THE CROOKED ROAD THE ENGLISH DRUNKARD MADE
 
The Axe is not a dramatic river, being most of its life a dribble, and barely evident even at the ford at Axminster, a quiet, grey market-town only seven miles from the sea, where once a Mr Hennington began carpet-weaving. Few people know that England makes magic carpets. The old carpet-factory is by the station where you get off the London train, there being on this line that dawdles Westward Ho! out of Waterloo only two trains, the London train and the Exeter train, this line not so much InterCity as InterJunction, which takes four hours (and for heaven's sake who has four hours!) to wander into Exeter Central.
You count the number of people who leave the train with you. You watch them disperse, some by foot, some onto buses, some into cars. You loiter outside the station consulting your watch as though waiting for someone to collect you, a common enough occurrence in the country. You recognize that a tail might be lurking at the junction with the main road, but you don't really think anyone followed you, anyone knows you are significant. You tap your foot. You sigh. You take out your mobile, but it appears you receive no reply. You sigh once more and peer around, then stride purposefully over to the small hut with 'TAXI' on it. It is a good thing your city angst is faked, for Devon Slow don' move 'asty for anything bar imminent birth or death. Never think 'laid-back' is a modern invention. You ask for the Harbour Inn in Axmouth. Your business is escape-routes of a somewhat unorthodox kind. Cats do not like getting their feet wet.
The village of Axmouth is now visibly notable for not being at the mouth of the Axe, for silt filled the estuary. It is said that the first cider in Devon was made here, sometime in the 1280s. Axmouth boasts one street, two pubs, two lanes, a charming stream (so the guidebooks call it, and this may matter for the need to cross running water is well documented) and a campsite, which in the winter is the football pitch (in other words a field). Hawksdown Hill glowers above. There the Ancient British, the Dumotiges or Dunroamiens or some such tribe, had a fort, for the Fosse Way ran through the Axe valley. The street runs from Tanyard Cross down to the river. A motor-road follows the river until sharp right is the ramshackle bridge that leads into Seaton. Continue straight ahead and the road becomes a muddy track leading to the mouth of the river and the sea. The cliff rises steeply and if you are clever you will see the scrabbles in the chalk made by generations of local children that become a slippery, slidey and dangerous path that hoiks you up onto the cliff-top and the Axe Vale Golf-Course. The members will not welcome you on their golf-course, but if you slither off quickly to the right, deep in the gorse and the rosebay-willow-herb, you will join the public footpath that leads into ye mildly well-known Landslip, where in 1839 eight million tons of cliff tired of height and dominance and jumped into the sea, taking cottages, orchards and people with them. You rackon on Loyme. As you begin the long trek across the cliff to Lyme Regis, civilization intrudes but lightly and usually in the form of Trespassers William, for the track is part of the South West Coastal Path and All Hallows School little relishes long-distance walkers picnicking on its playing-fields. Other discreet notices rightly warn you to keep to the path because the cliff is unreliable and it is a long sharp drop to the English Channel below. The wilderness is untamed. You will probably meet no-one and the experience is a salutary reminder that it is unnecessary to visit the Yukon in order that if you fall and break a limb no-one will find you. For this the mobile 'phone was invented. It is smugglers' country and the ghosts of drownded sailor-men abound. They will try to sell you beer and baccy and look in astonishment as you lecture them on lung cancer, air pollution and the risk of fire, but if they take a liking to you they will take you down to the sea-bed and show you the hulk of the Maria Santonia, the Spanish treasure-ship, where the gold still glimmers under the barnacles and the white bones of would-be plunderers.
The Landslip is of course an exquisite site for a murder if you are unprepared. You are not. In any case, you are not yet a murderee, enter Dorset and come into Lyme through emerald meadows. There you take tea and shelter from the spray battering the Cobb, the great pier that forms part of the harbour-wall. Somewhere out there are the lifeboat-men but it is no man you have come to see nor yet the French Lieutenant's Woman but an ichthyosaur.
There bin Annings, there bin 'Awkins, there bin 'Ardings, there bin Spillers goan on time immemorial. Mary Anning, aged 12, of the parish of Lyme, discovered the first English ichthyosaur. Time is thin in the Jurassic ridges of the south-west. As do all little girls who discover strays, she fashioned a collar and lead out of her ribbons and took it home. This of course gave rise to the famous nursery-rhyme 'Mary found an ichthyosaur./She’m led it to the Carbb./Her Papa were so proud of ‘er,/He gave to her two barb.' The ichthyosaur swims in the bay, Mary gazing at it fondly from her rocking-chair in the porch of her villa on the Esplanade.
Tropical Britain arose tranquilly from out the azure main in the Eocene, and verdant it was. Some 40 to 50 million years before, that which is now Britain was part of the Continent and so you walked to where is now Paris, or would have, had you existed. I existed, but that is a long story I shall save for later. Suffice it to say for the moment that the Cretaceous offers a relatively dry exit from a troubled island. There are of course hazards - tyrannosauri, pterodactyls and mere quicksand. As the young say, you have to have been there. I gain first-hand knowledge.
An interminable bus-ride returns you to Axminster Station. You pass the factory. You might be on your way into the pretty village of Musbury, but no, you leave the road, negotiate the stile. The cows regard you with apparent lack of interest, but Jemima (a small Friesian) catches the eye of Dorothea (a stout Jersey): they know and report accordingly. The farm-house has been modernized. The kitchen is fitted. The Range Rover stands outside. Jason's study has not been modernized. It is dark, probably oak, though the walls are so densely hung with carpets that it is hard to tell. You do not know how to come straight out with "I want a magic carpet." so you sit there projecting warmth and happiness while Jason, small, stout, wearing a navy-blue jersey, a dilapidated tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows, jeans and wellies, fiddles with a packet of ginger-nuts and asks how your journey was. The packaging defeats him. He looks up apologetically. You continue to sip your tea.
"What an interesting room," you observe brightly. If the eight-pointed star that is the centre-piece were cut into a marble floor, ah-hah! you would think. It isn't. It is simply a design on yet another carpet, cream on black. "I suppose it doesn't show the mud."
Jason is dark, craggy, tanned walnut, as are only countrymen out all day every day, but this strikes a false note, for surely no-one rises at five to be out in the fields milking the magic carpets.
"Did you ever read E Nesbit?" he asks.
"Camden Town, I believe," you say.
"The London branch," sighs Jason. "Rents too high. Had to close it. What do you want a carpet for?"
The question worries you. Is it a test of your moral worth? Perhaps it is merely that there are differences between carpets, some more suited to short hops, others to long-haul flights.
"It may," you murmur, "be necessary to depart somewhat rapidly and there is no guarantee transatlantic flights…"
"Where will you keep it?" asks Jason.
Stupidly it comes into your head, a carpet is for life, not just for Christmas.
"I have an aunt," you say, "a retired lady. I am on the move. She'll look after it."
Jason continues sipping, expecting more. "She's one of us."
"Who," asks Jason, "is 'us'?"
"I am a traveller." Jason laughs: pull the other one! I smile, amend. "A travelling-man.” Jason smiles back.
The room swirls.
Now we are in wattle and daub. Jason, never a congruous figure, has entered into the spirit of the thing, adding woad and a torque to his outfit.
"There will be a moot," he says tranquilly.
The hill-men gathered in their wolf-skin cloaks heavy with the silver buckles and hilts of the west pay us no heed. They draw their daggers and place them in a circle, points touching what was the centre of the star, but becomes the Imperial Eagle. Fighting happens next and chariots and the village burning but the legions are not winning, although I cannot determine why they are not. Jason has vanished. As is my wont in such situations, I try to make myself useful, dragging the wounded to places of relative safety and so forth, an inter-temporal Red Cross in locations where neither the symbol nor the act has significance, and indeed there is swiftly a dagger at my throat for tending a Roman. Fortunately I am out of Time, and dying is fundamentally a time-dependent act. As always, part of my mind remains detached, and I calculate or try to calculate what bearing Asterix version anglaise has on the matter at hand.
"I have it!" Jason whispers hoarsely. He has acquired a few streaks of blood and grime, contrasting prettily with the woad, but seems unharmed.
"What?"
"The Stone."
My mind hunts through the stones to which he might be referring. The Rosetta Stone?
The Stone of Scoon?
"Oh," I say, "that Stone."
There was or rather will be a sword in a stone. Much is made of the sword.
We are back in 2001 and Jason places in the centre of his carpet a turf, a lump of chalk. I waited. Nothing continued to happen.
"Touch it," suggested Jason.
It chimed.
"Something for the tourists?" I sneered. Jason sighed heavily. Clearly I was being very obtuse. "So long as you don't tell me it's the Rock."
"It is," he said, "the Matter of Britain."
Sea-farers found this tropical paradise, though the history-books will tell you that men (women and men) migrated across the land-bridge. Did I say they were human? Sprites and spirits too may be affected by Wanderlust, even dryads. There came the Celts and the Celts did what they do best, which is produce poets. Any poet worth his or her bardic crown lives in two worlds, the Irish fili, the Welsh derwydd, seers, priests and judges, thinking to have invented the goddess and keeping faith with her though somewhat off the edge, with the disconcerting habits of speaking in tongues and constructing Tree-Alphabets. Then came the military man, the Roman, the practical man, the Saxon not yet Anglo, the Norman not yet English and with them their gods but though there was physical conquest there was intellectual defeat for the poets took these strange languages and made them their own and Reason paired off with the goddess. The power of poetry grew and the heart of England remained on the wild side, which in modern parlance means free because no-one who has a stunted, rigid, rat-like little brain stuffed with dogma and regulations ever got near to writing a poem (this peculiar cultural synthesis is why the King James Version of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer are among many other things pure poetry) and the stunted, rigid and rat-like had to put up with it and coped as best they could by dismissing poetry as nothing to do with anything that matters. The goddess became a democrat. Her statue is in New York Harbour. Cultural syntheses indeed are strange things, nothing less resembling the goddess than the squat and warty figure of Cromwell who said the king-god had to go, and you will not be the first to note that the nation's successes and excesses were magnified under its queens, with the exception of course of poor Queen Anne, who as we know is dead. The Christians naturally put their own cover on the allegory of the grail, as the goddess had before them, the Great Womb and all that. The grail is filled with blood signifiying life. While the grail is unrecognized, the land remains a wasteland and the Fisher King unhealed. I could think of a number of candidates for the Fisher King.
None of this explains why the damned thing chimed.
"The Acacia Avenue effect?"
"It has a sense of humour."
"Ah," I said. "What else can it - you do?" "Change state," suggested Jason.
I glowered at him.
The Matter of Britain jumped onto my lap – I say ‘jumped’. Lurched, propelled itself, sprang. It seemed almost weightless.
"I scratch your ears? You are not big enough," I scolded, "to have a sword embedded in you."
"Shakespeare," said Jason.
"Interesting chap. Even when not - oh no. 'This precious stone set in the silver sea,/Which serves it in the office of a wall,/Or as a moat defensive to a house.'" I fingered the grasses.
"Narnia," said Jason.
"Yeah, yeah," I said. "Bigger on the inside than the out. It's terribly symbolic, of
course." So far this was a war of words and lies. I was at a loss to see what even a magic clod could achieve when it became a shooting-war. "I suppose this isn't the grail?" I began, not to put too fine a point on it, to stroke the Matter of B.
"This isn't the grail. Puck took it as seizin, and so it passed into the hands of the Guardian." Merlin.
It was responding - purring, not to put too fine a point on it.
"It? Is that quite polite?"
The Matter of B stretched and rubbed its head against my jacket. That at least was the illusion.
"I think you have been adopted."
"Oh, I see," I said. It figured. It was not that the sword allowed Arthur to take it, but that the Matter of B let the sword go. What we have learned to call the gender-dynamic is here too obvious to need stating.            "Don't I have to be sans peur et sans reproche?"
"Just don't do a Lancelot."
I found this an unnecessary intrusion on the complications of my domestic affairs.
"The Frigid Four are looking for it. Apocalyptics Inc." I do not doubt that matters are dire, but that seems to me excessive. "Who stands if England fall?"
It is a difficult question. The rugged self-determination of our American friends - a difference is they have got/the Second Amendment: we have not - the dogged independence that willed the settlers out West to build lives unfettered is related to but not synonymous with our English wild side.
