Report from the Grand Tribunal of Stonehenge: Ars Magica UK convention 2010

OK, it’s all over. I am just working out how many hours went in to organising  it all: at least 70, as the Cheltenham con is not part of a larger event, so I end up doing pretty much everything. Still it was worth it just to meet some lovely folks, and spend a weekend dedicated to one of my favourite roleplaying games.

For anyone reading this who does not really know me well, Ars Magica is a roleplaying game set in 13th century Europe, as it was believed to be. Dragons live in the mountains, wizards study in lonely towers, and faeries haunt the forests. It’s not a computer game — it is a game played like Dungeons & Dragons by people with pencils, paper and funny shaped dice.  This was the fourth annual Ars Magica convention here in the UK; I ran the first two, Neil and Sheila ran last years in Cambridge and will host the event in 2011, and there have been three now in the US as well, held the same weekend. This was the largest so far: a total of 37 people being at at least some of the event, though not all were gamers, a few were guests or friends dropping in to say hi!

Woodcut of the freeform players by Pitt Murmann

The venue is great, and usually very busy with community events and classes, so we were lucky to get it for a whole day and Sunday morning.

We opened on Friday with a very cheap meal at the Happy Garden restaurant, a local Chinese. It was great to gather 24 people together and just chat, and enjoy relaxing. For the Norwegian contingent  it was probably a much needed rest. Of course the day started much earlier for me and Becky, dashing around meeting delegates, and doing all kinds of preparation work — but that’s what happens when you host!

After the meal we made our way to The Cotswolds Pub where David Sivier gave an excellent paper on Fairy Beliefs in the 13th century & beyond. I learned quite a bit – I was not aware that changelings did not appear till the 16th century – up till then the fairies just left a wooden image in the place of kidnapped folks. The bit about the bloke who interrupted the fairy attempt to steal his wife and kept the captured wooden simulacra they had planned to leave as a useful bit of furniture made me laugh! I noted a number of similarities in the narratives with my recent work on poltergeists, and others had many questions for David who came all the way from Bristol to give the talk. Thanks Dave, and a belated happy birthday mate! (Same day as mine, the 23rd August). I was too tired to say much,a nd fighting sleep – because I was exhausted, but I hope Dave posts it somewhere on the web!

After that people just chatted or played card or board games – it was one o clock before people departed for their digs, even Lisa (who does not game) staying till the end, and I got home to find a problem with both my keyboard and printer, so much later before I finally managed to grab some much needed sleep. The gas was off: we have had a few leaks in the street recently – and it was morning before I could grab a quick wash and run down to open up the venue, Gas Green community centre. It’s a great venue, with two generous sized halls, a few rooms upstairs and a kitchen area, and served our needs well.

The guests were rather late this year, despite good weather; we were due to begin games at ten, but it took till eleven fr most people to gather, so we proceeded straight to the freeform, Puck’s Dell. I had worked rather frantically to complete this in time, and while it ended up with 23 players rather thn the planned 25, it was I think a success. Well at least most of the feedback I got was very positive. The sight of 20+ people dressed up running around scheming, dealing, plotting and manipulating each other was really entertaining, though as I was the only referee I was rather busy, and utterly exhausted by the end, where many true identities became apparent – think of it as As You Like It meets Ars Magica and you get the atmosphere and a rough sense of what it was about.  It is impossible to single out any one player, but it was amazing how Andrew O. composed an eight line song and melody (with help from Taryn) and got everyone to perform it while also trying to get his non-existent covenfolk (recently changed back from mice) to meet the many demands of magi and companions, and I think Nick Galaxy was absolutely amazing as Lugh the Apprentice!  Lloyd however was disappointed that his character the priest Father Gerard did not get to conduct any marriages, a fact given the plot I find astonishing, but then again he did not get to conduct any funerals – the only “death” was Sir Pharisee, turned in to a collection of sticks and flowers.  Barrie looked awesome as Geron, and Black Tom was also a lot of fun to watch scheming. However really I saw very little of the game; though the fireworks between Kirstie and Andrew Sceats characters at the end was really fun!

Freeform game at Grand Tribunal 2010

For those who don’t know what a freeform is: it’s a bit like a huge murder mystery game, where everyone is given a character sheet with what they know about their characters and then has objectives to meet. It is hard to explain, and for a lot of our players was the first time they had tried it, but they really got in to it,and Daniel Vandenburg and Ivan really worked hard making tabards and stuff, and were excellent fun throughout.

Anyhow, after the freeform I was utterly exhausted, but it was straight in to games. Tom Nowell ran a mystery playtest, the first of three over the weekend, for Atlas Games by special permission of line Editor David Chart, with the players signing Non-Disclosure Agreements.  This was part of a book still “in production” for Ars Magica, so I can’t say anything at all about the session (or the other two) but hopefully the feedback provided will prove useful for the authors.

Meanwhile Becky and  I played Leif Olav Josang’s The Unquiet Grave,  a wonderfully written game for grogs, with elements of low humour and high adventure, set in 13th century York (which happens to be where our Tuesday night saga is also set). Its a great adventure, possibly the best I have played for Ars Magica, highly recommended. Leif should publish it on the Special Ops Atlas Games site or in the Sub Rosa fanzine. Becky had never played Ars Magica before, and had only roleplayed twice, but she enjoyed herself too.

At the same time Nick Galaxy ran the entire Fourth Crusade, including the sieges of Zara and Constantinople, in just four hours.   only caught glimpses of it, but it looked great, and I heard the row between the Doge Dandolo and Boniface and things seemed to pan out as they did historically, except Zara surrendered and was spared sacking. I wish I could have played that as well; but we had to reshuffle time slots, so I missed out. I must ask Nick to let me see the character sheets though, because it looked like an incredible game, and because I am one of the authors of the latest Ars Magica supplement The Sundered Eagle which covers Constantinople and the Tribunal of Thebes, and indeed wrote the “modern” history bit.

