‘God save the Queen, Its a fascist regime’

S. Vicious.

The Sex Pistols 1975

‘Evening Sar…a, copy of the Daily Tele by any chance?’, twipped the ever so sweet, British Airways hostess, as I settled into a part of the jumbo I hadn’t paid for.  A tip here. Always be the last one onboard, and grab the best looking seat left available.  Maybe I overdid it a bit, as I later found out…. what with the British having more levels of social status than they have Royal everythings, I had apparently plonked myself in a class somewhere between first class slumber booths, and my, economy cattle .

Opening the paper, it’s was 20 pages, one after the other, of government destroying freedom of information exposes, on the pig in the trough habits of hundreds of MP’s, at a rate of about 10 MP’s a day,  apparently strung out to sell the Tele for weeks. Just as the MP’s had ripped off the taxpayers, getting their moat’s cleaned with toothbrushes, so too did the Tele rip-off the independent journo who had done FOI . hard yard, court time, to win the eventual High Court battle, that released a flood of tirade and disgust, at the 600 plus MP’s.

The MPs like a scene out of Animal Farm, were not amused, as they squashed, shoulder to shoulder, into the House of Commons, like some sort of industrial pig farm, in suits.

Limitless electoral and career damage was done to hoards of them, as the public cried for an election to behead the bunch of them. I know the feeling.

NYC’s JKF was fogged down, with dozens of jets cued for their chance to hammer down the strip, with wingtips fogged out of sight, and then leap skywards, into the grey nothingness, where once up above the clouds, it was a nice bright evening. It was not such a nice bright morning when I landed in London.

Normally I wouldn’t give a shit about the weather in the UK….assuming it to always be shitful. But it was particularly bad this morning, and somehow, I had to get 50 kg to Taunton, in Somerset, load it somehow onto a bike I had never seen, but owned, and ride off, decamp, and sleep in the unfolded contents of the kit bags, all in a wet, freezing, UK gale.

I told myself, as the wipers on the bus to Taunton sloshed away the rain, that it was time I toughened up. The heaters fogged the view of the cruel outside view. Yes, I could just give in, $cough up, and head for the nearest B&B, or cosy pub. But nope, Rod, I said to myself, Rod, you are gunna do this mate, toughen up.

The bike dutifully unfolded, as did a half dozen boxes and bags in the wet back yard, where the bike vendor, Paul, (Director of Humanities, Psychology) Smith, watched on as my insanity unfolded with it. Given a few hours, the bike looked like the Beverly Hillbillies Model T, and I was heading to Beverly Hills. All I lacked was grandma in a rocking chair on top.

My bike was a BMW R1100GS, the Lancaster bomber of off-road bikes…..the type Ewan McGregor had immortalised in the doco series, The Long, (or maybe, The Wrong) Way Around.

Guided through Taunton by the ever gracious Paul, I was ended up at the nearest camping ground, which was a cross between a Steptoe and Son set, and chook farm. The owner made cider here, bred birds, and greyhounds, and to add a level of colour and chaos, threw in few peacocks, who behaved like the politician from whence their name was derived, giving me a dose of attitude bad enough to make Shirley McLean fuck Andrew.

Hours unfolded the next day, as I tried to figure out what gear should go where. I already had a pannier set on bike, but I had 3 more coming, to be rigged in a truly Lancaster bomber way, ready to burn Dresden. In the meantime, I had to store and strap gear in bright, yellow and orange, rafting bags, as well as using my suitcase for a surprisingly comfortable backrest.

Day two, and it was off to the Moors of Dartmoor, to where the Hound of the Baskervilles awaited me. Some miserable campsite behind a cosy pub tested the blizzard capacity of my popup tent, as I drank Jail Ale  made, I presume, in the next door, 650 head, Dartmoor prison. In prison, they had central heating and cable TV. Committing a crime looked logical, after night 2 in the tent.