Before even the ancient Briton came to Rye or out to Severn strode, 'twas Puck he made the rolling English road. Pook's Hill, Puck's Hill, on such did we tread before we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head. There is a wound, a breach deeper than Party divides. There had been no such breach since Crown confronted Commonwealth. Hoity-toity, divine appointee! Poor Charles. They had come, the men in black, and built their shrines on the hill-tops, but Rome fell early. Now Canterbury too had fallen and in her place was the little red god.
Indeed there are now two nations. No-one went about proclaiming we detest democracy, we loathe individual liberty, meritocracy is disgusting; people just ran on other rules. It was a bit scary. It had irritated Dez, of course, being frightened. After a while she decided fear was a luxury, a self-indulgence granted those not in the firing-line, who could witter, bad business! what a shame!
The word was small and fat and bespectacled, an anorak, a geek. The word was an ageing hippy. The word was a stout, balding middle-aged doctor. The word was a housewife in Luton. The word was liberal and it lay spattered in the middle of a traffic accident, blood running from its eyes, its nose, bruised, broken, while the Leftist consensus crowed and cackled, took its clothes, kicked it in the stomach, but it summoned the last vestiges of its strength and said you do not give a fuck about the rights and freedoms of others. In America it was dead and they danced on its grave.
Dezzi wrote, increasingly confident no-one would pay the faintest attention.
No change of course had been wrought to the working environment. She had wondered what would happen if she shook the tree and now she knew, supposed she had always known, known and refused to know, that their insolence stemmed from support in the very heart of government. Well, it was no big deal, no great shock-horror to learn that there were Stalinists in the Labour Party. The wolfworm has been there since the start and 'Are you now or have you ever been?' is not a particularly useful question in the context of British politics, particularly when your ancestral home is the Communist Party.
There is a moment in which you realize you are expendable. In order that corruption goes unchecked, in order that face be saved, in order that nothing has happened, except the attempted destruction of your life, and that is nothing. Careers must continue untrammelled, reputations must be preserved. Dezzi thought she should now demand rather more, for instance ten thousand words on each of why her CV could be dismissed; why use of public office to further one's political kinks is acceptable; why a degree from the Faculty of Arts of the University of London is of less value than no academic qualifications at all; why we don't need no education and it is self-evident and thus not open to question that those with the least education should be promoted to senior management; why the public can just fuck off out of the running of the NHS, it ain't none of their business, all right..
Sheen Common was first enclosed in 1154. Gnarled roots reach out to trip the unwary. As dusk falls, mother-squirrels quickly round up their young. Night is best though naturally a well-meaning constabulary would have a fit at a female wandering there alone. Dez sat under an oak and let rip.
"They're in love with death! They want to turn the whole country into a bloody mausoleum, no damned spark of life, anything non-standard, non-uniform, anything not comprehensible to the lowest common denominator. So some drivelling little bitch of a typist doesn't understand me. Do I care! Let them come up to my level or leave me alone! I will not care what some bloody vacuous thug of a nurse thinks. I will not be made to care. He tried to cripple me. Nothing untoward has happened. It's pure Kafka! Some bloody baboon beats his chest. Oh I am so petrified. All the little monkeys start baring their arses. I do not bare my arse! I do not bloody crawl! There is no energy in humans, there is no life, there is no spark, there is only a machine, a void. It isn't capable of transcendence or any other bloody thing. I suppose it's projection. Why does it upset them that humans are different? Just because they're unimaginative, uncreative, brain-dead inadequates everyone else has to be."
"Stupid," said someone helpfully.
Sorry? Dezzi blinked and looked around, of course suddenly tense, ‘though it had not been the comment of a potential rapist.
"We've been reading your site."
"Good!" said Dezzi viciously. Puck stood in front of her. "O-o—h.”
“You’ve seen pictures of me.”
“What is it, I can't quite remember - " By Oak and Ash and Thorn, thought Puck. "Every time a child says I don't believe in fairies - " Puck laughed.
"A lickle fairwy dies. What we like about you is that you up the ante." "Yes," said Dezzi.
They talked on.
"You stayed, of course, to hear the end of story."
She knew it was true. Always exhausted, always stressed, too tired to leave, one does not bounce into a new job thus, but beyond that lay the unfinished paragraph. "I stayed until I knew I couldn't win. It was the University." "Until you knew they'd kill you," said Puck.
         "I    felt   -   I    felt   it   sounded    crazy    to   them.   Who       am     I    to stop the University
self-destructing! It wasn't the University, it was The University. Sodding Plato!"
"I think you might have lost me a bit there," said Puck cautiously. He didn't think so, but wanted to be sure.
"Sodding ideals. Absolutes. Temple of Reason and all that. It all came out wrong. I am a poet. I can't not be. It came to absolutes. I'm not even sure I know how. If there is neither rhyme nor reason - so there I am, spitting blood - literally - swearing like a trooper, crying with sheer fury and I'm representing Poetry with a capital P, defending Mind with a capital M against senior academics of the University of London and it even seemed crazy to me."
"It's a dirty job," said Puck. "Someone has to do it." "I just wanted to write poems about unicorns!" "Belonging," said Puck.
Dezzi winced.
"Eeuh. Yes. That's what it came down to. Who belonged."
Humour, we are told censoriously, is a method of control. You bet. It is extremely difficult to strut around in jack-boots, to get properly into the spirit of torturing and murdering people, when others are standing by howling with laughter and commenting what a preposterous prat you are.
Laters, laters, of course I realized that doctors and nurses are so intellectually ludicrous that an intelligent teenager could defend the University against them
Rock and roll has come of age when it is to prove essential to the defence of the realm.
Dear me, the purge of the intellectuals has begun in earnest. Some people might think the first duty of management to seize upon talent as an asset to the organization. Dez shakes her head violently. Don’t wanna be purged.
She had taken the precaution of establishing that heavy manual work presented a threat to her spinal fusion. When this penetrated the unicellular organism that constituted the brain of management, she was moved to an area the width of a chair, hemmed in by desk-units and beset by manual handling hazards. The office was not merely shabby; it was squalid. Dark stains spread across the carpet. Obsolete and broken equipment festered in the corners. Somewhere in a parallel universe the mass consultative exercise was taking place. Tell us what YOU think about the NHS! Here management had circulated the Health Service Circular on the Disclosure in the Public Interest Act, and helpfully appended Guidelines. She considered their words carefully. The only legitimate court of appeal against those who are beating you up is their colleagues, approaching even the House of Commons a breach of confidentiality for which one may be disciplined. Their supreme confidence in the dominance of norms other than those of liberal democracy underwhelmed her. Here it was one minute to midnight and outside the fascist bourgeois imperialist state apparently went about the business of liberal democracy largely unimpeded by the carrion voices and so she dwelt in two worlds. In fact of course there were three.
The MG had been dissected with a thoroughness of which the Royal College of Pathologists would be proud              (though no parts had been stored for future research), each seat stripped, every fibre examined.
"Idiot!" said Famine. "She didn't have it."
Death doesn't mind being proved wrong on the all too rare occasion it happens.
"Then where is it?"
"Puck?"
"It is much more likely," sighed Death.
"Oh yes," said Pestilence dully. If you wish to conceal something that looks like a piece of the South Downs, there is a great deal of the South Downs in which to conceal it.
"We must be thorough," said War in suitably clipped tone. "There is of course the possibility…"
Much had been forgotten in those days and, although they search diligently in The Biophysics of Ectoplasm and Matters of State the Frigid Four cannot find a reference to whether the M of B can successfully maintain its integrity with 20 fathoms sploshing about on top of it.
There is a bank where the wild thyme blows, south of the barrows on Carnforth Down and above it is a tank, the colour of pale sand, bleached by sun and rain, looking a relic of some desert victory. No plaque conveys what it is doing there. The field-mice scutter in and out, chittering. Puck had cleared the cockpit after protracted negotiation with Tiggy-Winkle ("It's the fleas," he had said. "How can I be an ace-negotiator if everyone starts scratching? PR, that's the gig, win friends and influence people. Especially…" He had stopped then, need to know and all that, no call to go frightening Tig with talk of letting the lions out, though he supposed lions would scarcely bother with a morsel like Tiggy). Puck had set up a small generator. It was there he recharged his lap-top.
He sat down to ask Britannia why she hadn't turned up and found in his in-box a blast from Taliesin. Have you no concept of security!       Darling, Britannia had murmured, you sound awfully like a human. He had grinned wolfishly at her. I am a human!
The word rippled through the Wild Brooks and into the reeds, across the jumps and over the byres, leapt the main road and sped onto the Down. They are here. Life defiant trebled its efforts and humans said afterwards they'd never seen a summer like it, grass up to your knees, cow parsley up to your head, bluebells you could hear, forget-me-nots like opals. Puck raised his eyebrows. Time I scarpered.
He began the trek down to the Arun. He lunched at the Black Rabbit (a battered trilby covered the ears). The Black Rabbit comes, he thought, but here among the reeds it was hard to believe. He walked on, the river sparkling by his side. Suddenly he felt the desire to evade town, any town, even Arun-Dell, and ducked into the Castle Park, climbed high, till it seemed all Sussex lay before him. He read his mail nervously and thought again of lions on the Downs. He knew Oberon hoped they could be persuaded to stay in London. That hell-hole! Why should they! Once the job was done, they'd retire to the country, like any solid citizen. He looked at his watch. How long should he give them?
The sea-gulls swooped on the dragon-fly then halted with an audible screech of
brakes. Moi, darling, moi. Titania blew them a kiss. As her dragon-fly approached the Down, she knew.
The barrow-wights whispered urgently to each other.
"It's the Lady!"
"Morning!" said a wight, with an ingratiating leer. Down, boy! whispered his pal.
"Morning!" said Titania, as ever inadequately dressed, a battered navy Barbour over the slinkier and more revealing sort of evening-gown. She climbed up onto the tank and sat on it, swinging her legs. "Just let me know," she said.
"We'll do that all right," stammered the adoring wight; the revealing bits of the gown included thigh-high slits and the legs hypnotized him.
"Well, she is the queen," they said to each other. "Noblesse oblige."
Titania slipped off her jacket and basked, then seemed to remember something, felt in the jacket-pockets, slithered into the tank, said a naughty word as she caught a long and elegantly manicured fingernail. A mouse scuttered out, panicking, zig-zag like a clockwork toy.
"Oh, it's you."
"Just moi," said Titania. "Waiting."
There is an unusual resonance to the footfalls of these particular horses, accustomed to scattering all before them. They drew up sharp in front of her, doing macho warrior-steed-type things, pawing the ground, neighing.
"May I help?"
"We wondered," said War, "if we might have a word with Puck." "We haven't got it," she said.
"I do not understand," tried Famine, never over-bright due to malnutrition.
Death sighed.
"But of course you know who has." "I wish!" said Titania.
War tensed in spite of himself. When Titania starts wishing, anything can happen.
Pestilence laughed.
"And of course you will tell us! Lady, if you will excuse us, we must search." Titania gestured broadly. Pestilence laughed again.
"We guessed Britannia," said Famine.
"        Thugs," said Titania.
"Relaxation," said War, but made no move towards her.
"Nobody," said Titania, "actually knows where it is. Have you tried Merlin?" Famine scowled.
"We shall search," pronounced Death.
Titania smiled winningly.
"Be his guest."
Puck sauntered back to his tank, looking for hoof-marks. An excited barrow-wight accosted him.
"They came. They went away again."
"Fine," said Puck. It didn't seem cause for excitement. By Oak and Ash and Thorn we must settle this!
"It was the Lady!"
"Oh dear," said Puck, a centuries-old reflex response, priming himself to remain calm. "What did she do?"
"All the flutter-bys came and made a fairy-ring."
"Tweet. And?"
"She magicked the horses. They had to go off on donkeys."
Puck howled with laughter. That was the thing about Titania. When she was good, she was very, very good. When she was bad, she was horrid.
She was still swinging her legs.
"Fumigate!" roared Puck.
"It's done."
"Have your uses, don't you."
"We must take precautions," said Taliesin solemnly.
Britannia caught his eye. They collapsed on the bed laughing.
Britannia wandered into Trafalgar Square, where the attention of both demonstrators and tourists had been distracted by a small fire in a litter-bin.
