A wholly true story.
Whenever I go out in London, something incredible, unlikely,
improbable and unbelievable always happens, like I recently did a magickal
ritual and forgot to close the circle. Not that I’ve done any of those things,
well, perhaps I have. Perhaps my life is an ongoing uncompleted magickal ritual
of some kind. I don’t mind it too much, it’s kind of cool and it gives me
plenty to think about, and it also distracts me from not having a girlfriend,
but sometimes it feels a little bit dangerous and edgy, especially at night and
without the sun to protect me, when the demons emerge from the shadows like zombie
vampires and I hear them calling after me as I quicken my pace and punch the
metal poles of the street lights to hear the resounding metal dings of my own
toughness.
This trip to London came about as a result of me hoping to
see David Devant and his Spirit Wife as he was due to play the Water Rats in
King’s Cross, but the gig was later cancelled due to a change in management
leaving me with a cheap return to London and a night booked in a rather sordid
and smelly Hostel where earplugs were essential if you didn’t want to be
subjected to the wet slurpy noises of the couple in the bunk inches from you
having sex.
I boarded the train at the end of the line seaside town I
called home during the summer months. Some people prefer hot exotic foreign
locations to spend their summer in but my whole life is spent in hot
exotic foreign locations and I like
nothing more than to spend the summer time cooling off under clouds and the
threat of rain and thwarted barbecues and festivals.
There was an uncommonly pretty girl who got on the train at
my home station which surprised me and so as not to appear like a creep I
deliberately avoiding following her into her carriage. I always do things like
that. I don’t know why. It’s not shyness, I just hate creepy guys and I don’t
want to be one. Sadly it means I never get to meet any nice girls because I
don’t talk to them. Who cares. I avoid clichés. The best thing is a girl who
talks to you. That shows strength of character and originality and I’m all for
that. There are too many damn relationships out there, too many marriages and
too many babies in any case. Gender politics are all so predictable, despite Feminism’s
claims that it wants to change things. Women still don’t have the guts, even so
called empowered Feminist ones, to ask a good looking man out. And that suits
me to be honest because much as I love women and their childlike soft faces and
ornate cleansing rituals, I still prefer my own company.
But still, if a woman asked me out, unless she was a troll, she’d straight away
get 10 points for originality and actually putting her ego in the balance,
which is usually what men are expected to do. My ego I suppose is too precious,
delicate and too important for it to be trampled by a rejection, but I think
the truth is that I fear acceptance more. More than rejection I fear being
accepted, signing myself up for something I can’t back out of. My ultimate nightmare, except of course for
nuclear holocaust and a slow lingering radiation death, is to be on a date with
someone to whom I immediately take a strong dislike, and realise that I will
be trapped in a lie for the next hour or two as I try to think of a way to extract myself from a very awkward
social situation. The sad fact is that I think most ladies, most people, would
likely bore me rigid after a few minutes. A date would be so much worse since
one is constrained to observe social form and express interest and even desire
in the person with whom one is spending the date. I can’t be bothered.
So I avoided any opportunity to talk to this beautiful and
well dressed woman and spent the rest of the journey to Doncaster regretting it
and instead sat near a disconsolate blonde Polish woman in tight jeans and
scolding into her mobile and wondering if there might be an opportunity to
correct what might have been an error by speaking to the pretty lady at
Doncaster, if that is, she is even changing at the station and continuing on to
King’s Cross as I was.
In the event she was indeed changing at Doncaster and she
even looked in my direction as I shyly eyed her and likely displayed all the
presence and power of a frightened rabbit. I told myself she wasn’t my type,
besides, I had a seat with a number and a letter on it which meant girlfriend
acquisition would have to wait to some other remote and unforeseeable point in
the future.
When I took my seat I found an elderly lady next to me
reading a slim volume from Russian
playwright Turgenev. She smiled at me with uncanny brightness and intensity
which I didn’t quite expect, not at Doncaster anyway, and soon we began talking
and her play was put down unread. She was a suspiciously interesting lady who
after I had told her that I was a teacher in Morocco, told me all about her
own travels as well as those of her son who had also been in the Paras and
apparently was now pursuing a career of ongoing higher education and, possibly
working for MI6 (which of course she didn’t mention but which I surmised, I
then told myself I was being paranoid and a fantasist). I wasn’t surprised that
such an interesting lady was seated next to me and I almost expect such
occurrences ever since my time in Japan when I became half emerged, or
submerged in Freemasonry and the secret services, I have always been followed
at a distance by Freemasons and spooks eager to recruit me and getting
increasingly frustrated with my complete insularity and total lack of interest
in them, except in so much as I can gather information to expose them and their
methods, after all, they are the bad guys, there are no good guys left anymore,
perhaps there never were. There is only
me.
I think I’m the only good guy left in the game and I fully intend to act
with the complete independence and full volition, and general self righteous
heroism to be expected of the good guys scattering the dark criminals of secret
Masonic paedophiles and secret service brain-washers to the dark corners of
reality where they can’t get me. Every further attack or attempt to undermine
me and recruit me is just another blog post or short story as far as I’m
concerned.
When I went out to Tokyo with the promise of joining a powerful network of something ‘better than friends’ and being offered the chance to become a ‘great writer’ in return for joining them and perhaps doing a bit of spying I had nothing to write about, but since rejecting them I have had no shortage of material and the dreams they thought they could make come true for me, have come true despite them, perhaps solely because I specifically opposed them. It was the only way I could metabolise the damage they attempted to inflict on me during my 6 month long training adventure which involved all manner of impositions from being sexually propositioned by underaged Japanese teenage girls under the purview of the school director to actual psychic battles with Far-Eastern witches. All of these things are unpleasant experiences, but they fit within the system of the Freemasonic secret services recruitment. Lure you into a sexual experience with 15 year old girl then you’re blackmailable and under their thumb for the rest of your life. Keep our secrets and we’ll keep yours, even if your secrets are ones we’ve imposed on you. These things hurt and can make you feel bitter unless you find a way to neutralise them, and so I write about them, it’s not as if I signed the official secrets act or was even offered a financial sweetener to keep schtum.
When I went out to Tokyo with the promise of joining a powerful network of something ‘better than friends’ and being offered the chance to become a ‘great writer’ in return for joining them and perhaps doing a bit of spying I had nothing to write about, but since rejecting them I have had no shortage of material and the dreams they thought they could make come true for me, have come true despite them, perhaps solely because I specifically opposed them. It was the only way I could metabolise the damage they attempted to inflict on me during my 6 month long training adventure which involved all manner of impositions from being sexually propositioned by underaged Japanese teenage girls under the purview of the school director to actual psychic battles with Far-Eastern witches. All of these things are unpleasant experiences, but they fit within the system of the Freemasonic secret services recruitment. Lure you into a sexual experience with 15 year old girl then you’re blackmailable and under their thumb for the rest of your life. Keep our secrets and we’ll keep yours, even if your secrets are ones we’ve imposed on you. These things hurt and can make you feel bitter unless you find a way to neutralise them, and so I write about them, it’s not as if I signed the official secrets act or was even offered a financial sweetener to keep schtum.
So later on in the
evening I would find myself meeting ‘them’ again and find the same evil theme
of underage children being used as a bait and temptation, but with a few more
details being thrown into the mix and a little more exposition being provided
to allow me truly complete the picture of what we are all up against.