But ahead was a few charming nights in St Ives, the UK’s prettiest seaside port, where the albatross sized seagulls, cried  listlessly in the night, with all the dying soul of Davey Jones. There, the tide tried its best to suck the entire town out through the stone wharf fortifications, the walls that had guarded hardy fishermen, deep back into ancient history. Where the pirates of Penzance, and black capped skippers had once recovered their circulation in the sheds, chapels and pubs of the waterfront, now, ice cream sales, and Devonshire teas fattened the bewildered tourists,  pram pushers who sought, but never found authenticity in their experience. The whole of southern England had become a weekend retreat for jaded, overweight, and limp dicked tourists, wandering the shops of useless trinkets, oblivious to the soul and history of one of the most beautiful seafaring destinations on earth.

Running against the tide, the odd authentic salt, mended his nets, or pottered around with his diesel launch.  The local newspaper reported the resurrection of the ‘Spirit of Dunkirk’, when a bunch of 14 ex urbanised shopkeepers, threw a few blankets at the door of a florist, whose piping overflowed. Those who died in sea of industrial grade blood at the real Dunkirk would have rolled over in their grave at the thought of the analogy. Such was the limp life of ice cream sales in St Ives.

To me, the charm and cosiness of Devon and Cornwall is unsurpassed the world over. The feeling I get from the low ceilings in the 400 year old pubs, is like that childhood shiver of excitement you get, from building your first cubby house. Buildings lean in on the street, like some Disney designer deformation. Twee bay windows, and thatched attics put the snug, into smuggling. Streets are so tight, that anywhere else on earth, they would be deemed one way. But not in Devon. In Devon, they put double decker buses down streets that anywhere else, would be restricted to push bikes and pedestrians. And it’s two way.  l love it. Except when I’m forced to wheel 400 kg of bike and payload, backwards up a laneway blocked by an oncoming vehicle whose mirrors are scraping both sides.

Waking in the upper bunk of the St Ives International ( and local dropout) Hostel, I could not fathom, what sort or early morning council vehicle could sound like a trashing machine made of hard nylon flappers. The sound came and went. And when it came again, it turned out to be a sort of snowmobile with plastic feet, around a caterpillar tread, towing a cat tread, lifeboat trailer. How silly of me for not having picked it earlier.

They like their heroic lifeboat stuff around here. Considering the paucity sea safety offerings in most places I had just sailed, maybe Cornwall lifeboat rescue addicts should consider an outreach programme. No sea to rough, no muff to tough, Cornwall sailors will go down on anything, ah, oops, any sea, sorry. One 3 tonne lifeboat behemoth, that was rowed as propulsion, was dragged by horse and men, on a wheeled cradle, up inclines that snow skiers would love, and over 15k of moor land, to be launched at Pormouth, in to effect a  rescue of some hapless ship wreck victims, in a classic tale of sea rescue determination. Me. I liked the idea of wheels under a boat.

What I yearned for, was a real dose of English countryside, and to find it, like all modern poms, I went online. Online, I found Westermill farm, and arrived at the farm gate to the excitement of several Border Collies, and a milk and honey farmers’ daughter, giving the dogs what-for. This was Exford, a twee hunting village, with two pubs, and a shop or two, surrounded by thatched cottages and real farms. Dark green Land Rovers were parked in front on the pub. Sweet, rosy cheeked girls in riding gear walked their horses, and the beer was slow, flat and fat .

My campsite, on the rich green pasture, so lush, it made willows weep, bordered a brook, gentling gurgling past my tent. It was just me, a farmer and his son and daughter, and a few hundred cute lambs. Roger, the farmer, was the same age as me, and when I was raiding England, at $10-a-Day, 30 years ago, he was raiding Australia, as a jackaroo, prawn trawler man, and truckie. We both had similar aged kids, but he’d inherited 500 acres of England, to which he was tied, whereas I just had a bike. It gave us both, interesting contemplation of our 54 year old, juxtaposition.

Riding around the moors, farmland and quaint seaside villages of Exmoor in the height of springtime was a sure delight. The sweeping  roadways took on an added allure, as a green, vertical, trimmed hedges formed a ‘wall of death’, that turned mild speed, into a call to acceleration that even Lawrence of Arabia could not resist, seconds before he died.

