About a year ago, while looking at something or other online, I saw that David Icke was going to be speaking at Wembley. Immediately, I bought a ticket. The tickets were quite expensive, between £40 – £60. I figured that if I was spending £40 on a ticket to see David Icke, I might as well spend £60 and get a better seat. That was a year ago. It seemed funny a year ago.

Since then, I’ve been to the “Inspired By David Icke” discussion group several times. I’ve met quite a few people who believe Icke’s theories. I’ve gone to the pub with them. It’s easy to dismiss these people as weirdos and cranks, but on the whole, the people I’ve met have been fairly normal. Nice. Likeable. I say “on the whole”, because there have been a couple of exceptions (a guest speaker at one session spoke about how our souls choose the experiences we have in our lifetime, and so with positive thinking, we can ensure that we only have positive experiences. The problem with this, of course, is that it raises the question of why people have negative experiences – did the souls of babies dying of starvation or those maimed in wars or victims of abuse choose those experiences? Of course they didn’t and it’s vile to suggest they did. But apart from that bloke, they’ve been nice).

To prepare for seeing Icke at Wembley, I bought a DVD of a previous talk he had given. Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More was filmed at the Brixton Academy and is a four-disc set. This is why I was dreading seeing Icke at Wembley. I knew it was going to be a long day. At the end of the second disc of The Lion Sleeps No More, after speaking for several hours, Icke looks at his watch and says “Well, we’ve come a long way, haven’t we? What we’re going to do now is have a break for, say, forty-five minutes…”

I arrived at Wembley and took my seat (seat 12, row 4, block A2) unsure of quite what to expect. There was a giant screen with a picture of David Icke. A clock counted down. Music was playing: God by John Lennon, Holding Out For A Hero by Bonnie Tyler, Don’t Look Back In Anger by Oasis, I Want To Break Free by Queen. These same songs would play during each break. Holding Out For A Hero is a brilliant song. With a few minutes left, a group of dancers came on stage and did a sort of euphoric dance.

Icke’s son, Gareth, is in a slightly awful rock band, and they did a couple of songs before each session began. I suppose he can now say that his band have played Wembley Arena, but to be honest, it seemed like nepotism to me. Bloodlines.

If you are not familiar with Icke’s ideas, his basic theory is that the universe is created from vibrational energy. The world as we perceive it is just a holographic projection of this vibrational energy. Humans are infinite awareness, we are consciousness, but there is a conspiracy to stop us from realising our true potential and instead to keep us locked in “five sense reality”. This conspiracy is led by entities Icke refers to as Archons, who are reptilian multi-dimensional beings beaming messages from the rings of Saturn (the messages are then amplified by the Moon, which is a hollow structure designed for this purpose). By manipulating our genetic code, the Archons have trapped us in this five-sense prison (this he refers to as “the hijack”, although in the Bible, it is referred to as the fall of man). There are also genetically modified human/reptilian hybrids who control the population through the media, politics and finance in order to preserve their bloodlines and keep us in a state of fear and negativity. These emotions create low frequency energy which they feed off. To combat them, we should give out positive energy and “choose love”. It’s quite a simple idea.

Whenever people mention Icke, they always say that he thinks “lizards control the world”. I’m not sure why people always pick up on the fact they’re “lizards”. He’s talking about multi-dimensional beings from space controlling humanity. Is the oddest thing about that idea really the fact that those multi-dimensional beings happen to resemble lizards? Although I thought he cheated slightly at one point. He was explaining how ancient cultures all over the world depict reptilian beings in their art and folklore – the Uraeus of ancient Egypt, the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the Chinese dragon. In this list, he also included the story of the Frog Prince. That doesn’t count, surely. Frogs are amphibians. You can’t claim them as “reptilian” just because they’re green. That’s like saying a cucumber is a lizard.

To be honest, much of what he said was very similar to the stuff in The Lion Sleeps No More DVD, although he didn’t mention Saturn on the DVD. Maybe the Saturn stuff is new. On The Lion Sleeps No More DVD, he seems more interested in his idea of the “Moon Matrix”. This is his idea that the Moon is an artificial structure and is hollow. He explains how he came to this conclusion:

What happened was that I was writing this latest book and I sat down one morning, and I’ve had one or two thoughts about this before but they’ve come and gone, but I sat down one morning at the computer to start writing and it was like, and I’ve had this so many times in my life in the last twenty years, it was like an energy field descends upon me and suddenly, I just knew the Moon was not what it seems to be.

That sounds pretty convincing to me.