This charming and rather remarkable old lady told me some
interesting tales; of how her son, while working, or holidaying, or doing God
knows what in Tunisia had come upon what she told me was a terrorist training
village, just outside Hammamet. I greedily absorbed the name and wrote in my
little red notebook determined to write a story about it, and with a flash an
idea came to me:
“How did he know it was a terrorist village? Maybe it was a
film set? North Africa is full of outdoor movie sets and studios?” I told her
she’d given me a great idea for a story, about a man who either discovers what
he believes to be a terrorist training camp, he spends the day hiding and
taking detailed notes, and in the end it turns out to be nothing more sinister
than the set of Gladiators 2 or something. Or indeed, contrariwise, the chap
sets out to tour the film sets of North Africa, Gladiator, Star Wars and all
that, but comes upon an unusual set complete with lifelike firearms and even
dead bodies which are uncannily lifelike...or not, uncannily deathlike, and it
turns out he has indeed strayed into a real life movie where he is basically
hiding, running and fighting for his life.
“No, that’s not it," she said. "he said there were black figures.”
“Black figures?” I asked, the tale growing apparently
stranger.
“Black figures, those cut-outs, the type they use for target
practice’
“Oh...wow” I said.
“As he was going around he was followed by a 4 wheel drive
vehicle but he got down into the valley where they couldn’t follow him and he
hid there.’
It was at this point that it occurred to me that her son was
probably a British spy as I had first assumed. It seemed with me that whenever
I was being a paranoid fantasist I usually ended up being right. I think the universe has a sense of humour
after all. I don’t think paranoid fantasists have anything to fear from the
world. They’re ready for anything; it’s those who are locked into the mundane
and familiar who are most taken by surprise and unbalanced when the world
refuses to be mundane and familiar and this is precisely the kind of thing
which the world seems to enjoy doing to people. Besides, this kind of thing didn’t really happen to tourists. Tourists just usually get blown up or killed
in these situations. They rarely escape. Precisely because they are not
paranoid fantasists like people in the secret services are trained to be. Putting
in hours at the breakfast buffet and drinking beer by the pool tends not to
prepare most people for escape from pursuit in a presumed terrorist training
camp. It’s the last thing they expect which is precisely the reason these
things are happening in the world, because some people take an evil pleasure in
shattering people’s complacency and holiday plans in order to make a political
point, like some kind of mad Gurdjieffs bombing and shooting people out of
their waking dream and making them confront some kind of absolute reality for
once.
So I immediately became suspicious, but also hugely flattered
and excited, here I was, on the train from Doncaster and apparently finding
myself rubbing shoulders with international spooks and secret operatives
disguised as energetic old ladies with a
fondness for Russian literature. Of course, that’s the trap. The heroic James
Bond bullshit which bears very little semblance to realty. According to Ken
Livingstone MI5’s major preoccupation throughout the 80’s was not saving the
world from the Red menace but apparently honey-trapping IRA members with
underage children to have sex with. Scum. All of ‘em.
“Have you ever been to Russia?” she asked.
“No... it’s not my thing. Too cold”
“My son worked in Russia, China. Dubai. They wanted Russian
speakers in Dubai, but you have to be careful, they don’t let you get into
debt. If you go into debt you go to prison”
“Yeah, I’ve heard about that. Business men whose deals went
sour sleeping rough in the streets. Funny really, surely someone should have
told the Emir that debt is the foundation of world capitalism.”
“South America. Have you been to South America?”
I made a negative noise. “I wouldn’t get on too well,” I
made a big mouth gesture with my hand, “I’d get myself into all sorts of
trouble out there.”
“Well my son got attacked by three men in Venezuela,” she
paused, “though he managed to deal with them.”
I raised an eyebrow, “taking out three men huh? Pretty
cool,” which seemed like a childish and inappropriate thing to say to an old lady but she didn’t
seem to mind.
“You know, my son will be meeting me at the station gates.
You can meet him if you want. He’s a writer too.”
“Really?”
“He has a book on Amazon. His name is Jack Blake and It’s
called ‘A Duty to Serve’” and she gave me a long significant look which I
immediately understood the meaning of and realised my paranoid fantasies had
just become concrete and inescapable facts.
I mumbled something about my own book but I couldn’t
remember the name of it and I struggled and floundered for a few moments trying
to remember what my book was called.
“I’ve recently changed the name but I can’t remember it
now.” Eventually I remembered the book and told her about it. There was a
moment of silence so I thought I’d tell her one of my stories. The one about me
arriving at Siwa Oasis and fancying a drink but finding the town dry I hired a
bicycle and peddled 10 km out of town to a resort by the side of a salt-lake.
By the time I had had enough drinks to make up for the hot dusty bike ride it
was dark so I decided to stay at the resort, sleeping by the lake-side and
getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. I told her of how when I returned the
Egyptian army, apparently panicked that I had not returned to my hotel in Siwa
that night, had sent out an expeditionary force to scour the desert looking for
me. She seemed interested in the story in a non committal way and was following
my narrative. Then I decided to throw something in to test her.
“I think they thought maybe I had been kidnapped by some
Al-Qaeda....” I paused, “or that maybe I was a British spy.” I laughed. Instead
of reacting to the end of the story and commenting on it she suddenly started
looking for something in her bag and made a very minor non-committal noise, as
if an old grandmother was listening to some gibberish from an infant
grandchild, as if pretending not to have been listening to my story or taking
it seriously somehow. I had just tested her and she had just confirmed my
theories that she was indeed what I thought she was.
After finishing rummaging through her bag she found whatever
it was she had been pretending to look for and we lapsed into silence for a few
moments. I started to stare out of the window.
“My son’s taking me to Kew Gardens. Have you been there?”
I answered sweetly in the negative.
“You can come along but I suppose you’ve got somewhere
fashionable and trendy to go to.”
I remembered the spy movies I’d seen agents meeting in
parks far away from people overhearing and hidden microphones. I also
considered that if these people wanted to do me harm of threaten me then I’d be
a long way from help in the company of a man who had apparently escaped from
Tunisian terrorists and defeated a three man ambush in South America. I’d have
to be suicidal to accept such an offer. Although I’ve never been to Kew Gardens
either and have always meant to make the visit.
“Oh, I’m going to make my way up to Kenwood house. Get up on
Parliament Hill then maybe have a swim in the ponds if the weather is nice.”
“Oh that’s nice.”
The train rocked through Stevenage, I heard someone saying
that it was the technology hub of Europe and I wondered if this was classified
information too. I hardly knew who was a spook and who wasn’t anymore. I
suppose that’s the point. You start to get paranoid and that makes for good
security.
Coming into London she signaled Alexandra Palace as the
train swung into London. I thrilled with genuinely delight as I had a great fondness
for this part of London.
“I love London!”. At this I saw a genuine pleasure or
approval in her face. Had I proved my loyalty to my country in such a simple
sentence. I got the feeling that I had.
“Look at how the ridge runs all the way to Hampstead through
Highgate.”
She smiled and nodded with genuine assent and a shared loved
of our country and its glorious capital.
And I wondered again if that smile meant I had proved myself
again after the indiscretion of my silly story about bike rides and looking for
beer in Egyptian oasis towns.
We pulled into King’s Cross and I took the lady’s case with
determination.
