate qualifications and the desire to fulfil, whether lorry-driver, stockbroker or priest, is to force one's self on her, to overcome and negate her individuality, to make the claim that you know what she is and of what she is capable because she has breasts and a vagina, to mentally rape her, rape her soul
It is, I trust, unthinkable that any Anglican would insist that John Sentamu and Michael Nazir-Ali are unfitted to be bishops of the Church of England by virtue of their race, let alone try to split the Church of England over it. It is, I trust, unthinkable that the sensibilities of some Nazi freak be pandered to in this respect. There is that which is non-negotiable. Women most evidently still do not fit in this category in some religious circles.
The superficial and rather pathetic justification for this is presumably that there is Scriptural authority for the nature of women and gays, as of course there is Scriptural authority for banning prawn cocktail as an abomination and eliminating ferrets, but not similar authority for racism. That has not been the view of supposedly Christian racists. The geocentric, androcentric view that the nature of the cosmos or as they would have it the creation is defined by the male human ape-descendants on the third planet from the sun is merely silly.
One is not loving, self-forgetting if one is forcing one's miserable self on another, demanding he or she obey one. One is an ego-maniac, one's sole concern the yammerings of one's self.
The corrupt self-appointed voices of God, in the case of Christianity of course in direct opposition to that God, have claimed and continue to claim that whatever withdrawal of love they choose to inflict is unchallengeable because it is God's Will. They may parrot about choice but within their disturbed minds the mere belief one may choose defines one as evil. Thus a vocabulary was developed of words of power to terrorize the faithful, 'heretic', 'blasphemer', 'apostate', meaning one insists one is a person in one's own right.
The excrement that whatever the twisted self-will of a clerical person desires is necessarily sanctioned by God was of course overturned by the Enlightenment, neither love nor reason having moved the priesthood to treat others as individuals and equals.
In place of we know that, it is evident that, came you know nothing of the kind and it is a piece of twisted untenable nonsense for which you have no evidence that.
Most notably in the case of women's university education, nor were the learned gentlemen prepared to obtain any evidence. One would have thought that those so confident of the innate intellectual inferiority of the female of the species would have admitted us to the universities as an experiment, in the confident expectation we should fail.
Thus it took the Enlightenment and secularism to overthrow the arbitrary and unchallengeable power of the mentally sick,for whom 'sin' lay in having a personality of one's own, a being of one's own, individuality, a will of one's own, I have noted elsewhere the perversion that self-will lies not in forcing one's will on another but in having a will of one's own and forcing it on no-one.
We are small hairless apes on the third rock from the sun. As apes go, we are special, but there is no reason to think we are uniquely special or more special than anything else that might be trying to make its way in another hard, cruel world. That half of us are particularly special should be the target of universal derision.
PANTHER -> Site news -> Check-list: Multiverse defined by sexual equipment of human male
by Ysabel Howard - Wednesday, 8 February 2012, 10:06 PM
That is what it boiled and boils down to. Form not essence. The defining feature of the universe is not Love, Fear, Chaos, Order, Infinity, God or Nothingness but maleness. Does it not occur to them the multiverse is a little bigger, even a little more complicated, than their pricks? Among a great many other things, it is of course a profoundly geocentric notion, the view that anything in the multiverse is defined by ape-descendants on the third rock from the sun. I imagine primitive man was fantastically impressed with himself and could not conceive of power, The Good and finally the cosmos itself as other than male, to which Whole women, since we irritatingly enough existed at all, were either subsidiary, the servants of men, or opposed, as the embodiment of evil. Some of us have moved on. The 'evils' of feminism and gay rights in fact represent a move to wholeness, a healing of the wound.
As was said at the time in a mundane context: "Father, you don't know the time of day."
I fail to see how marrying a brilliant Radcliffe girl constitutes rebellion.
She's not some crazy hippie.
She's not many things.
What irks you most, that she's Catholic or poor?
- What attracts you most? - I'm leaving.
Don't go off half-cocked. I would only ask that you wait a bit.
Define "bit".
Finish Law School. If it's real, it'll stand the test of time.
It is real, but why should I put it through a test?
- I'm asking you. - You're commanding me!
If you marry her now, I'll not give you the time of day.
Father, you don't know the time of day
As the Dutch scholar Buijtendijk has said very impressively in his book on Woman, it is only at an embryonic stage of modern 'feminism' that it was naively supposed that equality for women had to mean doing all those things that men do. This, as he points out and demonstrates very conclusively, far from involving a true acknowledgement of the positive and unique contribution of women to humanity, was a last attempt to subject them to purely masculine criteria and, therefore, a way of admitting them to full humanity only through depriving them of their femininity. The true, and the only true, way to an equality with men, which will not prove destructive of their own integrity, is not their admission to a kind of bogus masculinity, but the admission of the unique importance of what they only can do and be. Their contribution to human existence is no less important or honourable than (though fundamentally different from) the masculine contribution.
More generally speaking, in the Old Testament already and in Judaism as well, the exclusion of women from the priesthood or the public teaching of doctrine, far from being linked with any diminished or impoverished idea of womanhood, went together with an esteem of women and a legal (and practical) situation for them in society which had no equivalent in antiquity, especially in the Greek-speaking world.
Such, then, is the Orthodox understanding of the ministerial priesthood. The priest is an icon of Christ; and since the incarnate Christ became not only man but a male—since, furthermore, in the order of nature the roles of male and female are not interchangeable—it is necessary that the priest should be male. Those Western Christians who do not in fact regard the priest as an icon of Christ are of course free to ordain women as ministers; they are not, however, creating women priests but dispensing with priesthood altogether.
In our subconscious there are certain symbols and archetypes which are not invented but given. The same is true of the symbols revealed in Holy Scripture and used in Christian worship. We ‘prove’ these symbols; all we know is that God has set his (83) seal upon certain images and not upon others. We have been taught to say ‘Our Father who art in heaven’, and not ‘Our Mother who art in heaven’; the second person of the Holy Trinity is God the Son, not God the Daughter; Christ is the New Adam, not the New Eve; he is the Bridegroom and the Church is his Bride—the relationship cannot be reversed. These symbols are ‘given’, and they are absolutely fundamental.
On the contrary, if we were to substitute a Mother Goddess for God the Father, we would not simply be altering a piece of incidental imagery, but we would be replacing Christianity with a new kind of religion.(41) The male character of the Christian priesthood forms an integral element in this pattern of revealed, God-given symbolism which is not to be tampered with. Christ is the Bridegroom and the Church is his Bride: how can the living icon of the Bridegroom be other than a man?
This is what common sense will call "mystical". Exactly. The Church claims to be the bearer of a revelation. If that claim is false then we want not to make priestesses but to abolish priests. If it is true, then we should expect to find in the Church an element which unbelievers will call irrational and which believers will call supra-rational. There ought to be something in it opaque to our reason though not contrary to it - as the facts of sex and sense on the natural level are opaque. And that is the real issue. The Church of England can remain a church only if she retains this opaque element. If we abandon that, if we retain only what can be justified by standards of prudence and convenience at the bar of enlightened common sense, then we exchange revelation for that old wraith Natural Religion.
It is painful, being a man, to have to assert the privilege, or the burden, which Christianity lays upon my own sex. I am crushingly aware how inadequate most of us are, in our actual and historical individualities, to fill the place prepared for us. But it is an old saying in the army that you salute the uniform not the wearer. Only one wearing the masculine uniform can (provisionally, and till the Parousia) represent the Lord to the Church: for we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to Him. We men may often make very bad priests. That is because we are insufficiently masculine. It is no cure to call in those who are not masculine at all. A given man may make a very bad husband; you cannot mend matters by trying to reverse the roles. He may make a bad male partner in a dance. The cure for that is that men should more diligently attend dancing classes; not that the ballroom should henceforward ignore distinctions of sex and treat all dancers as neuter. That would, of course, be eminently sensible, civilized, and enlightened, but, once more, "not near so much like a Ball".