He didn’t explain how the Saturn theory came to him, but did talk extensively about the symbols used by secret societies and religions to represent Saturn (= Satan). This list included the following:

• eyes
• circles
• pyramids
• triangles
• reptiles
• owls
• bulls
• fire/flames
• the Phoenix
• crescents
• horns
• boats
• goats
• twin pillars/towers
• concentric circles
• rings
• the number eight
• spiders
• the number 666
• six-pointed stars
• skulls/skull and crossbones
• hexagons
• cubes
• squares
• the Crucifix
• the Kaaba
• the tefillin
• the colour black
• the colour red
• black and white squares/tiles
• mortar boards
• the Greek god Chronos
• the Grim Reaper
• time
• Old Father Time
• sickles/scythes
• crowns
• protruding tongues
• white beards
• Santa

It’s quite a long list and one which seems to include most shapes and ideas and colours and things. I was slightly disappointed that I wasn’t included in the list to be honest.

There was also a section on how these symbols are used in popular culture. Madonna and Lady Gaga both use a lot of them apparently, as do Jay-Z and Beyonce. One thing which was a bit odd was that he twice referred to imagery used by Annie Lennox during the Olympic opening ceremony and each time said “I’m not saying she’s involved in any of this” but never offered this benefit of the doubt to anyone else. I suspect Icke has a soft spot for Annie Lennox.

The third session involved Icke listing pretty much every conspiracy theory going and blaming it all on the Archontic influence: chemtrails, 9/11, 7/7, Dunblane, water fluoridation, global warming, Columbine, HAARP, Agenda 21. It’s all true, and it’s all the fault of the Archons. I’ve met a couple of 9/11 Truthers before, but I was still a bit shocked to hear thousands of people around me cheer when Icke claimed the Twin Towers were destroyed using directed-energy weapons.

Maybe it was a mistake to have paid the extra £20. I was four rows from the front, and while that meant that I could see everything perfectly (there were a couple of moments when Icke looked almost moved to tears), I didn’t really feel the scale of the event. Maybe if I’d been further back, I would have realised better just how many people were there.

The previous DVD I’d watched had quite a confrontational message: human race, get off your knees. At Wembley, Icke was more positive. Although having said that, there was quite a powerful bit at the end when Icke showed pictures of people working in the arms trade or in politics and simply shouted “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? YOU HAVE CHILDREN. YOU HAVE GRAND-CHILDREN. YOU SHOULDN’T BE DOING THIS”. You don’t have to believe in Archons to agree that “What are you doing?” is a good question to ask people in authority. “I’m sorry but it fucking makes me sick” he said, before adding “And yes, I am available for children’s parties”. These few moments of what appeared to be genuine anger stood out against what was otherwise a genial and often funny presentation. He does perhaps rely too often on the use of an exaggerated West Midlands accent in order to reinforce a weak punchline, but then so does Lenny Henry, and I doubt he could sell out a gig at Wembley Arena.

Eventually, nearly twelve hours after he originally took to the stage, Icke reached his conclusion. We need to choose love, he said. Since his Brixton talk a couple of years ago, we have seen riots on the streets of London. “What you fight, you become” he explains. You cannot fight a violent state through violence. Instead of violent protest, Icke proposes a “non-comply-dance”. Dancing in the face of authority. Positivity instead of aggression.

And here is Icke and his team of dancers doing their non-comply-dance:

This also happened:

Apologies for the poor quality of the video, but by that stage, I’d basically been drinking all day and had just spent twelve hours listening to David Icke talking about Archons. My favourite dancer is the guy in the white shirt and brown cords who is just behind the guy with long hair in the black T-shirt. Everyone else dances in a lost, euphoric way except for him. He waves his hands in the air and jumps from foot to foot in more or less the same way as David Baddiel in the video for Three Lions. I suspect he only agreed to dance on stage because he thought he might be able to kiss a girl if he did.

And then there was some chanting:

Finally, Icke finished with his message of love:

I think that’s how I’m going to end this year’s Boring Conference (tickets available here)

Icke even extended his message of love to the reptilian Archons and the bloodline elites who manipulate and control humanity. I thought that was nice.

Of course, you can laugh at Icke, make him a figure of fun, but ultimately, his message is a positive one. We are love. The logic behind every single step he’s taken might be completely wrong, it is completely wrong, yet somehow he’s ended up in almost the right place. And at the very least, you have to admire a man who can get thousands of people to come to Wembley Arena to watch a twelve-hour PowerPoint presentation.

