In blank blocked capitals above predictable blob graffiti, SHIVA precedes KARMIX RAPPEA! on the exit from Florence, 31^st May 2019

Even a contrived retrospective meditation on the signalbox scrawlings above (Hindu God versus misspelt rapper duo?) can’t excuse the fast-forwarded tedium that followed. As if taking the baton from the exterior of Florence’s Santa Maria Novella station, the journey to Bologna I can safely say, was about the most boring rail journey I’ve ever done. The estimated road time is around 90 minutes. The accelerated, non-stop, electric train aims to take only 39. For those dedicated to wrecking the environment there are also planes available[i] – the fastest being operated by Air France . . . which takes 4 hours and 20 minutes with a 50 minute layover in Paris and costs £3,688 for the round trip, as opposed to £27 return by train.

If only we’d had bikes . . .

Yet it started well. The departure from Santa Maria Novella is deeply atmospheric in a dilapidated way. But not far beyond the Florence/Firenze suburbs the train enters a tunnel from which it rarely emerges. It’s like being in a speeding tube with occasional bright flashes of sunlight. Stop the world, I want to get off[ii]. In lieu of bikes, granted three extra days and a lot less luggage, I would infinitely have preferred to walk the 63 miles to Bologna. We did get the odd tantalising glimpse of countryside . . . but never enough. The outside world ceased. We could have been spiralling down towards one of Dante’s nine concentric circles: “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate” – Abandon all hope, you who enter here. Instead, in the reflected deadness of the tunnels, apparently inconsequential (but to me enigmatically hopeful) scenes from the day before, rescued me from burial alive.

That distant-seeming afternoon on the earth’s surface had grown blazingly hot, making my proposed ramble, over-ambitious for the children. Following separate explorations for a spell, we all met up again near the Porta San Niccolò to cross the Arno and trace another long, improvised diagonal back to the apartment. Just off the end of the bridge not far from the Torre della Zecca, we came across this flower island . . . which breathes again, stilled forever under the clouds:

Tourist drop-off point on the north bank of the Arno, Florence, May 30^th 2020

All across Italy I’d been trying to improve my very poor Italian – throwing myself out of my depth in the hope that something would connect; that the branches and twigs of tenses and vocabulary would stick in my mind. Perhaps the odd cutting has taken root, but short of living in the country, this tree is never likely to produce much fruit. Increasing the problem of learning a language, is that all too often the natives of foreign lands are keener to practise your language than help you improve in theirs – which is only human nature.

If you can avoid falling into the more pointed definition of ‘tourist’ (persons with disposable income who jet to beaches for no longer guaranteed sun and indistinguishable nightlife. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, display a duty to obey guidebooks) perhaps the best thing about travel to faraway lands is the way it emphasises and redefines the sense of being an outsider; the way it questions home and not-home.

To return to my disdain for Adam Phillips’ statement in Patience (After Sebald)[iii] that “Only children have homes. Adults don’t have homes,”[iv] I realise that nowadays, my instinct of being at ‘home’ arises mostly from a feel for place – for landscapes and buildings; for an atmosphere rather than a social circle; for links and equivalences. Although travelling as a family inevitably means that some aspects of home are always present, my idea of ‘home’ has become increasingly metaphysical. I don’t know how common this is. Perhaps most adults given the opportunity, try to bury themselves in a security of home using money and material objects, friends and familiarity? Perhaps most, only want a holiday to relax or provide an agreeably brief jolt of awareness? Yet the strangeness and interest supplied by the tangible novelty of new places abroad, is always around us at home – waiting; silent; profound. If there is a ‘trick’ to appreciating life, one crucial aspect of it resides in being able to find strangeness and interest within the familiar: unexpected thoughts, a change of angle, a different level of concentration or relaxation . . .

Is a traditional sense of home partly created by taking the familiar for granted, by retreating into the sense of security that advantaged or complacent children feel? Are these the children Adam Phillips is thinking of? Maybe because he was one himself? Most are not so lucky and may temperamentally prefer holidays to be unfamiliar only within certain limits of comfort?

Even for those practiced at finding the strange within the familiar, the dislocation of travelling is bound to provide extra inspiration – and maybe, not understanding the language can extend the valuable nature of this dislocation? Adam Phillips’s statement implies that everyone is driven towards trying to reach a sense of home, to create such a feeling of safety. But perhaps we shouldn’t want this safety, pushed far enough perhaps we can do without it? Or, as with doubt and faith, perhaps what is most valuable is the tension between home and not-home?[v] As in the contradiction of ruinance[vi], perhaps it’s possible to escape through such tension, all our trivial consumer distractions, or even to get closer to the actual meaning of life itself (assuming it has one)? Is this the difference between travelling and tourism? One is trial and exploration, the other, a kind of privileged relaxation? Not that there can’t be some overlap between the two . . .

Venice improves upon acquaintance. Avoiding the central tourist zone, it recovers its appealingly shabbier reality – appealing in bright sun anyway. The sun being at its powerful zenith, for all our sakes and especially the children we had to find a park and the shade of trees. The comparatively hidden one we discovered (Parco Savorgnan) was grottier than the central wayside gardens (Giardini Papadopoli) of a few weeks earlier, but more real. It was also rich with mosquitos, which luckily didn’t seem to fancy the children. This was mine and K’s final opportunity to take it in turns to ditch the luggage and spend a couple of hours wandering in the searing, light-ghosting, heat. Our daughters were footsore and tired of what must have seemed to them, aimless roaming.

In the Parco Savorgnan the girls played happily for hours, at first with local children – the lack of a common language appearing to present no problems. Then we met a French grandmother, in Venice for the biennale, whose grandson began to play with our younger daughter. The grandmother’s English was far better than our French, and needed to be, for we had a long conversation about art, especially painting, of which she had years of colourful views and opinions. This grew into her experiences over the decades, of Paris and Venice. Within the relieving chiaroscuro of the trees, her impressions since the 1950s were mesmerising – worthy of recording, had she been willing and the equipment available. She approved that we aimed to keep our children away from the ill effects of technology[vii] for as long as possible – for it was “destroying the younger generation. Détruire!” she emphasised.