“Ought to be banned,” claimed someone, meaning smoking.
“Free country.”
Britannia started to climb the fountain.
“Here now, miss” said a copper.
Britannia giggled. “Come on! Am I destroying persons or property. A little girl like me on a great big lion.” Pause. “Go along with all this, do you?”
“Don’t seem any different, frankly. ‘Cept better. There isn’t the paperwork, see.” “Bureaucrats!” agreed Britannia. “That’s right!”
“Don’t you think – never mind. There’d never have been any changes, otherwise.
Agreed?”
The copper nodded.
“They’re all the same. Shard, Kendall, where are they?”
Britannia grinned to herself. Mr Shard and Mr Kendall were with Mr Bleagh and Mr
Brown in a Highland lodge, to and from which cryptic emails are passing
“They don’t listen!”
“Listen to some,” said the copper. “The wrong uns.” “That, I suspect, is what most people think.” “Had their arses kicked,” said the copper.
“Nice legs, love,” commented a passer-by.
“I like them,” said Britannia, a little girl astride a big stone lion. “But no elections.”
“It’s all going to be different,” said the copper. “I suppose – I trust him, right. He says there’ll be elections again and I believe him. But it’s all going to be different blokes.”
“Ahem,” said Britannia. Clearly the diversity training under the old order had not penetrated.
“And birds, love! They don’t care about no-one but themselves, right. People who care what happens, they’re going to be politicians.” “A man after my own heart,” said Britannia.
“I’m off duty at six. Care for a drink?”
“I’ve got a meet.”
“Oh well. Some other time, maybe.”
No other time, thought Britannia, if what I think is about to happen happens, for time is dissolving and space is strictly for NASA.
Ben chimed the hour, then went on chiming.
The copper, whose name is Nick, frowned. “What’s that, then?” Bong!
The first of the tanks rolls over Westminster Bridge.
Look out, lads, the Army’s here.
Maybe we don’t want liberating.
Bong!
Christ, what the fuck is this! For the tanks are black and roll indifferently over persons and property.
Bong!
This is no fucking joke, mate!
Bong!
Look at them skulls. Jesus Christ!
Bong!
What is this, the fucking SS?
Bong!
The tanks that are black and rolling indifferently over persons and property are coming up Whitehall.
Bong!
There is a heaviness in the air, unusual even in August smog, and people begin to cough.
Eyes water.
Bong!
Perception is altered and people looking at other people see them as corpses, as slimy orc-like entities, as stars, as crystal, as newts, and begin to scream.
Bong!
The first of the tanks crushes the Cenotaph.
Bong!
Out of Horseguards come four riders on black stallions and move to the head of the column.
Bong!
A vicar from Derbyshire who chances to be visiting London turns grey.
Bong!
The vanguard of the demonstration of the newtine that had begun at Speakers’ Corner reached Trafalgar Square.
Bong!
This ain’t no liberty!
Bong!
Stuff your fucking freedom!
Bong!
It ain’t allowed, all right!
Bong!
Can’t say that!
Bong!
Fucking fascists!
Bong!
London is erupting!
Bong!
You ain’t got no fucking right!
Bong!
It’s all big money, innit.
Bong!
One, two, three, four! Don’t give no fuck for the law!
          Five, six, seven, eight!   The fascist pigs are what we hate!
Down with bloody capital!
Power to the people!
Bong!
Screens go black.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Prime Minister!
“There has been a change of order. A new government has taken over.”
Who the hell is this, looks like Death warmed up. Indeed the squid at what he had thought the moment of his triumph is now as terrified as anyone who happens to be in
Whitehall.
“Time for my finest hour, I think,” said Britannia.
The problem with smashing the Embankment and letting in the Thames had been the Underground. The tunnels and subways would have filled and people would have drowned. In Trafalgar Square a mob raved, pissing in the fountains, scratching under its armpits. Nelson's Column had been brought down and the baboon-troop hurled pieces of it into the water and sprayed it with graffiti. The fountains suddenly went mad, water spouting everywhere. Anyone sentient enough to notice assumed wearily cracks in the pipes, destruction to the mechanism. The fountains overflowed. Trafalgar Square is built on a slope and so at the northern end below street level a pool began to form. It is hard to riot when you are knee-deep in water, the fun temporarily delayed while the rioters stampeded for the south side. No-one noticed the little girl on the big stone lion. Partly no-one noticed this because everyone was pulverized by terror as one by one the great stone lions jumped down from their plinths and began to roar.
"Paddy-paws," murmured the mermaid.
Answering roars came from the north. Lions bounded down Baker Street and into the smashed glass and gibbering lunacy of a looted Oxford Street.
Many other special effects take place.
The bells of the Abbey are smashed, and with them much of the glass. The small chapel just inside the South Door had been the first to fall, for it is dedicated to the fallen and therefore militaristic. The poppies surrounding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier had been torn up, regimental standards torn down, regimental memorials defaced. Up at the altar preparations for a Black Mass continued. Puck supposed they'd like to sacrifice a virgin but couldn't find one. Still, he tensed as The Lady, so-called, appeared, dressed in tinsel, and stripped. The Gentleman (so-called) came out of the vestry, the Lord of Misrule (they thought), wearing nothing. Heavy metal started up. Puck understood they understood nothing and began to feel enthusiastic about what would happen next. The Gentleman led her to the altar and she sprawled supine. Grungy acolytes, shaven heads, hollow eyes, handed him a knife. Puck wondered if it were real. The Gentleman raised the knife and plunged it into the space between her legs, then jerked it free and held it once again above his head. Oh, how symbolic. The music grew louder. Most of the horde was sky-high. A girl in the crowd screamed, "Fuck me!" "Fuck Jesus!" answered a voice. There was laughter. The girl weaved her way to the altar and knelt at the Gentleman's feet. "Suck Jesus!" This was hilarious. She sucked. Suddenly he pushed her aside and jumped up onto the altar. Can't even get it up on your own, thought Puck. She lay squirming and reached for her groin, pulled down her jeans. The knife lay where it had been dropped. She began to arouse herself with the hilt. This is a place of powerful magic, thought Puck happily. "Fuck Satan!" he yodelled. "Yeah! Fuck Satan!" "Fuck Satan!" screamed the crowd, took it up as a chant. Being stoned, they did not at first notice the down on the Gentleman's thighs lengthening, his hair curling, the ducky little beginnings of tail. The Lady did, but they thought her screams ones of ecstasy, if not E. A huge horned shadow bounced off the wall.
"Kewl!" breathed someone.
Puck laughed viciously at the unyielding inadequacy of the TV generation. He projected his voice.
"Look!" boomed Satan.
They looked, scattered, panicking at last as a chain of flame scuttered up the aisle. In the doorway, three metres high, hairy, horned, stood the devil holding a petrol-can.
"I am summoned," intoned the devil. "I come."
You have to hand it to the special effects department. I hope.
There are crypts, there are passages and in these the Dean and Chapter took counsel. "Mr Dean," said Puck, "there is much not allowed for by your theology." Oberon smiled.
"Trust me. I'm a fairy."
"We must sing," announced the choir-master. "God save our gracious - " "No," said Puck.
The Dean thought he understood.
"A hymn! The 23rd Psalm."
"The Battle-Hymn of the Republic," said Puck.
"Of course," said the Dean.
"We have our own words," said Puck. "Mine eyes will see the glory of the coming of the Lady."
Oberon is Captain of the Pinafore, and a right good captain too! He has enough elan and all will go to plan thanks to his fairy crew…HMS Belfast stirred slowly at her moorings and began to glow as all good fairy-ships should. Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow. Slow ahead, Cap'n. She did proceed in a seaman-like fashion downstream. Below decks they loaded the torpedos. The first Underground tunnel below water was the Northern Line from Monument to London Bridge.
Fire One. Fire Two, Three and Four. They waited, then continued in a seaman-like fashion. At Temple Pier they were joined by Chrysanthemum, Wellington and President.
"Now!" said Spikey.
He pushed the detonator. Victoria Embankment shattered and London began to leak.
At Embankment the Northern, Bakerloo and Jubilee Lines go sub-aqua.
"Fire!"
Oberon cast a vicious glance at County Hall. Fire! He restrained himself.
Spikey detonated The Terrace of the Houses of Parliament.
"Beats fire-'oses any day."
The range of an H Class destroyer is 12 miles - but that does assume you can see your target and aim at it, that you're sitting on a curved ocean not in a river valley. Still from the bridge you can see a long way and Oberon vented his spleen on the M1 and the M25.
There had been an explosion, apparently without result. Perhaps it had been imagined. Perhaps against all the odds Concorde still flew. At Chelsea Reach the embankment cracked. Water seeped slowly into the Physic Garden, then faster as the tide rose. There had been a series of bangs and rioters glanced at the skies as though for the first time it had struck them they could be bombed. London rises from the river, not steeply but significantly, we're not looking at Atlantis here, but it's astonishing how much imagination people one would have thought empty of it can display when they get their feet wet. Above the cacophony rose the wail "Ri-ver!"
Global warming has helpfully melted the ice-caps and it has recently rained in satisfying amounts. The Thames in central London is tidal and the tide was coming in. If there is one thing a truly grand riot requires, it is terra firma. Rioting and sploshing do not mix, especially when the water is cold and dirty. Four destroyers with their guns apparently trained on you also concentrate attention wonderfully. Nobody stopped shrieking about fascist oppression, indeed such shrieks multiplied, but people did stop trying to knife other people and pause to wonder what their next move should be. Meanwhile the tunnels seeped. The wonderful thing about the Underground tunnels is they are level, thus filling them with water, a limitless supply of water for the North Sea is enthusiastic about going wherever it is invited, refreshes the parts other floods cannot reach. The other wonderful thing about the Underground tunnels is that where possible they criss-cross the valleys of an undulating settlement.
They rode slowly up the Mall, War, Death, Pestilence and Famine, their banners fluttering in the breeze. 'War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.' Loyal Londoners cheered. To the left lay the devastation of St James's Park, the bleeding carcasses of dead and injured birds. Buck House shone silver, every inch covered by newts. The Guards' barracks were deserted and defaced with graffiti. The little girl is still astride the big stone lion, but now the lion is moving, following the column and the little girl has flowers in her hair and is laughing and as she passes the fruitcake terror instilled in the crowd by the column is allayed.
Britannia jokes with the crowd.
“You don’t need to worry about them! Just watch this space!”
“It’s a trap, do you see,” she says another time.”
In the centre of the Mall, about halfway up, is parked a small red sportscar.
Silly girl! thinks Death.
Titania is perched on the bonnet.
“So terribly dreary, darlings. No flair, no élan.” ` War rode at her, sword raised. She didn't move.
The sword broke.
Oh.
War conjured a huge and beautiful dragon, scales scarlet and gold shimmering like Lurex.
It came to rest on Admiralty Arch, behind Britannia.
“I have only to command.” “Silly me,” said Titania.
From Horseguards there came the sound of a trumpet “The Last Post?” asked War.
“It’s a game we play. Humour us.” “All the time in the world,” said War.
Death demurred: “Crush her.”
Britannia took something from her pocket and threw it down in front of the MG but it flapped its wings frantically to avoid a crash landing, and began the flight down the Mall, growing visibly as it - she, I should say – flew. She circled the dragon three times, then landed gently on its back. It shrugged to throw her off.
War laughed.
“Theatricals. You can do nothing.”
“You don’t take the hint.”
Pictures flashed round the globe to hysteria, to prayer, to cold gleams of triumph, to total lack of comprehension. In Noo Yawk there was a different note of panic. For Chris' sake, you cannot steal, you cannot lose - where the hell is she! Symbolic, said the President grimly. This is the end. There was a boom. Everyone - every thing, I should say assumed this was some further token of victory, the footstep of an approaching troll, perhaps. There was another boom, louder. She appeared behind the Palace. The newts began to flee, a swarm threatening to overwhelm the horsemen. Death raised his hand. Newts are expendable and swiftly expended. She walked round the Victoria Memorial and stood at the head of the Mall.
"No," said Miss Liberty.
"Dear lady," said Death. "Do not be silly." "No. No pasaran'." The crowd began to boo.
"The will of the people, my dear." "Sure, sure. Voted for you, one and all." "Ride on," commanded Death.
The horses stepped delicately through the sea of corpses.
"See what they think of you," said Miss Liberty. "Tell ya I didn't exist, did they." "It is an illusion," said Death.
"So pass me by."
The stringer for the New York Times in London tapped frantically at his palm-top. Nothing like this has been seen since - since - since ever You ain’t seen nothing yet, buster.
The unicorns marched out of Horseguards. The lions emerged from the shrubberies of St James’s Park. And then of course there were the dragons.
Oberon emerged from the crowd.
“God save the King!” shouted Spikey, thus confusing friend and foe alike.
“Rule, Britannia!” suggested Oberon.
“Not my thing, darling,” she murmured.
Oberon turned to the crowd.
“You must take cover now. I repeat, you must take cover.” “Nuts, mate. This ain’t happening but I gotta see it anyhow.” Oberon shrugged.