The Sundered Eagle - out soon!

I’m going to have to speed up or this will be immensely long; the evening saw only one game run, as Lloyd wanted more time to prep hs mystery playtest. I think a boardgame was played, but I wandered off to get food, letting Tom Nowell take my place in Andrew Sceats’  The Archmage is Busy; he had just run a session and I felt he ought to be allowed to play because he could not make the Sunday morning.  I think it was run with 3rd edition rules, and apparently it was a fantastic scenario – maybe someone can write a review, without too many spoilers as I hope to play it in the future?

I got to relax a bit in the evening and chat freeforms with Mark Steedman, games with the Mark S and Ars writing with Mark Lawford.  Then it was home fr a much needed shower, and last minute prep for Sunday! The Author’s panel featured Neil, Sheila Mark Lawford and myself, and we read a message from David Chart where many forthcoming releases were discussed or hinted at – but no we can’t tell you, yoiu had to be there! Thanks to Lloyd, Mark S and Andrew O. we managed  link up with Caifornia, and chatted to folks at the Grand Tribiunal US event briefly before we lost connection I think, but that was fun too, and the raffles raised £187 for our three charities, which was amazing.

Sunday opened promptly, and all the remaining delegates (bar Sheila who was off to church) were in a game; well Becky watched mine. Two were Mystery Playtests, one run by Kev Sides, one by Lloyd so I can’t say anything about them as they are covered by the NDA. I myself ran Twilight Fades - a very unusual Ars Magica game, in that it was set in Summer 2010 with four bored eleven year olds banned from TV and trying to find something to do in a  rural Suffolk village – but by the end it was classic Ars Magica, kinda, sorta! I really enjoyed running it – excellent performances all round, Barrie James and Barry Cowden were hilarious, Mark Lawford somehow kept them moving and was the sensible one but a pleasure to play with, and Daniel Vandenberg’s Matilda was priceless –  “I want to be a Ballerina!” Well soon she was a ballista – not quite what she had in mind!

And then it was one o clock, all too soon, and time for everyone to go home. Not that everyone did – for many it was straight down to Wetherspoons for the Flying Ship Design contest! I had to pop up to meet JK at the Queen’s Hotel, but caught them later, and that evening was treated to a lovely birthday lunch by Leif, Karl and anders before they set off home for Norway in the morning.

Despite being utterly exhausted I enjoyed a wonderful weekend, and will do it all again in 2012! next year Neil and Sheila are hosting again, and I hope to make it, finances permitting.

So how did it go? Really well I think. I was shattered for my birthday on Monday – but we had fun, and what was noticeable this year was how much the emphasis was on grogs and non-magi characters. Puck’s Dell has Grogs, Nobles, Magi, Apprentices, Magical People/Faeries and Covenfolk as the five types of character – I hope all were equally fun to play. Twilight Fades, The Archmage is Busy and The Unquiet Grave all emphasized grogs. It just goes to show what you can do with the Ars Magica setting, even without your magus in the limelight, and how much potential troupe play has.

Apologies to anyone I have not name-checked in this brief run through — it was lovely to meet you all. I have to dash, but see you all again in 2012. Next year Neil and Sheila are hosting again, in Cambridge, as part of the Consternation con.

cj x

Grand Tribunal is held by kind permission of Atlas Games. “Grand Tribunal” and the “Grand Tribunal” logo are trademarks of Trident, Inc. d/b/a Atlas Games, used with permission.

Dying by inches?: Understanding our NHS as it is now.

OK, today has seen a fascinating (frightening?)  White Paper, which looks like completely changing our NHS. I am probably going to talk a lot about back-door privatisation and the threat to our health system, but I thought I would actually read the White Paper first, and as always I encourage others to check the facts for themselves, rather than relying on media spin or what bloggers have to say. So I hope once you have had a look at my little piece you will actually look at the proposals for yourself.

So why am I bothering to blog on the subject at all? Because a sense of proper outrage generally requires one to have some idea what you are talking about, and unsurprisingly most end users of the National Health Service  have absolutely no idea how it is organised or run. So what I am going to present here, courtesy of the notes of Lisa Langood and my own thinking, is a quick guide to the  organisation as it stands, so that when you read about the reforms you fully understand what is being suggested, and what is there already to be changed. I am sure this may count as the most boring thing I have ever written in many people’s eyes, but hell, I think it’s important. This is a rare thing, a CJ/Lisa Langood co-written piece, though Lisa is at work and does not know I have used her notes!

The National Health Service (henceforth NHS) came in to existence in England with the National Health Service Act of 1946, forever linked with Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan who fought to establish the service in a very limited time frame against initial opposition from large parts of the medical establishment (but mainly the GP’s who were at that time private practitioners You wanted a doctor, you paid for it, or went to a charity hospital). The Scottish NHS was brought in to existence by the National Health Service Act (Scotland) 1947, and after 1967 Wales came to organise its own NHS which became autonomous of the NHS England. Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland (HSC) has many similarities, but its structure is sufficiently different that I will not discuss it here at all. I will focus primarily on the NHS in England, with differences in the Welsh and Scottish mentioned passing.

Figure 1. The Structure of the NHS – from Junior Doctor's Guide to the NHS (NHS, 2009)

OK, look complicated? I will briefly run through what each bit does…

The Department of Health

The overall responsibility for the NHS in terms of planning what it needs to do and meeting statutory requirements (making sure it obeys the law) and government policy is the Department of Health, a large Civil Service organisation, which deals with advising, formulating and implementing government policy and directives on matters of Health. The Department of Health is headed by the NHS Chief Executive, supported by the Chief Medical Officer, who advises the government on medical issues and public health policy and the Permanent Secretary, a civil servant who manages the Department of Health. A number of doctors are appointed to senior positions, acting as civil servants and serving successive governments. These include the Chief Medical Officer already mentioned, the NHS Medical Director, the Director General Research and Development and the Director of Medical Education.