On a different park bench a little later, I found myself in conversation with Rusty – a property renovator from Los Angeles – whose daughter was playing with our elder daughter. He began by trying to fathom how the British could possibly be so stupid regarding Brexit, before switching to the Conservative party leadership election: “Boris! Surely no one will vote for Boris!?” Convinced at the time, that few would be idiotic enough to endorse Boris, and unaware of anyone who had voted “leave”, I expressed my equal dismay, before countering with: “How could the States be so stupid as to end up with Trump?!” At this point we both began to laugh. Faced with the twin lobotomy of Trump and Johnson, other than terrorism or suicide, what else can you do? Thankfully, as I revise this text, Trump is on his sulky way out – leaving us only the “shapeshifting creep” to dispense with[viii]. But that a psychotic and bigoted moron could occupy the White House was obviously a shaming embarrassment for Rusty. He began to explain the American voting system and how easily undemocratic things could be “made to” happen. Obviously, the same misdirection and corruption is rife in the U.K – even more so during this last year, accelerating in the periodic shadows of the covid distraction.

Sharing a bottle of wine lurking in my rucksack, the conversation changed to less painful topics – beginning with 60s cars. As it turned out, in days still fondly remembered, Rusty used to have a Triumph Spitfire . . .

From geography and landscape, Shropshire and Arizona, we ended up on the Angeles Crest Highway[ix] – evocative mountain road used in the filming of Donnie Darko[x]. Surprisingly, although Rusty knew that route well, the film was an unknown quantity. But then, far from its Californian locations, Donnie Darko’s cult popularity took root in England.

It could be that beyond a basic political stance and old cars, Rusty and I had little in common, yet a long conversation In English accompanied by wine, ably created the opposite impression.

 Poster for the 1972 giallo, Amuck

When it came to my own sun-baked wanderings, I’d been charged with finding a cheap supermarket and eventually, more by luck than skill, discovered a Conad. Continuing north, the streets were all disconcertingly hacked off as the edge of the precarious land is reached.  Vaporettos[xi] chugged away to more distant islands – such as the one inhabited by a cravat-wearing, waspish writer, Farley Granger, in the 1972 giallo, Alla Ricerca del Piacere, or to cite its English-language title, Amuck[xii] (what was wrong with the more literal translation of In Search of Pleasure? I wonder). Though it’s good to see Granger and (typically) rather more of Barbara Bouchet and Rosalba Neri, Amuck is far better for its locations and atmosphere than for anything else. Forty-seven years later, apart from the wash from boats, the Adriatic was as mirror calm as it is in Alla Ricerca del Piacere, and I considered how much more vulnerable Venice and its islands must feel in a storm.

Circling back, I sat on a semi-circular dais of steps that disappeared into the dazzling water overlooking the lagoon, watching a continual stream of trains – arrivals and departures – navigate the causeway. With boats of all shapes and sizes frequently passing, and aeroplanes landing and taking off in the distance, it was reminiscent of a children’s picture-book – all that old atmosphere of hope, when even planes seemed happy and exciting and travel a beckoning and harmless pleasure. The truth is that excessive faith in science and technology – those oversized pair of blinkers – has turned us into demanding children. Driven by the fraud of market economics, our blind greed for endless ‘progress’ opened the door to the mess we are in. But as the chameleonic shifts and sleights of hand in art[xiii], are dependent upon some eternal quality preceding them, clearly there was some good in the original idea of progress – before its ideal twisted into fevered belief. At present, whatever the founding cornerstone was, we have buried its lustre. We need to change down several gears and find a better currency, a far less wasteful space . . .

Venice 31^st May 2019

With so much ‘art’ fawning on Society, at least some of the Biennale installations[xiv] curated under Mare Nostrum[xv] had a worthy objective, even if, concerning the manifesto stated on the billboard above, we are on a hiding to nothing. Aspects of Mare Nostrum’s installation, anticipated my more recent viewing of Patricio Guzmán’s admirable documentary films – mystical and horrific by turns – Nostalgia for the Light (2010)[xvi] and The Pearl Button (2015)[xvii]. While the mystical side of both films is occasionally sentimental, in the light of the horror of Pinochet’s regime this is justifiable. More negligent is the way that Nostalgia for the Light brushes over the negative impact on the world of Science. Similar to the encyclopaedias of transport by land, sea and air, and the concomitant globetrotting hopes of children, Nostalgia for the Light goes back to the ideal wonder in most of us. But while mystical or metaphysical star-gazing is intuitively and inexplicably worthwhile, the application of it, the calcium maps of stars etc, the attempts to make it mean something logical, are as tragically pathetic as the 70-year-old woman’s quest to find the whole body of her ‘disappeared’ husband. You can feel for her desperation to achieve this before she dies, but that doesn’t stop it from being as futile as thinking that we can find serious answers to our existence by looking at the stars. We will inevitably find all kinds of ‘evidence’; we may find metaphysical reassurance; but answers will always be beyond conscious understanding. Scientific research, whenever pertinent, due to the power of those that fund it, cannot help but tend towards ‘profitable’ applications – i.e. destructive[xviii].

Venice in a half heat-haze sepia 31^st May 2019

I can’t be sure now what hour we caught the Thello at Venice, since the times recorded by the camera were stuck on some British double-wintertime at least 2 hours out of sync. All I remember is that as we drew across the causeway towards Venezia Mestre[xix], a minor nosebleed forced our younger to stop talking. As she’d been obsessing about nuns and fishmongers and repeating the idea that she wanted to be a beggar, the enforced silence was probably a good thing, especially for her. Somehow, she’d gained the impression that beggars simply relax in the street for a while, before shuffling to outside cafes nearby for a slap-up meal on their proceeds. Peculiar the rubbish that people of all ages earnestly believe. I wondered how different our impressions of Venice, Italy and of travelling would be if we had the money to stay in luxury hotels, travel by the Orient Express and have great conversations to cordon bleu dining the whole way? Or enjoy one of those endless parties which always look so appealing in films but would probably be mind-numbing after twenty minutes: New Year’s Eve extravaganzas with everyone in bizarre costumes and people getting bumped off every few stations down the line. I’m thinking of crumby but sometimes enjoyable films such as Murder on the Orient Express or 1964’s Night Train to Paris – which we’ve often watched on New Year’s Eve just because that’s when it supposedly takes place and the TV (when we had it) was unbearable.