England in springtime puts new dimension into the colour green. On one of the odd days when the sun shone, every man and his motorbike hit the road, and sweeping and climbing through the English countryside by motorbike, on a sunny day, is a touring treat par excellence, making up for all the other rigours of riding hand over fist.

Glastonbury just popped up on the GPS by coincidence, as if to say, come here now. I had heard all the stories, but wasn’t ready for what presented itself, as smack in the middle of town the polite English speaking woman on my GPS told me I had arrived at my destination. The square was packed full of more weird colourful and  semi inasne people that you could fit ina Fellini movie. This was the Star Wars bar, earth embassy. More ley lines, Kind Arthur tales, and spiritual diversity packs the main street of this place , than anywhere on earth. I tried and I tried to make it more that 100m from the backpacking central square, but it took me hours, in fact 2 days, to make any progress.

There were that many interesting things to see and do, I was trapped like a fly in golden syrup.

For starters, I bumbled into a conference called Megolithomania, with more writers, explorers, and new agers than I knew existed, and book signings for several new release books, that lined up, one after the other. It you had a view on matters Stonehenge, Egypt, Druid of leylines….there was a writer with a book to be released there for you. After contributing to a discovery of megaliths in Australia’ s Daintree, where our find was welcomed with disinterest or derision, is was like walking into the promised land, finding a whole profession of experts who were brimming with of amazing speeches, slides and insights, that made Australia look totally backwards on the subject.

The last book on the secrets of the Sphinx theorises that the undersize Pharaoh head was a late add on, after the Jackal style dog, Anubis, the Doberman with rabbit ears, was defaced of nose and eras in one of the many marauding armies arrivals, and besides, the Sphinx was never at sea level, it was in a moat flooded by the Nile annually, where embalming rituals saw son of the dead, dad, pharaoh, wash dead dad’s guts in the moat, to sanctify them before embalming. Or something like that. One thing is for sure, those Egyptologists are into a massive cover up, as any idiot can see, multiple underground chambers below the sphinx have been blocked in, or filled with concrete. Something to hide, oh dear Iluminati establishment?

There is a steep hillock called Tor in Glastonbury , on a site so sacred it had had Neolithic types in deep ritual here for centuries, it was  the main pilgrimage centre for middle age types lobbing in from Europe. Christianity was founded here by the bloke who took Jesus off the cross.

The remains of Glastonbury Abbey, out my window here, are on view for 5 quid, and are a testament to all that is evil about the my Church of England’s, founding history. Horny and horrible Henry the Eighth,  as you may recall, wanted to dump his Spanish wife, for a French bitch, and was not happy when the Glastonbury Abbot would not agree to his demands for a divorce, so Henry burnt down the abbey, dragged the head abbot around, tied to a fence, cut his guts out whilst alive, stuck his head on a stake, and with it, burnt the most precious library in Christendom: to ashes….and this ladies and gentlemen, is how the Church of England was formed. With this limited historical background, I was somewhat pissed off, on enquiring who pocketed my 5 quid entry fee to the ruined Glastonbury Abbey, to be told the Church of England trousered the money…after their founder had wrecked the place.

But the real action was just ahead. Obeying the GPS as I cut and sliced down mile after mile of Wiltshire laneways, I was off in pursuit of the real deal in paranormal signs…I was off looking for crop circles. For crop circles, you need crops, and as spring raises the wheat, so too do ET’s flatten a bit. And the centre of all things crop, and all things Neolithic mystery, is Avebury in Wiltshire, where the world’s biggest stone circles make Stonehenge look like a weary tourist trap. What was it about this area, that gave birth to more than 5000 year of ceremony and pilgrimage? Encoded in those stones, was more than just quartz crystal. Crude as they may seem, the Avebury Stones are the early editions of man’s 12000 year pursuits in building megaliths, pagodas or cathedrals on a grid of sacred sites, where Avebury,  like Glastonbury, is the intersection point of all sorts of energetic magic, beyond the 1% spectrum we humans can detect. This grid, now complete, after thousands of years of work, stand ready, as the unity consciousness grid, for the time, maybe post 2012, when humanity realises it’s us, not me, that is our path. If not, its bye bye planet earth.