Some government ministerial positions involve a role in the Department of Health, changing with each election as parties appoint their candidates to the roles. These are the Secretary of State for Health, who is a Cabinet member, and include the Minister of State for Health Services, Minister of State for Public Health, the Minister of State for Care Services, and the Parliamentary Under Secretary for Health Services. A Departmental Board of highly qualified individuals provides oversight, but the Department of Health’s main role is the implementation of legislation and creating of policy, as well as oversight of the Strategic Health Authorities. (see below).

Summary: The Department of Health consists of civil servants and politicians advised by high ranking doctors who set policy in line with the Government objectives. So this is the department of Government who has proposed the changes in line with Cameron’s vision for the NHS, a sone might expect and is their duty.

Strategic Health Authorities

There are ten Strategic Health Authorities (SHA’s) in England.  These regional bodies are tasked with oversight of performance of local NHS Trusts (but not Foundation Trusts, both explained in a minute!) and implementing national policies and directives at a local level, as well as ensuring that the correct decisions are made at regional level, taking in to account the different local context. So rather than have specialist care in every regional hospital, certain regional centres specialise – Frenchay in the Southwest for example for head and spine injuries. With a key objective of improving performance and staff development, (and checking all staff are properly trained to the required standards) they form a middle tier of authority between the Department of Health and the local Trusts.

“Created by the Government in 2002 to manage the local NHS on behalf of the Secretary of State, there were originally 28 SHAs. On 1 July 2006, this number was reduced to 10.” – from the Office of the Strategic Health Authorities Website (http://www.osha.nhs.uk/)

The ten SHA’s established in 2006 are (1) NNS East of England, (2) NHS East Midlands, (3) NHS London, (4) NHS North East, (5) NHS North West, (6) NHS South Central, (7) NHS South East Coast, (8) NHS South West, (9) NHS West Midlands and (10) NHS Yorkshire and the Humber. Gloucestershire NHS Trust is within the NHS Southwest Strategic Health Authority region.

Figure 2. The Ten SHA's in England after 2006 from wikicommons

Primary Care Trusts

There are currently (2009) 152 Primary Care Trusts (PCT’s) in NHS England, which answer to their regional SHA; before  October 2006 there were 303, but the number was reduced for efficiency purposes and to redraw boundaries to match those of many local authorities.

A Primary Care Trust is a commissioning body, whose purpose is to ensure local health needs are met in  accordance with the targets and objectives set by the regional SHA, and each Trust has a smaller area which it is responsible for. PCTs manage their own budgets and set their own targets and strategies, in line with the directives from their SHA and the Department of Health. They are responsible for commissioning the provision of the full range of health services . These include hospitals, mental health services, ambulances and paramedic services, GP practices, opticians, community pharmacies, dentists etc. (McCay & Jonas, 2009)  They commission smaller NHS Trusts such as a Hospital Trust (see below) or from the private sector to meet these needs, and are responsible for allocating 80% of the NHS budget. (McCay & Jonas, 2009)

NHS Trusts & NHS Foundation Trusts

Within the area of a Primary Care Trust there will be a number of individual NHS Trusts, which are commissioned to provide one type of service to the region. These generally cover one area, such as a Hospital or Hospitals (Acute) , Mental Health, Ambulance and paramedic services, or Community Health Services such as district visiting, health visiting etc. There are two special kinds of Trust – Care Trusts, which are multi-agency task forces which only exist as partnerships between health and social care providers in a region, ensuring both services work fully together to provide a unified care plan. The second are Children’s Trusts which were created under the Children’s Act 2004, which again are multi-agency Trusts working to bring Education, Social Services and Health care provision together to address cases. (McCay & Jonas, 2009)

A Trust is managed by a board, often of eleven members, who provide direction, monitor performance, deals with the financial integrity and management of the Trust. Trust boards usually have a number of non-executive directors who may not be form a medical background but who bring other expertise or the public’s voice to the meetings, which are also open to the interested public if any wish to attend. Trusts have a legal requirement to break even financially, meet specified quality standards and meet other SHA targets.

A Foundation Trust is a newer initiative from the old New Labour government, designed to give increased local autonomy to the Trust.  Since 2005 Trusts who have met certain levels of financial and other target success are able to apply for Foundation status, which exempts them from SHA and Monitor control, and allows them to “run their own financial house”. They are able to set local wages and conditions, borrow money to meet short term needs under certain statutory limitations and  to manage how they meet targets and performance benchmarks in their own way, as long as they meet  the somewhat higher financial and quality control goal posts. They are regulated directly by a supervisory board called the Monitor which reports directly to Parliament. The aim is for all trusts to move towards Foundation Trust status, but as of August 2009 the number achieving this was 122 (the Reforms announced today will make ALL Trusts Foundation Trusts by 2013.)

A special type of Foundation Trust is the Foundation Trust equivalent, (FTe), all of which are specialist psychiatric trusts such as the one that covers Rampton Hospital for the Criminally Insane. They are still regulated by the SHA, but the Secretary of State has a personal remit to review cases and provide oversight to problems arising here.

Primary Care Providers

This group, often the first point of contact for patients, are businesses who work within the NHS structure but are privately owned and managed in accordance with legislation. They include GP’s surgeries, NHS dentists, optometrists, community pharmacies, etc. They are still subject to Primary Care Trust supervision and must work within constraints and parameters laid out to meet patient needs. It is for example not just possible to open a new pharmacy, especially in a rural area which may already have dispensers attached to a local GP’s surgery, but the new pharmacy must meet certain requirements to ensure it meets a perceived need in the neighbourhood and is properly run by a fully qualified pharmacist. Receipts, prescriptions and payments from the PCT and the constant supervision of the latter body mean that these primary care providers work closely alongside the licensing PCT in support of the local plan, at least in theory.  Also working in this area are Voluntary and Charitable groups and Social Enterprises who meet specific needs but work closely with the PCT to fulfil the overall health needs of the area.