April is curious about the work of crazed artist Adam Sorg in Color Me Blood Red (1965)

Perhaps the thought of joke art, my daughter’s nosebleed, crumby films and a soporific memory of a forgotten sandy shore with wispy trees, reminded me of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s Color Me Blood Red[xx]? This 1965 film has a strong feel of the period, especially regarding interiors, but as recently rediscovered, isn’t worth watching at normal speed – despite Gordon Oas-Heim as tortured artist Adam Sorg and the amusing art critic and gallery scenes. Much of the film is set on the beach (Sarasota, Florida, according to IMDb) and within the madman ’s wooden house – which looks as vulnerable to the slightest heave of the ocean as Venice. Being an artist (all maniacs of course, and as objective towards the flesh as doctors!), Sorg is too obsessed to notice April, the bathing beauty in a pink bubbly bikini, except as a potential source of blood for his canvases. The actress playing April was in real life, Candi Conder – and few names could be more apt for her role. This aspect of exploitation films, the manipulation of the sex or lust drive, might be worthy of a Digression itself, since, just as a wide view of a landscape with an enticing prospect is somehow more than the foreground, the horizon or the journey between[xxi], so the biological drives, surely, hopefully, contain other less basic, less visible qualities? Whether or not one could love the character of April – who, as the film manipulates her, appears shallow, even stupid – is probably beside the point. She is intended for a pin up, literal Candi for the eyes, naïve but essentially good, and destined in time (as is the implication behind even the wildest 60s films, ‘free love’ being reserved mainly for men[xxii]) to become the perfect housewife. Obviously, she is very ‘sexy’ in a late 50s way – the 50s lingering here, as most decades do, until at least the middle of the following one. It might have been 1965, but this is a film absurdly, parodically, about the ‘Beat’ generation. But to get back to Candi Conder: the ‘straight’ male gaze – could watch her walk up the beach (as the camera does lasciviously) to her encounter with nutter Adam Sorg and his easel, many times. But, be we straight, gay or bisexual, do such pleasures, ever get us anywhere? What is the hidden value or are they just animal leftovers? It’s true that mild titillation, may suggest or illustrate the greater danger of porn for driving addicts towards futile obsession. Taken philosophically, pornography also graphically illustrates the unsatisfiable nature of sexual desire. Would it be different if you loved April? Does love or beauty balance lust, as physical journeys across landscapes may balance the desire for what lies inside or beyond them? Can religious or metaphysical feeling likewise balance a desire for meaning? Where is the equilibrium between the valid and the distraction, the challenge and the rote? Or is the constant aspiration of desire in a world that can never be enough, always, in whatever form, unbalancing? For desire (like hope) almost always remains or revives beyond its objects, be they landscapes, people or ambitions . . . and anyone who can manage to escape discontent; anyone who is fully satisfied by religion, sex, country walks, (or by far less: sport; TV; drugs; technology, etcetera), is self-deceived  . . . or perhaps, has become (neatly, correctly) habituated to some lesser human sphere. Are even those who believe in a love too over defined – fixated entirely in particular persons – equally mislead?

Critic salutes mad artist at private view – not a situation I often experienced!

Anyway, despite its axe-heavy satire, its humour, the cars, backgrounds and hilariously bad art (though one of Adam Sorg’s less dwelt-upon paintings, at least from a distance, has something more intriguing than anything I happened to catch at the Venice biennale), Color Me Blood Red is fairly tedious. Its beach frolics and hip talk require a lot of fast-forwarding. Plus, I’ve never seen the point of gore (another animal leftover?), no matter how real – or in this case pathetic. Corman’s, A Bucket of Blood (1959)[xxiii] with its brilliant script[xxiv] (highlights spoken by poet Maxwell Brock: “Life is an obscure hobo, bumming a ride on the omnibus of art.” Or: “The artist IS; all others ARE NOT.” Or: “Walter has a clear mind; one day something will enter it, feel lonely and leave again.”) is superior in almost every way. Yet surly Sorg is both more dangerously insular and funnier to me than Dick Miller’s likeable Walter Paisley in the earlier black and white, cult classic . . . maybe because Sorg is so reminiscent of a long-gone friend? Are all artists unbalanced? K maintains that “they obviously are” indisputably including me in her classification[xxv]: “If an artist can achieve balance, they become a craftsperson.” Or a formula perhaps? I’m sure Adam Sorg would agree . . . and sign the contract in blood.

Darkness fell on board the Thello somewhere between Padova and Verona, and soon afterwards we turned our chairs into beds. By the time we reached Milano Centrale[xxvi]  the children and K were asleep or pretending to be and I’d left the compartment for the corridor, to film the incredible signal boxes and our arrival. Whether or not it remains the largest station in Europe “by volume”, some claim it is “still the most pompous”[xxvii] – dubious details including a swastika created for a possible visit by Adolf Hitler, inset in a section of parquet floor.

Arriving at Milan, 31^st May or 1^st June 2019

Milan being the only other place where passengers can join the train, a long wait ensued, not all of which was scheduled. Refusing to surrender to her obvious irritation and noting my interest in the architecture, the tall, elegant guard indicated that I could get off the train and wander about if I wished. We would be delayed for some time.

At about what our camera claimed was 3 A.M., a wobbling light in the distance resolved itself into a man cycling down the epic platform. He had come to perform the uncoupling – a different locomotive being required for the climb into the Alps. I hung about to watch him at work. Stepping back onto the platform as the locomotive drew away, the ‘conversation’ that began between us was hopelessly comic. Since his attempts at English were accompanied by expressive gesticulations, it naturally encouraged me to add emphatic gestures to my attempts at Italian. Managing to say that I worked (lavoro was one word I did remember) on old steam trains^[xxviii] (vecchi treni a vapore – though I think I just made puffing noises for the last bit), he became even friendlier. To him this made us colleagues, brothers under the camouflage of overalls and cameras. Enthusiastically, he began to pat me on the back and shake my hand and was about to invite me down onto the track to help couple up the replacement locomotive. Familiar with both English and continental style couplings, I would’ve been pleased to lend a hand, but unfortunately, just then, a superior inspector-type turned up and the division of ranks between him, the shunter and the driver of the replacement locomotive – who’d just happily thrown himself into the melee of our conversation – broke up our footplateman’s comradeship. Then the guard returned looking unbearably contained and exasperated by all of us and I felt obliged to get back on the train – just when I thought I might be offered a cab ride over the Alps to Modane.