With the Church, we are farther in: for there we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge. Or rather, we are not dealing with them but (as we shall soon learn if we meddle) they are dealing with us.
C.S. Lewis: Priestesses in the Church?
Man, Woman, and the Priesthood of Christ by Kallistos Ware from Man, Woman, and Priesthood, pp. 68-90, edited by Peter Moore, SPCK London, 1978.Christian Priesthood and Women by Louis Bouyer from Man, Woman, and Priesthood, pp. 63-67, edited by Peter Moore, SPCK London, 1978.!Screenplay of Love Story by Eric Segal
The earth is not bloody well flat. It cannot be repeated often enough, even by me, that their enemy is reality, simple homely evident realities such as that people are free to digest and capable of digesting other perspectives and finding them morally and intellectually superior.
On the treatment of women and gays by some members of our wonderful faith communities they are wholly silent. On the desire of some gay people to affirm a permanent relationship, they are vocal. On upholding freedom of conscience, which is what freedom of thought is, the right of anyone of integrity to think his or her own thoughts, not be a creature of another's will, they are bizarrely silent, it being after all all that leaves Catholics free to be Catholics and Muslims free to be Muslims.. On offence to religion, they are vocal. Routinely they come down on the side of evil and call it good and the rest of us evil.
Carrion, whited sepulchres, walking corpses, bags of infected shit, whatever. Yuck creatures who understand only power, force, violence.
Atheism versus belief is - could I have previously pointed this out – a red herring. The earth is not flat and a decent civilized atheist has almost everything in common with a decent civilized religious person.
Truly, the earth is not flat
Religion is a multi-faceted affair. Organized religion is the suppression of a multi-faceted, intricate reality. Organized and political religion is largely the official representatives of a bunch of psychiatric cases whose hallmark is that the universe and its inhabitants are as defined by a guy or guys a large number of years ago because 'God' told them that was how the universe (and of course its inhabitants, especially the females ones) are. If you do not believe the earth is flat, you are not a 'real' Jew/Christian/Muslim/Hindu/Sikh etc.
If God a being exists, conversation with It and sundry other beings - Michael? Gabriel? Raphael?- and puh-lease 'It' is the only rational pronoun, must provide hours not to say aeons of delight to Darwin, Huxley, Crick, Watson, Einstein, Schroedinger, sharing Its knowledge of space-time and evolutionary biology, introducing them to other universes in the multiverse where other physical and biological laws apply. Now that's diversity.
To put it more formally, any entity called God must by definition be omniscient and there can be no requirement to pay the slightest attention either to any product of the human imagination who clearly hasn't a clue or to his followers. The word you seek is mad. Madness is generally held to be divorce from reality and such persons dwell in a world that exists only in their heads.
Indeed, if in the course of conversation someone tells you the earth is flat, it does not instantly strike you that he and those who share his mind are critical voices in the running of the nation. If he goes on to tell you he thinks everyone who disparages him and those who share his mind should be locked up, executed or otherwise punished, you may indeed conclude that it is he and those who share his mind who should be locked up for their own safety and that of those around them.
The fight is for a world-view grounded in reality. The war against flat-earthers has really very little to do with whether there are or are not deities of some kind, indifferent or caring, whether the universe is chaotic or orderly, whether the Beijing Olympics happened concurrently in curved space and so is behind us and the universe as we know it is the result of a ping-pong ball straying into our dimension. The basic proposition to be confronted and defeated is that the universe has to be approached on one's knees. It is all known. While normal people have opinions or theories, put forward propositions, may indeed have strongly held beliefs, the excrement claim to know that which is untenable, that for which there is no shred of evidence, that which is readily countered, that which is rampantly sick nonsense.
The universe, we have from no less a source than Douglas Adams, is like big, man. Yahweh-Allah-Jehovah may at best be deemed a very local, provincial deity, obsessed as he supposedly is by the minutiae of the behaviour of the inhabitants of the third rock from the sun, right down to the menstrual cycle of the human female, where perhaps he is most obviously the figment of the imagination of the primitive human male, with ape-man's obsession with female virginity coming a good joint second with the simple hairy notion that, since he is an incontinent male animal, incapable of either self-control or individuation of the females of the species, those females should be modest in order not to unleash his lust. Nor has Yahweh-Allah-Jehovah had anything to say of late. Perhaps he has cleared off to some other part of the universe and has lost all interest in the human race.
Flat-earthism has very obvious basic tenets:
There is an alpha baboon in the sky whose majesty and whose self-appointed representatives must be spoken of with awe, respect and blah.
This alpha ape, like his human counterparts, requires people on their knees to him saying how wonderful he is.
Creationism
Women and gays belong to different and inferior species; usually this is held true of those of other races also
Heaven and hell and virgins and eternal flames
Frank affirmation of human self-centredness, the assumption the rest of the world revolves around them and is subordinate to them, the unquestioned belief that 'I' is the centre of the universe and they can demand others comply with them, the unquestioned enshrining of pure ego as divine will
Thinking, autonomy, independent judgement of mind and heart. are evil, for the rather obvious actual reason that anyone who thinks regards the ravings of the acolytes of a minority death-cult as sick crap and the given reason, which a child of six can see through, or at any rate a child of six not drugged from birth, that it is the evil of self-will, of thinking one knows better than 'God', or in other words them
"This new concept [multiverse theory] is, potentially, as drastic an enlargement of our cosmic perspective as the shift from pre-Copernican ideas to the realization that the Earth is orbiting a typical star on the edge of the Milky Way."
Sir Martin Rees, 1998, current Astronomer Royal of Britain
There is an enormous range of views on other planes, other dimensions, other realities, other worlds, other levels of being not least salvation and damnation. None of those is the point. The point is the putrid rejection of what is known of the reality of this world. While the Vatican's last best response to Professor Dawkins is that he is an evil atheist, it simply makes itself a joke, while instead of eagerly embracing his work as a new and fascinating branch of God's multiverse, it instead demands the twisting and corruption of reality to conform with its fantasies.
If you go on a trip through the universe, and there are many brilliant ones on the Web, you get a glimpse of what might be the Mind of God
Of course mystics knew that yonks ago, 'no human mind can conceive the entity called God', can't remember the exact quotation.
Meanwhile...'Hi, I'm God. No, I don't know much about the universe I created, I must admit. Thought the earth was its centre. I do get terribly upset about much skin human females show and whether they've had sexual relations with men who don't own them, and even more upset if anyone doesn't like the book I wrote. Sloppily researched, they say, no evidence, made it up as he went along. Thought he was supposed to be omniscient. And omnipresent. How can he not know? OK, OK, who am I trying to kid? I'm just a guy, trying to figure things out best I can. I got a lot of things wrong. Lots of politicians fulminate against guys who don't like the book I wrote. The trouble is, a lot of people are pretty thick and readily manipulated and there are a lot of people ready to manipulate them. I really didn't see it like that, you know. I mean, what I wrote is genuinely how things seemed to me to be.'
Really, who are they trying to kid? What is wrong with saying how things looked to guys a long time ago is not necessarily how they are?
It’s just a tool to control society. Works nearly every time. It most notably stopped working in 1789.
I am a non-person. For the moment my little gulag is quite cosy.
PROLOGUE
My name is Eris and I am a non-person, Despite my non-existence, I am introducing a tale of that theocratic, patriarchal, and unyieldingly fascist animal currently calling itself the British Left: I say introducing: most of the work's been done by Athena. She's a Professor of Philosophy. She's much more intelligent, informed and rational than I am. She would be, wouldn't she! She's pretty good at strategy, too, but we'll get to that later. I just like to play. I'm sure you'll be able to see where I've taken over the story. Pan will explain how we get involved here. Let's just say for the moment we're ancient Greeks. We do reason. And also of course democracy.
