83-year-old Reverend Sue Parfitt, being gently arrested by the Met. |

I've been thinking about war lately, as you know. Being at war concentrates the mind wonderfully. I remember asking my dad, when I was a little girl, if I would be required to go and fight - he'd been telling me one of his war stories and I was terrified. He reassured me that, being a girl, I wouldn't be called up. I didn't realise then that more civilians than soldiers are killed in war. And I don't think I understood then that nobody gets out of here alive. And there was that long period we all enjoyed - in Britain, at least, when we weren't much troubled by war on the mainland. To be sure, there were the Troubles and the Cold War and the nuclear scare - actually, there hasn't been a time when we weren't at war in my life time, and those that rule over us have been spectacularly unsuccessful at making friends rather than enemies. Why on earth didn't they welcome Russia into NATO when they had the chance?The current conflicts in which we seem to be engaged - although we are not told much about it and even when you actually experience events of a war orientation - like the Salisbury poisonings or the cable cuttings in the Northern Isles, we are gas-lighted out of understanding the significance of these things by government and media - to avoid panic, I suppose; anyway, the current conflict seems to be the West and the East lining up against each other. Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Palestine on one side against the U.S., NATO and Israel on the other side. I know I've not covered everyone, but stay with me here. I've just read True North - Travels in Arctic Europe by Gavin Francis. The blurb says: "The stark, vast beauty of the Arctic Europe landscape has seduced explorers and adventurers for thousands of years." The big take away for me, though, from Francis' meticulously researched book, was not the sometimes laboriously-striven-for lyrical prose - he describes the ice floes on the sea as crumbs scattered on a mirror - really? wouldn't they just fall off? (mr ishmael described the Orkney Isles as seen from a plane window as "dog droppings in the sea") - but the ubiquity of war, invasion, murder, rape, theft, enslavement of captives. Humans. We're a bad lot.
We're so used to the Mercator projection that this view of the Arctic circle is a surprise. There's some big boys there, held apart by the ice. As the ice melts - which it is, it is yielding previously unattainable resources that the big boys want. War. It is what humans do.
Here's a few thoughts about War from mr ishmael:
Just when I start thinking I have acquired an understanding of my fellows, as with the Bremainers and their talk of peace, just waving their mandibles at us, all moistly together, clicking and squeaking, inside their spit palace, fooling us, in a manner that results in us not quite being able to see what's going on. Or thinking we're mad and not them.
All of these bastards start a war at the drop of a hat. How can anyone look at them and not smell Carnage, the fucking monsters, uneducated, ill-tempered, larcenous red-faced, braying bullies, utter fuckpigs. They are filth, they are seen to be, known to be, proven to be filth. And yet they lecture us about Peace and Virtue, they have had no need to dip their snouts in European blood for they have drenched the streets of Arabia in it, of North Africa, of South East Asia and of Northern Ireland.
I dunno upon whom Donald Trump has rained fire and shrapnel and other than being a spiv, a ponce and a vengeful, Tory hypocrite I can find no fault in Nigel Poundland, either, yet I am told to see both as horsemen of the Apocalypse, when, in fact, Death's monsters are already stabled, fed and exercised in Brussels and Washington and in MediaMinster.
The role of the recruiting sergeant has been buzzing around my mind, we are urged by liars and crooks to do the right thing for our country, when what we are driven to do is of benefit only to our masters; the same dogs which snapped at townfuls of young men, the more eagerly to make them enlist for Flanders massacre, now roam the streets again, snarling; the same wistful lady arseholes send white feathers to those who object. The SpivLords of New Cotswoldia hector us as though they were Lord Kitchener, himself, whilst delivering us up to a junta of greed and corruption, to an unelected oligarchy of consumerisme totalitairienne nouvelle; to limitless immigration and to the iniquitous European Arrest Warrant.
The British folk song, once, like the pamphleteers, a voice of resistance and satire, has long been usurped by showbiz reptiles like Sir Billy Bragg, in his career, as a folk singer and Filth-O-Graph columnist.
Rich Americans, like the sensitive diva, Ms Joan Baez and the incomparable artiste, Mr Bob Dylan, have grown hugely rich on the Childe ballads of Scotland and Northern England and countless British musicians have corporatized the treasure house that is the Copper Family Songbook, the banks of the sweet primroses; the sweet morning in May; the hard times of old England.