31^st May or 1^st June 2019

Another delay followed, during which both shunter and driver disappeared. Later still, the long overdue connecting train from Rome arrived and the ire of the guard began to accelerate. Before Milan, she’d watched me filming the disappearing rails through the small corridor end window with indulgence and a forced smile; now, she appeared almost desperate to confide. Presumably influenced by my passport (which the guards keep and return near the end of the journey) she tried German at first, switching with no avail to Italian and then French – in all of which, she sounded enviably fluent. Finally realising I was English, the reasons for her tetchiness all came out. Some were directed towards Thello management, “lots of mistakes here” she kept muttering, as well as expressing scorn towards recent timetabling “all gone awry”. Awry was the untypical word she was drawn to repeat. But what agitated her most was that it was the “first day of summer . . . and I feel fed-up on this job”. After three years it “had gone awry. Not so good anymore – the constante shuttling”. Originally Austrian, she’d enjoyed living in Paris and Dijon”, but felt “sick of its whole way of life”. Fuelling her despair was the plain fact that the train had been over-booked, which had “never happened before. Never!” Excess numbers of passengers were clambering aboard expecting berths already taken. Everything was awry. Starting to think she would walk off the train and disappear into the Milanese night, I tried to be sympathetic. Without warning, she took a dramatic deep breath. Releasing and then pushing her long hair back, she reformed it tightly into its bunch with an unconvincing laugh. Grasping my arm very tightly (she left a handprint) she regained her official hauteur and adopting a grim smile, went off down the corridor. As I was – inevitably – awake all night, I did see her a few more times. She had a small room at the end of the corridor – which she was not allowed to offer to passengers – and lay down on its narrow bunk once or twice. Wedging the door open she occasionally looked up and spoke if I was around, but these sentences never turned into a conversation, maybe because her English was less fluent than her other languages? Jumping hours forward in time, I remember the moment in the corridor as the train drew into Paris. She returned our passports and for a moment looked as though she might embrace me. Or had I become just another traveller? Unsettling to think of all those people you feel fleetingly close to, who you will never meet again. She smiled but might have been embarrassed. Loaded with bags in a suddenly crowded corridor, did I act too distantly? Occasionally I’ve felt guilty about those claustrophobic minutes. I always imagine I look approachable and friendly, but K says I often look fierce.

Returning to the preceding night in Milan, presumably I looked friendly enough to the Japanese man, possibly a musician, who was last to board the train. Climbing down to help him with his mountain of luggage, it took two of us to lift one suitcase. This black vinyl object with wheels was so heavy that I wondered if it was loaded with gold bars . . . but thought it better not to ask.

Eventually we were rocking towards Turin. Sadly, as on the outward journey, the mountain section was all at night. With eyes propped open by metaphorical cocktail sticks, I strained to pick up as much detail as possible in sporadic moonlight and the glint from rushing rivers and snow . . . sublime in a mournful rather than uplifting sense, unless that was just my weariness.

As before, I was very impressed by the environs of Modane^[xxix] – hauntingly evocative border place in the dark and silver mountains. By the solid stone station extensive sidings and yards extended to the river which before and after the town often rushes fiercely in a channel abruptly beside the tracks.

As before^[xxx], the locomotive exchange under the defensive stare of the sinister signal box – from Italian to French voltage – was not done with any haste, especially since we awaited the southbound Thello for continued passage. I imagined a fantasy life as a train driver in Modane. A short story perhaps? Or seen through the eyes of the disgruntled, young woman guard – that tough air hostess on rails! This went so far as envisaging an angular daily walk from a small slanting apartment across the channelled meltwater from the locomotive sheds. Then I got side-tracked by the style of the footbridge over the cascade and distracted by an echo of Nietzsche . . .

Front of passing electric, north of Dijon, a frozen frame from a piece of film.   Sunrise 1/06/2019. Our passing speed must have been well in excess of 150mph. Note the CONAD bag in reverse.

The pre-dawn in France was misty and calm, the sunrise intense. It flamed through trees and woods and occasional grain silos. After the rushing station of Bourg-de-something (too fast to read) the landscape became serene again. Acres and acres of wide, beautiful cornfields, rivers with pockets of mist . . . reminding me of some idealised and radically depopulated section of the outer home counties. We drew to a halt in silent Dijon well-ahead of any kind of rush hour. After a leisurely start onward to Gare du Lantenay, the train accelerated steadily before going berserk, striving to make up all the lost time. Only as the outskirts of Paris began to gather were the brakes ever used.

Halted just beyond the platforms at the Gare de Lyon, our time available to walk across the city was diminishing. We finally rolled to a stop virtually the whole length of the train from the hydraulic buffers with just above an hour to spare and set off at a furious walking pace towards the Seine. Over the Pont d’Austerlitz we followed the river, eventually passing the bookstalls so often used in films – from small Parisian productions to Hollywood epics such as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962)[xxxi]. Re-crossing the Seine the unfortunate Notre Dame loomed up on our left. Regaining the north bank via the Pont au Change (“landmark bridge and popular photo op”), we headed up the Boulevard de Sébastopol, discarding all traces of leisureliness.

We were supposed to allow an hour for customs and check-in at the Gare du Nord’s Eurostar terminal, but with nothing to declare, despite queues, had little trouble with the former. Passport control involved an English border post weirdly out on a limb. Recognising immediately by speech that we both originated from London, the passport official asked about our unusual surname and got the usual potted history. “Anglo-Saxon through and through then!” he said approvingly, and to this day I’m not sure if he was just being friendly – welcoming me back to dear old Blighty (on a limb) – or whether there was some xenophobic undertone. Was he sounding me out (to be contacted later) for BNP[xxxii] membership?

The Eurostar left on time and a display screen near us, at two different points when I happened to glance up, registered 297 kph – which approximates to 184 mph. I was suitably impressed. Only my old dark purple marvel (bicycle), once (apparently) did better – attaining 687 mph on the Honiton Bypass[xxxiii] during the summer of 1989.

After weeks of travelling, was my fantasy that the perfect home would be a self-contained railway carriage attached to various trains – berthed in the marshalling yards or rural sidings of different countries whenever I preferred to stay and explore – beginning to pall? Or was the gravitational pull of the habit of ‘home’ lowering the tone? Perhaps Adam Phillips was half right after all? I’m not sure it’s possible to answer such questions. These final sentences come eighteen months later, and it could be that as with most journeys, the real travel is within – where whatever true home we may have, is located anyway. As for the tunnel under the Channel, fortunately, our youngest daughter was no longer concerned about sharks getting in through the windows, while I shut my eyes and ears and thought myself outside.