It has of course been observed - reading about ourselves is awfully jolly - that we goddesses were not the embodiments of the perfect citizen-wife, except perhaps for dear Hestia tending the hearth. Indeed, it has been noted, drily, if anyone came across us in vacuo, he or she might assume us a modern construct, an imposition of more modern values on an ancient culture, obviously phoney, standing out like blackbirds on a snow-field. Neither anxious little Mary nor great earth mother, we embodied in fact female possibility, the capacity for more than reproduction, nurture and making sure dinner was on the table, but that we had to work out for ourselves.
….
Rock idol Stavros Santinides waded into the Danish cartoons controversy. Gimme a break, man! 1.How and 2. Since when has writing been ‘Tory’? Since when has art been ‘Tory’. Since when have creativity and other intellectual activity been ’Tory’? Since the October Revolution of 1917? Labour is traditionally the Party of the arty, the intellectual, the anarchic with no time for authority, the goddamn hippy longhair. Lemme put this simplo. If you are not a Muslim, Mohammed is the guy who wrote the book. The book contains the bits the bombers justify the bombing with. End of story.
Asked to elaborate on his view by the NSS, he had this to say
We shall defend our island with the Fish Cheer. It will not be expected. They have minds like rats, following pre-established pathways. To them, all opposition comes from dashed true blue colonels in Cheltenham.
Why isn't the EU Constitution modelled on the US Constitution? GIVE ME AN F!
Where's the First Amendment? GIVE ME A U!
Where's the Second Amendment? GIVE ME A C!
Why are you such a sordid little creep? GIVE ME A K!
What's that spell? Free people can be awfully difficult, can't they. GIVE ME AN F!
Beat them into submission, of course, of course. GIVE ME A U!
Prosecute anyone who's half-alive. GIVE ME A C!
There's no such thing as freedom GIVE ME A K!
What's that spell? We don't want people who think or argue, do we.
GIVE ME AN F!
The last thing we want is intelligent people criticizing morons. GIVE ME A U!
They speak their minds. I'm speaking mine! GIVE ME A C!
All animals are equal, hey? GIVE ME A K!
What's that spell? Liberty is an illusion, a bourgeois fantasy. GIVE ME AN F!
People must not be upset by people saying what they like. Some people must not be upset. Other people
may be half-killed. GIVE ME A U!
It is not permissible. GIVE ME A C!
Alles in Ordnung, mein Fuhrer. Befehl' sind Befehl' GIVE ME A K!
What's that spell? It spells a British government that hates freedom and democracy and wishes to eliminate both. One more time, how do youall hope to stop Bleagh if you can't yell louder than that:
The campaign to remove Bleagh intensified. “What the - “ began Britannia.
“Hades?” suggested Puck.
“You know who he really is, of course.” “I know who he really is, of course.”
Naturally Stavros received the requisite number of death-threats. He recorded a cover version of 'Iron Man', adding an extra verse of his own: 'Is Bleagh live or dead? The Pope's thoughts have filled his head...'
The Vatican does not issue death-threats. It does, however, inveigh against the satanic nature of rock 'n' roll.
I am Artemis. I lie in the long grass, my head resting on Apollo's chest, a scene readily misunderstood. He is my brother. We are very close - not that close. When I say I am a virgin goddess, I mean it, Got that, mother-fucker? How badly do you want to die? I'll say this for C21st England. It is – for the moment – easier for a girl to go out in very little. But really Daddy can't you modify the climate just a teensy bit.
“Perhaps they should all murder their fathers,” I murmur. I feel him laughing.
“Exterminate all men!”
“If the majority of those in power were women, this would not be happening.”
“Have they lost their minds/Over the future of womankind! It will take more than rock
lyrics.”
….
Professor Pallas is something of a dark horse, a rank outsider appointed, a visiting Professor, she was, well, you know what that means, see them about once a year, to a Chair more commonly held by those whose reputations have considerably preceded them. Nonetheless the publications history is exemplary, the lecture at the Symposium ground-breaking, the performance at interview over one of the great conundrums that has faced philosophy since the days of Plato quite shattering.
An obscure college in the Peleponnese, I understand. An Oxford accent, nonetheless: not short of a bob or two, one concludes. One must not be insular (good to know standards haven't collapsed everywhere!) The one lingering doubt is that she may be well, a little old-fashioned, a little conservative for our – consumers but no, she clearly likes intelligent young people and shows herself as willing to learn from them as to teach them. She clearly likes intelligent older people too; fools, not. Much like Mrs Thatcher as she then was, the new professor quickly makes lifelong enemies, but in her case these are vastly outnumbered by lifelong friends.
Of course this has nothing whatever to do with her gender.
Pal quickly assesses which of her colleagues has a vestigial tail. One such is Bob Phelps, a small pink man, a Professor of Biochemistry, who reminds her of a small rubber ball and tempts her to bounce it. On the science side, Phelps is regarded as a dangerous man to cross, the biological sciences side at least; the chemists and physicists have little time for him. Certain administrative duties accompany Pal's post, mostly for the profoundly intellectual reason that the newbie gets the dodos, and she finds she has to attend the monthly meeting of the Information Governance Committee. Two students have been outspoken on social media sites and this, Phelps says, is unacceptable. The University's reputation! Pal raises her eyebrows. For concealment of lechery? Surely only if they have lied? Phelps is quite sure Dr Murgatroyd is incapable of such behaviour.
Why? asks Pal. The students should have in the first instance reported the matter to their Head of Department. Not, thinks Pal, if he is anything like you. There can be no automatic assumption of guilt or innocence. The monthly meetings of the Information Governance Committee begin to gain a reputation all their own.
“He doesn't like women?” asks Pal of her fellow-philosophers.
“Doesn't like people! Probably doesn't like cats. Anything with the temerity to be independent of Bob Phelps.”
“One of the worst,” sighs another, “biology's riddled with them.” “Worst what?”
“A primitive materialist. A hundred years of physics has passed them by! If it's not in a test- tube, it doesn't exist.”
“I think he applies that to people. Solipsist may be a better word. Since nothing and no-one with the possible exception of certain amino acids has independent existence, existence outside Bob's great mind, everything and everyone is at his disposal.”
“Entertainment lies in attempting any kind of intelligent conversation with him, opinion so trite it's painful.”
“He does not waste his time reading books. The physicists have the most fun with him. He crucifies himself implying they're not real scientists.”
“A popular man, then,” said Pal.
A friend she finds in Bill Foromonovic, Senior Lecturer in Greek. Bill describes himself as a lapsed Catholic.
“Your background is Greek Orthodox?” he hazards.
“I have learned in Northern Europe not to refer to myself as pagan. It has such silly connotations.”
“Hellenismos?”
“That does not precisely describe – what shall I call it? A realm of belief which has neither intellectual foundation nor external ritual and which has never entirely been annihilated. The gods are there. Perhaps you talk to them Perhaps you pray to them. Perhaps you half-pray, half-talk.
They are part of your life.”
“Well, well, well!” said Bill. Pause. “You know that's pretty much how I feel about Jesus.” “But lapsed.”
“Definitely.” He laughed. “I had a good priest – I mean he's a good priest and a morally good man, still a friend. He practically begged me to stay.” He laughed again. “He said the Church needs Greek scholars! Meaning Greek scholars with their feet planted firmly in the C21st, more than enough of the other kind. I did and do see the point but I said no. They go backwards.