Lisa wrote in 2009 “The NHS structures have evolved over time, with the creation of the NHS Trusts replacing the older Health Authorities and the introduction of SHA’s being major changes. Alan Milburn’s 2002 creation of Foundation Trusts, which came in to effect in 2005 have sparked considerable controversy, with opponents claiming that the setting up of the monitor and allowing them to stand outside the existing NHS plans of the Department of Health and SHA’s is a stealth move towards privatisation.  More importantly some claim this removes the cohesiveness of the National/Regional/Local plan, and reduces SHA’s ability to draw upon needed resources and create a regionally effective structure. Some of the heaviest criticisms have been directed at the financial targets which it is claimed may lead trusts to specialise in cost effective and profitable health care options, leaving expensive but necessary services underfunded and pushed out to other providers. As with any complex management structure there are obvious issues when the various Trusts and commissioned Primary providers must engage in multi-agency work, such as in the case of children with severe mental health, family and  educational problems, and even within the NHS structure different trusts must create working guidelines for how to share information and responsibility on specific cases, while maintaining client confidentiality and abiding the  provisions of the Data Protection Act.

Any multi agency approach runs the risk of the “somebody else’s problem” issue, where the relevant organisations and individuals assume that the needs are being addressed elsewhere, but do not check that  this is actually occurring. Faced with busy case loads and many issues it has frequently occurred in the past as we see from many high profile cases which eventually became newspaper tragedies, where a lack of coordination led to unfortunate oversights. Communication between the parties involved is absolutely key. Many health care  authorities are working to create regional multi-agency teams to deal with exactly this sort of case, but this has led to new challenges.  For example, when one steps outside of sole practice and works as a team, where does accountability lie?  Who is ultimately responsible for the decisions taken by the team?  Some GP’s are already concerned about the professional repercussions of decisions made by multi-agency teams they comprise part of, and the GMC has issued guidelines -  http://www.gmc-uk.org/guidance/current/library/accountability_in_multi_teams.asp

These problems can plague the attempts for various Health Care Providers to provide a unified and consistent approach to a problem.”

So what is actually changing?

I still need to read the White Paper properly, but the Strategic Health Authorities and Primary Care Trusts are being abolished. So everything will devolve to local level, and the GP’s will be asked to form consortiums instead to run the local areas doing the work of the now defunct PCT. For this they are being granted an £80 billion pound budget, and the provision of services currently provided by the Primary Care Trusts will pass to the GP Consortiums. Overall responsibility for Public Health campaigns and services passes to the  Local Authorities (by which one assumes county and town councils, and hence one might cynically assume, our Council Tax bills). ALL NHS Trusts are to become Foundation Trusts by 2013. To allow this to occur the current caps on Trusts taking on fee paying private patients are to be lifted, and Trusts which fail to achieve profitability and go bankrupt will be allowed to go under, not be bailed out. (So yes, hospitals can now go bust and be closed down, if they fail to break even.)

I am unsure if the new GP consortiums will consist of solely NHS employed doctors, or include GP’s in the private practices that treat NHS patients and are paid by the NHS for providing that service currently by the PCT’s. If the latter, it means that the doctors consortiums will be able to award contracts to their own practices, set their own fees etc, etc? I really need to read this paper! I’ll write more once i have properly read and digested it in a future post.

Anyway I appreciate this has been a bit dull (understatement I guess!) but hopefully if you took the time it read it you have a little more idea of the background, and a better understanding of the news coverage of the NHS reforms announced today.

cj x

Wheelchairs, brothels and community spirit!

OK, it seems like forever since I last wrote. I stopped blogging during the election, and it has proved hard to start up again, but I suppose I will slowly get back in to it. Part of the reason is I have been so incredibly busy with the old lady down my street who I have long been friends with; we now go for an hour long walk every evening, and her cup of tea every night takes another hour, with frequent visits during the day eating up  my spare time.  She’s lovely but the endless phone calls as she has become forgetful do drive me mad! Still I guess this is part of the “big community” we hear so much about — I’m lucky enough to live in a street where people are very friendly, (yes, that includes very much the really nice folks from the brothel that used to be down the road till the big police raid a couple of years back — not that I ever twigged it was a brothel till the police kicked the door in, and I lived next door to it!), and spend a lot of time talking to one another and helping one another out.

Actually thinking of the brothel, or massage parlour or whatever it was in reality reminds me of the one night I nearly realised what was going on, or should have done. A chap in a wheelchair knocked on my door, and when I answered appeared to try to be asking me to sleep with him. He had a mild speech impairment that made communication difficult, and I was very polite, simply assuring him “I was not that kind of girl.” (I’m not any kind of girl actually, I’m a bloke.)  He remained quite insistent, and then I realised he wanted sexual favours from someone else, not me. I became rather confused and a little embarrassed, till he suddenly realised he had the wrong house  number. That was a relief! I should have referred him to the woman at Lloyds Pharmacy who covered Lisa and others holiday or sickness when she was a Dispenser there — she was unfortunately entitled a “Relief Dispenser”, and that was what this chap claimed to want!  Anyway the brothel is long gone, and life here has returned to what passes for normal in this ironically named street.

The whole brothel affair was brought to mind a few minutes ago when I was walking Chris in her wheelchair down the road. We parked in the shade of the garages to talk to Tina, and then a lady from a letting firm drove up, a pretty blonde girl.  So naturally I had to wander over to chat to her a minute, as the residents of the street interrogate any one we see walking past (more on this soon). I asked her if the house was still for rent, and she said no, it had just been let — “to a lovely couple of working girls”. I must have looked shocked, because she blushed and said “I mean professional women”… That did not make it any better, and we both burst out laughing, and then she said I knew what she meant — “women professionals”, and laughed more and apologised and said she knew all about the brothel raid! Nice lass, very friendly, as letting agents tend to be.  She assured us if we had any problems with the new people in the street we could complain to her — and I was mildly amused, and said “why on earth would we do that?”   To which she replied – it’s that kind of street!  Er, OK.