“Let me take this,” although I think she could have carried
it just as easily as I and there was something in the way she demurred which
told me this. As we made our way down the station concourse I was astonished at
how fast she could move. She must have been in her eighties and she easily
strode ahead of me, and I am a hell of a fast walker. What a magnificent old
woman I thought. She must be doing something right to be able to move at such
speed at her age, though to be fair I was carrying her case which wasn’t
particularly heavy. I was curious and a little nervous as to what her son Jack would be like.
As we got to the gate I saw her head move and make a quick
happy sound of greeting and I quickly followed her gaze and saw what was
obviously a spook. Head down, black baseball cap only looking up to meet his
mother’s eyes, in fact he looked like he could easily have been an assassin,
but one who perhaps had lost a few fights, he had a badly cut upper lip which
looked like it had been injured a couple of months ago with a fist wearing a
heavy ring, but which hadn’t healed properly. Possibly this wound was acquired
in the field and it had not been possible to seek any medical treatment or
stitches. As a result it seemed that the wound had become infected with what
looked like staph and it must have been quite sore and uncomfortable. He would not have been out of place chasing
Matt Damon around New York in the Bourne films, and I thought of how he had
taken down three men. But I wasn’t afraid, sure I expose the Illuminati and
Freemasonic paedophiles but that’s what we’re supposed to do right? That’s what
good guys do and we all know the good guys win in the end. At least one hopes
they do....sometimes.
I went over to him and handed him his mother’s baggage. He
greeted me in a Russian accent, and I’m not entirely sure why since he was
supposed to be an English man called Jack Blake. I wondered for a second if
this man really was this woman’s son at all. She wasn’t Russian, neither
presumably was her husband since he had inherited an English surname. Whatever
the reason I didn’t like it and immediately my instant distrust of spooks
draping themselves over rail station barriers with black baseball caps on was
magnified a hundred fold and I just wanted to get out of there, but not before
deploying my usual charming Englishman act and feigning delight and enthusiasm
and then getting the fuck out of dodge before I got bundled into a dodgy white
van.
“Thank you for looking after my mother.” He said with a
Russian accent.
“It was a pleasure, she’s a remarkable woman. Your mother
told me you’re a writer, I’ll have to check out your stuff.”
“Yes, if you’ve got a moment I’ll show you what I’m working
on.” No I thought, I just want to get away from you spooky people and relegate
any future contact with these people to the remote safety of email and the
internet.
“You can contact me, I’ve given you mum my contact details.”
I said, regretting that I’d given his mother my contact details.
“What’s your new book called?” I asked.
“There are two: Across the Abyss. And I’m also working on
‘The Dawn of the Apocalypse’.”
I bet you are I, I thought.
I bet you are I, I thought.
I wanted to show some human sympathy, so I touched him on
the lower arm in a friendly gesture.
“Well, make sure you get in touch”.
As I touched him I felt something in his mind, I wouldn’t say I read his mind but I almost did, I sensed recoil, fear as if I was dangerous to him, like I was made of antimatter and I could destroy him if I showed him too much human sympathy in a world in which he experienced none. I don’t know what it was but it seemed somehow that what I did as a friendly matey gesture was something alien to him. It was odd. What kind of world did this man live in? What was going on in his mind? Or perhaps it was something else, a man used to danger, violence and suspicion would immediately feel threatened by another man closing in on his own physical space, and certainly one reaching out to touch him. I expect a spook is always on high alert and has been trained to expect danger from any possible quarter, so my friendly gesture of one human being reaching out to another to bridge the perceptual void between two people with the bridge of physical contact, probably set off a red alert danger warning for our scared and nervous Mr Blake.
As I touched him I felt something in his mind, I wouldn’t say I read his mind but I almost did, I sensed recoil, fear as if I was dangerous to him, like I was made of antimatter and I could destroy him if I showed him too much human sympathy in a world in which he experienced none. I don’t know what it was but it seemed somehow that what I did as a friendly matey gesture was something alien to him. It was odd. What kind of world did this man live in? What was going on in his mind? Or perhaps it was something else, a man used to danger, violence and suspicion would immediately feel threatened by another man closing in on his own physical space, and certainly one reaching out to touch him. I expect a spook is always on high alert and has been trained to expect danger from any possible quarter, so my friendly gesture of one human being reaching out to another to bridge the perceptual void between two people with the bridge of physical contact, probably set off a red alert danger warning for our scared and nervous Mr Blake.
In fact I was quite as nervous as Mr Spook but I like to
think I was slightly more difficult to read, as I hastily extracted myself from
the Blake family mother and son recruiting double act and set off to an
unclouded horizon free of strange dangerous people with strange and frightening
looking scars talking of the abyss and apocalypses. Just not my style. So for old time’s sake,
before my trek up to Kenwood house I decided to make a detour to my old haunts
of East London and see what is left of East London as it becomes an
increasingly large sprawling suburb of Shoreditch yuppiedom.
I got out at Mile End and made my way past my old Alma Mater
which had now grown and spilled over beyond all sense: with high student tower blocks of glass and
steel with a trendy blue sheen applied to the glass; they cast the Mile End
road into an unsettling darkness and I
found the place largely unrecognizable, the old indigenous East-Ender pubs full of geezers gone, cheap beer and the occasion National Front meeting
upstairs, turned, body-snatcher style into clone coffee shops and tapas bars.
The old pubs, despite their dubious politics, were places where people who
actually lived here went to drink.
Now everyone is just passing through for the next three or four years. No doubt
when tapas bars cease being fashionable or profitable business ventures the
place will change its mask again to whatever is trendy and expensive ten years
from now. I don’t know, if I want tapas I go to Spain, that’s supposed to be the
point. Cheap food to go with your beer. In a typically English version they’ve
somehow managed to make tapas expensive and a kind of ‘restaurant’ experience
in themselves. Maniacs. The English would do well to ignore Europe until their
plane lands at the airport because they always manage to muck it up when they
try being European at home. We’re not European and we have no right trying it
on. Europe is for going on holidays and watching the police chasing Muslims.
I saw a pub ahead of
me and desperate for an early drink because I was on holiday after all, I saw
an open door with a chair temporarily blocking the way. I looked in and saw a
husband and husband couple behind the bar, a touch of coldness lingering as if
they’d just had a domestic.
I addressed one of the husbands: “What time do you open?” he
ignored me and deferred my question to his husband.
“11.”
“What time is it now?”
“Five to.”
Friendly. Must have been a bad bust up. I was fucked if I
was going to stand there for five minutes in the street waiting for these two
surly homosexuals to deign to allow me to give me their money for some
overpriced fizzy German’s cellar piss, so I walked on. The next pub was a much
better proposition. A man and his daughter just opening up and I walked in
breezily.
“Not much of a welcome from the Mr & Mr place up the
street.”
“Oh yeah, they’re always like that.”
“They don’t even have any real beer.” I looked around.
“God the place has changed....It’s crazy. I was here 20
years ago. ’94, was full of cockneys back then,
Pie and mash shops down the Roman Road and all that. This is the only
place left that seems like a real pub. How long you been here?”
“ About five years now. It’s changed even since I’ve been
here. Since we’ve been here it’s all posh cafes on Roman road now.”
I laughed “Cafes or cafés?”
“All cappuccinos and dry Italians biscuits. Cafés. Three
quid for a coffee. The places are always full they must be raking it in.”
“Where have all the Londoners gone? I can’t understand
it. It’s like ethnic-cleansing or
something. Did they send all the cockneys to work-camps or something? Someone
should call the UN.”
He laughed, “They’re all out in Essex now.”