Disappear up their own into a world that never existed because you cannot combine the mind of Augustine with quantum physics. They need to lose Europe.” He gave a wry smile. “After all, a split has been tried already. I really don't see myself as Luther nailing my theses, all of course in perfect Attic Greek, to the door of Westminster Cathedral. They think themselves the fount of western civilization. That is worse than false. They think themselves synonymous with Jesus and most of them would have buried him – idiomatically - as readily as the orthodox of his day crucified him, a trouble-maker, disobedient, as they bury all attempt at reform. Through them his teachings survived. Despite them, we have freedom, democracy, medicine, quantum theory. What do you make of the Vatican?”
“A dinosaur that doesn't know it's dead?” Bill snorted.
“Horribly true! My own analogy – the chalice thinks it's the wine, the cup-bearer thinks he's the cup. It survives because it represents – because it holds something so vastly greater than itself.”
“I was about to say,” said Pal, “but yes, I think you are right. About to say it survives on mass ignorance, gullibility, irrationality, but if all the intelligent, informed, rational leave, then the mask is stripped, an empty shell. The wine does not require the chalice?”
Bill smiled.
“The wine is rather special wine. It can stand up on its own.”
Hephaistos grumbled. I'm a smith not a mason! But can you do it? asked Apollo.
Of course I can do it!
Ah, the University, the Quad, the Rectangle, the Square and the Octagon - not only are these verbal people; clearly they know something of mathematics. It is the start of the academic year, unusually hot for October. The grass has had time to recover from summer trampling and welcomes excited freshers.. In the midst of the gently buzzing crowd appears a quite startlingly good looking young man in black jeans with a black bandana around his long curly hair and a black T-shirt, and some kind of a wooden choker. Girls do not look at his choker, but if they had they probably wouldn't have recognized it as a little phorminx. The young man is apparently oblivious and wanders off to get a coffee.
Apollo spends a long time casing the joint. Having found the Department of Greek, he traces it to its furthest extent which is a south-facing courtyard of irregular shape – how dare they - across half of which runs a crumbling brick wall of apparently no purpose, separating one patch of grass from another. Nonetheless, the courtyard is sheltered and clearly tended, a few late roses and chrysanthemums Around the grass, runs a path On the path are a couple of benches. On one of them is a girl failing to organize a coffee, a lunch-box, a small pile of books and a lap-top. To save the lap-top the books must fall. She swears fluently, spills the coffee on her leg and makes a sort of fouch! noise, for the coffee is hot.. Apollo picks up the books for her. The Duchess of Malfi?
“Not a student of Greek?”
“'Grief, no! I like it here. Not many people know about this place.” “How true.”
He goes on his way and vanishes off through the swing-door.
The corridor is brightly lit and lined with posters, timetables, reading lists suggestive of life, but there appear to be no humans. He is looking for the office of Dr Bill Foromonovic. Ah! And the light is on.
He knocks firmly on the door. “Enter!”
He smiles warmly at Dr Foromonovic, much like an interviewer greeting a particularly nervous candidate.
“Do excuse me. I found this. Strange thing, some kind of paperweight? I thought I'd better hand it in.”
“Good of you,” murmurs Bill, concealing his surprise at confronting a youth closely resembling the Apollo Belvedere. “I must apologize, don't know everyone yet. Are you one of our freshers?”
“Post-grad,” says Apollo, “bane of my life, my youthful looks.”
Bill notes the phorminx and smiles to himself. He must know what he looks like! Bit difficult to carry a bow around London.
“Then I must apologize again! A strange thing, as you say.” A small squat arrow sits on the desk between them, arrowhead rather, only no-one ever made an arrow of what looks like translucent marble. “I shall send an email! Has anyone lost a paperweight? That will I think be comprehensible only to the owner.”
“Then I shall not disturb you further.”
Bill returns to the nightmare of timetabling a wide array of subsidiary subjects, and not only those of students of Greek for the Department worked closely with SOAS and taught both Greek language and Greek culture to students of Persian and Iranian, Sanskrit, Ancient China, and indeed there was now to be a full degree in the Ancient World, though the content was not yet fully threshed out. Philosophy with Greek and Ancient History with Greek were standards as of course was accommodating the Latinists. Study of the ancient world was thriving. He knew the opinion of the funding committees was split down the middle on this, what's the point, versus what the point is: enthusiastic, highly educated, articulate people spanning the globe who know the world began with neither Christianity nor Islam.
The paperweight or whatever it is sits on his desk. His eyes keep being drawn to it. I should have taken his name. He berates himself briefly – I should not accept being busy as an excuse in others! Ah well, I'm sure I shall see him around. The more you stare – extraordinary, quite extraordinary. It's like – the most beautiful picture you have ever seen but you can't say what it's a picture of.
Only if you keep staring you can. Surf, clouds of foaming surf and half-veiled by them the form of a woman in a short tunic with a bow. He blinks, laughs. Ridiculous! Tricks of light and texture. No, little paperweight, Aphrodite arose from the foam, not Artemis. He looks again and it seems that the woman turns into a most imposing figure of a man, broad of chest, bearded. This is really very clever. There must be a chip. A very sophisticated version of those – oh what d'you call them. Things kids used to have where you shake them and snow falls. I want one. It's delicious.
Someone is having me on? Perhaps truly it is lost property and someone is going mad looking for it. If you possess this, you do not carry it around with you as though it were a phone. How then do you come to lose it? The thing is distracting him and he truly is busy, busy, busy. He puts it in the drawer and sends the email.
There is another smaller courtyard, square, barely larger than a pocket handkerchief, off- limits, mostly decorative gravel in the midst of which on a pedestal stands an of course imitation Grecian urn. The walls which bound it are glass, letting natural light into the 'museum', a small but much loved collection as much a question of sentiment as of scholarship, photographs of 'me with my first shard', a few small relics, anything of moment having been delivered to the BM, the minute office of the Head of Department, Prof Santos, and what is dubbed the internet cafe, being the computer and reprographics room, in the corner of which is a coffee-machine, a water-dispenser, a small fridge and a couple of easy chairs. All in all a considerable number of people see a shower of golden arrows fill the urn. A third-year grins evilly. It's a show we put on for freshers. The trajectory...mutter the mathematically inclined. The trajectory, others note drily, is suggestive only of heaven. The courtyard can be accessed by anyone with a key but only Estates have a key and by the time they arrive a hundred phones are clicking. It is all most untoward and indeed disruptive.
Call the Fortean Times! Student are shepherded off to wherever they ought to be, but not before some cheery soul has urged caution, could be contaminated, coated. Can't be too careful these days. Is this biological warfare! First the biochemists then the chemists are pulled in. The real problem, remarks a shaken chemist is they do appear to be pure gold. Well, we are short of funds! A rather unusual anonymous donation. But provenance. Fell off the back of a lorry, guv? Should we call the police. How can you lose 12 golden arrows! Naturally this curious incident makes the news.
Phelps of course is furious. A childish stunt! Phelps does not think the Faculty of Arts houses serious people like himself. Serious people get things done in this world. Serious people do not lounge about reading or waste public funds on discerning the nature of truth. Serious people know facts when they see them. Serious people live in the real world and do not let matters of principle get in their way. He has been astonished in the past at how many of even his own colleagues in the biological sciences fail to be serious people, the new venture being kept under wraps, what the eye don't see, the heart don't grieve over, eh, he really does not want his new Centre for Biomedical Research scuppered by adverse publicity.
How, Bill, asks himself, can you have 12 golden arrows? One would be bad enough. The cost excludes a jolly student jape. A point is being made, for the moment obscure. A stunt? What is an area of contention? The Marbles! Wrong building, guys, the BM is next door. He opens his drawer and stares just a little unnerved at the toy, paperweight, whatever, which has changed.