Bruce Willis (here playing Bruce Willis) appears to have walked into this office wearing pyjamas and a dressing gown. It’s not the sort of thing you’d expect Bruce Willis to be wearing in public. Why is Bruce Willis in his pyjamas?

Those two men shaking hands on the left there don’t even seem to have noticed the fact that Bruce Willis has just walked in wearing a dressing gown. If I worked in that office and Bruce Willis walked in wearing a dressing gown, I would definitely look round. “That’s Bruce Willis” I’d think. “Why is he in his dressing gown?”

Watching the advert, I assume the implication is that Bruce Willis’ character (played by Bruce Willis) was at home using his laptop when his broadband failed and he became so enraged that he stormed out of the door to complain face-to-face without stopping to get dressed.

There are several problems with this scenario though.

Let’s assume it’s true. Bruce Willis is at home in his pyjamas, maybe in a dressing gown. He’s using his laptop. Suddenly his broadband service is interrupted. He jumps up (grabs a dressing gown if he wasn’t already wearing one) and storms out the door to confront his lousy broadband suppliers.

But how does he know where to go? I use BT Broadband. I wouldn’t know where to go if I wanted to complain. OK, so let’s say he has a bill to hand. Maybe it came in that morning’s post, or it came the day before and was stuck to the front of his fridge with a novelty magnet he picked up on a recent holiday. He grabs the bill, looks at address, then shoves it in the pocket of his dressing gown.

OK, he now knows where he needs to go, but it’s unlikely that he’d recognise the address. He goes back, grabs his phone, then looks up the postcode. Is it likely that he lives walking distance from his broadband supplier? Not really. He goes back inside for a third time, grabs his wallet and his car keys and storms out again.

By this time, I’d be thinking that maybe it would be easier to just phone up rather than go there in person. I’d probably also think that it might be a good idea to get dressed properly.

But let’s assume that Willis’ character (Bruce) has tried phoning them in the past and it’s never worked. First you have to go through the automated call centre, entering your account number and other details, then you’re put on hold for ages, and when you finally get to speak to someone, you’re told it’s not their department and they need to put you through to someone else which means being put back on hold and then having to explain the problem all over again. Also, it must be a bit annoying when you phone a call centre like that and they ask for your name and you say “Bruce Willis” and the other person laughs and says “No, really” and then you have to say “Yes, really – my name is Bruce Willis!” and then they say “What? Really? Bruce Willis? Like the actor?” and then you have to say “Well, actually, I am the actor. Bruce Willis. That’s me” and you have to go through this every single time you want to complain about your broadband or order a pizza or whatever.

Bruce Willis (played by Willis) has had enough of all that bullshit. He’s going to go there in person and he doesn’t care how impractical that might be or how cold he might get wandering through the streets in his pyjamas and dressing gown.

So, he arrives at the offices of his broadband supplier. Now what’s his plan? What does he say to the receptionist? “I want to speak to someone, I’m unhappy with my broadband service?” She recognises him. Of course she does. He’s Bruce Willis (Willis’ performance here is quite uncanny in the way he is able to so accurately capture all of Bruce Willis’ mannerisms). She lets him through. “Just take the lift” she says. “It’s OK, it very conveniently opens out into the main office floor and there aren’t any further doors you need to go through or anything.”

By this time, of course, “Bruce Willis” would already be trending on Twitter. People are posting photos of him wandering around in his dressing gown. Everyone assumes he must be on drugs.

The lift doors open and he’s in the offices of his broadband supplier (who appear to be called “Broadband”). “Who’s in charge here?” he asks. Within seconds, he’s identified the “manager”. The manager of what? The manager of “Broadband”? Surely not. I mean, just look at him. Let’s assume he’s just the Customer Services Manager. Let’s not say that he’s in a more senior role because I think the actor playing the manager is younger than me and it would be upsetting to think someone younger than me might run a company as big as “Broadband”.

Willis shows his laptop to the manager and explains the problem.

“When I’m on the internet, this keeps happening…”

On the basis of this advert, we are to assume that Bruce Willis sits around at home, in his pyjamas, streaming his own films and watching them on his laptop. Is this how Bruce Willis wants us to think of him? A lonely man sat at home, watching past glories on a small screen? And why is he streaming these films anyway? Why doesn’t he just buy them on DVD? The Die Hard Quadrilogy is only £10.99 from Amazon (on Blu-Ray, it’s £19.99)

Even more puzzling is quite how he is able to continue streaming these videos on his laptop once he reaches the offices of “Broadband”. He left his flat, carrying his laptop under one arm, but the film he was watching carried on playing. Either the signal is extremely strong (in which case, it seems churlish for Willis to complain about the occasional outage) or Willis actually lives in the same building as the offices of “Broadband”. This would also help to explain why he is still wearing his dressing gown, but it might have been helpful to have some sort of establishing shot which would illustrate this point rather than expect us to guess that for the dramatic purposes of this advert, the actor Bruce Willis happens to live downstairs from his broadband supplier.