“Seems a shame to be forced to flee your own capital.”
“Way of the word. If you can’t pay, get out. Same with the
pubs. They’re all closing, we’re the last one in the area. The rest are ‘bars’
you couldn’t call them pubs. ”
“What does it all mean?”
He shrugged.
“It’s weird, even the park’s changed. It used to be a park
with trees, now the trees have gone and it’s all children’s activity centres
and a crazy children’s swimming pool, it looked like the penguin enclosure at
London Zoo. Why can’t it just be a park? It’s probably all part of the long
devious road to turning it into a shopping centre anyway.”
He laughed with humour as if the cynicism of my comment was
too real to be taken humorously.
I asked for a pint of Amber Ale and prepared myself for the
ever more remarkable sum of money about to be asked for a pint of what after
all is mostly water with about 5 percent alcohol by volume, I readied my
price-of-a-pint- poker-face, I guess it would probably be somewhere in the 4
pounds range by now since it was about 6 months since my last British pub pint
and that one was rapidly escaping the confines of the 3 quid mark.
“£4.35”.
I felt catatonic with astonishment but for politeness’ sake I
managed not to let it show and sat myself down at a table to muse on how many
of these things I could actually afford before my money ran-out. How can people
afford this? Then the answer came quickly, they can’t, that’s why all the pubs
are closing and only the yuppies places run by homosexuals serving German
cellar-piss full of people with more money than sense are staying open. Hardly
seemed democratic or fair, but who said social engineering was fair.
It seemed odd to be the first in the pub, especially to
arrive as the pub opened, it felt less like a pub but more like the front room
of these two’s house, it didn’t feel puby enough, more like housey. It would
need a few more drinks and, a bit more banter, some more faces, some rude words
and edgy comments to set the place up as a pub for the day. They came along in
due course.
A man walked in and immediately struck up a conversation
with the landlord’s daughter which showed they had met several times and
possibly he was a regular. It turns out he wasn’t a regular.
I stepped up to the bar to refresh my glass and was feeling
liquid and limber enough to strike up a conversation with a random stranger
stood next to me. This is England after all and this is a pub.
I noticed he had been talking to the landlady about one of
the ales and it being the same one I had lately finished I felt no reluctance
in vaunting the merits of this pleasing and refreshing beer.
“It’s pretty nice that stuff” I said, “I’m having another.”
“Yeah, go on and then, I’ll have one of those.”
I stood beside him in the impartial manner of someone who
has just made a sound moral judgement as to what really is the best possibly
beverage based on all possibly criteria of taste, quality and general
refreshment.
“So you from round here?” I asked after we had both been
handed out cherished brown glassfuls.
“Nah, just in town for the festival.”
“Oh, the Nutbox Benderthon?”
“Uhuh”
“Who are you here to see?”
He laughed “No, I’m working there. I’m a rigger, just spent
the morning setting up the main-stage. Can’t stand the music that’s why I’m in
here”.
“Wow.” I always tend
to do that when mildly impressed, I guess I sounded as if the guy had just told
me he’d returned from space or had spent the morning wrestling dragons, when
he’d just spent the morning with a screwdriver and a spanner.
“Funny,” I said “people paying for tickets and clamouring to
get in there and you’re in there and can’t wait to get out.”
“I just don’t like the commercial music. It’s all it is
these days.”
After a moment of silence drinking our beers I asked him:
“Have you ever done Glastonbury?”
“Oh yeah, was there this year at Arcadia. We set up this
giant 40 foot high fire breathing spider.”
“Wow.” I said, realising that the first wow wouldn’t have
been deployed had I known that he’d helped build a giant fire breathing spider
for the Glastonbury festival.
“It was pretty good. There was a space inside for the DJ as
well. That was a pretty good couple of nights that was to be fair. Got
completely off my face.”
“Well,” I said, judicially,” I suppose you’ve gotta put up
with your commercial weekends in East London to hang out in the West country
with a giant spider.”
“Best time I ever had was in Moscow with the Scorpions.”
“Spiders to Scorpions. Nice!”
He laughed a single chuckle.
“We’d gone around Moscow and it was just as I’d been led to
expect you know. Just sort of drab and
almost like life in Europe 50 years ago. All the women wearing these funny
headscarves and the men in blue nylon trousers and inflammable tan coloured Terylene
shirts. Like a sort of uniform of drabness and I wondered what we had all
strayed into. It wasn’t just another country it was like another century and I
thought this is all a terrible mistake.
Maybe they’ll run us out of town or maybe the KGB will decide we’re a
danger to public Communist morality. It got even worse when we started setting
up for the Scorpions. There was the Russian military everywhere doing the
security, all pretty dour and they were as dubious about it all as we were. And so we were just hanging around doing the
checks and people start to come in but they’re all hanging about around the
edges of the stadium or far off into the distance and all we are really aware
of are these bloody Russian soldiers with those Kensington Market military caps
on we’re up there on stage like being on a military firing range or something
with all these blokes lined up just watching us. Anyway,” he took a drink of
beer, “the roadies come on and start testing the equipment and that seems to
have been taken as a sign and all these people from the back just fall in at
the front and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. All these rockers with leather jackets, punks, lads
with studded denim jackets, women with shaved hair, and I was like ‘where the
fuck have this lot all come from?’ I couldn’t believe it! It was just like a
home crowd, and that just made the contrast between them and the soldiers even
more weird. And they all had these flags and placards in English ‘Peace not
War’ and they were almost jostling against these uniformed soldiers and for me
that was it. I saw it all. This row of
confused soldiers who didn’t really know what was going on, what they or
we were doing there, against this surging crowd of rock fans who looked more
like protesters and it dawned on me: this is the fall of Communism right here.
And so it was. Three months later the Berlin Wall came down and the rest is
history. But when that happened the whole world was taken by surprise but I
don’t know, but I had been expecting something like that to happen ever since
that Moscow gig. Something happened in that gig, something almost mystical
which set off a train of events.”
“That’s incredible.” I almost said ‘wow’ again but
fortunately stopped myself, instead I contributed my small insight into life
behind the Iron Curtain: “I had a girlfriend from East Europe once. She lived
in East Berlin. She told me of how the government had monitoring devices
installed in everyone’s apartment because there were people in her
neighbourhood who seemed to know all her families private business and the
things they discussed at home. I’m glad you were in there to see that crazy
shit crumble to the ground but all that seems to have happened is that it has
left Russia and this same weird peeping spying evil is creeping into the
Western world. I mean why do we have a thing called ‘political correctness?’.
Do you know where that comes from?” I asked, ready to pounce triumphantly with
the answer.
“Marxism. The Frankfurt School. Otherwise known as the
Institute of Social Research.”
“That’s it. Well this girl had a weird Portuguese friend who
was trying to recruit me into something. Don’t want to sound xenophobic but
whenever there is a large cadre of European students at a UK university,
particularly if they’re doing Business, marketing or Economics then there’s
almost certainly an Illuminati component behind them as a sort of common
understanding. I liked this girl but she was trying to get me to join
something, maybe it was just the Freemasons but they seemed to go to
extraordinary lengths just for a dinner club. He made his big pitch to me once
and he asked me: “What makes the world go around?” the answer was obvious of
course. ‘Love’ I said, he seemed confused at this and corrected me ‘no, it’s
money’. Of course I couldn’t let that stand. That’s just a stupid song isn’t
it? No basis for a philosophical line of reasoning and certainly not a sound
economic proposition. But these people believe it and they can think of nothing
more than money, it was fairly easy to explain to him that without love the
world would stop in its tracks. Without money people would find a way to make
things work, but without love what reason would there be to try to make
anything work. Love is the great motivating force for continued life on Earth
and perhaps that’s what happens when people kill themselves: they just run out
of love. Anyway I got a phone-call from my girlfriend later that day asking me
bluntly if I wanted to join their organisation. I said I didn’t and she told me
she was glad. Who knows what she would have said if I had agreed. Would she
have said the same thing. It was odd. Odd people, but she was really pretty
though.”