Marble, black marble, but it's not like a lump of marble, it's like a bottomless pool of liquid marble into which you could dive, in which you could drown – were you approximately the size of a paper- clip, of course. He pauses, suffering a moment's acute data overload. Just at this moment, he really doesn't want to remember that the altar at Delphi was made of black marble
He looks into the pool, stares into pink and gold and peach and sunset and then stars, endless stars. Microsoft do that one, he mutters but the stars coalesce as galaxies, which then dissolve, scatter at the approaching sun. Uh
A very expensive trick. Who has the money? Hellenismos?
There had been a somewhat awkward incident when both the Hellenic Society and the Islamic Society had booked the same room. Two rational solutions presented themselves - one group go elsewhere or a fascinating discussion of Sufi examination of Greek thought. Neither had been taken up. The reciting of a prayer to Athena in front of a Muslim woman in a niqab could have turned quite nasty, were in not that the recitation was in Greek. Most of his students regarded Islam as a Johnny-come-lately, possibly the worst being the son of Iranian refugees whose favourite attire was a T-shirt with 'Mazda lamps stay brighter longer' on the front. Perhaps fortunately, not everyone got the allusion.
Time to teach! Afterwards, I think, a word with Jim.
Jim is on the 'phone, hold up his hand. Yes, yes, no. He cuts the call. “Bloody arrows!”
“You ain't seen nothing yet...Someone gave me this yesterday. Said he'd found it and was handing it in. Look at it. Look into it.”
Jim looks. “Good....gods!”
“It does not help that he looked like Apollo!”
“Beware of Greeks....If you were given this, there was presumably some purpose to it.
Other than ogling Aphrodite.”
“Why?” demanded Bill. “Why should it not be ornamental? The same could be said for the arrows!”
“It could. Have you tried to find out how it works?” “Of course not. Break it.”
“We wait, I think, for something more clearly defined.” “Bring Them Back!” said Bill
“The gods?” “The Marbles!”
“That occurs to me also. This Department at least does not need to be reminded of Greece.” Bill gestured at the Thing. (His mind had been tempted to call it the Oracle and he had quashed that one fast. “You keep it.”
“When things settle down - “ He laughed. “If things settle down, I'll have a real session with
it.”
“A libation, at least,” said Jim. “Any excuse will do.”
Jim called him at 8.30 the following morning. “It seems the Medical School is in chaos.” “Dare I ask?”
“Item: There's a rather fine statue of Lister in the lobby. It has been crowned with vine leaves and adorned with a lyre.” Bill began to pretend to sound like a staid academic suitably shocked, but Jim was continuing “Item: Behind the main reception desk has appeared a full-size portrait of a naked Apollo with a small plaque reading 'God of Medicine and Healing'. Item: on the half-landing is a full-sized portrait of Athena, fully clothed, I hasten to add – labelled of course 'Goddess of Reason' – surrounded by a rather pointed collection of books. On Liberty. The Open Society and Its Enemies. The Age of Reason.”
Bill sighed.
“And they think our kids – I don't suppose they even know where the Medical School is.” “Item,” continued Jim, “an extraordinary creation, a (19th print of the riots marking the
admission of women to the Medical School heavily Photoshopped to include Athena confronting the rioters with Medusa's head and Artemis stage right pointing her bow at them. A further full- length portrait of Artemis in her hallmark tunic bears the legend 'Mini-skirts are old-fashioned.'
Bill could not suppress a yelp of laughter.
“The students from a Hindu background express considerable enthusiasm for goddesses The students of Greek descent crawl on the floor with laughter. A Miss Shah and Miss Al- Khanoum,, in appearance quite conservative, giggle and remark the Lord Apollo is rather sexy. A Miss Mahmoud in a skirt so short as to be barely extant yowls with laughter. The usual number of Christians and Muslims are outraged. These are overwhelmingly male.” Bill sighed again. “It has been said to me, thinly – I do not like that man – no matter how diverse the backgrounds and beliefs of our female students, they have one thing in common - “
“They want to be doctors not doormats,” finished Bill for him. “The overwhelming majority recognize cause and effect?”
“Just so.
“Can't they get him on medical ethics! If he doesn't like Jews and women, how can he be fit to practise?”
“He's clever. It's not actually he who makes the remarks that have almost the entire campus fuming. He merely invites the speakers who do and sits smiling through his beastly little Himmler spectacles.”
The Treasurer of the Islamic Society is a medical student. Jim's turn to sigh.
“The other divide of course is between first years of narrower background and those who know the context.”
“Welcome to the University! Complaints to mum and dad?” “Almost certainly. Phelps of course.”
“Of course.”
“Breaking and entering is undoubtedly a criminal offence. I am really not sure of the status, legally or in any other way. Can one say something has been vandalized when it is unbroken? And indeed unmarked.”
“Spend hours on that one! I put up a picture. I remove it. At least there's a hook, a hole in the wall.”
“Just propped,” said Jim.
“I am trying to connect this with our arrows. Artemis' arrows could bring destruction to women. If we are being subtle here, whoever 'we' are, might we not be symbolizing destruction to women has penetrated the heart of the University?”
“They shall not pass!”
“Who's stopping them?”
“That just may be the question. Round up the usual suspects!”
The Chair of the Hellenic Society is either in bed with flu, Prof, he has a temperature of about 40! or concealing injuries sustained during felonious activity though like everyone else Jim is unable to see how both alarms and guards were circumvented. Jim is prepared to keep an open mind.
“We didn't do it. We wish we had, but we didn't.”
Bill looks at his schedule. Certainly there are many things he needs to do, ought to do and sometimes even wants to do but there is nothing he has to do for three and a half-hours.
He takes the Thing out of his desk, pockets it, and skives off to the Goat and Compasses, thinking a sequence of events – it's university business, Jim but not as we know, it.
Jim meanwhile was reading a lab report. The arrows tested negative for the full range of known deadly toxins but did appear to cause spots. Well, itchiness, like nettle-rash. Must be the alloy, some kind of metal allergy..
The Goat and Compasses has a fine beer garden He sits himself down, takes a swig of his pint, then firmly lifts it and pours about half a cupful onto the grass. Now, by the blessed gods, little paperweight tell me your secrets. Does it have to be shaped like an arrow? . And now the sun is shining on a London street lined with cheerful crowds and ambulance men, police-officers standing by and cheer goes up as a single female runner appears, apparently effortless, streaking past like the wind, running a – marathon?
'What is this thing! The word Ask comes instantly into his head. Ask what! Who are you?
I am Apollo. Obviously, says Bill to himself, that is my projection. Or obviously not. Apollo Belvedere is approaching his table. Am I dressed for this!
“Twelve golden arrows are a very expensive joke.” “No joke. May I have a crisp?”
“Is it wise to refuse?” Apollo picked up the bag. “I love Smoky Bacon!”
“Hmm. Charred to a cinder? Who are you?” “I am Apollo.”
“You will forgive me if I have difficulty in believing that.” “Oh yes.”
Bill snorted.
“Let us stick to essentials. You, whoever you are, clearly wish to converse with me,who know who I am.”
You are a lapsed Catholic.”
“Ea“This society has two pillars, Athens and Nazareth, love and mind, if you prefer not to be parochial. These are universal values, facets of the human animal. Both have been rotted, largely by those charged with upholding them.sy enough to find out.”
“You can't stand them. I can't stand them. Already we have much in common.” “This is - “
“War,” said Apollo. “The arrows are hallmarked.”
Bill reached into his pocket and silently handed him a boring letter about a committee meeting and a biro.
Apollo briefly drew, a circlet of four pairs of antlers. “Hmm! That still does not necessarily.”
“It just creates a link between me and my sister's arrows.”
“You appear to be communicating to me that England has incurred the wrath of the gods.” “We came here because it was relatively civilized.”