© Lawrence Freiesleben,

Cumbria, July-November 2020

[email protected]

NOTES

[i] Accessed 17^th July 2020: https://www.google.com/flights?q=florence+to+bologna+by+air&source=lnms&impression_in_search=true&mode_promoted=true&tbm=flm&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwirjbjQ89PqAhWkUhUIHS4UD_EQ_AUoAXoECAwQAw#flt=/m/031y2./m/096g3.2020-08-02*/m/096g3./m/031y2.2020-08-06;c:GBP;e:1;sd:1;t:f 

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_the_World_%E2%80%93_I_Want_to_Get_Off 

[iii] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2118702/

[iv] http://internationaltimes.it/the-italian-digression-part-8/   See Note 4 

[v] The main reason I remain so deeply affected by Jerzy Skolimowski’s film, The Shout, (1978), is that its landscapes and villages capture the exact air I encountered at 18 on moving to an isolated caravan, of the remote strangeness of North Devon. Nowadays, I would have to shift to a Pacific island or the moon, to equal such a dislocation . . . The lanes, cliffs and dunes used as locations were all places I came to know shortly after it was made, without my knowing the film existed. Although the story itself remains hypnotic and the standards of décor and appearance so much more appealing than those of the stultifying present, at the same time, part of my mind bypasses the characters and all the background hints and suggestions of the scenario, to recognise my most powerful sense of geographical attachment – to North Devon 40 years ago: maybe the first time I saw a landscape with separated eyes and mind, away from the influence of friends or relatives? Although many of those landscapes haven’t changed so much, clearly the whole social atmosphere of the late 70s has vanished. In this sense Adam Philipps is correct: the original homes of adults are inevitably lost in the past – in a childhood which for most perhaps can only be perceived (or imagined) retrospectively? In the long run the concept of home cannot be trusted. If you cannot restructure its basis, you end up constantly yearning for the past. For me, as the perfect example of this, the superlative W G Hoskins television series, Landscapes of England  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landscapes_of_England  may also be a perfect catalyst? Almost every episode sets off a powerful longing for the 70s. Every episode underlines the increased avarice of the Western present.

[vi] To use a rather dubious biological metaphor, the contemplation of ruinance [see Note 2 of http://internationaltimes.it/the-italian-digression-part-8/  ] is another of those stimulations/irritations which can work as a kind of mental antibody, the production of which in the form of ‘overwhelm’, contradicts any potential negativity – even if negativity wasn’t intended.

[vii] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNgQOHwsIbg – particularly the section on the addictive danger of cell phones etc., from 3.10 onwards. 

[viii] Former Obama press aide Tommy Vietor’s description of Boris Johnson: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/biden-ally-lashes-out-at-shapeshifting-creep-johnsons-racist-comments/08/11/ 

[ix] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angeles_Crest_Highway

[x] http://internationaltimes.it/donnie-darko-a-digression-on-universality-and-inevitable-nostalgia/ 

[xi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporetto 

[xii] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068206/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 

[xiii]  Flashy facades and conjuring tricks that may nevertheless reinvigorate what we already know. 

[xiv] Although much of the Biennale merely showcased third-rate art from around the world, art “barely worth domestic consumption, let alone export” at least it was (generally) free to view. All great/true art galleries should have free admission . . . but then not much of it is great or true!

[xv] https://www.itsliquid.com/mare-nostrum.html 

[xvi] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1556190/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 

[xvii] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4377864/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 

[xviii] Just as art is corrupted by the desire for profit and/or entertainment. 

[xix] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezia_Mestre_railway_station

[xx] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059044/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_26

[xxi] “You can never know how it [such a landscape] possesses what it does. It’s not in the uncertain distances nor the bright foregrounds, nor quite in the journeys in-between . . .” as Huw says in Estuary and Shadow – and I’m sure I’ve repeated all over the place.] 

[xxii]  When Julie Christie behaves in the way of men in the overrated yet nevertheless worthwhile Darling (1965), typically she is judged far more harshly – not for her character’s undeniably shallow nature but for her fashionable lack of morality. Italian directors did this type of film so much better – either at the abstract end of the spectrum (Antonioni) or the more accessibly satirical end, for example La Dolce Vita (1960), Dino Risi’s Il Sorpasso (1962, see part 4 of this Digression) or Pietrangeli’s I Knew Her Well (1965: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060545/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 ). Darling, looks dated in a far more disabling way than any of these films. 

[xxiii] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052655/

[xxiv] https://cafedissensusblog.com/2018/08/15/roger-cormans-a-bucket-of-blood-i-will-talk-to-you-of-art/#  

[xxv] Discussing creativity and the ‘artist’ more than a year ago, K saw creativity as a factor common to many people “most of whom have no need for high ideals. It need be no more than an activity they enjoy – a craft or a hobby: painting, modelling, gardening, cooking . . .” The trouble with artists, in whatever medium, she claims, is that they “like to inflict themselves upon everyone.” This made me laugh, yet I know what she means. Whatever justification ‘artists’ might come up with: childhood trauma; spiritual, ecological or political vocation; an urge to redirect or save the planet; imaginative overload; inspiration; the sensation of being no more than a conduit . . . whatever excuse or reason surfaces, in most cases, to inflict their results on others is an inescapable part of the process, personal ego or ambition, two of the bad faith aspects hard to avoid. K feels that people could live without art but not without creativity. But is it only a lack of self-confidence or self-esteem that prevents certain creative people from stumbling upon high ideals? Alternatively, is it only an excess of confidence, arrogance or death anxiety that turns the creative person into an ‘artist?’ Once your imagination has been stoked enough perhaps you can live without art – especially as much of what is so classified is merely feeble diversion, repetition or copying. I was pretty well stoked by the age of twenty, but still need new coal to burn now and then (and the carbon metaphor is deliberate, for excess indulgent and empty ‘art’, especially of the mainstream type, is a waste product that undoubtably pollutes our social environment). Another worrying question is whether, rather than encouraging an expansion, the internet has caused an inflation of creativity. Does the distancing from any kind of widely shared culture, simply undermine society, or could it destabilise it in a potentially worthwhile way? In a metaphysical sense, rather than being selfish or solipsistic, this retreat inside ourselves, might have aspects that should be encouraged – trying to break the materialistic dominance of time and space for example . . . but even if we are or could have been moving towards some unforeseen transformative stage, it appears increasingly likely to be cancelled. It’s impossible to see how our craven submission to every form of destructive consumerism, can now be turned back. We have invented and invested in disaster. The human race is in an error state. We’ve been taken over by our tools and can’t turn back. Short of a plague infinitely more serious than covid or a natural catastrophe rather less severe than the one on the horizon, there’s no chance of returning to some previous ideal – there are simply too many of us . . . and no reasonable, political system can deal with this simple fact.