I felt my point had been made so I ordered a Hakushu whisky
and smiled to myself about this guy who had momentarily sought refuge for the
dreadful music he had helped set the stage for.
The Landlord remarked to his daughter serving at the bar
that Malcolm hadn’t yet made an appearance and was about due. Within a few
minutes a man walked through the door who I presumed was Malcolm.
Malcolm the regular came up to the bar though me with two
pints inside me, a Japanese whisky and
some pretty good stories felt like I owned the place and HE was the slightly
self conscious stranger from out of town that I should have been. I greeted him
at the bar and waited to see what kind of a person he would turn out to be and
whether he might give me a cigarette. He greeted the barmaid with a
grandfatherly consideration and she in turn greeted him fondly like she was his
granddaughter. A pub is a wonderful thing. Perhaps the only commercial
operation left in the world where the people who work in the trade actually
show fondness and a personal regard for their clients and treat them more like
friends.
Malcolm took his drink and remained at the bar next to me,
he then pulled out a copy of the Mail on Sunday and proceeded to reveal the
crossword for the benefit of himself and the landlord to pore over.
I was starting to feel pretty swag after lubrication and
wondered if I should have more here or move on elsewhere. If I stayed here I’d
get pretty sloshed because the beer was good and it was comfortable and this
place seemed to be where the real Londoners and not those on a three year study
visa, were still to be found drinking. I turned to Malcolm and couldn’t seem to stop
myself speaking my thoughts aloud and addressing him in a completely unsolicited
manner.
“It’s pretty nice here,” I said to him, “Not been round here
for nearly 20 years. Used to live here, and it’s all changed.” I felt like an
old man saying this but since he was
an old man I considered that this approach would be met with benevolent
understanding.
He nodded sagely then said: “’’ere you don’t know this is do
you? Four letters bulbous fruit of the Rosaceae
family?” He held up the crossword.
I puzzled and dribbled for a few moments trying to find the
answer but I couldn’t.
“Rosaceae? What’s that? Rose?” I was being bit drunk and dense and never could answer
questions like this that I hadn’t read to myself first.
After a moment of them pondering the clues aloud and me
admitting to myself that I couldn’t think of answers to any of them; I really
fancied a cigarette I decided to ask the barman if I could buy a single.
“We can sell you a packet but not a single, that’s illegal
you know.”
“Nah, I don’t want a full pack. Just fancied the one.”
Malcolm piped up from behind the newspaper:
“I’m going out for a cig in a minute, you can come out
wimee, you can ‘ave one of mine.”
I smiled and expressed my thanks and shortly afterwards he
beckoned me to come out with him to the street for a smoke.
Out of doors I felt the sun struggling against the clouds
since I had entered the pub and though
the sun appeared to be winning the battle against the clouds on that atypically
sunny Summer’s day in England, I knew that chemtrails and poisonous aluminium
rain wouldn’t be too far behind.
“I can’t believe how much this place has changed?” I
returned to my theme, because I suppose it was something which bothered me. The
gentrification of London and the replacement of decent British beer with
generic German lagerpiss. But also it bothered me that British people are
losing their homes and capital city to an endless horde on a student
conveyer-belt who are forever just passing through and contributing nothing of
value to the community except their removal and the replacement of indigenous
culture with indentikit boil-in-the-bag Euro culture in the shape of Tapas bars
and even more coffee shops for women and homosexuals to compare their shopping
and their clothes in. I shared my concerns on these matters and him being a bit
of an old geezer I was sure would agree.
“S’a bloody disgrace it is. All these Muslims ‘ere. What are
they doing here? We don’t need ‘em.”
This wasn’t exactly the tack I was hoping for and I seem to
have momentarily shown myself to be a willing participant in a potentially
racist conversation outside a pub in East London. Obviously back in the day
this kind of working class rhetoric was common but not these days amidst the
Tapas bars and Cafés and I felt a little cry of victory well within me that we
two cockney geezers (with me as pretend one) where expressing our opinions like
working class men without regard for intellectual fashions and political
correctness.
“Well I live and work in Muslim countries. I quite like it.
Since they’re all so keen to come over here I return the compliment and go
round theirs. I like it though. It’s not what people think, these countries are
a bit like England used to be fifty years ago, kids playing in the street and a
strong sense of community.”
“Yeah, they do like children.” he said, as if this was
somehow unusual or a unique ethnic habit of the Arabs, but I suspected it was
just an example of the English art of understatement.
We continued in this vein for some time and I even managed
to get into discussing the Iraq war, bankers and the Zionist Israel threat to
the world. The ease with which Malcolm dealt with these topics and the lack of
reflection involved in his responses told me that these are probably the key
topics of conversation that are usually discussed here and I suspected the
possibility of a little far-right BNP hobby club somewhere involved in the
Malcolm’s life. I suppose one can’t blame these people really for turning to
misguided extremism after being on the front lines of an unprecedented culture
and economic swamping by the poor, war-torn and demented from all the world’s
most badly organised and unstable countries of the world.
We went back into the bar and we continued our conversation
indoors, although I sensed the Landlord seemed to have some reservations about
taking me fully into his full confidence and seemed to be more of an observer
than a participant in our litany of complaints about how the European and
Zionist interest are deliberately destroying the country we love.
We continued drinking and talking and the more I talked the
more dogmatic and sure of myself I started to become, and I found myself in the
position of guest speaker or revolutionary agitant and it seemed to me that
potentially, if there were more people like me refusing to mind their own
businesses and piping up with their own unwanted opinions, then the country
would probably be only 10 pints from revolution.
Unfortunately I didn’t get to 10 pints on that occasion and
so the revolution would have to wait. It seemed we were tactically interrupted and our threat of sedition and
insurrection diffused in the form of a rather ugly looking tall feminist Marxist
type with goofy teeth and the dyed red hair middle aged feminists they seem to
wear as some kind of uniform or moppy flag of recognition. It was probably just
as well because I think I was starting to turn slightly messianic and I think I
got to the point where I was telling the blokes in the pub that what we needed
was a righteous King from a non German royal bloodline. As far as I was
concerned the Saxe-Coburg crew are part of the invasion of England force and I
don’t really know why Hitler needed to invade England at all since their royals
already had done. Of course it was no
coincidence that I had non-Germanic royal blood dating back to William the
Conqueror and my surname was suitably British heralding to a Celtic ancestry.
It’s no secret that I secretly saw myself as a mixture of King Arthur and
Jesus. But we’re all entitled to our secrets.
Something about the demeanour of the guvnor told me
something was up and there was something forced and contrived about their
interactions, it almost struck me that some ears had sensed the foment within the
walls of the pub and a liberal agent had been deployed to ensure that the liberal
homosexual all-inclusive politically correct London be maintained and to neuter traditional British masculinity and
expression. I almost felt as if this was some kind of inspection, but not from
CAMRA making sure their beer was alright and there was a traditional pub
atmosphere but by an agent of HM government ensuring that the pub was not
contending in any ways against the Liberal agenda.