“This is where it gets messy.”
Military bands had amassed in Horseguards and began to play not so much the sonorous or the patriotic as the catchy. He snaps his fingers at the foeman’s chant.
The crowd had been packed and now the frankly newtine – you knew those lizard-men were real really – came forth, knives at the ready.
The sky darkened and people covered their ears as wave after wave of aircraft approached, an ectoplasmic RAF.
“Take cover!” commanded Oberon.
This time people didn’t need telling twice.
“Ain’t seen nothing like it for sixty years,” muttered an old man.
“’Ad to be doing something, didn’t they. Planning, that’s what.”
“They are weakened,” murmured Oberon. “Can they do it?”
They could: the tanks grew wings and tails and turned into fighters, then cloned.
“So pass me by,” said Miss Liberty again.
Above their heads the dogfight to end all dogfights was going on but one in which the casualties neither exploded nor spiralled to the ground but were forced to re-form, like a sort of inverted karma, at every wound a less potent foe. Perhaps fortunately, not many people looked up.
“You know you’re trapped,” said Miss Liberty, the unicorns assembled in front of her.
The lizard-men lined up behind the horses.
The unicorns lowered their heads.
The unicorns charged.
The horsemen scattered, plunging into the crowd.
The lizard-men were impaled. It got messy.
London begins to undulate. I am Tiger. I make the earth move. I do not, however, inform my allies of my intent. Merlin – you have noted his absence, no doubt – Merlin looks at me and laughs.
“Wha – “ said Britannia, speaking for once on behalf of the entire nation.
The panorama began, and you knew, people said after, you knew it had to be in your head, but it wasn’t like that, you were there, you were seeing it. I am Tiger. I dissolve the walls of Time.
First, there were the ancient Britons, then came the legions and elegant men in togas held court, but no, there were the first British slaves being transported overseas and shackled together in the silver-mines, then there were laws, the rule of law is so important, don’t you think, but these were unjust laws and Boudicca in her chariot screamed revenge, then slaughter and more slaves, then Rome is growing weakened and there come the Danes, bringing terror then there is calm, calm until there is a battle at Hastings and new masters but the power of the king threatens all and at Runnymede is contained and there are rights, ancient rights, habeas corpus, but here are Mr Bleagh and Mr Flunkett vomiting on Common Law, and now we are at Henry’s court, such a pretty lady, and besides the tax-men from the Vatican impose too onerous a burden, and a candidate for the UKIP delineates the tax paid to the EU, but now the monasteries are burning and innocent monks weeping           then there is Latymer at the stake and Mary and Charles who will not see being led to the scaffold, then the shortness of Cromwell’s rule and the new Puritans, the feminazis, and all the time some men, though different men according to the time, go in fear of the axe, the scaffold, the stake, and a       small-time hippy preacher shakes his head, no, that is not what I had in mind. Later there is Locke writing busily and in fear and Jefferson who reads him and Voltaire, Montesquieu, Condorcet, Rouseau, Diderot are tearing down the walls of the Vatican, beating at the door of the Holy Office, dismantling the Inquisitor’s pyre, while priests and rabbis deplore Mr Rushdie’s offence to Muslim sensibilities, and a small Cornishman, a Mr Paine, now in France, now in the American Colonies, destroys what remains of the old world and a new world is born where we the people have dominion and reason rules, and the Bastille is stormed and the head of another king rolls bloodily to the ground then comes the Terror but freedom spawns invention and invention industry and industry a new slavery to complement the old for the slave-ships still cross the Atlantic and once again there must be war, but the waged are still enslaved and still all around whether in togas, in the dress of the Danes, the Normans, the Dark Ages, in ruffs and codpieces, in the lace of Charles I or the dark suits of Cromwell, in the garb of the C18th or the C19th, the industrialist in his top-hat, are men in conclave who know best, while the poor toil and children starve, while filth and disease and squalor and ignorance        rule the lives of the many, and            a German gentleman with a bushy beard writes furiously in an attic in Highbury and a new idea takes hold of men and when men have a new idea they kill for it, and the bloody history of the Soviet Union unfolds, and here are Lenin and Stalin,           Beria and Trotsky, and Lenin is writing away, and the ink pools and turns to blood in Siberia where the dead do not rot because it is too cold, but he cannot stop writing. You feel the cold like a knife cutting your cheek and reach up, expecting to feel blood,and someone is counting. Hitherto, there hasn’t been much in the way of a creative back-drop beyond         A Room in the Palace, Madame Guillotine, This is Tower Green, Oh Look it’s a Bonfire, but now the background turns clouded sepia and a huge skeletal hand is throwing tiny corpses, splaying, cartwheeling, dropping small change, a beloved doll, footwear of rotted cardboard and rope, over the edge of the earth, one million, two million…five million, ten million, twenty million, twenty-five million and in the foreground are canting priests and pastors spitting hatred of the Jews, now a mediaeval monk, now Luther, now a pope, while in the drawing-rooms of Belgravia and the mines of South Wales they hymn the praises of Mother Russia. The counting continues, thirty-one million, thirty-two million, thirty-five million….There are swastikas over Europe and glittering parties in Berlin, in Paris, in Vienna, while we are in Auschwitz, in Dachau, in Bergen-Belsen, in Ravensbruck, in the Warsaw Ghetto and here is a BNP meeting, load of nonsense! someone is thundering, bloody gravy-train, trust the Jews! and in the Synods, in the Vatican they are agreed upon the evil of sodomy,            and again someone is counting for now a second skeletal hand is throwing away the rubbish. Trust the people! declaims a voice. Let a hundred flowers blossom! but Mao frowns. The people could not be trusted. Again there is the relentless counting and a third, fourth,      fifth hand join in the task of eliminating the unnecessarily human, while the barricades go up         in Paris, in Berlin, in Berkeley, in London and they brandish a Little Red Book and proclaim the heroism of the Viet Cong. Liberation starts here and the stars and stripes burn. There must be respect for authority, says Mr Bleagh, says Mr Shrub, say the priests, say the rabbis, say the mullahs, says Herr Hitler, says Comrade Stalin, say the toppled heads of Charles and Louis, says George III and here are the final fruits of respect for authority, and who after 1945 gave a hoot about authority, except the dinosaurs that continue to stalk our land, the ghosts of dead worlds, for now we are in Woodstock and although it is grubbier than generally depicted            there are butterflies above that nation, but the butterflies are fading and in their place is an incessant whine demanding Authority do something, feed me, clothe me, heal me, live my life for me, save me from being human. Really? That is readily arranged. .
You know what you can do with your regulayshuns and proseedyures and laws made by traitors for slaves, laws to uphold psychopaths who think people are property
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode, here was I.    Unprovable of course,, but no reason why my ancestors were not rambling around this island in woad
Of course they are the very models of medical practitioners. Just bestially ignorant of anything else, and just plain bestial.
Argument by authority is a fallacy. Therein too lie our roots. The Great Lie has it that the one has triumphed over the other. Liberated from the shackles of religion, we are post-modern, the Enlightenment come of age. Naturally our new gods are irrationality and ignorance.
I wanna corrupt the young, thought Surf viciously. You know, like Socrates.
It was an article of faith that Labour had the moral high ground. Sin, whether snatching bread from the mouths of starving children or living debauched and immoral lives, was the prerogative of the bloated capitalist. The ragged trouser philanthropists bring out battered fiddles and a mournful wail fills the air: 'She was po-or-or but sheee was honest, victim of a rich man's gi-i-ime…' The Weekend Book instructs us to sing 'with moral significance'. 'See him in the House of Commons/Passing laws to put down crime/While the girl as he has ruined/Slinks away to hide her shame….' The rhyme is evident to Londoners. Dezzi's problem was that she was not ruined, had no shame and, large though her vocabulary was, slinking away didn't figure in it.
I AM THE VERY MODEL OF A MEDICAL PRACTITIONER
Oh, if you cannot make up rhymes, there are always the columns of The Times...Or YouTube, of course. To be exact, the scansion needs tidying before I put it on YouTube.
I am the very model of a medical practitioner
I read all the monthly bulletins from the Health Commissioner
I labour with the greatest care not to offend the Madam President
And daily send her emails saying at her feet I'm resident
I prove my academic cred by writing abstracts by the score
I once had one accepted! I deny that most are pretty poor
It's really very critical there's some research on my CV
It never once occurs to me I'm guilty of illiteracy And after ten to fifteen years, when finally I've my MD Then I'll do lots of private work, make myself a heap of money.
Mix in the best circles and twitter influentially
(That's twitter not Twitter - think of confidentiality)
I never cause upset and frown upon all argument
God told me categorically that doctors are all heaven-sent
I know He's looking after me and He tells me everything That's why my mind is sealed tight-shut and I never learn anything Philosophy has passed me by, and books in general I suspect.
On no account should anyone suggest that I have intellect
Thinking is a dangerous act, which could cause unhealthy dissent I think it could make you blind; ideas are not relevantI t's so much more productive to masturbate the President I fool so many people into thinking I'm omniscient That when I sniff dismissively at what I do not comprehend The idiots are awestruck and assume my patience at an end!
When people dare to put to me that nurses do not have degrees
I purse my lips and roll my eyes, frown really quite appallingly It' never once has crossed my mind, not ever once occurred to me Intellect and reason are required to gain a real degree.
It’s not like that in Medicine, I assure you categorically.
That nurses all are saints is basic science learned as a student
For more than once it was plain that crossing Sister was imprudent Some say it's actually something the nurses put in our tea An excellent decision, wider access to the formulary.
I really cannot understand why people do not love me more
I heal the sick, I raise the dead, sort of Jesus in miniature
And if I care nothing for truth, lie to advance professionally
Use knowledge to cause injury to those who put their trust in me
Care not a jot for anything called medical morality,
(Sounds some arty-farty nonsense, something like philosophy)
And if the very raison d'etre of the University
Demands the rule of reason then it's it that has to change not me I am the agent of God's Will to whom all must at once defer I am the very model of a medical practitioner.
Remote and ineffectual Don
That dared attack my Chesterton,
With that poor weapon, half-impelled,
Unlearnt, unsteady, hardly held,
Unworthy for a tilt with men— Your quavering and corroded pen; Don poor at Bed and worse at Table,
Don pinched, Don starved, Don miserable;
Don stuttering, Don with roving eyes,
Don nervous, Don of crudities;
Don clerical, Don ordinary,
Don self-absorbed and solitary;
Don here-and-there, Don epileptic;
Don puffed and empty, Don dyspeptic;
Don middle-class, Don sycophantic, Don dull, Don brutish, Don pedantic; Don hypocritical, Don bad,
Don furtive, Don three-quarters mad;
Don (since a man must make an end), Don that shall never be my friend.
                                                                       *          *          *
Don different from those regal Dons!
With hearts of gold and lungs of bronze,
Who shout and bang and roar and bawl
The Absolute across the hall,
Or sail in amply billowing gown
Enormous through the Sacred Town,
Bearing from College to their homes
Deep cargoes of gigantic tomes; Dons admirable! Dons of Might!
Uprising on my inward sight
Compact of ancient tales, and port And sleep—and learning of a sort.
Dons English, worthy of the land; Dons rooted; Dons that understand. Good Dons perpetual that remain A landmark, walling in the plain--
The horizon of my memories--
Like large and comfortable trees.
                                                                       *          *          *
Don very much apart from these,
Thou scapegoat Don, thou Don devoted,
Don to thine own damnation quoted, Perplexed to find thy trivial name Reared in my verse to lasting shame. Don dreadful, rasping Don and wearing, Repulsive Don—Don past all bearing.
Don of the cold and doubtful breath,
Don despicable, Don of death;
Don nasty, skimpy, silent, level;
Don evil; Don that serves the devil.
Don ugly—that makes fifty lines.
There is a Canon which confines
A Rhymed Octosyllabic Curse
If written in Iambic Verse
To fifty lines. I never cut;
I far prefer to end it—but Believe me I shall soon return.
My fires are banked, but still they burn
To write some more about the Don That dared attack my Chesterton.
'Lines to a Don', Hilaire Belloc
Literate, educated people of course communicate in words. even Dons despicable, Dons of death, Dons dreadful, rasping Dons and wearing,          repulsive Dons—Dons past all bearing, Dons nasty, skimpy, silent, level; Dons evil; Dons that serve the devil.       Nothing like a bit of shouting and banging and roaring and bawling the Absolute across the Hall.      It is of course, what shall I say, a male paradigm.
Perplexed to find their trivial names reared in my verse to lasting shame.
 