The songs, however, own themselves and exist, still, to be applied as they were intended to be, as an antidote to MediaMinster, then and now.
This one, here, is an historic Anglo-Irish counterblast to the taking of the King's or Queen's poxy, one-shilling inducement. The recorded song dates from the late 'seventies, the joyful visualisation is much more recent but if you squint you can see that, Redcoat or David Beckham, the recruiting sergeant would always see us march to a ruinous drumbeat, whilst they march to none.
Maestro Paul Brady is old, now, sourly marinaded in vinegary showbusiness; the song, however, a caustic and lyrical refutation of vicious, mendacious state charlatanry,
remains the same.
A song, now, for Europe.
..........................................................................I was asked about Levimus Leminius, whose diary I quoted last Sunday. He was a Dutch physician and author, living from 1505 to 1568. He studied in the Netherlands and Padua and travelled to Switzerland and to England, where he was interested in the English use of strewing herbs. Part of the purpose of a Medieval and Early Modern garden was to provide the household with strewing herbs. Floors were carpeted with rushes, reeds or straw, for insulation and to provide bedding for members of the lower household. They also served to soak up spillages, bones, dropped food and dog droppings. However, these floor coverings were only cleaned out and replaced once or twice a year, so to counteract the accumulated odours fragrant herbs were scattered (strewn) on top of them, releasing their scents when they were walked upon. Some of these herbs also acted as insect and pest repellents. Shakespeare references this practice in Taming of the Shrew, Act IV, Sc. 1 when the servant asks:

We're so used to the Mercator projection that this view of the Arctic circle is a surprise. There's some big boys there, held apart by the ice. As the ice melts - which it is, it is yielding previously unattainable resources that the big boys want. War. It is what humans do.
Here's a few thoughts about War from mr ishmael:
Just when I start thinking I have acquired an understanding of my fellows, as with the Bremainers and their talk of peace, just waving their mandibles at us, all moistly together, clicking and squeaking, inside their spit palace, fooling us, in a manner that results in us not quite being able to see what's going on. Or thinking we're mad and not them.
I dunno upon whom Donald Trump has rained fire and shrapnel and other than being a spiv, a ponce and a vengeful, Tory hypocrite I can find no fault in Nigel Poundland, either, yet I am told to see both as horsemen of the Apocalypse, when, in fact, Death's monsters are already stabled, fed and exercised in Brussels and Washington and in MediaMinster.
The role of the recruiting sergeant has been buzzing around my mind, we are urged by liars and crooks to do the right thing for our country, when what we are driven to do is of benefit only to our masters; the same dogs which snapped at townfuls of young men, the more eagerly to make them enlist for Flanders massacre, now roam the streets again, snarling; the same wistful lady arseholes send white feathers to those who object. The SpivLords of New Cotswoldia hector us as though they were Lord Kitchener, himself, whilst delivering us up to a junta of greed and corruption, to an unelected oligarchy of consumerisme totalitairienne nouvelle; to limitless immigration and to the iniquitous European Arrest Warrant.
The British folk song, once, like the pamphleteers, a voice of resistance and satire, has long been usurped by showbiz reptiles like Sir Billy Bragg, in his career, as a folk singer and Filth-O-Graph columnist.
Rich Americans, like the sensitive diva, Ms Joan Baez and the incomparable artiste, Mr Bob Dylan, have grown hugely rich on the Childe ballads of Scotland and Northern England and countless British musicians have corporatized the treasure house that is the Copper Family Songbook, the banks of the sweet primroses; the sweet morning in May; the hard times of old England.
The songs, however, own themselves and exist, still, to be applied as they were intended to be, as an antidote to MediaMinster, then and now.
This one, here, is an historic Anglo-Irish counterblast to the taking of the King's or Queen's poxy, one-shilling inducement. The recorded song dates from the late 'seventies, the joyful visualisation is much more recent but if you squint you can see that, Redcoat or David Beckham, the recruiting sergeant would always see us march to a ruinous drumbeat, whilst they march to none.
Maestro Paul Brady is old, now, sourly marinaded in vinegary showbusiness; the song, however, a caustic and lyrical refutation of vicious, mendacious state charlatanry,
remains the same.
A song, now, for Europe.
..........................................................................
Meadowsweet |