So when you have crop circles laid strategically at the edge of the Avebury circles, it’s seemingly not just a coincidence. The controlled media just dismiss the new batches of crop circle as the work of pranksters, but any trained observer, can easily detect the clumsy tread print, and board shifting marks of man-made crop circles, that make up less than 10% of the maybe 100 or more crop circles arriving, some in an instant, during daylight hours, all around Wiltshire. Some arrive at the rate of 7 in one night. That would need about 700 drunk pranksters all out flattening wheat on the one night.

The Masons, doing the grubby dirty work of their unidentified  Iluminati masters, may have erected their typical spire obelisk as a message on the hill overlooking Avebury, but the ET circle-makes ignore them , imprinting their circles all around the evil obelisks, in defiance. Go ET.

The  crop circle that most impressed me, was a huge, geometrically perfect series of spinning, ying and yang cycles,  on a rotor, which had only be made some 48 hours before I arrived. If farming pranksters made this one, they should give up farming, and take up geomancy and design sales. But it was obvious that 100 drunks didn’t make this mega glyph.

Since the 70′s, the circles have evolved , from a basic circle, to forms so geometrically complex and beautiful, that they hint at something very big ahead, if one just joins the dots.

One crop shows the exact star formation at Dec 12, 2012.

So it was no surprise, when I slipped out of my tent at night, to see a wee UFO light bubble, dancing along the horizon, like the sing-a-long dot in the Aeroplane Jelly add.

It had been a great day with the ‘croppies’, having had a picnic in one huge circle, after a photographic session using long poles, as choppers and ultra lights photographed from above. The Silent Circle cafe bookshop, the world’s one and only crop circle base station, was the scene of a hour or two’s chat with Charles, croppie prince, and we could only conclude, that the veils keeping humanity asleep, are looking like being torn asunder, real soon. Bear in mind, the 2012 Mayan agenda, says 2012 is the year earth’s consciousness shifts form a ‘one world’  global perspective, to a galactic perspective, suggesting we then join in a bigger community, and todate, the Mayan projections have been without fault.

The incredible SHOUTING messages from above, are seemingly being ignored, as local traffic simply goes to work, down roads alongside the amazing new circles, without batting an eyelid. Talk about asleep. Humanity is arguably in for some huge shocks ahead. The hypnotism that ignores the truth, across mystic, medicinal, archaeological, and energetic paths, has a use by date. Is it 2012?

My guess, is when or if the ETs do arrive, the governments will do all they can to create fear and panic, to portray what will likely be a helping hand, as a killing claw. The years of cover up on the ET issue defy truth, and add to the list, as long as your arm, of the world’s blind denials.  Hey, if they can do what they did at 911, with impunity, they can do anything. And they are.

But bugger the asleep world, as I am wide awake, and me, I love the gifts and hints from the ET croppies, with their instant zap blasts, that bend stalks like as though they were melting plastic pipes, but with no heat, and no harm to the stalks. Seeds taken from the circles are robust and vigorous fathers. The circles themselves are beautifully charged, literally, and are a lovely place to have a picnic, and a little lie down, as did I.

Synchronicities has been running rampart of late, as are karmic loop lessons, as time seems to speed up. One such synchronicity turned up with immaculate conception, leading me immediately from crop circles and Neolithic megaliths, to the greenie, alternate, liberal, healers home, of Brighton, where the Peer may have burned down twice, but the town is alive with hip insight. And just as one thing leads to another, I walked back into the life of my long lost flatmate George, Georgeous to be complete, who had, like the wise and the alert, made her way into a clean life, of fun loving service, sweeping me along into new worlds of life force nutrition, in a whole new menu of raw food antics,  that makes TV chef Jamie Oliver look positively stuffy. I could learn from George, George could learn from me. And given our propensity to automatic fire jokes and quips, we had a right regular laugh.