Life in the street progresses at the usual slow pace; we have all been worried about one of my neighbours cats, a beautiful fluffy black Persian that looks like a walking bush with two glowing orange eyes when she sees my cats and fluffs up. She was fitting on Friday, and it was touch and go, but after veterinary intervention, some shots and a considerable bill she is now seemingly fine – let’s hope she stays that way, she is a lovely beastie.  Yet I wonder how many people in the UK would know about the current state of health of their next door neighbour but sixes cat???

So let me get back to what started all this. I’m busy with work, Becky, and lots of other things — but I have to stop and think about the “Big Community” idea that is currently so fashionable in Cameron’s rhetoric. Obviously I like living like this — or I would not do it — but would you??? It’s an honest question. I like it, but it drives me mad. In a sense I have spent much of my life “growing up in public” — I never valued my privacy much, and much of what I do (though not all) is well known to many people. I’m a chatty, outgoing, open kind of guy. I think a lot of you think you know me and what goes on in my life pretty well for that reason (though I think I could still surprise even those closest to me at times!).   I know what “big communities” are like — and I know the pitfalls.

Firstly, I’m an amateur. What I do for Chris can not replace the dedicated health professionals — doctors, nurses, opticians, pharmacists, and the lovely NHS carers who come round four times a day to look after her. I can’t heal my neighbours cat — she needs a vet for that. I can’t look after the street lights, make sure the water supply is clean, or mend a broken boiler or chimney. Community activism and volunteering supplements but does not replace the need for dedicated professional services, and never will, unless we return to a very small economy and near subsistence living.  Even medieval villagers were not as self-sufficient and isolated as people often think.   A “big community” can do something to make life better, but it does not replace the need for social services and properly trained professionals.  Secondly, while the voluntary sector with superbly run organisations – we all know the Red Cross, Age Concern, The Samaritans, the RSPCA, NSPCC, etc, etc, which perform such incredibly valuable work in our society — can take up some public services and perform them very well, these organisations still need funding. More importantly, they need committed, hard working volunteers. And sure, twenty years ago I knew loads of people who did this kind of work — but in fact that is getting harder and harder to achieve. People on JSA or HB are seriously penalised if they spend too much time working in the voluntary sector – because they are limited to working less than is it ten or sixteen hours now, or face losing their benefits? The Benefits people look askance at volunteers – if you can work for the PDSA or British Heart Foundation shop, why are you not getting a proper paid job they ask?  So many volunteers are those who own their own homes, have an income from another source, or have well paid partners.  When I was an undergrad Student Community Action was a popular way to help others and get some stuff on your CV – nowadays its muh harder, and as Student Grants were replaced by Student Loans the number of volunteers diminished as students who previously were leading tea dances or doing gardens in run down parts of town were suddenly forced to do a MacJob to pay their way. Not necessarily a bad thing — but we saw a contraction of the voluntary sector, as economic realities hit home.

Next up, it might sound idyllic living with great neighbours who look out for you and always stop to talk or ask you in, but is it really?  Everyone in the street knows who Becky is, who Lisa is, and what my latest situation is at any given time. I can do almost NOTHING without becoming the centre of gossip for a week! I don’t mind, but you can absolutely forget privacy – DC, Kevin, Tom and Dave Sivier are all known by name and reputation and what they are up to equally to many of my neighbours, but they are just casual visitors to my home. In how many streets are passers by stopped and chatted to and quizzed about heir business? (the Brothel customers used to often walk round the block several times before ringing the door bell, because they were too embarrassed to walk up to the door while half the street was outside chatting, drinking tea and coffee on door steps or playing with cats or whatever…)  In how many streets would a letting agent come to do something at a house be interrogated by people from the street, and feel she had to offer assurances?

And that is what it’s like. Forget privacy, forget coming home after a long day and just watching the telly. I have a constant stream of visitors and telephone calls, a hundred demands upon my time.  Most of today has been spent on talking to neighbours, taking the wheelchair out, talking to Tom who popped round and making calls for people or just chatting on the street. I had a day fairly free – and while I had some work to do, and have spent more time on this post, I can promise you it can be a little tiring. I think a lot of people who bemoan the loss of community forget how claustrophobic the world I live in, a world that really is best represented by EastEnders or Coronation Street where everyone knows everyone’s business and everything becomes a cause for public discussion, is.  Fall out with someone here, and thank heavens I never have, and your life could soon become almost intolerable. I think it’s really quite intimidating for people like my new Polish neighbours, who are talked at whenever they walk to their house, and find themselves the subjects of intense scrutiny, or for the young married couples down the street who don’t know the history of the various households, or unwritten “customary law” and “traditions” of the road I have spent the last five years learning.   You park in the wrong place, like the poor actress who rented a house the Christmas before last for a few weeks while she worked the panto season, and face the consequences. She was unloading her baggage to move in  the house, and had a group of neighbours asking who she was, why her car was there, and shouting at her because she had parked in a spot outside their window. I went out and tried to help her, and managed to find out she was becoming a resident, but then I became the subject of some of the hostility – she only managed a few days before she moved on I think.  God help those who try and park their cars down here to go shopping: the roads nature pretty much precludes that though, as it is so narrow. Parking your car an inch too far across and impeding others access and you immediately incur a lynch mob…

Still it’s a wonderful place to live, and I want to reiterate that. If you are a private person like Lisa, or are used to the anonymity of a suburban semi, I’m sure it could be hell on earth. Communities are people, and big communities mean you have a lot more people in your life. I think Andrew Oakley would enjoy it here — I certainly do — but for those whose lives are shaped by privacy, neighbours who may nod in passing, and a comfortable retreat in to their own homes, this could be a future vision of Britain they are not keen to see come to fruition…

cj x

Living with the ‘Enemy’ – the Epistemological Acid Test

I don’t mean Lisa, I mean my internet activities.