[xxvi]  https://railwaywondersoftheworld.com/milan-central.html   or             
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milano_Centrale_railway_station

[xxvii] https://retours.eu/en/29-milano-centrale/#

[xxviii] For a few years, I was a trainee driver on the North York Moors Railway – starting by lighting up the fires in steam locomotives at 5 a.m. ready for the day’s work with occasional footplate turns learning the route, shovelling coal, observing signals and so on.   

[xxix] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modane

[xxx] http://internationaltimes.it/the-italian-digression-part-1/ 

[xxxi] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054890/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

[xxxii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party

[xxxiii] http://internationaltimes.it/cycling-at-light-speed/

 

Online conspiracy theories have been trying to link the novel coronavirus pandemic to the rollout of 5G technology recently. Despite there being no scientific links, multiple 5G towers have been set on fire in the UK. Theories shared on Facebook, Nextdoor, and Instagram are being widely spread, leading the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to very clearly state: “5G technology does NOT cause coronavirus.”

None of the conspiracy theories that try to link 5G and the coronavirus even make sense. The virus is spreading in countries without access to 5G, the frequencies from 5G can’t harm your body, and COVID-19 is caused by a contagious virus that is in no way related to electromagnetic waves. Even the general correlation between 5G and COVID-19 doesn’t stand up to scrutiny: they’re both global phenomena happening at roughly the same time, but as soon as you look at specific countries, the correlation falls apart.

Professor Stephen Powis, a medical director for NHS England in the UK, called the links between 5G and the coronavirus “outrageous” and “absolute and utter rubbish.” The UK government has also branded the claims “dangerous nonsense” and labeled conspiracy theories “crackpot.”

Some of these theories suggest that the novel coronavirus can be transmitted through 5G or that 5G suppresses the immune system. Both are untrue. To understand why 5G and the virus aren’t linked, you have to understand why 5G radio waves aren’t powerful enough to damage the cells in your body alone or transmit a virus. Much like 4G or 3G before it, the radio waves used in 5G are low frequency and non-ionizing radiation. These are on the opposite end of the electromagnetic spectrum to ionizing radiation sources like X-rays, gamma rays, and ultraviolet rays.

These 5G radio waves simply aren’t strong enough to heat your body and weaken your immune system. “The idea that 5G lowers your immune system doesn’t stand up to scrutiny,” explains Simon Clarke, associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, in a recent interview with the BBC.

Likewise, radio waves and viruses aren’t transmitted in the same way. The novel coronavirus spreads from one person to another, typically through tiny droplets of saliva produced when a sick person coughs, sneezes, or breathes. The only types of viruses you can transmit via radio waves are ones that affect computers, not humans.

Other facts that really bring this 5G conspiracy theory crashing back to the realms of reality is that the pandemic has hit counties like Iran, India, and Japan where 5G isn’t even in use yet. Iran has only just reportedly finalized its regulations on 5G, with plans to roll out the technology later this year. Iran currently has more than 66,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Japan only just started rolling out 5G services in the past week, and India’s 5G launch may even be delayed because of the pandemic. At the same time, South Korea has had 5G towers in place for a year now, and it only began seeing COVID-19 cases after the Wuhan outbreak.

The broader 5G fears have largely been addressed by regulators, scientists, and independent groups. While some implementations of 5G use millimeter-wave (mmWave) band transmissions, a higher frequency of radio waves than 4G or 3G, regulators in the UK have recorded 5G electromagnetic radiation levels well below international guidelines. The International Commission on Non‐Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) also found no evidence suggesting 5G poses a risk to human health.

The ICNIRP updated its guidelines last month, following a seven-year study. “5G technologies will not be able to cause harm when these new guidelines are adhered to,” said ICNIRP chair Eric van Rongen.

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

A lot of these coronavirus 5G conspiracy theories have originated from active disinformation campaigns. A New York Times report from last year warned that Russian campaigns were actively exploiting 5G health fears. RT America, a Russian government-funded TV network, aired a report more than a year ago in which an RT reporter claimed 5G “might kill you.”

A European Union task force has also been tracking many of the disinformation campaigns, warning that “some state and state-backed actors seek to exploit the public health crisis to advance geopolitical interests.”

Many of the recent fringe theories appear to have originated from a Belgian newspaper that published a scientifically baseless claim that “5G is life-threatening” and tried to link the origins of the pandemic to the rollout of 5G technology in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the novel coronavirus originated. The general practitioner quoted in the article admitted, “I have not done a fact check,” but that didn’t stop conspiracy theorists from immediately spreading it far and wide on English-speaking Facebook pages.

After the spate of cell tower attacks, UK mobile operators are calling on members of the public not to spread the false claims. “Please help us to make this stop,” the top four UK mobile operators pleaded in a joint statement earlier this week. “If you witness abuse of our key workers please report it. If you see misinformation, please call it out.”

By Tom Warren

Tracklist:
Lonnie Smith – Afrodesia
George Duke – Dukey Stick
Black Heat – Check it All Out
James Mason – I Want Your Love
Ohio Players – Funky Worm
Jodi Gayles – You Gotta Push
Toto – Georgy Porgy
Cheryl Lynn – Got to be Real
Jo Ann Garrett – Walk on By
The Last Poets – It’s a Trip

Steam Stock

Let’s do a reality check: many of us wake-up in the morning with our default memory sleepily reverted back to a pre-covid state of seeming ‘normality’. But after splashing our face with cold water, taking the dog for a walk and having some breakfast, it dawns on us that we are being strung-along by the hands of a puppet master, whose tweaking of the strings of power is making us dance to a tune which is 100% alien to our natural evolutionary inclinations.

That puppet master is actually not one person, but a number of people; although calling them ‘people’ might already be an error, since they operate in the shadows of a life less than human and impose their will based on a narcissistic ambition to ‘own’ everything – and of course, to control it too.

So you turn on your radio/television, open a newspaper/computer and you get something called ‘The News’. And what is it you are actually getting? Is it really The News?

Your slow mind, which prefers to remain in a convenience/comfort mode, leads you to believe you are actually receiving The News – well doesn’t it?

But once you get that mind sharpened-up a little, straighten your back, and let some sense of the true reality start to manifest, you recognize that it is not the news at all – but simply ‘the spin of the day’. The Daily Spin.