I left as it soon became apparent that as long as the red
haired witch sat there then the fight back could not continue and I considered
perhaps that I may have endangered the renewal of Tony publican’s license because
the red-headed Marxist will likely report him to the local Community
Observation Committee for hosting racist conversations, so I made myself scarce.
I made my way to Kenwood on foot in the sunshine and
gleefully took photos like a kind of delinquent snap-happy tourist. Funny that I’d lived in London for nearly ten
years but had never taken any pictures of its ancient and modern architectural
wonders. As I strode into the Square Mile the sun bounced and beamed into me
from the glass windows and the shiny steel like a electromagnetic hall of
mirrors.
After my long relentless march northward I decided to drop
anchor in merrie old Camden Town and have a poke around and see what’s new,
hopefully not too much but I was disappointed that the Camden Stables market
was now totally dominated by even more noodles bars. One couldn’t really call
them restaurants since there was no waiter services and only rickety old wooden
benches to sit on, the prices however seemed to be under the misapprehension
that it was a restaurant and not just a shitty and overpriced trendy rip-off
for chumps. The ever ongoing devolution of the old and historic Camden Market into nothing more interesting
than a giant open-air canteen. Why the fuck are noodles cool? Why is food and
being homosexual and/or foreign replacing culture?
However amidst the tedious and swiftly breeding noodle-bars
was one remarkable shop near the station and opposite the Fresh n’ Wild store
was a funky shop and my eye was caught by a black sailor’s bag with a picture
of a pirate on it which looked awesome. The shop was full of old band t-shirts, random
badges salvaged from some 90’s teenager’s bedroom drawer, amps and audio
equipment likely salvaged from under dad’s bed. Nothing seemed to have any
price on it and when I asked Ben the shop’s owner about the price he didn’t
really have a figure in mind and demurred until I suggested 10 pounds.
“Hmmm,” he said, “It is new. How about 5?”
This is the first time in the world a shopkeeper has ever
bargained for a lower price. I wonder why he didn’t want 10 pounds, maybe he
himself felt the bag wasn’t worth 10 pounds, maybe it was only worth 5 but I would have been happy to pay 10. Who walks
into a shop and expects to pay only five pounds for something which isn’t a
carton of noodles? I looked over at a badge with the word ‘SMILE’ on it in big
friendly orange letters which I had plucked from a bowl of random odd and ends.
“How much is this?”
“Er... I don’t know. I think everything’s 20p in that bowl.”
“20p!” I was astounded. You can’t go into a shop and buy
anything for 20p anymore. Perhaps this guy like all of his merchandise was
found somewhere in the 1980. When you could buy a newspaper and a Mars Bar and
still have change for a 20 pence coin. Or nearly.
“I can’t give you 20p for this. I’ll give you 2 quid.” I was
insistent so I bought the bag and the badge for 7 pounds.
This time I actually paid more than what he asked. What a strange shop. Maybe it’s some kind
of self generating honesty dynamo in the shop’s erratic pricing structure which
encourages the generosity of those more able to pay what they think something
is worth to them personal. It was a quest to discover what are the items in the
shop’s intrinsic value. For Ben the badge was worth only 20p but I saw 2 quid’s
worth in it. Maybe it’s an experiment in economics or something. A university
research project of some kind. I did find something in the shop which had quite
a high value, apart from his old 60’s valve amps which they often sold though
he told me he had sold the last one for far-too cheap. The last one he had sold for 200 when he said it was probably
worth nearer 600. As well as these he sold his own guitar distortion effects
switches using parts he had salvaged from old 60’s diodes from an old amp. He
asked me if I wanted to try it out and I was curious to be honest so without
any ado he gave me a guitar and plugged me into an amp and so I started
nervously but fairly competently to play guitar. Some electric arpeggios,
finger style then some bar-chords turning into a riff and some twiddly bits and
bobs. We were all impressed including myself and I observed that it would sound
even better with a more powerful amp.
Without any further ado he invited me to the back of the
store where I met a Brazilian guy who was fixing or messing with some
electronics parts. He was surrounded by old amps and had one turned on ready.
This time me and the Brazilian guy plugged in our guitars and effectively had a
cool little jam. Afterwards we chatted about pleasing platitudes and personal biography
and I remember that I was on my way to Kenwood house and was hoping for a swim
in the ponds. Alberto remarked that this seemed a good idea on a nice day like
this and with fond farewells to the remarkable shopkeeper Ben and Alberto I
continued my journey, now with a swag looking black sailor-bag with a picture
of a pirate with a red bandana on it. Awesome. London could still prove itself
cool in these uncertain times. I was very pleased about that.
The woods of Hampstead Heath and the large green pasture of Kenwood
House combined with the water in the pools was a fantastically refreshing
experience, though at the ponds I was disturbed and awed by how many beautiful
girls there were lying in the sun. One of them I am sure was bathing topless in
a corner but I didn’t dare take another peek to confirm it. I found myself
falling in love with everyone and started, for a misguided second, to make eye
contact with a girl, but I checked myself and noticed that most of them were
accompanied by men and one never knew the politics involved in a situation like
this. So I told myself that the sun loves me and that’s all a boy could ask for
so I made my way across to the Spaniard’s Inn for some photographs of this
fascinating and unchanging, old toll-gate and stabling Inn. Apparently Keats
wrote An Ode to a Nightingale here and I could almost see him looking through
one of the top windows looking over the Heath. Keats’ actual house was nearby at the bottom of the
hill towards the base of the Heath, and I had visited the house several times
when I lived in Gospel Oak, Gospel Oak is a grimy little place dominated by a
weird fortress-like council-estate, at the bottom of Hampstead Heath, caught in
total obscurity between Camden and Hampstead Village. It’s one claim to fame
being that I once lived there and that my great aunt had a Pet-shop called
Animal Crackers which still exists to this day, though under different, though
no less enthusiastic management by a hearty Irish chap. So as a result I
consider the poet John Keats to be a little like a ghostly neighbour of mine,
forever standing on the green lawn of 10 Keats Grove and conspiring poetry or upstairs in one of the small rooms
drinking claret and wondering what will become of London in the future and will
this fine old Spanish stabling inn still be here hundreds of years from now
when I am long gone and nothing but a Hampstead ghost. I mentally answered him
and felt a sudden pleasing feeling of eternity and transcendence.
It was moving
past late afternoon and into early evening when I finished my solitary musings
at the Spaniards Inn, speaking to no one except to buy a couple of pints of
nice cider, a packet of crisps and to ask a Frenchman for a cigarette which he was
happy to give to me. The atmosphere was quite different here to the pub with
the old fading spirit of East London. Here there were families having some food
after a long day spent playing with Frisbees and ecstatically bounding Golden
Retrievers; there were also dating couples, business meetings and confidential
chat in low tones, but this wasn’t the place for the drunken righteous true King of
England to find a following. These people were not alienated from their
environment at all, in fact they likely felt perfectly at home in this so
called ‘modern Britain’.