I just saw a friend has joined a Liberal Christian forum on Facebook, and it has brought to mind a few thoughts on what many people think is a rather perverse feature of my personality; given that I am a religious and ‘paranormal’ believer, with fairly strong beliefs that I express freely, why do I spend most of my on-line existence in atheist and sceptic sites?

Well firstly, as I have pointed out for many years now, I don’t see there being a dichotomy between ‘believers’ and ‘sceptics’. The opposite of belief is disbelief: often a leap of faith in itself, and an opinion. Yet the notion of ‘belief’ and ‘disbelief’ is pretty meaningless unless we understand the context in which it is being employed. I know hard atheists who believe in life after death, hard Christians who have no belief at all in angels, and hard-core mediums who think psychic powers are bunk. If you are confused by any of those statements, just ask for clarification, but I think we can all accept that a believer in werewolves may or may not believe in ghosts, and a believer in a God may or may not believe in fairies.

Some atheist friends often remind me of all the gods I purportedly do not believe in (and then I like to argue henotheism awhile for fun!);  yet often they seem to fail to apply the opposite notion — a disbeliever in deities (god/dess/es) may or may not disbelieve in all kinds of other things.  There are plenty of virulent atheist spiritualists out there; and mediums seem pretty equally split on whether they do or don’t believe in reincarnation. Some of us may still believe in the Tooth Fairy; some may believe in Santa Claus, and some may believe Ipswich Town FC are a first-rate club. There is no necessary relationship between those beliefs.

The terms disbelief and belief are opinions on a specific issue: context is all important.

I see Scepticism as something very different – a process of understanding, by which one questions assumptions and truth claims critically. The sceptic may or may not believe in deities, ghosts or the Easter Bunny – that is an outcome of their enquiry, not scepticism in itself. One is a method, one a conclusion – the two should never be confused. As such one can believe sceptics believing in almost any hypothesis, given a limited set of data from which to draw their conclusions.

So scepticism is never enough – with scepticism must go work, research, and an attempt to apply the methodology objectively to as much pertinent data as possible.  Any methodology applied to insufficient data will result in worthless results: sceptics must make an effort to make an informed and reasoned case, and that unfortunately is often a lot of hard work. Given the differing access to the evidence, it is unsurprising that sceptics often sharply disagree in their conclusions. Yet ultimately is hard for me to see any difference between a sceptical approach and a rationalist-empiricist synthesis scientific one.  It’s almost impossible to define the scientific method, as long-term readers will appreciate, but scepticism comes pretty close. One critically examines claims, by a variety of methodologies – much as in the humanities actually.

So I regard myself as a process sceptic. I like to examine beliefs, including (especially) my own, and try to see if they stand up:and the acid test for doing this is surely in dialogue with those who have very different readings of the evidence, and hold very different opinions? One of the beliefs I hold is that “linguistic communities” who hold similar beliefs build them in to a way of interpreting reality in line with their paradigm — magicians learn to talk magic, Wiccans wicca, Atheists atheism and Hindus Hinduism, and by adopting certain linguistic ways of rendering or negotiating their lived experience they create a feed back loop that sustains and strengthens their pre-existing beliefs.

I’ll give the example I always give. Many years ago the Christian Union had booked a coach for an outing. The coach broke down, and by midday it was clear we could not get a replacement bus. I thought the bus had broken down owing to a mechanical fault: but I saw two divergent opinions arise among the Christians sitting around waiting for news. Some saw this as an attack by the devil: little imps had engaged us in spiritual warfare, and we were facing the opposition of the Evil One. Others, mindful that the devil has no power over God’s children, saw it as a sign from God – we were meant to stay and witness on this glorious sunny day to the heathens at the university, rather than take a coach to the sea-side. My comment on the bus probably being badly maintained and this being the cause of us being stuck there was passed over without any comment: yes that was the cause, but not the meaning of the events.  Fair enough – what was fascinating to me was how this rather dismal outcome was negotiated in terms of existing theological and language structures to affirm Christian beliefs. It all felt a bit “heads I win, tails you lose to me” but of course if you believe that God is sovereign over all and intimately concerned with our lives that makes perfect sense: I accept the theology, but don’t process things that way, I have not spent enough time in Christian communities to interpret on those lines.

It’s easy to take cheap shots at Christians: I can imagine some of my dear atheist mates laughing heartily at this. Yet atheist communities, paranormalist communities, Lib Dem communities and for all I know Country Music fans do very similar things. They build consensus modes of interpretation, filters if you like, and they view the world through those lenses. Challenge the assumptions, and you may be ostracised, or ignored. In-group ways of seeing prevail:  it takes a lot to upset them, because they are learned short-cuts for dealing with reality. Some one who has been unemployed a very long time will view the world radically differently from a bank manager, or office worker – but the difference between a Wiccan, a Spiritualist and an Atheist may be even stronger, as they have learned to read reality from utterly different perspectives. To a materialist the notion of a meaning beyond the cause of the coach breakdown is just silly.  A spiritualist may find the idea of ESP bonkers: they knew stuff because a spirit told them, not because they psychically read Uncle Joes’ mind.

In fact we defend our communities beliefs passionately:  we are annoyed when people question the common sense right to love as you will, live as you will, work as you will, in line with our concepts of what is right and proper. We form communities with like-minded people, and we pat each other metaphorically on the back, and only fight to establish OUR version of the party line. A fight between Anglicans is likely to be more heated than a row between a Baptist and an Atheist – the closer the conceptual closeness, the more the heresy hurts.

