The End

 

 

 

 

The weekend in black and white is here.

A penny for the Old Guy

 

In November 1605 a plot to blow up Parliament and the king was thwarted due to the incompetence of the conspirators, betrayal and plain bad luck. Anyhow the guys involved were not champions of individual freedom and liberty, far from it, they wanted to restore the Catholic Church, domination by mainland Europe (France or Spain, I forget which but it matters little at this distance), Popery and all that crap. If it sounds familiar well maybe there are only so many stories in the world and indeed the EU is uncannily like the Holy Roman Empire and it took Napoleon to end that farce. Anyhow every year, in England, celebrations mark the narrow escape from Papish rule with bonfires and fireworks, but things ain't what they used to be ...

Up until around the turn of the century all of October would resound to fireworks going off, bangers and rockets. I recall in the 60s and 70s kids would make Guys, life size dolls in  the costume of Guy Fawkes, stuffed with paper and go begging for a "Penny for the Guy" in order to buy fireworks. The Guy would end up on a garden bonfire, it was all very pagan. I haven't seen a Guy for so long I've forgotten when it was. Now as for fireworks, you were I think, supposed to be sixteen to buy them, but we all knew shops, little shops, like the one above, where the mister would sell you a packet of bangers or jumping jacks for a bob, no questions asked. Then, well then along came the Great Interference, the we know better than you brigade, the soi-dissant "caring" children-shouldn't-be-out-enjoying-themselves-they-might-get-hurt-battalions, smothered all of this in a suffocating blanket of puritanical cant ... ironically these neo-puritans killed off the very celebrations of their escape from Catholic conformity. 

It was the Blair years that led to the rise of these busy-bodying nosey-parkers that has led inexorably to the present farce-fascism of locking us all up for our own good. All done, as I indicated, under the ruse of health measures, so no smoking in pubs (killed off the pubs), banning the sale of strong beers (affected small off-licences and shops), a sugar tax on fizzy drinks pushed vile artificial sweeteners onto the poor and as somebody said only fat people drink diet coke. I won't go on about the same mindset that "cares" about the "climate" and wants to tax meat and make us all to eat nuts and raisins and grass and I mention only in passing that wonder of wonders, straight out of the Inquisition ... the "hate crime" ... I cannot, in the space allowed, pour enough contempt upon these manipulative, mendacious, maliciously evil, yes, evil, people. If you are one of them or have fallen for this switched morality where everything weak is praised and all that was good is now evil, I despise you with a passion. You negate life, you would drag us down because you are in decline, you are the opposite of human, you are death.

Lockdown v2.0 will kill off what is left of our pubs and take with it many cafés and restaurants and small businesses in their money-making run up to Christmas, only the big supermarkets and the online traders will be left ... that seems to be the plan, if, indeed, there is a plan. England has been deliberately dulled, made utterly compliant (where is the nascent populism of the Brexit years? that, too, may be part of the plan all along, to kill populism in Europe and the US ... it was never about a poxy virus, ever!) so much so that one almost wishes for a modern day Guido to succeed and bring back Popery, incense, idolatry and jumping-jacks ...

The Class of 2020

This year's graduates are the usual noisy, raucous bunch, with no manners or respect for their elders.

This one graduated with first class honours.

Herring gulls take four years to sexually mature and become completely white on the head so this one is probably a three year old and still has a lot to learn. The oldest recorded herring gull was forty nine years old.

"Dewey defeats Trum ..."

It seems that there is another quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing. Folk out there are in a tizzy over whether to paint the ends of their eggs blue or to paint them red. Quite why this should interest the Mainstream Manipulators in this country so much I cannot imagine since our paintbrushes don't reach that far, indeed those guys have stolen our paint (and our eggs). But nevertheless there is a morbid fascination in seeing which dead or dying horse will pass the line first; my money, for what it's worth, is on the red though the prize seems increasingly small.

The picture was taken by Margot K Juby and then ruined by me.

In the beginning was nonsense...

Atlas must have been a pretty dull fellow, sent off, as he was, by Zeus, to the end of the world to keep the Heavens aloft forever. Did it not occur to him to ask how did the Heavens manage before he came along? I wonder if, after a few eternities, he thought: "What happens if I take one hand off, or both, ...hey up the sky's not falling, D'oh ... Oi Zeus you bastard!" ... but by then Zeus was dead, like all the gods, probably died laughing thinking of poor old Atlas Telamon. Eternal Atlas is now reduced to being a hotel sign holding not the celestial bodies but a battered globe on a windy corner of a small Norfolk town.

I've posted this little Titan before but the myths are always worth revisiting, as this delight is worth a new coat of paint and some tlc and maybe a tea break.

But who is stronger than death?

They bury you when you go and die

It ain't that in their hearts they're bad
They can comfort you, some even try
They nurse you when you're ill of health
They bury you when you go and die

*

In mid-November 1875 a fleet of fishing boats was heading from Lowestoft back home to Fife at the end of the herring season when they were caught in storm and five boats were lost. Thirty two men were drowned and of them only eight were found, washed up on the Norfolk shore. Here they lie with this unique memorial, paid for by public subscription, among the kind folk of King's Lynn and surroundings... It stands as a memorial to the close links between the fishing communities of Scotland and Norfolk.

This is in Hardwick Road cemetery, a place that could have a whole blog to itself never mind a single post . Later perhaps. The cold details of this fine memorial are here.

 

It ain't that in their hearts they're bad
They'd stick by you if they could
But that's just bullshit baby
People just ain't no good

                                                Nick Cave

The theme for City Daily Photo ... (I know, I was told there would be no more theme days, we were all told a lot of things this year that weren't necessarily so) ... is kindness. It's reckoned we could all do with more of it, I know some who could do with a lot less.

Both photos by Margot K Juby who is always kind.