Dowsing at Seahenge

We were on our way to the site of the Seahenge timber monument when we came across the annual outing of a dowsing club. The chap leading the group told us that the place where we were standing was in fact the actual location, and not where we were heading for, which was a mile away, and near the golf course. You got the information off the internet, he said, which is deliberately misleading, to stop people digging around this area…and that’s understandable, I suppose. He’d marked the perimeter of the monument with small plastic yellow flags, and the dowsers were strolling around the vicinity. It was dug out from here, and is in King’s Lynn Museum now, he went on, but a few years later, they came across another similar site, only smaller, just a hundred yards away over there – he gesticulated vaguely to his left. It’s buried beneath the sand at the minute, but we’re going to go over in a little while and do some dowsing, and see what happens…
Although I’ve got a lot of time for the Norfolk Archaeology service, I think that in the case of Seahenge, they got it wrong. Whatever their reasons for doing so, digging up a bronze-age monument and sticking it in a museum is really just an act of cultural vandalism, and it’s interesting to compare that approach to the one adopted later when dealing with the Happisburgh footprints, which were left in situ after all the archaeological data had been gathered.

referendum haiku

the clattering sound
of hectoring ignorance
is louder than truth
*
out in the open
deep-seated prejudices
surface from below
*
lies are met with lies –
who believes a word they say
about anything?
*
they are not like us –
there will be blood on the streets
if nothing is done

The Accidental Referendum

I'll be glad when it's all over, and I don't have to listen to any more of the hyperbollock nonsense issuing forth from both sides of the debate. Neither side is coming out of it very well, but the Leave Campaign has by far the biggest idiot quotient - you've just got to look and to listen to the tousled-haired buffoon and wannabe Prime Minister Boris Johnson, to realise that the people like him who want to run the country after Brexit are stark staring mad, and dangerous to boot.  As for David Cameron, he's shown himself to be totally inept and intellectually lazy, always ready to blame everybody else for his own mistakes. The only reason we're having this referendum in the first place is because it appeared in the last Conservative manifesto to appease the swivel-eyed nutter faction of the Tory Party. Unfortunately, now that the Liberals aren't in government, and can't be used as an excuse for the abandonment of election promises, Cameron finds himself hoist by his own petard, and so we find ourselves spending millions of pounds of taxpayer's money,  having a needless referendum not because it's in the best interests of the country, but because it's in the best interests of the Conservative Party.

Vote to stay in Europe. The alternative means a Boris Johnson premiership, which would be disastrous for the country. The man's an idiot.

Hark! The Lark in the Dark

We found ourselves at three o'clock in the morning on a disused airfield which had long been reverted back to farmland, and all around us the larks were singing in the darkness.
The words are based on the notations made by Walter Garstang.

Knettishall USAF airfield

oil on canvas 90cm x 65cm

There used to be an old USAF airfield here, but now it's reverted back to farmland, and the drone of the bomber has given way to the song of the lark.

returning

The last year hasn't been so good - illness, death, and more illness. To quote the song, Things can only get better...tomorrow, I'm clearing out the tin shed, sowing some seeds and planting some tomatoes and herbs. It's good to be back.

A Little Englander Speaks His Mind

You can see him propping up every bar
pontificating with a pint in hand
about the state we're in

as he sups his warm beer
and he's not a racist
but there's too many immigrants over here

too many foreigners taking our jobs
and all of these Muslims with their bombs and their burkas

- don't get him wrong, he's nothing against them -

but, you know, the whole place
is going to the dogs

and all of these Romanians
and all of the Poles
living on benefits, getting the dole

and all of these migrants
who never bother to learn English

and foreign aid - what's that about?
charity begins at home, surely?

and while we're at it,
all of these scroungers on the sink estates
these four-by-four mothers
with their snotty-nosed kids

these dysfunctional families
that terrorise the neighbourhoods
and the bone-idle bastards
who've never done a day's work in their lives
while we've got to go to work
just to pay for them sitting on their fat arses

and all of these politicians -
don't get him started -
they're all the bloody same,
too lily-livered, too faint-hearted

only in it to fiddle their expenses
and further their careers

he interrupts himself, as he finishes off his beer

I'll tell you now, he says,
the lot of them's finished,
there's no votes for them anymore round here

the sooner we're out of Europe the better
we'll pull up the drawbridge and keep the buggers out
and we'll have none of these ridiculous rules and regulations
none of your Strasbourg human rites
and none of your Brussels bureaucrats

no more being swamped by Eastern Europeans
no more being dictated to by the frogs and the krauts

we'll make our own decisions, thankyou
and we'll put the great in Britain again

he looks at his watch -
is that the time, he says, he must be going

he bids us a cheery farewell
and steps out into the English rain