In the background, the Times ran photos and newly revealed storied on the world’s shameful turning away from the massacre of Tamils by the Sri Lankan government, under the convenient Bush era excuse, of rebranding freedom fighters as terrorists. 20,000 were massacred.  Triple the official line. That was double the Iraq 2 year total, and 5 times the comparable period in Afghanistan, or smack war deaths.

The Sri Lankans mowed down the surrendering leaders with automatic fire, clean and clear into the group holding white flags. Doctors in field camps pleading with the Red Cross to have the shelling of the hospitals stopped, saw the coordinates used to shell the dead and bleeding, 2 hours after the pleas were made. They rounded up pinned civilians on a beach, and killed them at a rate of 1000 a day, breaking all international agreements that disallow overhead, shard shattering munitions to be directed at hapless civilians in ragged tents on a sand spit. The human rights abusers all got together at the UN the next week, to sanction the Sri Lankans crimes against humanity. So much for the UN being there to protect humanity. The UN should be disbanded forthwith: it’s a disgrace, and a sham, some say, me being one. After the world wept when the Tsunami killed thousands in Sri Lanka, no one batted an eyelid when the Tamil massacre made Afghanistan look peaceful. Peaceniks, deluded by the Obama myth, have in 2009, dropped their cause, in the absurd belief that Obama means peace, even after he just doubled the attack forces in Afghanistan.

On the other side of the duality, I met filmmaker Nikki Williams who has been working on the Time of the Sixth Sun, who like me, has been tracking the shifting consciousness towards the seemingly tidal shift near 2012. Her work reveals the thinking of the world’s best writers, shamans and teachers, mine is more a personal spiritual comedy. Let’s face it, the Rapture could be fun for all the family, if everyone just lightens up a bit. This cosmic gig is as much a comedy as it is a drama, given the understanding of the instant, replay relief of reincarnation, coupled to the likely Luna Park ride ahead. Hey, from my viewpoint, it’s time to get out of the rat’s exercise wheel, and onto the merrier go around.  Besides, word has it that we all get free upgrades in the cosmic game: in   next big match. 6 billion have turned up for the grand final. There won’t be crowds like this around forever, if the male fertility rates keep dropping through the floor. And given the seemingly dramatic drop in fertility, through a range of fake oestrogens and poisons in your cool aid water, is infertility really such a bad way to reduce our population from 6 to 2 billion, without bloodshed? But we are at peak load population right now, and some freaks like me, reckon all our karmic reincarnation contracts,  contain, access all areas, backstage passes, a place, where, ahead, as on the stage above, so too will it be in the mosh pit below. It will rock.

London, in 1975, had a notable song. I recall it coming through the ceiling speaker of Sainsbury’s, as I filled my shopping trolley, via Capitol Radio.

The opening line was, “God Save the Queen, its a Fascist Regime”, sung in rather non dulcet tones, by one, Sid Vicious, of the Sex Pistols.

The album was called “Never mind the Bollocks”. Idiot coppers deemed the word, ‘Bollocks’, an obscenity, and confiscated the first releases, hitting headlines everywhere, and creating massive sell-outs.

My arrival in London, after several decades away, came on and Abbey Road album cover, picture perfect, 28degree, sunny day. London looked beautiful, in its springtime greens. It was not the same funky London I had lived in the mid 70′s. Just of Church St, Kensington, not far from the murdered Di’s palace, was where I had onced lived in romantic blur of a 20 year olds romance. The street where I lived, was then full of meagre Morris, and rusted Bedford vans, and on return, it was wall to wall with black Aston Martins and Mercs. The plunderers had made a motza in London in the last 15 years, and it was on show everywhere. Money for one beer in 2009 would have bought 7 or 8 in 1975. London was a lot more sober, wired, and flash.