Say that again slowly, thought Bill.
He said: “From the point of view of a scholar, that's a story I'd like to hear some time.” “They threw it all away under the banner of Faith. Now they use Islam to do it again.”
Bill raised his eyebrows.
“That is my interpretation. It is not the usual one.” “We have friends in common.”
“We do?” “Professor Pallas.”
“Oh no,” said Bill. “I have – always thought of her as a rather special lady.” “She is,” said Apollo.
“Agent in place?” suggested Bill. “Suppose I think of you as human plotters.” Apollo gave the smallest shrug.
“The total destruction of their power needs those not susceptible to destruction of either body or reputation.”
“But without human support - ?”
“One cannot uphold democracy without the support of the demos. We wondered if you would care to join us for dinner.”
“Ambrosia?” “Whatever you choose.”
“Ah. When in Greece...Olives I think will figure largely.” “When do you finish?”
Midnight, thought Bill. The chances of my getting any work done today are slim. “Six.”
“Pal will pick you up.”
“P- fine.” Live the dream! “May I ask – what is this thing exactly?” “What did you call it?”
“T- oracle!”
“You ask. It answers.”
“So does my tablet,” said Bill. He picked up the Thing. “What was the location of the debate between Anaxagoras and Plato?” Trick question. Apollo smiled but Bill was muttering to himself no, a computer could compare the dates (Plato was born in the year before Anaxagoras's death) even as the Thing showed him Zeus laughing. “Screen-saver,” said Doubting William.
“You could call her Sibyl,” said Apollo. “If I briefly transform, you will say it is something slipped in your drink.”
Bill spluttered.
“That may be worth it!”
There seemed to be a lot of golden light.
When he gets back to his office, a copy of the lab report is on his desk. Of course there could have been something slipped in my beer. I think I shall wait a little before making it generally known we have attracted the attention of the gods.
Pal knocked on Bill's half-open door, entered without waiting He smiled.
“Well, lady Athena, I seem to have gone up in the world. You are, you know, going to have to explain to me how it works. Goddesses can get away with silence. Not Professors of Philosophy.”
“Laters.”
Bill looked around. He wasn't entirely sure how he'd got here or maybe the rational part of his mind was screening it out. There are limits!
“A veritable home from home.”
Olympus? Yeah, it's like it is on the film-sets, a tasteful mixture of white gold inlaid with silver and the curious translucent white marble of the Thing, full of palest peach, palest blue, palest primrose, like a particularly stunning sunset.. All the soft furnishings were silver fleece. The light was befitting a mountain-top. He wandered over to the window, expecting to see – what? The
foothills of Olympus, celestial towers? What he got was the view from Richmond Hill. “Charming,” he murmured. You are having me on.
World-famous rock idol Santinides appeared.
Bill's eyes widened. He was about to say you got dragged in too but Stavros held out his hand in a business-like fashion and said, “Pan. Tends to unnerve humans, my actual appearance.”
“Yes, it would”
Pan waved at the surroundings with a wicked grin.
“Have to keep up appearances! If you went to Balmoral, you would have certain expectations, which would not include minimalist design and op-art.”
“That is true,” said Bill.
Pal appeared/re-appeared/manifested. “Making friends, good, good.”
She wore standard upper-class female Athenian dress.
“Glad to see you take the helmet off occasionally - “ Words failed him as he turned into a soppy mass of adoring babble.
“Turn it down, sweetie,” said Pan.
Aphrodite became normally devastating instead of abnormally. “Madam,” said Bill, recollecting himself. “you can only be.” “Just don't ask who is the fairest,” hissed Pan.
“Trouble-maker!”
What Bill instantly described to himself as a little wide-eyed poppet appeared. “I'm Eris.”
“All hail Discordia!” replied Bill promptly, then paused “You are not – and this may be just about the biggest faux pas since ever – all Olympians.”
“We're those who like it here,” said Pan promptly. “Shall we – I mean personally marble bores the shit out of me.
“Me, too, darling,” said Aphrodite. “Design has really moved on,” said Pan.
“The Garden Room,” said Aphrodite. “Don't you just love Peter Jones!”
“I love,” said Bill instantly, “the Garden Room. It may be just slightly doing my head in, but I love it anyway.” It may be the scent of the hibiscus. I have walked through a door into a room, not a garden, not even a walled garden, though it has walls. How then do I define it as a room? It has an immeasurably high ceiling of, I suppose, glass. It also, and this is the catch, appears to stretch to infinity, as though – as though you can just see the boundaries, immeasurably – what else
– distant. It has a stream and a little wooden bridge over the stream, a clearing in a grove – presumably sacred – and in the clearing small tables of intricate metal work and by them – he snorted – couches, the kline as interpreted by modern designers, of the same delicate and intricate metal work but upholstered like a chaise-longue, and a central long low table of the same design laden with food and drink.
“Pad Thai,” said Pal enthusiastically.
“Yummy,” said Aphrodite. “It really pays to get out more.”
“You are not - “ said Bill cautiously, “ - yours is not the only pantheon - ?” “My point exactly,” said Pan.
“The Jade Emperor,” said Pal, “is a good friend.”. “We think we've got problems!” said Pan.
“We have problems,” said Pal. “Late again! The twins.” “I think you do not mean Castor and Pollux.”
The deer chariot hove into view, high-stepping hinds apparently skilled in dressage. Apollo stepped out.
“The traffic,” he murmured airily.
Artemis released the hinds from their harnesses and they wandered off to graze. “Well?” she demanded.
“Everything's cool, babe,” said Pan.. Artemis glowered at him then turned to Bill “Are my arrows safe?”
Bill grinned.
“You tell me! They seem to cause itches.”
“Obviously we didn't want to start with a plague,” she said briskly. “The target of nettle-rash is unclear to me,” said Bill.
She giggled.
“It's not exactly nettle-rash.”
“He's been playing in the lab again,” said Pal
“It is not widely known,” said Apollo,”that my remit includes pharmacology. A psychotropic substance known to the ancients which has still not been clearly identified. Its common name is mind-itch. It's a test.”
“It's inhaled,” said Pal. “The effect depends on the victim.” “Victim?”
'”Trippy,” said Pan.
“I think of it,” said Apollo, “as a mind-irritant. It is liable to attack, at unexpected moments, those parts of a mind that are sealed shut and cause the victim to have what to him or her are impossible and perhaps even intolerable thoughts, with which he or she must then deal.”
“The pictures too?” asked Bill. “Oh yes,” said Apollo.
Some hours later, Bill is saying, “A society that wouldn't let a woman within ten miles of fighting its wars venerated a woman in full battle-dress! What is your explanation?”
“Virginity,” said Artemis promptly. “If we start from the paradigm that man is perfection and woman defective, we must then ask what is the defect? A woman could be a man if only we poor silly things could control our urges - “
“Both control our desires and not fall sway to the desires of others,” said Pal. “A virgin demonstrates controlling reason.”
Bill hooted.
“Not what I learned in Catholic school.”
Some hours later, many things have happened. Bill became slowly aware the garden was alive. It wasn't just the adorable little brown tortoise that nuzzled his feet.
“He's hungry,” Pan had said anxiously. “Lettuce?” suggested Bill
The others laughed. “Don't start him off!”
“There is so much misinformation about the diet of tortoises,” tutted Pan. “Point him towards the hibiscus. They're sweet little things but they're not, you know, terribly bright. I think it's because we're eating. A confusion of odours. So many pet tortoises die just because they're fed the wrong things.” Just at this moment, thought Bill, the great god Pan reminds me of nothing so much as an anxious twelve-year-old. “I've started a public education campaign.”
“Is it all right to pick him up?” asked Bill.