So I merrily made my way down Hampstead Hill to the Royal in
Camden Town which had caught my eye coming up the hill by the presence of some
totally free music tonight. So that would be the plan. By the time I got to the
Royal it was nearly 9pm as I had taken a few detours on my way down the hill
becoming enchanted with the beautiful quaintness of Hampstead and wearing out
my finger taking pictures of things I likely would not see much of when back in
Casablanca, namely anything green and anything pretty.
I got to the Camden Royal in the fading black and orange
glow of a full ripe summer’s day withering then falling into night. Inside the
pub was like a darkened cave with small flickering and clustered lights which
served only to illuminate the blackness of the walls. Why does everything to do
with music and gigs have to be black? Black amps, black speakers, black
curtains, black boots. Maybe not always but the Royal was particularly dark,
even though it was fading day outside it was already night in the pub. The
walls were black, the shadows were portals into the abyss and there were
creatures which came in from the darkness. And most people were wearing black
boots. There weren’t many people in the middle of the darkened room, most were
propping up the dark walls and trying not to fall into shadow. Others stood at
the bar but everyone in there seemed the need to stand next to something. Not
quite sure why. I came in an immediately caught the whiff of ‘open-mike’ with
some odd looking ginger headed guy just getting up on stage and confusing
everyone. After a moment of listening I started to get into it and he stood
there with his guitar manically strumming chords and making ranty but amusing
observations, like a kind of one man Housemartins. I immediately surmised that
I had walked into a Folk-Punk night in Camden, a free Folk Punk night in Camden
and I wondered what else I might be in store for.
The guy Jake, rattled off his act and his funny collection
of songs wryly about failing to understand the opposite sex and also doing
stupid things, usually as a failure to understand the opposite sex. He was very
good and pretty talented, but I had
arrived only to catch the last three songs and he went. I wondered feverishly
if there would be more music and asked someone who quickly reeled off the three
other acts that would be playing that night.
So I dedicated myself to enjoying the music and a few beers
and not to get distracted by thinking about women as I had at Hampstead mixed
bathing pond. After all, like Jake I’ll never understand them. I think the key
to happiness for me is to keep away from what I don’t understand and just enjoy
the things I do understand. This makes perfect sense really.
The music was varied
and interestingly powerful. There was another solo artist and two band and all
the while I felt a genuine excitement building about this powerful acoustic led
vibe with articulate punk protest poetry type lyrics. I mentally controlled
myself not to think about the girls who were in my vicinity and who I
occasionally noticed looking at me. I went to the bar and ordered another pint
of craft-ale, as I was waiting I overheard one of the barmaids say to the other
‘that I was cute’ she said other things but I determined not to follow their
conversation and pretend I hadn’t overheard them.
I went up to the toilets and found the door wouldn’t move,
so I gave it a push and as I did a group of five black men suddenly all hurriedly came out. They appeared to be
carrying one guy who was crying and angry and they were trying to mollify him.
“Don’t worry about him, he’s just ‘ad too much stuff.” God know what particular good stuff they were talking about but when I
got into the toilet I saw a pink marigold glove perched on the edge of a
urinal. I wondered what that was doing there and did it have anything to do
with what these black guys were up to in here and why they hurriedly came out.
And why that man was in such a state. Was it some kind of initiation? Some kind
of gay shaming bonding gang initiation ritual.
The only way to be sure would be to smell the glove and find out where it had been. As I stood there at the urinal next door peeing I thought to myself if I just smell the glove then I’d know what had been happening here. For a moment I almost did, but stopped myself through disgust and also from the mental picture in my mind of me holding this glove and smelling it, while perhaps the same bunch of black lads all came back in. Or indeed if anyone came in. I don’t think I could live down the shame and it’s just the kind if thing someone would do if they were drunk like me, so I fortunately managed to realise that I was drunk and considering doing something which in any case, was a pretty disgusting thing to do. So I didn’t smell the glove and complete the research and have no idea what part this glove had in the initiation activity but I can guess it had something to do with men’s bottoms, why else would they have needed a glove? It was unlikely that they were in here doing the cleaning. Unless they were doing community service of some kind but trying to blend it into their evening out. But that’s unlikely. Cleaning pub toilets isn’t a job done by young offenders. It’s a job which as we all know, is not done by anyone.
The only way to be sure would be to smell the glove and find out where it had been. As I stood there at the urinal next door peeing I thought to myself if I just smell the glove then I’d know what had been happening here. For a moment I almost did, but stopped myself through disgust and also from the mental picture in my mind of me holding this glove and smelling it, while perhaps the same bunch of black lads all came back in. Or indeed if anyone came in. I don’t think I could live down the shame and it’s just the kind if thing someone would do if they were drunk like me, so I fortunately managed to realise that I was drunk and considering doing something which in any case, was a pretty disgusting thing to do. So I didn’t smell the glove and complete the research and have no idea what part this glove had in the initiation activity but I can guess it had something to do with men’s bottoms, why else would they have needed a glove? It was unlikely that they were in here doing the cleaning. Unless they were doing community service of some kind but trying to blend it into their evening out. But that’s unlikely. Cleaning pub toilets isn’t a job done by young offenders. It’s a job which as we all know, is not done by anyone.
About a minute later one of the guys, the same who had done
all the talking before came in and asked me if I fancied any coke. It wasn’t
really my thing and these guys were certainly not my thing. Instead I asked if
he could get me any weed. He told me to see him later. I’d been offered free
cocaine before at a gig. The last time it was one I was performing at.
Afterwards as I walked down Dalston Lane with the other musicians a guy in an
alley way beckoned me down there and asked me if I fancied a line of coke which
he was about to line up for me. He was insistent and I was suspicious. What was
all this about? People don’t lurk down alley ways giving free cocaine to anyone
passing by, they do in horror movies
though and there was something about this that I felt if I went along
with this guy then I couldn’t be sure of what might happen next. I would be in
their power somehow. And so I walked on and said thanks but no thanks and
caught up to my mates who had not even remarked on my disappearance and hadn’t
even stopped to see where I was. They’d be no good in a zombie or horror movie
that’s for sure, carrying on yapping to each other as one of their number is
plucked off down an alley to be eaten.
When I went back to the bar I noticed that a few people
including the bar-staff were sniffing and touching their noses and looking spacey. I went outside for a cigarette and remarked that most of the people
here including seemed to be using these guys’ coke. In front of me stood a
short fat hairy man with a red face. He greeted me and asked me if I knew who I
was. The strange thing was that as soon as he said this all of the thirty odd
people outside suddenly scattered in all directions, like a kind of dissolved
flash-mob.
And I couldn’t get over the strong impression that him addressing me was a signal for everyone around who presumably were part of this thing with black gangs and coke or whatever it was.
I asked him for a cigarette and he gave me a one willingly and asked me where I was from. I told him. He then told me that he was from Israel.
I told him I lived in Morocco and he seemed surprised and
said:
“Aren’t you scared?” he seemed scared for me and I
just smiled in disbelief.
“Why would I be scared?” and I immediately dismissed him
as a lunatic and misinformed bigot of some kind. But he got excited and
told me the he was from Morocco.
“Were you born there?”
“No, I was born in Israel but my parents are from
Morocco.”
It seemed strange to see a man like him here, I didn’t quite understand what a man like this was doing here at all. His presence, like the presence of the black drug gangsters initiating each other in pub toilets, was somehow an imposition.
Then he leapt into a strange sort of sales-pitch for the state of Israel, and I wondered if this could be connected to the spooky events of the evening. Was the free cocaine part of it too? If I had been coked up I wonder if I would be more receptive to this hairy red faced short little Israeli man. He told me all about the Hebrew patriarchs and I told him my man was Jesus.