Where London was awash with radical street fashion in 1975, in 2009, corporate fashion muscle wiped the soul of London fashion away like a deodorised kitchen chemical. Gone were all but a tiny residue of truly hip, out there looks. In 1975, 30 or 40 Kombis and their owners lived permanently on the street outside Australia house, in a live in motor mart for travellers like me, breezing it in at “Europe on $10 day”. 100 bucks is tight these days. Parking in London is now a matter for the pay to play elite. So arriving by motorbike suddenly made a lot of sense, and a space for a car would cost more than a hotel room, in most countries I had just visited.

In the 70s’ coppers were armed with a mere baton, and a helpful attitude. In 2009,  London coppers wear flak jackets whilst on traffic patrol, and the street guys have sub machine guns, and looks on their faces, like they would like to unload a magazine or two into anyone daring the stare them down. Like me.

Whereas in NYC, with tens of thousands homeless on the streets, the British, to their eternal shame, have made begging illegal, in a rich get richer, the poor get the picture scenario, complete with posters imploring the public, not to give a beggar a penny. British have a way of covering up their infections, like mascara over a one inch deep boil. Making conversation with bright young girl, forced to sleep under bridges, through her tears, it became apparent how desperate life in London could become, when they fine you for begging: as if you could find money for a fine before food. Homeless, under this rule have one option left: crime. Besides, British jail has cable TV and a warm bed.

British press as a general rule are at the lowest of world standards, and highest on the world ranking of trivial judgmental gossip.

Meanwhile the demonic symbology just evades everyone’s senses, plastered all over the architecture of the church, parliament, bureaucracy and royal palaces of world’s number one Iluminati base station. Distracted by Da Vinci kiddie grade understanding, the public never dig deeper, to wonder what is behind the ‘Sum-of-the-Aryan symbology, the serpent/dragon residues of the Draco, Draconian, and Dracula sources and sorcery, that is the unbelieved truth behind the ruling agendas, deep into history.

I dropped in the House of Commons, the people’s court, via a series of machine gun and sharp shooter gun emplacements, complete with anti tank technology, in a general understanding that there is nothing in the peoples parliament, that is really about us the people. Hundreds of surveillance cameras recorded my every move, and a rate per head, of 340 shots for every man woman and child, in UK, each day.

Inside the debating room, as in all Westminster Parliaments, no one was listening. Maybe 10 of the 600 odd parliamentarians were in attendance. No one even cares, that the antiquated parliament, has seating that can squeeze in just over 400 members, while there are over 600 elected members. After two weeks in the UK, the usual manipulation of the fall of Gordon Brown’s government was well underway, just as planned, with the crisis in MP’s being sacked, resigning or withering under a hammering from expenses related exposes, in readiness for the Iluminati’s next version of 33 degree Mason, Blair, in his all smiling Tory equivalent. The Tory’s are not elected yet, but you could bet anyone’s mortgage drowned house, that it will happen.

The pommes are a sickly looking lot, having had a traditional diet that would kill a lab full of fat rats, and this added to the UK’s chemical crisis, where the water itself, direct from the streams, is polluted with prosac, which when coupled to the centre aisles of Tesco, selling evil processed food, to traffic delayed and time short shoppers, and you have a big mess on your hand. The government, of course, through its own dedication to pumping chemicals and Govt approved deadly food and cosmetic poisons onto the people, are as complicit in the mass murder of their population as anyone. So it was no wonder some waffling MP, on the floor or Parliament, was making a speech to no one other than some dosing parliamentary butlers, and a handful of tourists behind the glass wall, like me, about the growing stroke problems. The speech lamented the fact that stroke and cardiovascular disease was now rampart in the UK, more so than anywhere in Europe, and the figures were on the rise like the bankruptcy rate. And that was just heart disease, costing the community 7 billion quid a year. That’s before, or course the other scourge, cancer, was accounted for, attacking 1 in 2 men, up from 1 in 30 or 40, 50 years ago. Some freak once wrote, that in the last days, disease will be rampant. No one seems to notice, degenerative disease is beyond plague proportions. But ads of the eternally young, in advertising and TV images of  the British, ignore the deeply personal truths, and we just accept the new ways to die, as a regular part of life.