And if it is the case that he lives downstairs from “Broadband”, then that surely reduces the impact of his “face-to-face” confrontation – turning him from an outraged customer to a slightly ratty neighbour.

The fact that Bruce lives downstairs would at least explain why those two men shaking hands were so blasé when he walked in.

Except even that doesn’t make sense. If he’s always wandering in, then why is the ginger haired woman so clearly starstruck as he walks by:

She’d be used to it if he lived downstairs and was always doing this.

As would the dark-haired woman sitting near the manager:

It’s obvious from the way she looks at him and mouths the words “Bruce Willis” that she fancies Bruce Willis. But note how she only mouths the words “Bruce Willis”, not “Bruce Willis – why is he in his pyjamas?”

Willis explains what he expects from a broadband supplier:

I don’t want smaller, I want bigger. I want helicopters shot down by police cars. I want people on the verge of mass destruction. Saving people’s lives on a daily basis. Does that sound small to you?

Although actually, considering Willis’ most famous role as John McClane, it would be more accurate to say he saves people’s lives on little more than a near-annual basis.

Hearing this impassioned speech, the dark-haired woman bites her lip in a sexy way:

She then explains that actually, Sky’s broadband service is much better because it is “totally unlimited”, adding that she is also “totally unlimited”. I think that’s meant to be sexy in some way. Willis then winks at her and the two walk out together, presumably to fuck in the toilets.

I’m not sure what this advert is trying to say. I’ve watched it about fifty or sixty times now. I’m guessing Bruce Willis hasn’t had some sort of Charlie Sheen-style breakdown, but it’s difficult to interpret it in any other way. Either he’s wandering the streets in his dressing gown, or he’s picking up girls who work in the office upstairs. Something has gone wrong in his life.

I don’t plan to change my broadband supplier as a result of this advert.

One of the photos was of the sky. I looked up and took a photo of the sky. I posted it on Twitter and just labelled it “Up”. A couple of minutes later, someone sent me a picture of what they could see when they looked up. Then a couple more did. Then a few more.

This is what Twitter sees when it looks up:
(Click each image to enlarge)

It was my first time camping at a festival. The festival experience was one which I had always suspected wouldn’t really suit me and so I never embraced it as a teenager. However, a couple of months ago, Julian from The Lost Lectures asked if I wanted to do my talk on why I like boring things, and I thought that maybe it would be a fun adventure, and so I said yes.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Secret Garden Party, but suspected it might be a bit like this:

As I sat on the train from King’s Cross, the two girls opposite me seemed to reinforce this idea. “Shall I text Jemima and ask if she’s packed an iPhone charger?” one of them asked. Later on, Jemima texted back. It turned out that although Jemima didn’t have her iPhone charger, fortunately Julia had packed hers. To make things worse, as we got off the train at Huntingdon, I saw that the girl who had asked about Jemima’s iPhone charger had a hula-hoop with her. These are not my people I realised.

Just as I was beginning to regret ever agreeing to all this, a group of three people in front of me asked if I wanted to share a cab with them. That was nice of them, I thought. We chatted during the short cab ride. One of them even offered me a Maynards Wine Gum, although she had opened the packet the wrong way up and that always bothers me so I declined (I didn’t tell her that was the reason). We arrived on site, and they went off to meet their friends or maybe just talk to someone who wasn’t me and so I went and queued for my wristband. The queue was slow-moving, but jolly, and the rain didn’t seem to put people off. It started to get a bit muddy though, so I changed my shoes:

It carried on raining as I got to the campsite. It rained as I put up my tent. It rained as I went to get some food. It rained as I watched Literary Death Match. It rained as I watched Robin Ince. It rained as I watched David O’Doherty. It carried on raining throughout the night. “Never mind, this is a fun adventure!” I kept telling myself.

I think it was around half past five the next morning – as I lay in my tent; unable to sleep because of the sound of music, the sound of people and the sound of the rain – that it stopped being a “fun adventure” and instead became one of the most miserable experiences of my life.

Here is that moment captured on film:

By the morning, everything was covered in mud:

If ever there were an environment seemingly designed to break me as a person, this was it. I’d been there less than twenty-four hours and I was desperate to leave. In my notebook, I started a tally chart; marking off each hour as it passed until eventually I could return to the civilised world.