The Rolling English Road Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode, The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road. A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire, And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire; A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head. I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire, And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire; But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made, Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands, The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands. His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun? The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which, But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch. God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier. My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage, Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age, But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth, And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death; For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen, Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green. GK Chesterton When I am dead, my deares The Rolling English Road
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head. I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.
His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.
My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
GK Chesterton
 
Of course poets wrote about government too
# I
As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.
II
I met Murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:
III
All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed the human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.
IV
Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell.
V
And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.
VI
Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
And the shadows of the night,
Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy
On a crocodile rode by.
VII
And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.
VIII
Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.
IX
And he wore a kingly crown;
And in his grasp a sceptre shone;
On his brow this mark I saw -
'I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!'
X
With a pace stately and fast,
Over English land he passed,
Trampling to a mire of blood
The adoring multitude,
XI
And a mighty troop around,
With their trampling shook the ground,
Waving each a bloody sword,
For the service of their Lord.
XII
And with glorious triumph, they
Rode through England proud and gay,
Drunk as with intoxication
Of the wine of desolation.
XIII
O'er fields and towns, from sea to sea,
Passed the Pageant swift and free,
Tearing up, and trampling down;
Till they came to London town.
XIV
And each dweller, panic-stricken,
Felt his heart with terror sicken
Hearing the tempestuous cry
Of the triumph of Anarchy.
XV
For with pomp to meet him came,
Clothed in arms like blood and flame,
The hired murderers, who did sing
'Thou art God, and Law, and King.
XVI
'We have waited, weak and lone
For thy coming, Mighty One!
Our purses are empty, our swords are cold,
Give us glory, and blood, and gold.'
XVII
Lawyers and priests, a motley crowd,
To the earth their pale brows bowed;
Like a bad prayer not over loud
Whispering - 'Thou art Law and God.' -
XVIII
Then all cried with one accord,
'Thou art King, and God and Lord;
Anarchy, to thee we bow,
Be thy name made holy now!'
XIX
And Anarchy, the Skeleton,
Bowed and grinned to every one,
As well as if his education
Had cost ten millions to the nation.
XX
For he knew the Palaces
Of our Kings were rightly his;
His the sceptre, crown and globe,
And the gold-inwoven robe.
XXI
So he sent his slaves before
To seize upon the Bank and Tower,
And was proceeding with intent
To meet his pensioned Parliament
XXII
When one fled past, a maniac maid,
And her name was Hope, she said:
But she looked more like Despair,
And she cried out in the air:
XXIII
'My father Time is weak and gray
With waiting for a better day;
See how idiot-like he stands,
Fumbling with his palsied hands!
XXIV
‘He has had child after child,
And the dust of death is piled
Over every one but me -
Misery, oh, Misery!'
XXV
Then she lay down in the street,
Right before the horses' feet,
Expecting, with a patient eye,
Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy.
XXVI
When between her and her foes
A mist, a light, an image rose,
Small at first, and weak and frail
Like the vapour of a vale:
XXVII
Till as clouds grow on the blast,
Like tower-crowned giants striding fast,
And glare with lightnings as they fly,
And speak in thunder to the sky
XXVIII
It grew - a Shape arrayed in mail
Brighter than the viper's scale,
And upborne on wings whose grain
Was as the light of sunny rain.
XXIX
On its helm, seen far away,
A planet, like the Morning's, lay;
And those plumes its light rained through
Like a shower of crimson dew.
XXX
With step as soft as wind it passed,
O'er the heads of men - so fast
That they knew the presence there,
And looked, - but all was empty air.
XXXI
As flowers beneath May's footstep waken,
As stars from Night's loose hair are shaken,
As waves arise when loud winds call,
Thoughts sprung where'er that step did fall.
XXXII
And the prostrate multitude
Looked - and ankle-deep in blood,
Hope, that maiden most serene,
Was walking with a quiet mien:
XXXIII
And Anarchy, the ghastly birth,
Lay dead earth upon the earth;
The Horse of Death tameless as wind
Fled, and with his hoofs did grind
To dust the murderers thronged behind.
Shelley
Oh, Wellington! (or "Villainton"[477]--for Fame[it]
      Sounds the heroic syllables both ways;
    France could not even conquer your great name,
      But punned it down to this facetious phrase--
    Beating or beaten she will laugh the same,)
      You have obtained great pensions and much praise:
    Glory like yours should any dare gainsay,
    Humanity would rise, and thunder "Nay!"[478]
                      II.
    I don't think that you used Kinnaird quite well
      In Marin�t's affair[479]--in fact, 't was shabby,
    And like some other things won't do to tell
      Upon your tomb in Westminster's old Abbey.
    Upon the rest 't is not worth while to dwell,
      Such tales being for the tea-hours of some tabby;[480]
    But though your years as _man_ tend fast to zero,
    In fact your Grace is still but a _young Hero_.
                      III.
    Though Britain owes (and pays you too) so much,
      Yet Europe doubtless owes you greatly more:
    You have repaired Legitimacy's crutch,
      A prop not quite so certain as before:
    The Spanish, and the French, as well as Dutch,
      Have seen, and felt, how strongly you _restore_;
    And Waterloo has made the world your debtor
    (I wish your bards would sing it rather better).
                      IV.
    You are "the best of cut-throats:"[481]--do not start;
      The phrase is Shakespeare's, and not misapplied:--
    War's a brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art,
      Unless her cause by right be sanctified.
    If you have acted _once_ a generous part,
      The World, not the World's masters, will decide,
    And I shall be delighted to learn who,
    Save you and yours, have gained by Waterloo?
                      V.
 