Motoring around London, under do-as-the-GPS-says ease, is quite fun, in a bike courier kind of way. Harrods was a treat for non shoppers like me.There is not a thing I need, or for that matter, could fit on a bike already loaded like a Lancaster before a bombing run, so, given freedom from wanton desire, Harrods presented a chance to see, feel and touch all sorts of design and manufacturing excellence. I had no idea what a rack of slowly spinning tubes was for, but hey, I don’t have a dozen automatic watches I need to keep wound up by walking. So why not buy a cabinet to wind them? I had no idea there was such huge range or watches available over the counter at $300,000 a piece. How fun. I tell ya, it’s getting tough and competitive to be rich these days. Just when you think you have made it, by blowing $30,000 on a gold Rolex, some fuca turns up to lunch, 10 minutes late, according to his $300,000 watch.

Golfers can get cool, by aquiring a mini Hummer style golf buggy, just in case the bunkers get real.

And they had a real wooden horse, not one of those cheap fibreglass ones, as a saddler and polo outfitters accessory. The poor fucas working in the perma-perfume of the entry areas of Harrods…if they only knew how carcinogenic that blur of smell really is. It’s just as well they sell cosmetics along with perfumes, as the tox’d sales assistants need every bit of makeup they can muster, to cover up their work induced toxicity. Just like air hostesses…getting the equivalent of 5 full body Xray radiation scans, every long haul flight. There ain’t enough atmosphere at 30,000 feet, to keep out the radiation , that pieces a planes shell like air.

Heading out of London, on a sunny Friday afternoon, it seemed only logical to do the super yuppie thing, and go via the Park Lane BMW service centre, on the way for a smashing weekend in the Cotswolds. Oxford, cute pubs, charmed B&B’s and my favourite human here in Europe, Anoesjka,  my most reincarnated, beautiful, repeat offending partner, who was flying in from Holland for the weekend. Like all BMW service centres, time stress is the main ingredient, but having all day, I waited around the cafes and yard hands of Battersea, in pursuit of that $10 part, the one that stops the back break jamming closing, and throwing me under a truck. In Oxford, the evening before riding to Birmingham Anoesjka at Birmingham airport, I camped in the most overprized, overrated and only campsite in Oxford, where nearly dead British grey nomads but the grey into campervan, sit and rot retirement. The poor Brits, they really have overindulged, and underexposed themselves, to the point where retirement is a series of failing health episodes, and excitement in the Tesco shopping aisles on a battery powered, wheel chair trolley.

The pub to drink at, for and old rower’s private school boy like me, is the Head of The River Pub, close to the finish lines of Oxford vs Cambridge duals. In my day, Head of the River races were closer to, Give Me Head, of the River, after the em-blazer’d, boater adorned, drunken lads were allowed an annual liberty or two, with the new thing booze, in the car parks alongside the rowing races. Messy.

And at Oxford, a day after the private school boys had slugged down the champagne bottles, after their last exam, the waterside pub was more about recovery that recidivism.

The gorgeous Anoesjka arrived in the very worst of British weather, and after being ripped off by the ever deceptive marketing practises of the new UK, paying a night out for 60 minutes in the car park, we made our way onto the grey, wet blur of the UK motorways, pulling into to dry our shoes in Stratford on Avon, where Shakespeare  once put his boots under the electric hand dryers of  the riverside pub. As the weekend clouds parted, the green laneways, and ridiculously quaint and pretty villages of the Cotswolds, made a weekend two-up by BM’ kinda fun, with quaint pubs by night, and cosy Bed and Breakfast lofts for lazy sleep ins. Every time I catch up with Anoeskja, (maybe soon Dr Timmermans, PHD) it’s an ever increasing story of acquired wisdom, and joyful family,  ranging across all fields of politics, food, athletics and spiritual growth. What a star.

May the relationship rock on through a few dozen more intertwined lifetimes.

Birmingham is pretty grim city, but it is home to the cutest, most colourful hostel I have yet seen, and who cares what is happening outside, when Birminham Backpackers in going off inside.

But Ireland calls, if for no other reason, than this: I’ve never been there.

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