Why had I done this to myself, I wondered? My talk wasn’t until Saturday evening. I could have got the train early on Saturday afternoon, stayed for a few hours and come home the same evening. But no, here I was. Stuck in a fucking swamp for another two days. I began to hate myself. I trudged around, trying to find somewhere warm and dry to sit. At one point, I even sat and watched a performance poet do a piece about Hugh Grant giving evidence at the Leveson inquiry, because the only other option was to get up and go somewhere else.

I went to the “Revolution Bunker”. Here you could see how hippyish notions of personal liberation and meditation slide so easily into conspiracism:

By Saturday, the rain had stopped and now the mud began to thicken. Each step became a challenge, the viscous mud weighing down each foot. But as the sun started to shine, you got the feeling that if weren’t for the mud, the place must look like a beautiful ramshackle village – all fairtrade coffee and vegan food stalls. But, watching people stagger around in the thick mud, the place seemed like some sort of post-apocalyptic disaster zone; a glimpse of what life would be like after a nuclear holocaust where only the middle-classes survived.

I know this all sounds incredibly ungrateful. Lots of people paid lots of money to go to Secret Garden Party and I get in for free and just complain about it. I’m sorry about that. It was really nice of Julian to invite me and there were moments I enjoyed and it was probably good for me as a person to have had this experience, even if just so that I know it’s something I don’t ever want to do again. And it’s always nice to see something really big get set on fire in the middle of a lake:

In fact, the Saturday and the Sunday were nice, and as I watched the enormous firework display at about one in the morning – surrounded by all sorts of people all sharing this moment, all sharing the same childlike grin which fireworks generate – I could absolutely understand why people come to festivals. But then I remember that moment at half past five on the Friday morning in the tent and how miserable I felt.

There’s a bit in the talk I did where I quote Georges Perec:

What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms.

To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us.

At the very least, three nights in a tent has made me realise how much I appreciate bricks, concrete, glass and no no hair removal.

A couple of months ago, my friend Biltawulf was wasting his life by looking at rubbish on the internet, when he discovered a special package deal on the Thomas Cook website; two tickets for the Olympic opening ceremony and a two night stay at the Athenaeum Hotel website for the bargain price of only £12,998. A normal two night stay at the same hotel, not including Olympic opening ceremony tickets, would be £737.

The itinerary for the trip is as follows:

26 July

• Check in to your hotel. Please note you must arrive at your hotel by 18:00 on the 26th July for your accredited coach transfer to your evening meal
• Dinner at a local restaurant

27 July

• Breakfast at your hotel
• Pre Ceremony Meal
• Transfer to Olympic Park
• 19.30 – 23.30 – Ceremony – Opening Ceremony

28 July

• Breakfast at your hotel
• Check out of your hotel

The Athenaeum Hotel has its own restaurant and yet the itinerary mentions a coach transfer to a “local hotel”. How “local” is this other mystery restaurant if you have to travel there by coach? And why don’t they just give you a meal in the hotel’s restaurant? It’s only downstairs. Perhaps the hotel’s restaurant was already fully booked, or it might even be closed that evening. Biltawulf decided to check to see if the restaurant was open. A few minutes later, I received the following email:

Rather than simply checking to see if there were tables available at the restaurant that evening, Bilta decided to book a table for four.

I assume he booked a table for four, because although Bilta and I are friends, we’re not really the sort of friends who would go to a fairly smart restaurant for dinner together. By booking a table for four, Bilta carefully avoided putting undue pressure on our friendship. But whilst he solved that problem, another problem presents itself; there are now two empty seats at our table.

We need to fill those seats, and that is where YOU come in.

YOU can apply to have dinner with Biltawulf and me. Please bear in mind that we are not offering to pay for you to have dinner with us, you will have to pay for yourself. We are also not offering to pay for your travel or any other costs you may incur. We are not offering you anything whatsoever. We just need to fill the two empty seats at our table so it looks like we have friends.

If that sounds like something you are interested in, go HERE for more information and to apply online (deadline is 12noon on 21st July 2012).

Good luck!

I am not the first person to be called James Ward. My dad’s brother was called James Ward. There was an eighteenth century painter of animals called James Ward whose painting of a horse was used on the cover of Bryan Ferry’s 1994 solo album Mamouna. There was a psychologist in the nineteenth century called James Ward who defended a philosophy of personalistic panpsychism based on his research in physiology and psychology which he defined as a “spiritualistic monism”.

There is also a tennis player called James Ward.