    I am no flatterer--you've supped full of flattery:[482]
      They say you like it too--'t is no great wonder.
    He whose whole life has been assault and battery,
      At last may get a little tired of thunder;
    And swallowing eulogy much more than satire, he
      May like being praised for every lucky blunder,
    Called "Saviour of the Nations"--not yet saved,--
    And "Europe's Liberator"--still enslaved.[483]
                      VI.
    I've done. Now go and dine from off the plate
      Presented by the Prince of the Brazils,
    And send the sentinel before your gate
      A slice or two from your luxurious meals:[484]
    He fought, but has not fed so well of late.
      Some hunger, too, they say the people feels:--
    There is no doubt that you deserve your ration,
    But pray give back a little to the nation.
                      VII.
    I don't mean to reflect--a man so great as
      You, my lord Duke! is far above reflection:
    The high Roman fashion, too, of Cincinnatus,
      With modern history has but small connection:
    Though as an Irishman you love potatoes,
      You need not take them under your direction;
    And half a million for your Sabine farm
    Is rather dear!--I'm sure I mean no harm.
                      VIII.
    Great men have always scorned great recompenses:
      Epaminondas saved his Thebes, and died,
    Not leaving even his funeral expenses:[485]
      George Washington had thanks, and nought beside,
    Except the all-cloudless glory (which few men's is)
      To free his country: Pitt too had his pride,
    And as a high-souled Minister of state is
    Renowned for ruining Great Britain gratis.[486]
                      IX.
    Never had mortal man such opportunity,
      Except Napoleon, or abused it more:
    You might have freed fallen Europe from the unity
      Of Tyrants, and been blest from shore to shore:
    And _now_--what is your fame? Shall the Muse tune it ye?
      _Now_--that the rabble's first vain shouts are o'er?
    Go! hear it in your famished country's cries!
    Behold the World! and curse your victories!
                      X.
    As these new cantos touch on warlike feats,
      To _you_ the unflattering Muse deigns to inscribe[iu]
    Truths, that you will not read in the Gazettes,
      But which 't is time to teach the hireling tribe
    Who fatten on their country's gore, and debts,
      Must be recited--and without a bribe.
    You _did great_ things, but not being _great_ in mind,
    Have left _undone_ the _greatest_--and mankind.
                      XI.
    Death laughs--Go ponder o'er the skeleton
      With which men image out the unknown thing
    That hides the past world, like to a set sun
      Which still elsewhere may rouse a brighter spring--
    Death laughs at all you weep for!--look upon
      This hourly dread of all! whose _threatened sting_
    Turns Life to terror, even though in its sheath:
    Mark! how its lipless mouth grins without breath!
                      XII.
    Mark! how it laughs and scorns at all you are!
      And yet _was_ what you are; from _ear_ to _ear_
    It _laughs not_--there is now no fleshy bar
     So called; the Antic long hath ceased to _hear_,
    But still he _smiles_; and whether near or far,
      He strips from man that mantle (far more dear
    Than even the tailor's), his incarnate skin,[iv]
    White, black, or copper--the dead bones will grin.
                      XIII.
    And thus Death laughs,--it is sad merriment,
      But still it _is_ so; and with such example
    Why should not Life be equally content
      With his Superior, in a smile to trample
    Upon the nothings which are daily spent
      Like bubbles on an Ocean much less ample
    Than the Eternal Deluge, which devours
    Suns as rays--worlds like atoms--years like hours?
                      XIV.
    "To be, or not to be? _that_ is the question,"
      Says Shakespeare,[487] who just now is much in fashion.
    I am neither Alexander nor Heph�stion,
      Nor ever had for _abstract_ fame much passion;
    But would much rather have a sound digestion
      Than Buonaparte's cancer:--could I dash on
    Through fifty victories to shame or fame--
    Without a stomach what were a good name?
Byron
 
If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap,"
I'd say — "I used to know his father well;
Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and die — in bed.
Siegried Sassoon
 
Reminds me somewhat of the latest mouthings of HMG.  The Tory Party of course has a stellar reputation to maintain and this it does.  I don’t go to shops or offices anyway and I don’t use public transport so I’m not in the firing-line, merely continue my existence of largely splendid isolation.  I fear for those who need to mix.  I understand we are going to have to co-exist with Covid.  I do not understand why this cannot be approached in a calm and methodical fashion: two weeks (that I read is the time needed for the jab to become effective) after everyone who is willing to be vaccinated has been, twice, including everyone over the age of whatever is the youngest you can receive the vaccine, and with everyone also scheduled to receive whatever NEW!  IMPROVED! boosters there may be against the latest variants.
 
‘What passing bells for these who die as cattle?’  Bit OTT but vaccination remains a good idea.
 
Of course one can quite see there are bits of English literature Muslims, for instance,  don’t like at all, but that’s tough, isn’t it. The literature of the Arabic-speaking world has been going on just as long as the literature of the English-speaking world and if you tell me it doesn’t contain anything offensive to Christians I think I might laugh. 
 
Lepanto
BY G. K. CHESTERTON
White founts falling in the courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
 
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain—hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.
 
Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.
 
They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,--
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate ;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still—hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.
 
St. Michael’s on his mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
      Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.
 
King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial, and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed--
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.
 
The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign--
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!
 
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)
 
GK Chesterton
 
It should always be remembered that the Muslims started that one.

The First Crusade, launched in 1095, was a fairly fuckwitted expedition but  probably not in the way you have been taught it was fuckwitted.

Long before the crusade was even thought of the Muslim empire included the whole of the Holy Land, the whole of the North African coast and Spain.  Islam was thus just the other side of the Pyrenees and subsequently invaded France.
 
Islam had got into what is now France and was defeated at the Battle of Tours/Poitiers
 
The Battle of Tours followed two decades of Umayyad conquests in Europe which had begun with the invasion of the Visigothic Christian Kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsulain 711. These were followed by military expeditions into the Frankish territories of Gaul, former provinces of the Roman Empire. Umayyad military campaigns had reached northward into Aquitaine and Burgundy, including a major engagement at Bordeaux and a raid on Autun. Charles's victory is widely believed to have stopped the northward advance of Umayyad forces from the Iberian Peninsula, and to have preserved Christianity in Europe during a period when Muslim rule was overrunning the remains of the old Roman and Persian Empires.[28]
Most historians assume that the two armies met where the rivers Clain and Vienne join between Tours and Poitiers. The number of troops in each army is not known. The Mozarabic Chronicle of 754, a Latin contemporary source which describes the battle in greater detail than any other Latin or Arabic source, states that "the people of Austrasia[the Frankish forces], greater in number of soldiers and formidably armed, killed the king, Abd ar-Rahman",[29] which agrees with many Arab and Muslim historians. However, virtually all Western sources disagree, and estimate the Franks at 30,000, less than half the Muslim force.[30]
Some modern historians, using estimates of what the land was able to support, and what Martel could have raised from his realm and supported during the campaign, believe the total Muslim force, counting the outlying raiding parties, which rejoined the main body before Tours, outnumbered the Franks.
 
It seems that the Franco-Spanish border remained - active, shall we say, incursions into Spain by the Franks, incursions into France by the Muslims.  
 
As the crow flies, the distance from Tunis to Rome is just under 400 miles, much the same as the distance from London to Edinburgh, which is just over 400 miles.  I’m sure the Vatican loved that.
 
The distance to the coast of Sicily from Tunis is just under 100 miles.
 
No-one invited Islam to leave the Arabian Peninsula and invade everywhere in sight, they decided that for themselves. 
 
‘Christendom’ launched an expedition to the Holy Land. Since it’s where Jesus hailed from, they felt strongly about Jerusalem, site of the Crucifixion, and there were Christians there suffering under Muslim rule, Europe somewhat thought of it as its own, it seems, though it hadn’t been stirred to do anything for the previous 400 years or so it had been under Islam; Jerusalem was conquered by Islam is 638.   One of the more well-known facts of ancient history is surely who ruled Jerusalem in 33 AD and who were under Roman occupation. Hint: they were not Arabs.  Hence the events known to history as the Jewish-Roman wars.  Under the Christian emperors Jerusalem had been Christian. The place, it must be said, is not fundamental to Islam in the way it is to Jews and Christians, though of course after 400 years the Muslims were well settled down, doing peacetime type things.

There is of course a party-line which goes something like poor little Muslims who wouldn't hurt a fly subject to unprovoked Christian aggression.  It wasn't quite like that. If they hadn't been willing to hurt flies they wouldn't have been in the Holy Land in the first place.

Quite the internal reasons for launching a foreign adventure are not clear to me but the upshot was Pope Urban II issued an invitation to every criminal, every wide-boy in the West
 
Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels and end with victory this war which should have been begun long ago. Let those who for a long time, have been robbers, now become knights. Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians. Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for small pay now obtain the eternal reward.
 
Mercenaries, adventurers, out for a fast buck, religious fervour, wanting to from their perspective take back Jerusalem, wanting to rescue Christians who had found themselves under Muslim rule, all these were factors.  If they had been slightly reasoned, they would surely have concentrated their efforts on liberating Spain and securing Europe. 

Mostly 'Christians' were far too busy killing other 'Christians' to bother about Islam.  Have the French forgiven us for the Hundred Years War yet?

Which is not of course to say there weren’t always civilized men and women.  Such a pity they have no descendants.
 
[From the C13th Book of Games of Alfonso X
And therefore we don Alfonso by the grace of God King of Castile, Toledo, Leon, Galicia, Seville, Cordova, Murcia, Jaen and Algarve commanded that this book be made in which we speak about in which those games are made most beautifully, like chess, dice and tables.]
 
Oh the games people play here/Every night and every day here…There is of course no change.  I display  intelligence, wit, erudition, charm and you remain a sly cowardly wordless mindless butcher, a degenerate who crawls around behind closed doors, a pathetic inadequate lying and whining and manipulating and paying off. 
 