So maybe that is why I hang out on atheist sites: I am too annoyed by my fellow Christians to want to spend much time discussing with them, as they say things that challenge my own reading of Christianity, and I am too cowardly to defend and fight for my interpretation. Or more positively, because I see the value in learning a completely disparate mode of interpretation, so I read every communities I cans stuff, and try to self identify with te concerns and ways -of-seeing of that group, and engage in playful guerilla ontology, forcing them to question assumptions by mere existence at the party.

I don’t know: maybe I am just perverse, after all. I do know though that as a self-proclaimed sceptic it never does any harm to open yourself to other perspectives, and to listen to others.

cj x

CJ goes to the cinema: ‘Paranormal Activity’

I don’t often go to the cinema – in my whole life I have seen eight films there. The Wizard of Oz (got scared and had to be taken out), Excalibur, Ghostbusters, Mississippi Burning, Dracula, the first Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings part one – The Fellowship of the Ring, Tombraider 2 – where I screamed and Lisa swore she would never go to the cinema with me again! That’s it, every film I have ever seen in my whole life at the cinema, until last night, when I went with Becky to see a film called Paranormal Activity.

I have watched about the same number of films on TV, and maybe the same again on DVD (including Star Wars, The Magnificent Seven, Battleship Potemkin, Oktober, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Producers (original version, never seen the new one) and Dr Strangelove. I have enjoyed all these films, and maybe I should watch more; but I acknowledge that many people watch more films in a month than I have seen in my entire life, so I may be the worst person in the world to review films. However compared with the other films I have seen, let’s get one thing straight — Paranormal Activity, the film I saw last night–was not very good. Or was it? I can’t make my mind up!

So what is the film? It’s pretty simple in concept – hand-held camera home movie of a couple experiencing paranormal activity. The two main characters are called Micah and Katie, a young couple who live in a house I think near LA.  Katie experienced “paranormal activity” in her childhood home aged 8, then later at age 13 – though we learn very little about the second bout of activity. Micah is I think a “day trader”, which I assume is some kind of depraved bloodsucking capitalist vampire, or is that a “day walker?” On seeing their house my first thought was people this rich deserve to be haunted, I hope they spontaneously combust. That may just be me though…  Actually in many ways the house was a star of the film – I wonder if it belongs to one of the cast? It has that kind of homely feel, and would certainly meet the overall theme of the film. It was almost an exploration of what could be, a house’s neuroses. It was anew house, like the Barnwood poltergeist case I investigated in 95 – it had a very authentic feel in that respect. A weaker film would have used an old house – this was a film which deals with the kind of noises in the night any new tenant has to face. I hope that was the writer’s intentions, because if it was he did a great job.

The plot, in as far as there is one, reads like something I would research or Becky would be studying for her PhD (which in case anyone does not know is on a replication of an 1894 Society for Psychical Research survey). Given we both are active in spontaneous case investigation, and both watched the film from that parapsychological perspective,  our perspectives may be warped.

So I’m going to look at the film briefly on a number of levels..

Firstly as a film. It did not move me, certainly did not scare me, it made me laugh out loud a number of times, but in a nice laughing-with-not-at kind of way – Micah Sloat (yes he is actually called Micah, and Katie is played by Katie Featherstone) has some fantastic lines, and both characters are likable and believable. The ending was a bit naff, but overall the film tried for the ambiguity of the classic ghost story – it came closer than most to The Turn of the Screw in this respect, and Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw is the best you can get. I would have ended thsi film a minute earlier, with them just going downstairs after Katie screams – the final shot was really not needed. Still, full marks that the house did not blow up, the thing was never seen, remain an eldritch horror lurking off camera, and I will say the script by Oren Peli shows huge promise.

Was there a script? I should say “idea by Oren Peli” (I hope I got his name right, I tried to remember the actors and writer) because you get the idea that much of this was improvised – it’s the most natural dialogue I have seen since Alan Partridge stayed in a Travelodge outside Norwich, and actually that is really a serious compliment.

It works, and works well. A way in I suddenly whispered to Becky – Dogme 95, and i think she though I was mad, if she heard me. Dogme 95 was a manifesto I associate with Danish genius Lars von Trier (anyone seen Riget? Not Dogme 95, but brilliant – watch the series! ) Hand held camera, classic unity time and place, no budget, shot in colour with natural lighting – all there. This may ironically be the most commercially successful Dogme manifesto  film ever – I’m just not sure if that was intentional, and Peili was aiming for that, or he just hit upon the same formula because it works so well for this kind of film.  Oddly it seems far closer to Dogme 95 type films that to say it’s obvious parallel, The Blair Witch Project.  I tried to sit through a video of  Blair Witch once, mainly cos I knew a Cumbrian Witch called Jo Blair and thought it funny, but this film was better. Artistically, intellectually, creatively, an excellent film.

Emotional response; same as any review of a spontaneous case video; more interesting than the hours I have spent watching footage from locked off cameras waiting for the ghost not to show, but at least in those cases it was real. This being fiction made the tedium less acceptable, even if I just had to watch the edited highlights.  This made Most Haunted Live look exciting: in fact it made sitting “backstage” at Most Haunted Live chatting to Phil Whyman and David Wells look like a hot night out.   I was tired and if cinemas were more comfortable might have fallen asleep on Becky’s shoulder, as it was I ate a large bag of popcorn and was mildly entertained. Maybe some people are scared by this film — if so I suggest they do not attempt a career in paranormal TV, or spontaneous case investigation.  I was personally more scared by the Muppets take Manhattan.