He went into an incredible spiel blending mathematics with religion, going on about the generations of man and asking me to make daft little calculations about how many generations ago Jesus lived. I think part of it was an attempt to bamboozle me with numbers and getting me to give answers and also affirm his calculations, in a sort of rhetoric of acquiescence to make me more receptive to his ultimate message whatever that turned out to be. Maybe this is what religious mind control looks like.
“So now, you like Jesus, so how many generations from now to
Jesus? One generation is 25 years.”
“So 60 generations?”
“Yes, so 60 generations, so how many to Abraham, 120, 60
more than Jesus. Right?” I nodded.
“And how many to Noah. Ten more generations, seventy
generations before Jesus am I right?” I shrugged.
He continued: “And now, how many from Abraham to Adam.
Remember they lived longer in those days because they were closer to God but we
can call it 20 more generations! And Adam was the perfect man, and Noah was
almost as perfect and was spared by God and Abraham was next in
perfection and chosen by God, and then a long time later comes Jesus.”
His idea was as clear as it was ridiculous, that because
Abraham was older than Jesus that he was better. Because he was
closer to Adam who was according to this man ‘more perfect’ than Jesus despite
the story of the fall from paradise. It was certainly a strange kind of
theology.
“Do you know the story of Abraham and Sodom and Gomorrah?”
He asked me and I said I did.
“That Abraham made a deal with God that God would not
destroy the city if 50 good men could be found in it. Then he gradually
convinced God to accept a smaller and smaller number of good men to be found
because he knew there were so few. Until God accepted not to destroy Sodom if
10 good men were to be found there.”
I wondered to myself if he was trying to tell me something about the nature of Zionist terror, that they first corrupt the culture in order to find as few righteous just people within it giving them the excuse they need to act for ‘God’ and destroy it. Rather like the League of Shadows from Batman Begins.
I wondered to myself if he was trying to tell me something about the nature of Zionist terror, that they first corrupt the culture in order to find as few righteous just people within it giving them the excuse they need to act for ‘God’ and destroy it. Rather like the League of Shadows from Batman Begins.
“We are animals” He said suddenly “We have to protect our
family” I didn’t know quite where he was going with this but suddenly he had
become quite bellicose and seemed to be rousing himself to some new religiously
inspired madness.
“If I attacked you, you would need protection wouldn’t you?
He seemed to jeer at me.
“In ancient times I would fight you.” He said and I stopped
him short:
“Hang on I there, I’d give you a pretty good run for your
money. I can go nuts if I need to.”
He backed off and stopped trying to physically intimidate
me:
“We need a big war to sort everything out in the
middle east. We need to be safe from our enemies.”
“Your enemies?”
“The Muslims! We need answers.”
“I have the answers.” I said, because I did, I was drunk.
Anything's possible when you're drunk.
I smiled at him in his angry bellicose fluster and in my
drunken messianic righteous King guise I disarmed his diatribe and showed him I
wouldn’t be joining his strange little club.
He looked at me and walked off. He either didn’t understand
or had to admit that he had totally failed to convince me that Israel should be
allowed to instigate a huge world war to kill all its Muslim
neighbours.
I turned myself in the direction of King’s Cross and
resolutely set off for the ‘home’ of the smelly hostel. Before I had escaped
the confines of the pub’s facade one of the black cocaine guys came after me
and walked along with me promising to get me some weed, then just as I was
about to acquiesce to further trafficking with these people, two clearly underage girls suddenly
appeared from somewhere and started flirting with me. I sensed that the situation
wasn’t entirely natural and that it was part of this strange OTO Zionist
magickal continuum I had just strayed into, so this time saying a quick
goodbye, I made myself scarce for good. I didn’t fancy hanging around much longer with dodgy black gangsters and
strange boisterous old Israelis lurking around.
The walk home was a little nerve wracking as several times I
sensed I was being followed and would hear shouts coming after me. I didn’t let
it scare me, I just punched the lamp posts occasionally to show my toughness and told myself this is what anyone who messes with me will get. A bang in the face hard enough to make a metal post ring.
Opposite King’s Cross a man working in the London sewers was
sat propped against the wall and he seemed to be ill. It was a sad sight. To
see what some people have to put up with to keep this dirty old city rolling.
Much dirtier underneath and this man appeared to be suffering from the effects
of methane poisoning. It was the first time I realised that a third class
does exist in the UK and they only come out at night. The people who have to clean up all
our shit.
The hostel was smelly and the couple next to me were having
sex so I put in my wax ear plugs in to drown out their drunken sex adventures.
I guess this is why the place was so full of Europeans. It was knocking shop for
Europeans. Pretty sure they wouldn’t have gotten away with the same thing in
France. Unisex dorms are a particularly British moral provocation.
As I got to the station I decided to stop for a bottle of
Fuller’s Vintage ale for my dad. I had to be careful not to shake it up too
much as it was a bottle conditioned beer with a yeast sediment. Not sure if it
was still alive after 15 years since I bought the 2000, but they’re supposed to
improve with time. As I walked onto the platform I heard a voice which seemed
to be directed but not directed at me at the same time. I had encountered this
kind of thing before. A one way psychic conversation, since I have consistently
resisted becoming psychic some people can connect to me and hear my thoughts if
they are directed to them, but I cannot hear theirs. Since I have no wish to
read minds. It is an actual phenomenon however and seems to work through our
conscious electrical signal which is continually giving off hidden energy. A
thought creates a radio wave and some people are capable (or sometimes they
have no choice) of receiving these signals and reading them.
I felt an energy from the man as I walked past and I sensed
that he was trying to tune into my mind. I refused to be drawn and walked on.
Suddenly from behind I heard an angry voice shout ‘don’t you ignore me.’ Weird,
I got a auditory response from a psychic exchange. Was he schizophrenic? Are
all the top-spook people secretly schizophrenic and can read minds or something? Or are they psychically tuned to some weird hive-mind? Are they all in
on this big secret together and they are all terrified of us finding out about
them and simultaneously utterly contemptuous of us because we do not have the
psychic gift/curse which their ever extending Illuminati family provides.
As I walked away I sensed the man was making a phone-call.
Suddenly my phone rang with the chilling words ‘unknown caller’ and I nearly
had an heart attack. But I pressed on trying to keep my bottle of conditioned
beer as upright as possible.
I found my seat on the train and sat down with a ‘phew’.
Rather an intense though enjoyable day all things considered. Still it was all
a bit intense.
Just as I was settling down my phone rang again, I panicked
for half a second, but this time it didn’t say ‘unknown caller’. It said Tom
and I felt a lot better. If anyone could help me get through this crazy shit it
would be him.
“Hey mate, what’s up you playing?” he said.
“Sheet yeah, I need a drink, but Tom, things are getting a
bit fucky, you’d better bring your space suit.”
Tom laughed and hung up the phone, or at least he pressed
the red button. I know Tom wouldn’t know what to do about all this stuff but he
would definitely be happy to spend a couple of hours boozing with me talking
about it all.
They have their own website now. Surely you've seen this:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.illuminatiofficial.org/
Dude.
ReplyDeleteYou are the most honest of people whom have experienced
What we have
It's interesting, no?
D.No
Yes. It's pretty cool...Feel like I'm the only one though....just me and the sunshine for company.
Delete