As always:
Je suis allee voir dans la tete
Mais je n’y ai trouve nyet!
Je suis allee voir dans la boue
Je n’y ai trouve qu’un grand trou
Je suis allee voir dans la main
Je n’y ai trouve que rien de rien
 
Elegy in a Country Churchyard
BY G. K. CHESTERTON
The men that worked for England
They have their graves at home:
And birds and bees of England
About the cross can roam.
 
But they that fought for England,
Following a falling star,
Alas, alas for England
They have their graves afar.
 
And they that rule in England,

In stately conclave met,

Alas, alas for England

They have no graves as yet

Oh, by the way, Belloc's Hippopotamus poem - 'I shoot the Hippopotamus with bullets made of platinum/If I use leaden ones, his hide is sure to flatten 'em.' - quite wrong.  The Pink Hippo requires silver bullets.  I have sometimes wondered if my misfortunes can be attributed to my dislike of garlic.  Clearly I should be packed with, coated with the stuff, and of course a crucifix never came amiss when confronting irreducible evil.  All times are now.

Page d’ecriture Jacques Prevert

Deux et deux quatre
 
quatre et quatre huit
 
huit et huit font seize...
 
Répétez ! dit le maître
 
Deux et deux quatre
 
quatre et quatre huit
 
huit et huit font seize.
 
Mais voilà l’oiseau-lyre
 
qui passe dans le ciel
 
l’enfant le voit
 
l’enfant l’entend
 
l’enfant l’appelle :
 
Sauve-moi
 
joue avec moi
 
oiseau !
 
Alors l’oiseau descend
 
et joue avec l’enfant
 
Deux et deux quatre...
 
Répétez ! dit le maître
 
et l’enfant joue
 
l’oiseau joue avec lui...
 
Quatre et quatre huit
 
huit et huit font seize
 
et seize et seize qu’est-ce qu’ils Font ?
 
 
Ils ne font rien seize et seize
 
et surtout pas trente-deux
 
de toute façon
 
et ils s’en vont.
 
Et l’enfant a caché l’oiseau
 
dans son pupitre
 
et tous les enfants
 
entendent sa chanson
 
et tous les enfants
 
entendent la musique
 
et huit et huit à leur tour s’en vont
 
et quatre et quatre et deux et deux
 
à leur tour fichent le camp
 
et un et un ne font ni une ni deux
 
un à un s’en vont également.
 
Et l’oiseau-lyre joue
 
et l’enfant chante
 
et le professeur crie :
 
Quand vous aurez fini de faire le pitre !
 
Mais tous les autres enfants
 
écoutent la musique
 
et les murs de la classe
 
s’écroulent tranquillement.
 
Et les vitres redeviennent sable
 
l’encre redevient eau
 
les pupitres redeviennent arbres
 
la craie redevient falaise
 
le porte-plume redevient oiseau.

I'm sure you'll all be simply thrilled to read Nigel's obituary:
Nigel Howard Scholar who invented 'drama theory', advised the military and industry, and wrote a Kung Fu film 9:12PM BST 28 Apr 2008
Nigel Howard , who has died aged 73, was the brilliant, if eccentric, inventor of "drama theory" – a development of "game theory" which aims to explain the choices different parties make to resolve conflicts.
"Game theory" is a mathematical method of analysis which has been applied to biology, economics, business and political science; but its most notable application has been to peace-keeping operations in such regions as the Balkans and Afghanistan. Howard, however, who in the 1960s was an adviser to the American arms control agency during the Salt talks (the East-West negotiations on limiting strategic arms), concluded that game theory contained a fundamental weakness: it failed to allow for human emotions, and assumed that rational behaviour lies at the core of any conflict. As a result, he developed a model to include such factors as changes of mind, deliberate deceit, anger and love, calling it "drama theory".
Howard adopted the position of an outsider in any academic community, and spurned the comforts brought by the tenure of university posts. When, for example, he was offered a chair at Wharton business school, University of Pennsylvania, he declined and decamped to the Universities of Waterloo and Ottawa before returning to Britain. There he settled in the Birmingham suburb of Moseley, and became a senior visiting lecturer at Aston University and, later, visiting professor at Sheffield Hallam University.
Unlike many academics in his field, Howard was happy to deal with practical problems. He analysed the conflicts among Arab interests in the Middle East for the Royal Jordanian Institute; how to negotiate environmental regulations in the Netherlands; and problems facing the NHS, the National Coal Board and British Leyland. He advised Dupont of Canada on whether to build an ethylene plant, and ran training courses for steel plant managers in Nigeria.
One of Howard's greatest admirers was General Sir Rupert Smith, who was grappling with the problems of Northern Ireland as director of military operations in the late 1990s. He and Howard wrote a paper on the unified theory of war in today's world, and Howard helped Smith when he was writing his innovative book Utility of War (2005). Some of Howard's ideas were also incorporated into software at Nato headquarters, where Smith was Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe from 1998 to 2001.
Randolph Nigel Barrington Howard was born in London on September 5 1934, the son of Barrington Howard, an advertising man who wrote crime novels under the name Simon Stone. Nigel went to East Grinstead grammar school, which he left early without qualifications. His early ambition was to work in America as a butler. In the event he studied Fine Art at St Martin's School of Art for a year before embarking on four (unpublished) novels and two (unperformed) plays. He supported himself by working on building sites and in a wellington boot factory as well as by writing for a newspaper in south Wales.
His literary career was interrupted by two years' National Service in the Royal Navy, which sent him to learn Russian, though he was more interested in writing verse dramas. It was during this period that he came across the book Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour (1944), by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, which inspired him to explore the subject.
To pursue his new interest he had to obtain O- and A-Levels before reading Economics at the LSE. It was while working on a PhD in Applied Statistics at University College London that he emigrated with his first wife, Diana, with whom he had three children, to work at the Wharton business school, which had links with the State Department.
There Howard developed a complicated, mathematically-based formula to interpret irrational decision-making in his book Paradoxes of Rationality (1971). Twenty years later he explained drama theory in Confrontation Analysis: How to Win Operations Other than War, published by the American Department of Defence; last year the department presented him with its Enduring Achievement Award.
Howard was an argumentative man, but possessed of boundless enthusiasm. He read widely and in his later years enjoyed walking on the South Downs near his home in Brighton.
Among his more unusual later projects was advising the playwright David Edgar on The Prisoner's Dilemma, a drama about an imaginary country resembling Bosnia or Kosovo written for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Howard was also involved in making a Kung Fu film. Brighton Wok was directed and produced by his sons Gabriel and Saul, while his third wife, Moya, and their two daughters were in the cast. Howard wrote the script and played the wise, marijuana-smoking old man who saves Brighton from the machinations of evil ninjas. His death on April 1 robbed him of the opportunity to attend the premiere, scheduled for later this year.
 
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1905492/Nigel-Howard.html

How dull you all are, how boring, how stupid, ignorant, ineducable, irrational, unimaginative and brutish. That is so however many degrees or chairs you hold, whatever your status..  It is how you act or rather don't.  Even de Holy Church recognizes sins of omission; they are of course standard issue to Anglicans or were when the BCP was used.  This is the BCP of 1559 in the English of the time, linguistically fascinating.  I have to look up when -cion turned to -tion and who decided we have  hearts not hartes.  As for all those extra e's.

¶ AN ORDRE FOR MORNING PRAYER DAYLY THROUGHOUT THE YERE.     At the beginning both of Morning Prayer, and lykewyse of Evening Prayer, the Minister shall reade with a lowde voyce, some one of these sentences of the Scriptures that folowe. And then he shall say that, which is written after the said sentences.
   

AT what tyme soever a synner doth repent him of his sin from the bottome of hys harte; I wil put al his wickednes out of my remembraunce sayeth the Lord.Ezek. xviii.
    I do know mine awne wickednes, and my syne is alwaies against me. Psalm li.
    Turne thy face awaye from our sinnes (O lorde) and blotte out all our offences.Psalm li.
    A sorowful spirite is a sacrifice to God: despise not (O Lorde) humble and contrite hartes.Psalm li.
    Rende your hartes, and not your garmentes, and turne to the Lorde your God, because he is gentle and mercyful, he is pacient and of muche mercie, and such a one that is sory for your afflictions.Joel ii.
    To the, O Lorde God belongeth mercies and forgevenes: for we have gone away from the, and have not harkened to thy voice, whereby we myght walcke in thy lawes, whiche thou hast appoincted for us.Daniel ix.
First page of Morning Prayer, from an edition printed in 1559. Clicking on the image will bring up a larger, readable image.
    Correct us, O Lorde, and yet in thy judgement, not in thy furie, least we shoulde be consumed and brought to nothyng.Jere. ii
    Amende your lives, for the kyngdome of God is at hande.Math. iii.
    I will go to my father, and say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven, and againste the, I am no more worthy to be called thy sonne.Luke xv.
    Entre not in to judgement wyth thy servaunts, O Lorde, for no fleshe is rightous in thy sight.Psal.cxlii.
    If we saye that we have no synne, we deceyve ourselves, and there is no truthe in us.
 
1 John i.
DERELY beloved Brethren, the Scripture moveth us in sondry places, to acknowledge and confesse our manifolde sinnes and wickednes, and that we should not dissemble nor cloke them before the face of almighty God our heavenly father, but confesse them with an humble, lowly, penitent and obedient harte to the ende that we may obtaine forgevenes of the same by his infinite goodnesse and mercie. And although we ought at all tymes humbly to knowledge* our synnes before God, yet ought we moste chiefly so to doe, when we assemble and mete toguether, to rendre thankes for the greate benefites that we have received at his handes, to sette furth his moste worthie praise, to heare his moste holye worde, and to aske those thynges whiche be requisite and necessarie, aswel for the bodye as the soule. wherfore I praye and beseche you, as many as be here presente, to accompany me wyth a pure harte and humble voice, unto the throne of the heauenly grace, saying after me.
  * "acknowledge" from late 1500's
A generall confession, to be saide* of the whole congregacion after the minister, knelyng. ALMIGHTIE and most merciful father, we have erred and straied from thy waies, lyke lost shepee we have folowed to much the devises and desires of our owne hartes. We have offended against thy holy lawes: We have left undone those thinges whiche we ought to have done, and we have done those thinges which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us, but thou, O Lorde, have mercy upon us miserable offendours. Spare thou them O God, whiche confesse their faultes. Restore thou them that be penitent, accordyng to thy promises declared unto mankynde, in Christe Jesu our Lorde. And graunt, O most merciful father, for his sake, that we may hereafter lyve a godly, ryghtuous, and sobre life, to the glory of thy holy name. Amen.
  "made" in 1604
The absolution[, or remission of sins,]* to be pronounced by the Minister alone. ALMIGHTY God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which de sireth not the deathe of a sinner, but rather that he maye turne from his wickednesse and lyve: and hath geven power and commaundement to hys Ministers, to declare and pronounce to his people beyng penitent, the absolution and remission of their synnes: he pardoneth and absolveth all them which truly repent, and unfeinedly beleve his holy gospel. Wherefore we beseche him to graunt us true repentaunce and hys holy spirite, that those thynges may please hym, whych we doe at thys present, and that the rest of our life hereafter may be pure and holy so that at the last we may come to his eternall ioye, through Jesus Christe our lorde. The people shal aunswere.     Amen. Then shall the Minister heginne the Lordes Prayer wyth a loude voice. OUR Father, whiche arte in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kyngdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Geve us this day our dayly breade. And forgeve us our trespasses, as we forgeve them that trespasse against us. And lead us not into temptacion. But deliver us from evil. Amene. Then likewise he shall saye.     O Lord, open thou our lippes. * added in 1604
Aunswere. And our mouthe shall shewe furth thy prayse.
Prieste. O God, make spede to save us.
Aunswere. Lord, make haste to helpe us.
Prieste. Glory be to the father, and to the sonne [: and to the holye Ghoste]*.
    As it was in the beginning, [is nowe and ever shalbe: worlde without ende. Amen.]*
    Praise ye the Lorde.
  * Replaced by "&c." in 1604.