A couple of days ago, James Ward the tennis player was playing at Wimbledon. As I have already mentioned, my name is James Ward and James Ward the tennis player is also called James Ward, and so as a sort of joke, some people on Twitter sent me tweets saying “Good luck at Wimbledon!”

What they didn’t realise is that I happen to work in Wimbledon, so I was able to take their messages of goodwill at face value. These people had intended to make a joke, but were actually wishing me well against their will. I didn’t bother to correct them. Instead, I kept their messages of accidental kindness like a sort of positivity thief. A spiritual mugger. A happiness bandit.

As a result of all the people coming to see the tennis, Wimbledon station has been a lot busier than normal for the last week or so.

After leaving work on Friday, I went to the station, but when I got there, I saw several people standing around, each holding a newspaper of some sort:

This is a massively unhelpful photo. It doesn’t really show you anything, but what I’ve found is that if you don’t include some sort of image in a blog post, then people stop reading.

I’ve highlighted the people with the newspapers using green circles below:

The newspapers they were holding were copies of The Watchtower, described on Wikipedia as:

an illustrated religious magazine, published semi-monthly in 195 languages by Jehovah’s Witnesses via the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania and printed in various branch offices around the world.

I don’t really know a great deal about Jehovah’s Witnesses – although I remember that someone I used to work with wasn’t a huge fan, as his wife (who had been raised as a Jehovah’s Witness) had been shunned by her entire family when she decided it wasn’t for her. I wanted to find out more.

But there was a problem.

Even though there were several people standing around holding copies of The Watchtower, they didn’t seem to be making much effort to give them to people. In fact, they were making no effort whatsoever to give them to anyone. I stood less than five feet away from two of them for over fifteen minutes and at no point was I offered a copy of their magazine.

I waited and I waited and I waited.

Nothing.

And it wasn’t just me. During the whole fifteen minutes, they didn’t give a single copy of their magazine to anyone. Not one fucking copy. There were half a dozen of them standing there and they did nothing. They just waved the magazines around like they were a prize on the worst ever episode of Wheel Of Fortune. Perhaps the magazines weren’t free and were for sale, but they still didn’t make any fucking effort.

I tried catching the eye of one of them, that didn’t work. I tried avoiding the eye of one of them, that didn’t work.

The more I stood there, the angrier I got. It felt like bad customer service. It made me think of all the time I’ve spent standing in Topman or Office, holding a size 42 Chelsea boot, waiting for someone to come over and acknowledge me. It reminded me of all the time I’ve spent in Currys or PC World or Dixons, hoping someone would be kind enough to sell me a fucking printer.

According to Wikipedia, The Watchtower is “is the most widely circulated magazine in the world, with an average print run of over 42,000,000 copies per month”.

I suppose I could have gone over and asked for a copy of the Watchtower, but shouldn’t they have been the proactive ones here? They’re meant to be evangelical. I can’t be expected to knock on their door. That’s their job.

As you may have gathered from my previous post, I am not a natural monarchist. I suppose it’s something to do with the fact that celebrating hereditary power and wealth is really offensive to anyone with a conscience or a heart or a brain. I’d like to imagine that I have at least one of those, and so I struggle to accept the concept that we should all submit to being subjects of a woman because she happened to be born from the right fanny.

But despite my obviously correct republican beliefs, I do like a party. There’s nothing I love more than a good old knees-up. In fact, I like to keep my knees as high as possible at all times to maximise my fun. This is not always practical – for instance, when I am at work, the height of my knees is physically limited by the underneath of my desk. Does this affect my performance at work? Almost certainly. Are my employers willing to order a bespoke desk for me, featuring a large bulge in the middle, allowing unrestricted knee movement? No. Well, I’ve never discussed the idea with them, but I doubt they’d go for it.

The celebrations for the Jubilee looked set to be a massive spectacle, and I wanted to be part of it. Just like the Royal Wedding last year, this was an opportunity for the country to celebrate not just the Royal family, but the country itself. Part of the celebrations included a massive flotilla which would sail along the Thames. People would line the river, waving flags and cheering.

On Sunday, it was raining for most of the day, so I went to the cinema.¹ Fortunately, however, the rain stopped on Monday and so I headed to the Thames to see the flotilla.

I’d expected to see huge crowds of people, but there weren’t many people around:

There were a few people on the Millennium Bridge, although they mainly seemed to be crossing the bridge rather than watching the flotilla, so I’m not sure they really count.