It’s a formula designed and constructed by the puppet master and his less than human cabal, to ensure they remain on course to ‘own’ everything on this planet – which includes you, me, our children, aunt Mary, uncle Tom, granny and grandad, our/their houses, furniture, gardens, money, cars, and even – thoughts.

With something of a jolt you realize (once again) that The News is a grand indoctrination exercise, duplicitously contrived by those who own and run ‘the media’; and that these ‘less than human’ entities work hand in hand with the grand puppet master, as part of a mafia-esque stitch-up in which the ‘news owner’s’ get a handsome reward for printing and broadcasting ‘The Daily Spin’.

But, you may well ask, from where does the cabal get its billions? How can it pay-off the great majority of the media chiefs so as to keep The Spin going from day to day? Pay-off not just the media chiefs but all the other operators who work from the shadows to keep this virtual agenda pumping its fake news into our overloaded psyches?

Where does their blood money come from? These fake kings and queens of imposed virtual reality whose psychopathic ambition is to rule the world.

Wait a minute – don’t we know this? I mean, we take out a loan or get an overdraught agreement from our bank – and suddenly we owe that enterprise/corporation some repayment for its supposed ‘generosity’.

Puppet master Big Banker really is a true master of deception – a magician! He applies a simple but brilliant formula which has been around a good few centuries now, but still works a dream. Yes, he simply ‘lends’ you that which he does not have – and commands you to pay him back with something you do actually have – your earnings garnered from your work, your job. A truly treacherous slight-of-hand, wouldn’t you agree?

But you see, in this way the great cabal – which is actually a very small fiefdom (probably less than 0.2% of the population) can acquire an infinite amount of dosh and thereby ‘run the world’ according to its desired despotic blueprint. That is – just so long as you and I keep taking out loans or overdraughts with Big Banking plc.

They press a button and hey presto! We have 50,000 pounds/dollars in our bank account – wow! But if you go to the cashier and ask for that 50,000 in bank notes, you will be refused. Why? Because the bank doesn’t actually have it. It’s just on paper, created from thin air. Once you get into your repayments you may be allowed to withdraw around 10% in notes, but only in separate tranches and at separated time gaps. And only so long as bank notes are kept in circulation, in this digital age of illicit surveillance.

They control how you can use your money. It is this amazingly deft act of in-your-face theft which keeps the cabal, media, fake democracies and corporations in the high chairs of control. It is this supreme act of deception which underpins the destructive capacity and longevity of the deep state; the huge debts now faced by ‘forever borrowing’ governments of nation states. Governments that then circulate the fraud by borrowing at interest from the Goldman Sachs’s of this corporate world, who in turn are supplied with endless liquidity by the Bank of International Settlements, the biggest launderer of all launderers.

Give your dirty laundry to the BIS and it will redistribute it around all the banking fiefdoms of the planet. And thus wars are financed, Soros/Gates/Rothschild ‘colour revolution’ putsch’s underwritten, false flag events fueled; propaganda, social engineering and behavioral psychology agencies kept at work. All engaged in mind controlling the masses into submission.

“Keep the Great Reset on course!” demands the puppet master. The Reset, with its dystopian fake green techno-fascistic agenda brazenly heralded by The Daily Spin. The ‘green new deal’ ‘zero carbon’, ‘smart grid internet-of-things’ promised land we have all been dreaming about?

Yes, dear friends, many among us – and maybe you – shout “Crime!” briefly grasping the truth during that high moment of the day, or night, when the cabal’s road map suddenly comes into focus and the truth is out. But the next morning, once again bamboozled by the digitalised torrent of words; the tinkling announcement of incoming calls on your pocket sized microwave handset; the beckoning big brother flat screen TV on your living room wall; the long list of sterile supermarket fake-foods you need to purchase – not to mention Covid, the social agenda, the demands of the job – if one still has one – all this and so much more – cloud that moment of truth once again – and leave one as slavishly dependent as ever on the puppet master’s darkly disguised template for global control.

“Take the vaccine and submit to my will.”

How in God’s name to get out of this manic cul-de-sac? Answer: you must want to get out. That’s the precondition of all freedom. One must want it. One must love what it offers, uncertainties and all, more than one loves one’s slavery. But the puppet master quite obviously doesn’t want you to want to get out. He wants you to continue to buy-into his little game of domestic and digital distractions. He wants his empire and its occupants, to be largely robotic; 5G driven and mindless.

Now, draw back. Listen. Just around the corner is the ‘cashless society’, according to the cabal’s blueprint. If and when that little objective is put in place we will have to admit to having capitulated to becoming an instrument of a 100% surveillance coup which leaves no recourse to daily survival other than a piece of digitally primed traceable plastic or RFID chip under the skin.

Let’s not let it get that far shall we? Let’s take the steps today that will keep freedom alive tomorrow. One by one you can wean yourself off all the convenience items you adopted to make surviving in the rat-race that little bit more..err..’comfortable’.

On one level it’s quite simple: you don’t want 5G scrambling your DNA? Give up the cell phone. You don’t want sterile, denatured, genetically modified and irradiated food busting your immune system? Give up the stupor-market. You don’t want big banks stealing your money? Give-up big banking.. You don’t want Covid? Give up being afraid of life and give-up your mask. You don’t want to be permanently under the cosh of arrogant technocrats? So say “No” to those bully-boy fake authority figures. “I do not consent.”

Give it all up. Give your support instead to down to earth decentralized life affirmative alternatives. They exist, in embryonic forms and will flourish once a critical mass joins-up. Once you have started down this road you have shifted from being an “it’s them!” accusative in-activist, into an “it’s us” self assertive activist. Now that’s real. Once tens of thousands – in each country – get on the same trajectory, the Big Brother blueprint starts to wobble. Once tens of millions take up the challenge, the globalist agenda starts to pale. Once that wave becomes a surfer’s dream, the Great Reset becomes the Great Reject.

We the people have made the only move that really matters: taking control of our destinies and choosing to support people friendly enterprises that are already demonstrating that a whole other range of ‘life positive’ initiatives exist and are just waiting to be built upon.

In order to finally pull the rug out from under the feet of our oppressors we have to recognize ourselves as the real actors – as people taking charge. Psychologically we must overcome victim-hood and develop faith in our creative abilities.