Then shalbe sayde or song, this Psalme folowyng. OCOME let us syng unto the lord: let us hartely rejoyce in the strength of our salvacion.
    Let us come before his presence wyth thankesgevinge: and shewe oureselfe* gladde in hym wyth Psalmes.
    For the Lorde is a great god: and a greate Kynge, above all goddes:
    In his hand are al the corners of the earth: and the strength of the hilles is his also.
    The Sea is his, and he made it and his handes prepared the drie lande.
    O come, let us worshippe and fal doune: and knele before the lorde our maker.
    For he is the Lord our god: and we are the people of his pasture, and the shepe of his handes.
    To day if ye wyl heare his voyce, harden not your hartes: as in the provocacion, and as in the daie of temptacion in the wildernesse.
    When your fathers tempted me : proved me, and sawe my workes.
    Fortie yere long was I greved with this generacion, and saide: it is a people that doe erre in their hartes: for they have not knowen my wayes.
    Unto whom I sware in my wrath that the shoulde not enter into my rest.
    Glory be to the father, and to the sonne: &c.
    As it was in the beginning, is now, &c.

As I say, England has been going a long time.  Maybe you  prefer Drake in his hammock:
Drake he's in his hammock an' a thousand miles away,
(Capten, art tha sleepin' there below?)
Slung atween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay,
An' dreamin' arl the time O' Plymouth Hoe.
Yarnder lumes the Island, yarnder lie the ships,
Wi' sailor lads a-dancing' heel-an'-toe,
An' the shore-lights flashin', an' the night-tide dashin',
He sees et arl so plainly as he saw et long ago.

Drake he was a Devon man, an' ruled the Devon seas,
(Capten, art tha' sleepin' there below?)
Roving' tho' his death fell, he went wi' heart at ease,
A' dreamin' arl the time o' Plymouth Hoe.
"Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore,
Strike et when your powder's runnin' low;
If the Dons sight Devon, I'll quit the port o' Heaven,
An' drum them up the Channel as we drumm'd them long ago."

Drake he's in his hammock till the great Armadas come,
(Capten, art tha sleepin' there below?)
Slung atween the round shot, listenin' for the drum,
An' dreamin arl the time o' Plymouth Hoe.
Call him on the deep sea, call him up the Sound,
Call him when ye sail to meet the foe;
Where the old trade's plyin' an' the old flag flyin'
They shall find him ware an' wakin', as they found him long ago!
Sir Henry Newbolt

Possibly a bit plonky, this version.  I  seem to remember that when we sang it at school in Devon, 'The Song of the Western Men' had more bounce:

Not nice, those lyrics.

Jonathan Trelawny (1650 - 1721) was one of the seven bishops imprisoned in the Tower of London by James II in 1688. Born at Pelynt into an old Cornish family, his father, the 2nd Baronet of Trelawne, was a supporter of the Royalist cause during the English Civil War. Jonathan was ordained a priest in 1676, and in 1685 was appointed Bishop of Bristol. In an age of religious intolerance, when Protestant England feared the might of her Catholic neighbours, the Catholic James II reversed the pragmatic policy of his predecessor, Charles II, by appointing Catholics to high office -- for example, as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Chief Admiral of the navy. In 1687, James challenged the authority of the Church of England by setting out a Declaration of Indulgence towards Catholics; the following year, he instituted a second Declaration, this time directing it to be read in every church. Seven bishops, including Trelawny, presented the king with a petition against the reading. James reacted by imprisoning the bishops in the Tower. Fearing a popular demonstration, James had the bishops transported by river to Traitors' Gate in the royal barge. On the way, spectators waded into the river to receive the bishops' blessing, and the Tower Warders knelt inside the gate as they landed. The guards that night drank a toast to their health. In Cornwall, the news of the arrest of their Bishop was greeted with anger and dismay. "And shall Trelawny die?" asked the Cornish. But at this time there were no twenty thousand Cornishmen able to march on London to effect his release. The Cornish had given so much to the Royalist cause during the Civil War that they were exhausted. After overcoming the English at Stratton, the Cornish regiments had marched eastwards to capture Taunton, Bridgwater, and Bath. They had figured prominently in the taking of Bristol, but their losses had been severe, especially among their leaders. The Cornish Army's loyalty had been to its leaders, and not to the English commanders who now exerted authority. The survivors of the Cornish regiments headed home. Although depleted in numbers, they yet managed to overcome Dorchester, Weymouth, Portland, Bideford, Barnstaple, Exeter, and Dartmouth. Almost single-handed, the Cornish had taken on the rest of the South West counties and won many famous battles. (Feats later to be emulated on the rugby field!) On 30th June, 1688, the seven bishops were brought before the King's Bench in Westminster Hall and charged with seditious libel. To cheers in Westminster Hall, and in the streets of London, they were acquitted. News of the acquittal produced scenes of great joy. In Bristol, the church bells rang out and fires were lit in many parts of the city. When the news reached Cornwall, the church bells of Pelynt rang and the mayor fired the two town cannons. The imprisonment and acquittal of the seven bishops became an important milestone in English history. Soon afterwards, William of Orange, with the approval of the Church of England, took the throne. James II fled the country, never to return. Trelawny went on to become Bishop of Exeter, and then Bishop of Winchester. When Trelawny was imprisoned in the Tower, the Cornish asked "the reason why". These words are thought to be an echo of a much older popular ballad, possibly from the time of the "An Gof" rebellion of 1497. In the nineteenth century, the poet R.S. Hawker, vicar of Morwenstow, published anonymously The Song of the Western Men, based on the imprisonment of Trelawny and the reaction in Cornwall. The poem was set to music. Trelawny, as it is now known, has become the Cornish national anthem.

Also very much a song of the western men Not

The place you are thinking of is called Beer. Yes I know you've never heard of it, but it was pretty much the smuggling capital of that particular stretch of coast.  Un don' have no toime for Excise man. 
INTRODUCTION Ask anyone to describe an 18th-century smuggler, and they will probably tell you about a Cornishman called Tom dressed in long boots and a striped jersey. He rolls a couple of kegs up a moonlit beach, hides them in a cave, then hawks the brandy round the village. Everybody knows him as Tom the Smuggler, and his neighbours take it in turns to distract the revenue man at the front door while Tom rolls his barrels out the back.
Many took Rudyard Kipling's advice to "watch the wall... while the gentlemen go by" so that they could truthfully say that they saw no smuggling. 
How accurate is this traditional picture of the smuggler? On the one hand it is a romantic impression that doesn't accurately reflect the historical facts about smuggling at any one place or time. However, it might be argued that the substance (though not the letter) of this popular image represents correctly the extraordinary circumstances which supported a vast expansion of illegal imports in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Smuggling explodes In the 18th century illegal trade across England's coast grew at a prodigious rate. What had previously been simple small-scale evasion of duty turned into an industry of astonishing proportions, syphoning money abroad, and channelling huge volumes of contraband into the southern counties of England. Even by modern standards, the quantities of imported goods are extraordinary. It was not unheard of for a smuggling trip to bring in 3,000 gallons of spirits; to picture this in your mind's eye, imagine some 1,500 cases of brandy stacked in your garage. Illegally imported gin was sometimes so plentiful that the inhabitants of some Kentish villages were said to use it for cleaning their windows. And according to some contemporary estimates, 4/5 of all tea drunk in England had not paid duty. Statistics like this are even more extraordinary when seen in the light of the time. The first steam-powered ships appeared only in the early years of the 19th century, so sailing ships brought the goods from the continent, and kegs and bales were man-handled — often up sheer cliffs — to a waiting file of men. These carriers then transported the goods either in carts or caravans of ponies, or lashed the tubs to their own backs for a journey inland. Whole communities connived in the trade, and profited from it. The Scilly Isles, for example, was totally reliant on smuggling for its survival, and the islanders were brought to the point of starvation when prevention measures were stepped up in the area. A large cargo drained capital from the area where it landed: in Shetland and around Falmouth there were times when every available penny had been spent on contraband. And there are numerous instances of whole communities uniting and taking up arms to reclaim cargoes that had been seized by the revenue.

A Smuggler's Song
If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet,
Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street;
Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie.
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark --
Brandy for the Parson,
Baccy for the Clerk;
Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,
And watch the wall, my darling,
While the Gentlemen go by!

Running round the woodlump if you chance to find
Little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy-wine,
Don't you shout to come and look, nor use 'em for your play.
Put the brishwood back again — and they'll be gone next day!

If you see the stable-door setting open wide;
If you see a tired horse lying down inside;
If your mother mends a coat cut about and tore;
If the lining's wet and warm — don't you ask no more!

If you meet King George's men, dressed in blue and red,
You be careful what you say, and mindful what is said.
If they call you "pretty maid," and chuck you 'neath the chin,
Don't you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been!

Knocks and footsteps round the house — whistles after dark --
You've no call for running out till the house-dogs bark.
Trusty's here, and Pincher's here, and see how dumb they lie --
They don't fret to follow when the Gentlemen go by!

If you do as you've been told, 'likely there's a chance,
You'll be given a dainty doll, all the way from France,
With a cap of Valenciennes, and a velvet hood --
A present from the Gentlemen, along o' being good!

Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark --
Brandy for the Parson,
'Baccy for the Clerk;
Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie --
Watch the wall, my darling,
While the Gentlemen go by!

Et bien sur - every trade-route has two ends. Britanny, Normandy, more respectable law-abiding souls.  I suppose some people might say membership of the EU is merely the regularization, the legitimizing, of what their ancestors had been doing for centuries.

Of course sometimes it got rather nasty...Not actually a real sea-song, but written round Treasure Island, but there's no reason to suppose pirates weren't like that. 

Yes, I think with Brexit we can look forward to an - ah, regularizing of trade, business as usual.  I trust HMRC are recruiting.