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Missing Britain Newsletter No 90 30th January 2005

News
An interesting snippet from the BBC website this week might just tickle your fancy. Sir Tim Berners-Lee who invented the Internet, has been named as the ‘Greatest Briton’. Others who were also presented awards were Kelly Holmes and Sir Paul Smith, the fashion designer. Nice to kick off with a bit of home grown trumpet blowing.

Most of the rest of the news this week has concerned the forthcoming elections to be held in Iraq and the build up of violence which it has heralded. As I start to write this on Friday morning, the expatriate Iraqis have already started to cast their votes around the UK to some considerable scenes of excitement. For most of them it is the first time in their lives they have had the opportunity to vote in any election.

You may or may not be aware, but for the past goodness knows how many years, there has been a fairly concerted effort by a large group in this country to get the hunting of wild animals (mainly foxes) banned. The ‘antis’ appeared to have won when Parliament recently passed an act to make hunting illegal. Very recently there has been some movement to challenge the act and keep hunting alive. It will be interesting to see what happens when the law lords meet to decided on the legality or otherwise of the act, but so far the first challenge to it has upheld the act. Keep watching for further developments.

Looks like Northern Ireland is set to stir up again, in the news at least. In December there was a raid on a bank in the province which netted several million pounds for the robbers. After a couple of days investigation the police decided that the IRA/Sinn Fein were behind it – vigorously denied of course by Jerry Adams for Sinn Fein. Tony Blair is due to meet with Adams soon to discuss the way forward in the ‘peace process’ in Northern Ireland. Should prove interesting.

One little aside about the robbery. All the bank notes taken by the robbers were printed by the bank and would be instantly recognisable by any organisation being asked to exchange them. Which could make life a bit difficult when the robbers try to buy a pint of Guinness in their local. No doubt they will already have found a nice little Swiss bank somewhere to take the cash off their hands. Cynical? Moi??

Weather
Dull and grey. Other parts of the country have had a fair old battering with snow, particularly in the north of Scotland, but we’ve just had miserable grey stuff all the time. Seems like we have missed out on the snow again, though it appears to be hitting the rest of Europe pretty badly – even in Spain!

On the subject of weather, I am sure there is someone in charge of the weather with a very nasty sense of humour. Twice recently on rising from my slumber in the morning I have looked out to see a clear blue sky, not a cloud in the sky. Wonderful! Within three hours the whole sky was grey, thick clouds from stem to stern and rain pouring from them! I ask you? What do you have to do to get some decent weather at this time of year?

Ramblings

Fahrenheit 9/11

This week Channel Four showed Michael Moore’s ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ for the first time on UK television. Having read so much about the film over the past months I awaited its arrival here with some anticipation. Glad to say that I was not disappointed by it. What a catalogue of conniving and backdoor dealings have gone on around the world to ensure that the USA and the West in general continue to get their oil! I found the implications of the way senior politicians around the world have worked together to ensure their own survival at the expense of the people they are supposedly representing very disturbing, but not altogether surprising.

For those of you who read this newsletter regularly you probably realise I have something of a jaundiced view of politicians and their ways, so perhaps I should not have been so disgusted with the manipulation and lies which the film portrayed.

Considering that the film was made some time ago, and that the world has moved on since then, it comes as no surprise then when one hears in the media that maybe Iran is next on the list of ‘terrorist states’ which George and his armament friends are going to target. Who’s next? one wonders.

If this sounds a bit too much like USA bashing then I apologise, it isn’t meant to be. As I pointed out to Chris after the film had finished, “Prior to the US becoming Saudi Arabia’s ‘best friend’ the UK were the major military influence in the area, and had been for years”. But, perhaps we were a bit more subtle? I don’t know. I do recall paying a visit to an aircraft manufacturer locally back in the early 1960’s where a large number of BAE Lightening aircraft were being refurbished for the Saudi Air Force. So the supply of arms to that regime does go back some time, and the influence and interference of the UK in the middle east over almost the past hundred years is well known.

What’s that saying about people living in grass houses not stowing thrones?

The Da Vinci Code

During the run up to Christmas I was asked by Chris if I would like a copy of the Da Vinci Code as a present, and she was a bit puzzled when I declined the offer. My reason was that although I had not read the book I had sneaked a couple of looks at it in the local WH Smith shop when it was first released, and had read much about it in the press since then.

Over twenty years ago the BBC did a series of programmes which culminated in the programme makers publishing a book called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, and the Da Vinci Code seemed to me to be little more than a re-working of the same old story. Don’t misunderstand me, it’s a very good story and based on a lot of historical fact mixed very cleverly with a lot of historical blarney.

In a nutshell the book sets out to prove that the Holy Grail, allegedly the chalice used at the last supper of Christ, was not in fact a physical object but the bloodline of the family of Jesus, and that this bloodline and its existence had been hidden from public view since his ‘death’, but in actual fact exists today. It’s a marvellous story and one which gripped me completely for many years. So much so that I went to visit one of the major places mentioned in the story, Rennes le Chateau in the Langedoque area of France, several years ago.