The great majority of national and international political assemblies that orchestrate the ways of the world, have been exposed as immeasurably corrupted. Giant institutions like the UN, WHO, WEF (World Economic Forum) are hornets nests of corrupted self interest and speculative financial wheeler-dealing. Vast global financial institutions like the WTO, IMF and World Bank are just geopolitical hegemonic levers and money laundering exercises. Add it all together and where else is there left to go other than right back home, to reactivate and fiercely defend your indigenous local resource base. The place which is your immediate point of reference and hub around which your daily life revolves. That is where the revolution starts.

The gardens, parkland, orchards, bees, allotments, renewable energy schemes, artisan skills, all micro elements that when joined together give a community some form of genuine sovereignty, self sufficiency and excitement.

As much as we might not wish to recognize it, the world of the Great Reset is best counteracted by the revivification of our immediate neighbourhoods. Those still non-digitalized, human scale places of shared endeavour where one can rebuild the true connections without which life becomes intolerable. Vital connections that form the most fundamental antidote to the collapse of community and natural intimacy; irreplaceable qualities deliberately crushed by the anti-life ambitions of the master puppeteer and his less than human cabal.

You want to break the puppet master’s grip on your life?

Yes? Then heal this severance. Make life whole again. Be life affirmative. The new humanity affirms life over death. And that affirmation starts here, right in our back yards.

Julian Rose

Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and holistic teacher. His latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is particularly prescient reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info

It’s a disgrace: the UK Government is still blocking attempts to legally protect animal welfare in trade deals.

Under relentless pressure from Compassion supporters, other campaigners, and the House of Lords, the Government has committed to increase parliamentary scrutiny of new free trade agreements.

Yet it refuses to require, by law, that food imports meet British animal welfare standards.

We cannot allow the UK to import cruelty.

If you haven’t already done so, please share ciwf.org.uk/Protect-Animals or use the buttons. Every signature counts.

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Thank you so much for helping to protect animal welfare standards, through Brexit and beyond.

With best wishes,

James West Senior Policy Manager

PS: With the end of the EU transition period fast approaching, and the UK Government keen to secure a trade deal with new US President-elect Biden, it is crucial we speak up for animals now. Please spread the word using ciwf.org.uk/Protect-Animals today.

Forton Services, that fantastic tower again, Summer 2020

I would like ceilings to be brief and a sword that cuts knots.

For all the richness between quiet villages, that downdraught of escape . . .

To feel the flow of cities, undivided.

I would like to live forwards instead of backwards

for my rage to cease

for all our time all over again – without the rubbish

I would like to praise all the earliest motorway services, but don’t approve of the motorways that link them – only the childish hopes they originally engendered (and all the old cars of then – of the 60s and 70s).

I would like to live for a thousand years to see if the human world survives; to see if my instincts are correct: that worthwhile art will be obvious at a glance – the sham and the pose, instantly revealed.

I would like to see Forton’s tower restored to its morning’s glory.

I would like to fly – using only my arms.

© Lawrence Freiesleben,

Cumbria, September 2020

[email protected]

Makhno

I thought this would be as good a place as any to start an ongoing conversation among anarchists about the coronavirus pandemic. I will post links to a number of articles and web sites, but first, let me briefly state my own views:

1. Pandemics are an inevitable result of the crowded urban living conditions, increased mobility, and global chains of production and distribution in our contemporary world.
2. There has been a great deal of confusion generated by the mass media about the science and government actions related to the coronavirus pandemic.
3. The majority of people are not making the effort to critically evaluate the information and opinions that are being disseminated about the coronavirus pandemic, especially if these facts and arguments challenge their pre-conceived notions. They tend to react emotionally and defensively to any such challenges.
4. The currently-favored government strategies of lockdowns and other restrictions are doomed to fail, because the objectives are not clearly articulated to begin with, the destructive consequences of these policies far outweighs any potential benefits, and even in a best-case scenario, an effective, widely-available vaccine would not be able to eradicate the coronavirus.

A number of opinion pieces that may be of particular interest to anarchists can be found here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/topic/covid-19

A few articles from non-anarchist sources that I have found helpful:

https://gbdeclaration.org/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/500271-rule-obeying-cult-coronavirus-lockdowns/
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/499816-positive-covid-virus-contagious/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/world/europe/coronavirus-europe.html?…
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/500000-covid19-math-mistake-panic/

Elena Caldera

Nick Victor

Tracklist:
Terry Callier – Dancing Girl
Tom Scott – Today
Roberta Flack – Go Up Moses
Nina Simone – Sinnerman
Aretha Franklin – Border Song (Holy Moses)
David Crosby – Cowboy Movie
Os Mutantes – Baby
The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
Steely Dan – Black Cow
Black Sabbath – Planet Caravan
Barbara Lewis – Hello Stranger
The Turtles – You Showed Me
Van Morrison – Into the Mystic

Steam Stock

Lucky Cat collects a wide range of genres– all on vinyl– but true to her South London roots Reggae is her first love! In 2019 she competed in 2 Reggae DJ clashes Tradition’s Old Hits Clash and the Lover’s Rock and Revival Clash. As a solo DJ she has played in Switzerland, Ireland and Germany and specialises in late 60s/early 70s styles of Reggae.

Collecting records since age 12, Lucky Cat started DJing at parties in 2000, then progressed to hosting her own club nights in South London. In 2005 she debuted on Resonance FM and has since made almost 20 series of her show. A passionate broadcaster, she also contributed mixes to the BBCs cult programme On the Wire.

In 2016 she founded an all-female Reggae DJ collective – Sisters of Reggae. The collective of 5 DJs and 1 MC gig all over the world and encourage other women to get behind the decks with their popular Female DJ Relay Nights.

Lucky Cat Baxter

“Civilized Hell” (alternate version) is off the new album from Lukas Nelson & Promise Of The Real, “Naked Garden” available now. Video adapted from “A Short History of America” Copyright © Robert Crumb, 1979.

Imagine, for a moment, that the law doesn’t recognise your ability to feel joy, fear, pleasure, or pain – nor your ability to learn, or your consciousness of the world around you.

Unless the UK Government introduces new laws recognising animal sentience before 1 January 2021, that terrifying prospect will face every single one of the UK’s farm animals.

If you live in the UK, please email your MP today. Urge them to use their influence to ensure animals are recognised as sentient beings in post-Brexit legislation.

Email your MP

 

 

https://action.ciwf.org.uk/page/67354/action/1?ea.tracking.id=link&supporter.appealCode=CATWE_UK0920c&utm_campaign=politics&utm_source=link&utm_medium=ciwf

Elena Caldera
thanks to ‘Burrobirra and Veritaserum (facebook page)‘

OGMIOS VS HARRY BAKER