“Scoop him up from underneath,” said the nerdy bespectacled twelve-year-old. “Never pick them up by their shells.”
Beyond the dazzle of the hibiscus lie the trees. I am aware, Bill thought, that though they do not step out of the trees, though they are at the same time of the trees, which is of course impossible, but what isn't, there are dryads watching, laughing, talking to each other, even flower- nymphs. The tortoise was nibbling enthusiastically and Pan still holding forth upon tortoise nutrition. The nymph of the hibiscus seemed to be dancing. Not sure about that, thought Bill.
Does she like being eaten? Is she distinct from the leaf being nibbled? I have questions!
Pal began to expound her plan for SPQR, the Society for the Protection of Question and
Reason. With just a little difficulty Bill began to think, hard.
….
“The point is,” said Pal, “not one of these people has a single free democratic bone in his or her body. A massive public education programme is required.”
“The question is,” said Bill, “the – degree of sublety.”
“Nothing like thunderbolts,” said Pan. “Where is Papa tonight?” “Entertaining,” said Pal briskly.
Bill kept his face impassive.
Apollo changed into a well-known presenter of the weather.
“Thunderbolts are expected overnight over much of Scotland, moving south during the day over the Pennines, and expected in London in the early evening. Weather warnings have been issued. You are advised to seek underground shelter.”
“That bad?” asked Bill.
“Perhaps a little hard to explain,” said Pal
“That of course,” said Artemis, “is the other key issue.”
Bill turned to her and found her changed into a young Margaret Thatcher.
“Whole new meaning to identity theft. A trick with possibilities.” He looked hopefully at Apollo. “There's probably a law against impersonating the Prime Minister.”
“Venison,” said Artemis. “I see no law against turning him into venison.” “Torn to pieces by his hounds?” suggested Bill. “A shocking end.”
“I don't think he has any hounds,” pointed out Pal. “That may be fortunate,” said Bill.
“The other key issue,” resumed Artemis. “To what extent must events be comprehensible to humans?”
“That's for later,” said Pal.
“Depending, as it does,” said Apollo, “on the consequences of words.” “And music,” added Pan.
“Certainly music,” agreed Apollo.
“There have been many words,” said Bill, “but perhaps not the key words.” “Agendas,” sighed Pal. “It appears to be necessary to have an agenda.”
Bill looked shocked “You have no agenda?”
“How can we?” sighed Pan
Bill realized he was a little bit lost and felt his way carefully forwards
“You mean at some point the – purposes of – Olympus, if I may put it like that, and those of mortals diverge?”
“Oh, that, yes,” said Pal dismissively. Bill thought that if she were human he might have detected a note of how much should we tell him and saw no reason why her being a goddess must mean that note couldn't have been there.
Pan caught his eye. Tell you later. Hmm!
Aphrodite looked up.
“Tub-thumping. Awfully dreary.” She smiled. “Let me call this meeting to order.” “Target-audience,” said Artemis. “The human race.”
A rock-star, thought Bill, reaches places professors of philosophy do not. A designer...I think this is planned. What is? Essential to this is what people are, I understand that. Is what the gods are equally essential?
“The message is not complex,” said Pal.
“That's the problem,” said Bill. “That which is basic and non-negotiable has been negotiated.”
Though colleagues noted a gastro-enterologist (male) not so much acquire a whole new
Look as divest himself of the tedium of either ironing shirts or having them ironed for him and a female pathologist suddenly realized she had very good legs and started to dress them in sheer black tights and distinctly impractical shoes, medical students became more argumentative, and two senior chemists resigned to first marry each other and then to join a gay commune, the mind-itch had no results that could not be attributed to other causes, or in other words (Artemis's), it didn't work.
SPQR.
Cumulative, said Apollo.
Artemis invited him to make it into a spray. “There is something called an LD50,” he mused. “That's the one.”
Bill begins to put out feelers and soon has most of the Department wanting to learn more of
“I have to ask you,” said Jim, “if this has anything to do with arrows.” Bill burst out laughing.
“You are accusing me?” “Just asking.”
And I, thought Bill, should be a downright liar if I said no, but that is not the exact question. “I had no part in our anonymous donation. I had no part in the - invasion of the Medical
School. I had no foreknowledge of these events.” Jim looked at him cynically.
“Nicely put. Should our investigations perhaps extend to Professor Pallas?”
Bill found he was rather enjoying seeing if he could get out of this without actually lying.
After all he could always put his hands up and extend an invitation to Richmond Hill. “Pal, I'm sure, had neither part in nor foreknowledge of.”
“She's an attractive woman.” That feint will get you nowhere. “And of course she is a Greek national.”
“She has many friends. Some of them are on the letterhead. Will be!” “Greece's Namazie.”
“It would seem to me, and I have thought about this, that British women do not so acutely perceive the threat. Which is not to say that should it become up, close and personal, they will not rise to the occasion.”
“Greek Orthodox?”
“Not. In her own words, she has learned not to call herself a pagan in northern Europe because it has such silly connotations. Broadly Hellenismos, yes. Vaster rather than narrower. This is not let us raise a temple to Zeus on the site of the Abbey!”
“She is after all a philosopher. I should not expect anything literalist. ” “Exactly what are you thinking?” asked Bill.
“I take it she's fond of Byron. Curious, is it not, that our political leaders fail to grasp that some immigrants want England to be a free country.”
“I have other words for that,” said Bill.
“We know that those wanting a free country are largely erased from the political discourse.
Exactly? Why do you think this venture can achieve a breakthrough?” Sex, drugs and rock and roll, thought Bill.
“Sex, money and rock and roll.”
There was a moment's pause, then Jim bellowed with laughter. “Backers?”
“A multi-national as I'm sure you know, the signature line of which is exquisite items of fine lace which are not tablecloths. Zacharias Gavapolis is another name I'm sure you know. Stavros Stantinides.”
Another pause.
“A well-connected lady. Rather Greek?”
“Not by the time we have half the academics in London on board. But the money upfront
for PR, yes, that is Greek – if money has a nationality. Most of it. Some of it's French. It's an interesting question. La raison! Et bien sur la liberte! For the Greeks, for the French, these are intellectual issues in a way that is quite simply foreign to England! Partly perhaps that is complacency. We have assumed we are free and are taken aback to find there is no longer consensus.”
“The old cliché - there never was a war for which England was prepared.”
“A matter of culture, certainly, but culture at a level – like eating with a knife and fork not chopsticks.”
“And suddenly people take exception to knives.”
Artemis took a lot of trouble over designing the label, which must look utterly standard. Everyone knows vermin are a major problem and regular deinfestation both routine and vital.
The name of the product is KILLIT in big red letters under which is a picture of a dead cockroach. Being a goddess has its uses. You do not have to carry your cylinders of KILLIT but merely summon them. She sprayed offices, she sprayed boardrooms, she sprayed kitchens and left neat packs of six canisters in the corners with a note to the cleaners please use daily for six weeks, signed of course The Mgt.
….
Isis glowered at the Thames.
“I am a river goddess?”
The rain pelted down. There was a driving wind. The lush grass stretched and visibly grew. She was a goddess: she wasn’t cold and wet and her exquisitely crafted eye make-up didn’t run. That still didn’t make it Cairo.
“This is war,” said Britannia briskly. “We all have to be flexible.”
“Others,” pointed out Isis coldly, “are fighting on home ground.”
Britannia beamed.
“You’ll simply love the otters. You love nature, don’t you. Be positive: no crocs.”
“Sobek,” said Isis, “is a close friend. He helped heal my beloved Osiris.”
Before Britannia had time to think foot in mouth, should have remembered, there was movement in the water. A long head emerged, shook itself gracefully and slid onto the bank, its human body behind it.
“Welcome to Oxford!” said Britannia.