In fact, I only saw one person who looked like she’d come to catch a glimpse of the Queen:

I got quite excited when I saw HMS Belfast, a relative of mine had served on that ship. It was incredible to think it was part of the flotilla. It’s such an impressive ship. And here it was, celebrating Her Majesty!

After watching the HMS Belfast for an hour or so, I realised that actually it wasn’t part of the flotilla. For one thing, it was facing the wrong direction. But probably more importantly, it wasn’t moving. I carried on.

As I approached Tower Bridge, there seemed to be a few more people around, although a few of them seemed to be going in the opposite direction:

I was worried that maybe I was too late, but then, after a couple of hours, I saw it!

I wasn’t able to actually see the Queen, but I was still happy to have been part of it. I felt a bit disappointed though.

I was disappointed by the poor turnout – are people really so cynical these days that they aren’t even willing to spend a day by the river to cheer on the Queen? After all, she’s served this country for sixty years – yes, you could say that being in the same job for all that time suggests a lack of ambition, but it’s still an impressive achievement and one to be celebrated.

I was also disappointed by the flotilla itself. In fact, it wasn’t even really a flotilla, it was just a boat. The Queen just went on a boat trip up the river.

The whole spectacle was so underwhelming that I’ve decided I’m not even going to bother going to the Jubilee concert tonight.

—–

NOTES
1. I went to see Iron Sky, which is about the Nazis building a base on the dark side of the moon and planning an invasion of earth. It’s amazing to think it’s based on a true story. I did enjoy Iron Sky, though it was very different to the TV series – the bloke wasn’t even in a wheelchair.

I’d gone in to buy a sandwich (it was lunchtime). I walked over to the chiller cabinet and saw this:

I immediately walked out.

Things got worse. After tweeting about this monstrosity, someone sent me this:

Stop trying to make everything a sandwich, Marks & Spencer, you lunatics. A pork pie doesn’t belong in a sandwich, neither do Yorkshire puddings. Just leave them alone. And don’t put these insane creations in wrappers covered in Union Jack bunting, suggesting some sense of tradition and nostalgia. There is no widely held tradition in this county of putting pies in sandwiches.

Photo by @snoozysuzy

I wasn’t entirely sure what a “Jubilee strawberry” was, but as Nick Marston on the Berry Gardens website explains, the Driscoll Jubilee is:

an exceptional strawberry with a wonderful naturally sweet flavour profile. It literally is the Queen of the Crop when it comes to summer strawberries. It is the UK’s leading variety for retailer’s premium brands. Nothing compares to it.

If you want any further information about the Driscoll Jubilee Strawberries please contact Nick Marston at enjoy@jubileestrawberries.com

It’s not just Marks & Spencer who have gone out of their fucking minds though. You can’t walk down any aisle of the supermarket without seeing some product or other in limited edition Jubilee packaging.

Ma’amite:

Brit Kats:

Photo by @DaisyGreenwell

Queensmill:

Great British Fancies:

They look quite similar to French Fancies, to be honest.

Tabasco sauce:

Ah, good old-fashioned traditional British Tabasco sauce.

I suppose this outbreak of Union Jack bunting was inevitable given the perfect storm of both the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics this summer. The combination of the two has caused some companies to go so completely demented that they seem to have forgotten what the products they sell are actually for. Pampers, for example, have launched a range of Union Jack nappies:

Encouraging children to piss and shit on the Union Jack isn’t celebrating Britain, Pampers.

I went to the London David Icke Discussion Group again on Sunday, and the Jubilee and Olympics were one of the topics discussed.

One man suggested that when crowds of people gather to see the Queen, she feeds off their energy.

Every time anyone’s there, waving a flag, they are feeding off the energy you’re giving them.

But he offered some advice to anyone who fancied a nice day out but didn’t want to give positive energy to the Queen:

If you do go there, don’t adore them – adore yourself. Come from the heart chakra. That’ll mess them up.

He even suggested forming a gang and going along, each person coming from their heart centres. “That’ll mess them up.” Sounds like a fun day out.

The security measures being introduced for the Olympics were also mentioned. One person asked if anyone thought the Olympics would be used for a false flag attack. The majority of the room seemed to think this was likely. “OK, but then what if it doesn’t happen?” he asked. “It might be a trick! It might be a double bluff!” someone said. So if there is a terrorist attack during the Olympics, it’s proof of a conspiracy and if there isn’t one, that’s proof too.

Another person suggested that the Olympics could be used as a test for Project Blue Beam and that rather than the Illuminati staging a terror attack during the Olympics, they might stage an alien attack, although this was dismissed. “I would be very surprised. I don’t think they’d get away with that. I think it’s too soon to do a fake alien attack” said one person.