When Chris and I were married in 1995 we spent our honeymoon in the same area and again visited the place a couple of times. This allowed me to investigate one of the parts of the story which concerned a priest from the village who was appointed as priest of the village in 1895. According to the Holy Blood story the priest found evidence of a major physical treasure and also documents relating to the bloodline of Christ.

What my investigation turned up was that the priest had indeed spent millions of Francs during his life in the village as the story had related, but that rather than this money coming to him as a result of either finding a ‘treasure’ or having been paid off by the Vatican to keep the story quiet, he was in fact an old fashioned crook and had raised the money by selling Masses – something which the Vatican apparently frown upon. In English law the offence is called Simony.

There is no doubt that both the stories are brilliantly written and weave a web of very believable fiction which encourages the reader to accept the mixture of historical fact with the writers own interpretation of other stories they have invented.

One thing I found amusing about the village of Rennes le Chateau is worth mentioning. On my first visit there I drove past the small opening to the single track road leading to the village as there was almost no signposting to it at all. On finally entering the village there was an air of almost apology about the place. The locals were a bit confused about the interest which was suddenly being shown in their hill top retreat and the facilities in the village were few and far between.

On my subsequent visits the place had changed considerably. The signpost to the village was now an official brown French tourist board sign, the village had been spruced up a little, and the guide books in multi- languages. A whole industry had been created within the time between my two visits, and now it seems, the same thing is happening in Paris around the places mentioned in the Da Vinci Code.

I don’t find it incredible that so many people around the world are interested in the books and the histories, but do find it hard to believe that people are so willing to readily accept the stories as being history and true. What is history? What is the truth? After so many years of being manipulated by government, politicians and leaders why do we so easily accept on face value what we read and hear?

Spooky
You are getting your money’s worth this week aren’t you?

Not far from the lesser known stately home of Crumble Cottage in Blackburn lies another stately home. Well, not exactly stately, but old. Tudor in fact. Salmesbury Hall to be precise lies about six miles from where I sit looking out over the old apple orchard and the Capability Brown designed gardens of Crumble Cottage. One of the things for which Salmesbury Hall is noted is its annual Virgin Cull weekend, usually held in the month of July each year where all the maidens of the area get together to compare notes and indulge in harmless fun and frivolity.

One of the other notable things about the hall is that it is haunted (well come on – it wouldn’t be a Tudor hall without a ghost would it?)

Anyway, this particular ghost has been providing a reasonable income for the owners of the hall for a good number of years by encouraging multitudes of tourists, and recently a student from the parish of Preston ventured into the place for a ghost hunt. You can see what happened next by going to the appropriate page on ye olde internete. It’s a nice little story, but not half as frightening as the one which I am about to tell you.

It concerns my first wife and me, and it was at a time shortly before we became wed. We were staying with some friends in Hexham, Northumberland. David and Margaret (the friends) lived in a newish house in the town and had a dog called Soddy. (don’t ask! – alright ? just don’t ask!). At the foot of the stairs near to the front door of the house was an old padded chair which apparently had belonged to Margaret’s mother.

After a long journey by public transport to the house, and a trip out for a meal in the evening we returned to the house quite late. It was almost Easter, about late March or early April, so the house was in total darkness and quiet as we opened the front door. Soddy bounded up to greet us all as we entered the house and then returned to his place in the kitchen at the far end of the hall way to sleep on his bed by the solid fuel central heating boiler.

We were all tired and were soon ready for our beds, so after saying good night to each other we went to our separate bedrooms, David and Margaret to their bedroom at the front of the house, me to the sofa bed in the front room directly beneath them, and my future wife to the single bed in the small back bedroom.

I got into the large double sofa bed and closed my eyes to sleep. The house fell back again into total silence and darkness. After about fifteen minutes I heard the sound of the dog, Soddy, whining in the hallway outside the room where I lay. I listened to the apparently distressed dog for a few minutes and shouted gently to him to be quiet. It had no effect, and he continued to whine.

Realising that he was not going to be quiet until I did something to shut him up, I slowly rolled off the bed and found my slippers and dressing gown and pulled it over my pyjamas against the chill of the room. Once the heating was turned off the temperature of the house dropped quite quickly, and I shivered as I tugged the gown around me and walked around the bed to open the door onto the hallway.

Well, sorry about that, but it looks like I have run out of paper and time to finish off the story. Perhaps next time….

Quick Wits (courtesy of Tommy Cooper)

This fella is on safari in Africa when he comes across an elephant lying on the ground, in distress. He investigates and finds a thorn in its foot. He removes it, and the elephant trots merrily away. Twenty years on, the man is standing in the street in London watching a circus procession pass by. When the elephant gets level with him, it stops, looks straight at him, reaches out with its trunk, lifts him bodily into the air, smashes him on the ground and jumps on him. It was a different elephant.

Cheers

David
Missing Britain?
http://www.missingbritain.com

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