“The climate is abominable,” said Sobek. “Must I linger?”
“He looks after me,” cooed Isis.
“How do you do it?” asked Britannia. “You’re terribly good-looking, far better looking, if you will excuse my saying so, than the average crocodile. Oh no, I see. I think.”
Isis raised her eyebrows. Sobek might have smirked.
“What do you see?” asked Isis.
“All of you, all right, not all of you! When most cultures conceive beings part animal part human they’re ugly, malformations, because they were conceived as deformities. You were conceived as whole.”
“Elegance,” said Sobek. “Proportion.”
“That, of course,” said Isis, “is why we are so important to your mission.”
“I really don’t think,” said Sobek, “there is anything here that need detain me. There is great work to be done at home.”
“Indeed,” said Isis.
Britannia does not stammer, Look, this wasn’t my crackpot idea. She merely thinks it.
Unexpectedly Isis laughed.
“I think – you are, what shall I say? My hostess. But you are not – Chief of Operations.”
Britannia sighed.
“You want to talk to the C-in-C. She’s in Hong Kong.”
“Then we shall join her.”
A thousand paper-lanterns, thought Britannia dreamily, but no, there is not a paper-lantern in sight. It is merely as though there were a thousand paper-lanterns, a thousand shafts of coloured light. Hmm, that rhymes if not scans. So this is Egyptian Airlines, is it. The only thing is I don’t seem to be moving. The lights are smiling, really there is no other word. I like this. She entered the wave. I. Am. Or perhaps I am not. I am no thing. All. Muon or tuon? On the back of a human crocodile in Hong Kong Harbour. Where is Isis? Everywhere, the wave answered. We’re going away from the mainland. Nearly there, said the wave. The Isle Celestial. The Kingdom of Pure Felicity. You must understand that – Britannia wasn’t understanding anything as she realized Sobek was sprouting wings and turning into a dragon. The wave laughed. Now you fly! It is like a moon, a silver orb. I am flying into it, through it, and Sobek is shrinking, the size of an elephant, of a moose, of a stallion, a pony. The small golden dragon landed gracefully in a garden of magnolias. You must understand, said Isis again, sounding more urgent now. You are British. The laughter returned. Not 3 million years of cultivating the Tao quite soothes. To what we surrendered Hong Kong, sighed Britannia. Sobek is amusing himself shape-shifting and is now a small green lizard. He looked up shyly. It is not possible to be aggressive here.
Now here is Athena in cream silk robes trimmed with black and magnolias in her hair, looking somehow younger, barely out of her teens. Well, she would, thought Britannia. Am I then a child? She looked down at herself and seemed little changed, other than her jeans and T-shirt having transmuted into a robe of grasses. That was a long time ago! A small Chinese gentleman manifested at her side. Britannia addressed the Jade Emperor
“Sorry about Hong Kong.”
“I understand you wish me to come to London.”
I do seem to be the first person to notice that the three icons of the free world, Britannia, Marianne and Miss Liberty, are all women.
Dull, vicious, and disgusting, you are, yes. Butchers, murderers, traitors, all these things.
But you’re all safe in the House that Keir Built, so that’s all right.
THE HOUSE THAT KEIR BUILT
Naked Capitalism confronted Inner-City Decay. The whore whined. The eunuch raged at his impotence. As ever, she offered herself to the highest bidder, and so they built a shrine to Capital at Canary Wharf. Trade rolls up its sleeves and employs labourers and supervisors, warehousemen, fork-lift truck drivers, lightermen (once, lightermen). Capital preens and employs bankers. Outside the hall of mirrors, the rot is evident but no Eternal Dentist comes to drill it out. No sky-god ever has properly fulfilled his obligations. Loss of faith surprises? Here among the potted palms of Faceless Capital there is no loss of faith. See the laughing brook rippling over plastic pebbles of uniform size and carefully toning hue for they are available in a wide range of colourways. This is a place of work or a stage-set for the Garden of Eden? You deal till you reel. Is there more to life than moving money around the globe? Like pigs ready for slaughter they go to the Market. The Market will provide. Clearly the Market does not provide, here where the kids have found a pensioner to rape and they shoot up in the high street, but why should it? When people reject all human experience bar momentary sensory gratification and the thrill of injury to others, why should anyone care what happens to them?
Cometh the Saviour. Things can only get better.
Once upon a time a lad called Keir saw there weren't no good proper house a working-man could call his own, one without damp and rats and no flipping landlord squeezing your life's blood from you, and so he got out his tools and set about building one. It were a fine sturdy house, plain, mind, but warm and solid, place you could feel right at home, put your feet up by the fire. You were safe there.
All Keir's family moved in. You know what families are like, fight like cats and dogs. You don't necessarily like all your rellies, but they're still family, and Keir's family prided itself on its internationalism, lot of folk been raised abroad, married foreigners, and family's all the better for it, that's the theory, anyway, but different folk have different ways and some of them ways didn't go down too well and so most folks lived on the ground floor and slept in the bedrooms on the first floor, bit chilly in winter, fires in the bedroom, that's for posh folks, but good thick blankets, heavy curtains to keep the draught out, but other folk lived in the roof. You didn't go up there without a clove of garlic, that's for sure! And you didn't go up there without something to feed Them. Nice piece of bleeding flesh would do, preferably not your own. Some of the neighbours were extremely disturbed by Keir's house, feared the infestation would spread to adjoining properties, called in the Council, demanded fumigation, but you look after your own, right. Folks a bit funny in the head, you don't turn them out to live on the street. Besides, they're right pretty and they sing something lovely, sometimes their music fills the whole house, a song to pierce the hearts of the hearers with pain, longing, a sense of inferiority, we are so coarse, so practical, if only we could be pure, single-minded like Them.
Some of young Keir's mates were really quite fond of Them. They shouldn't be excluded and just needed to be understood. Their ways wouldn't work for most people but that don't mean we can't learn from Them. Invite them down for a bite of supper! By the time They had eaten the table, the chairs and half the diners, it was a little late to reassess, but They were so pretty and their song so sweet They were forgiven. Others were more callous and thought they found ways of sealing Them off, but of course these were always temporary.
Over the years, many fine upstanding lads and lasses went to live in Keir's house, and some were right meanminded, wanted to throw Them out, but more said, eh, it's family, you don't reject family, don't mean you give them their own way all the time, mind, and when the lads and lasses were out at work They showed their gratitude by making quite considerable structural changes to the house, even adding a whole new East Wing, and planted red roses round the door to make it more welcoming. Of course the lads and lasses weren't always grateful and sometimes right angry and stomped upstairs shouting you put that back like it was right now! But other changes were so seductive, so bewitching, that the lads and lasses could only gaze in awe. Why didn't we think of that! As time passed, more and more folks couldn't tell what was part of the original structure and what was later work and indeed many people took the East Wing as the original and rather looked down on the folks who stayed in the main building.
Right now the house that Keir built is in some disarray. Someone removed the last brick in the wall. What does this mean! There is more! Revisionism! Conquest! Change!
By whom are we being revised? What is the nature of the conquest? Is there really any change? What is 'New Labour'?
'New Labour' is government. 'New Labour' is political power after years in the wilderness. We prefer not to ask.
Recent developments have shown how New Labour's values have developed in a way that is inimical to traditional liberties. John Mortimer, barrister, playwright and lifelong Labour supporter, claims he has witnessed over his lifetime a slow improvement in the humanity of the law until the advent of the present Labour government, which "seems to have been born without a single libertarian instinct".
It was a lot of things. Labour wasn’t one of them.
LOL. An old Labour man speaks to Blair from beyond the grave.
All There is to Know About Adolph Eichmann
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You do not appear capable of granting me my rightful Periclean role in a modern democracy.
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