There are four stages to Project Blue Beam:

The first stage involves engineering a series of earthquakes, which reveal “discoveries” proving that all of the world’s religions are wrong:

What is important to understand in the first step is that those earthquakes will hit at different parts of the world where scientific and archaeological teachings have indicated that arcane mysteries have been buried. By those types of earthquakes, it will be possible for scientists to rediscover those arcane mysteries which will be used to discredit all fundamental religious doctrines. This is the first preparation for the plan for humanity because what they want to do is destroy the beliefs of all Christians and Muslims on the planet. To do that, they need some false ‘proof’ from the far past that will prove to all nations that their religions have all been misinterpreted and misunderstood.

The second stage involves a giant holographic projections of all of the main deities:

The second step in the NASA Blue Beam Project involves a gigantic ‘space show’ with three-dimensional optical holograms and sounds, laser projection of multiple holographic images to different parts of the world, each receiving a different image according to predominating regional national religious faith. This new ‘god’s’ voice will be speaking in all languages.

[...]

The result of these deliberately staged events will be to show the world the new ‘christ,’ the new messiah, Matraia (Maitreya), for the immediate implementation of the new world religion. Enough truth will be foisted upon an unsuspecting world to hook them into the lie. “Even the most learned will be deceived.”

The project has perfected the ability for some device [referred to as "tractor beams" by ufologists] to lift up an enormous number of people, as in a Rapture, and whisk the entire group into a never-never land We see tests of this device in the abduction of humans by those mysterious little alien greys who snatch people out of their beds and through windows into waiting “mother ships.” The calculated resistance to the universal religion and the new messiah and the ensuing holy wars will result in the loss of human life on a scale never imagined before in all of human history.

[...]

Then the projections of Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna, etc., will merge into one after correct explanations of the mysteries and revelations will have been disclosed. This one god will, in fact, be the Antichrist, who will explain that the various scriptures have been misunderstood and misinterpreted, and that the religions of old are responsible for turning brother against brother, and nation against nation, therefore old religions must be abolished to make way for the new age new world religion, representing the one god Antichrist they see before them.

Naturally, this superbly staged falsification will result in dissolved social and religious disorder on a grand scale, each nation blaming the other for the deception, setting loose millions of programmed religious fanatics through demonic possession on a scale never witnessed before. In addition, this event will occur at a time of profound worldwide political anarchy and general tumult created by some worldwide catastrophe.

The United Nation even now plans to use Beethovan’s ‘Song of Joy’ as the anthem for the introduction for the new age one world religion.

Next, they will project thoughts and voices into people’s heads using extremely low-frequency radio waves:

The advancement of techniques propel us toward the third step in the Blue Beam Project that goes along with the telepathic and electronically augmented two-way communication where ELF, VLF and LF waves will reach each person from within his or her own mind, convincing each of them that their own god is speaking to them from the very depths of their own soul. Such rays from satellites are fed from the memories of computers that have stored massive data about every human on earth, and their languages. The rays will then interlace with their natural thinking to form what we call diffuse artificial thought.

There are three “orientations” to the final stage – make everyone think aliens are about to invade earth, make Christians believe the Rapture is about to take place and make “satanic ghosts” appear through your TV and phone:

One is to make mankind believe that an alien (off-world) invasion is about to occur at every major city on earth in order to provoke each major nation to use its nuclear weapons in order to strike back. This way, the United Nations Court will require that all those nations which launched nuclear weapons to disarm when the invasion is shown to have been false. And how will the United Nations know that the invasion was false? They will have staged it, of course.

The second is to make the Christians believe that the Rapture is going to occur with the supposed divine intervention of an alien (off-world) civilization coming to rescue earthlings from a savage and merciless demon. Its goal will be to dispose of all significant opposition to the implementation of the New World Order in one major stroke, actually within hours of the beginning of the sky show!

The third orientation in the fourth step is a mixture of electronic and supernatural forces. The waves used at that time will allow “supernatural forces” to travel through optical fibers, coaxial cables (TV) electrical and phone lines in order to penetrate to everyone at once through major appliances. Embedded chips will already be in place. The goal of this deals with global Satanic ghosts projected all around the world in order to push all populations to the edge of hysteria and madness, to drown them into a wave of suicide, murder and permanent psychological disorders. After the Night of the Thousand Stars, worldwide populations will be ready for the new messiah to re-establish order and peace at any cost, even at the cost of abdication of freedom.

Now, that might all sound a bit insane, but it’s not as insane as putting a pork pie in a fucking sandwich.