I was however drawn to Micah’s character – he reacts EXACTLY as I have on occasion – when folks were calling out “is there anybody there?” I have done exactly what he did “What is your Quest?”, “what is your favourite colour?” The Monty Python quip is an obvious one, and the mix of humour and suspense is good throughout, but I laughed a little too loud as I recognised something of myself, not least the absolute frustration that drives Micah to try and make stuff happen, and Katie’s resistance and just wanting the phenomena to go away – the central paradox of psychical research of this type, the people experiencing it want it to end, the investigators want to see more. The film captures that paradox nicely, framing it in the young couples reactions. There is probably something also about the voyeuristic male gaze – why men like porn and pictures, women relationships here, but I won’t explore that lest this become a nightmare essay. Oddly the film does not seem voyeuristic or an intrusion on intimacy to me, but then I was viewing it from the perspective of someone interested in the phenomena, not the relationship – this may be an unusual way to read the film and one my own odd perspective brings ot it. I’ll have to read some reviews later see how others not in this line of work see it.

Now let’s look at it with my “work” hat on. This comes closer to being what the kind of cases i have looked at in reality are actually like than any other film or TV adaptation I have seen. It feels authentic. The psychic was beautifully understated, and the phenomena were entirely believable. I found myself wishing I had a dictaphone to record the rumbling bumping noises and apply Barrie Colvin’s ideas on sound analysis of poltergeist cases h discussed at the recent SPR Study Day on Poltergeists to the sounds, which were disturbing – was infrasound used? Dunno! Only the ouija board scene seemed over the top to me – the recovery of the misplaced photograph was beautifully shot, and i keep trying to recall where I have come across that motif before, as I think through real pyrogeist cases from the literature. It seemed familiar. I thought the footprints of the thing seemed to be like those of a giant chicken – again something I think I have seen in have seen in the literature.

A couple of missed opportunities – having the bead clothes form a simulacra, whole body of face only is in keeping with the reported cases in the literature, I think Amherst, and of course M.R.James fictional Oh Whistle I’ll And Come To You My Lad, and an apparition of a rabbit or white animal, or a talking mongoose called Gef would have added to my pleasure. Actually if there has been a parrot in a cage I think that might have freaked me out and made me think this was a documentary after all, but I won’t explain that just yet – you get the idea I have found pet parrots involved in a rather a lot of poltergeist cases, why I know not! Unlike say Ghostbusters there were no knowing nods to the psychical research literature – and that was good, Katie and Micah are not normal people eschewing (strongly in the case of Micah) so-called “expert” involvement. Again, full marks for authenticity.

Now let’s talk Demons. Yes I know, another Sunday night in with CJ.

In the film the phenomena is interpreted not as RSPK (Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis, or a common or garden lesser spotted Poltergeist to you and I) but as demonic, or perhaps to be more accurate daemonic activity.  Actually, nah, let’s face it it was a demon. (A daemon is just a discarnate intelligence – angels, demons fairies, elementals, whatever other psychical bogeyman can be found on a Theosophophist’s shopping list really.)  This was a demon – you know one of them satanic, malign, malevolent, evil, insidious beasticles which most cultures have in their cultural history. This is mildly disturbing, but mirrors something going on in real life.

When I first got in to the ghost business my Christian beliefs made me often feel a bit of an outsider – sure in the UK we have the Church Fellowship for Psychical And Spiritual Studies etc, and David Sivier and David Carter-Green. However Ed and Lorraine Warren, demonologists who see paranormal activity through the lens of the demonic were a peculiarly American, and I thought distinctly non-mainstream fringe. However, just as in the UK Most Haunted brought Spiritualism and spontaneous case investigation back together, and made the use of psychics fashionable (at least I’d be playing around with Gertrude Schmeidler’s ideas on Quantitative Assesment of a Haunted House for a good decade before that, and knew the pitfalls) in the USA demonology is now huge.

Ironically, given that I am famous (in some circles) for saying “if it acts like a demon, bites like a demon, stinks like a demon it’s a demon” I’m a bit disturbed by all this It’s not far from the idea that all paranormal event are demonic to seeing them rooted in people’s sins; the victim is once again victimised. Exorcism kills – you know my friend I wanted you to know that, because I am deadly serious.  While the churches on the whole have been careful, circumspect and intelligent in requiring psychiatric, medical and natural explanations to be considered, there are now crowds of amateur US ghosthunters who see demons behind every rosebush, in C.S. Lewis’ memorable phrase. This film eschews the spiritualist “dead guy” interpretation of the poltergeist (the shade of Professor Ian Stevenson is no doubt annoyed) and equally rejects the “nervous break down outside the head” living agent hypothesis (and for once, the shade of D Scott Rogo shakes his head glumly in agreement with Stevenson’s spirit.) I am tempted to say it’s like William Roll never happened; it’s actually more like Roll, Gauld, Cornell, Cassirer, and all modern parapsychology never happened.  Come ot think of it it’s like the whole 18th century never happened – we are stuck in that milieu Shakespeare lived in, just after the Reformation: ghosts might not be visitors from Purgatory,  but instead ‘that damned mole’ may just be a demon masquerading as your father on the battlements of Elsinore Castle.

I have some sympathy with the theology and the analysis, but the ramifications and craziness that may follow as amateur ghosthunters throw away their EMF meters (ya!) and pick up crucifix and holy water terrify me.  And i mean that – as I said to Jeff Belanger on the phone earlier this year, this can only end in a tragedy.   Guys leave the spiritual forces to the devout ministers of God – we really can dabble in things we don’t understand (a point the film makes, through the psychic who is far wiser and more mature than the reality of dealing with such often leads me to expect. Astonishingly for an American film it also avoids religious symbolism, crucifixes, pious cant and much of the craziness – perhaps it’s a Jewish ghost – actually, Oren, Micah, I may be right, and if so I’m glad?)

So all in all, what did I think? I’m glad I saw it;  a clever, well shot, intelligent film, not remotely scary but highly enjoyable, with a great cast, marred a little by the Blair Witch style opening and closing “it’s all real” credits. I look forward to seeing more of the actors – Micah Sloat is outstanding, and Oren Peli will doubtless go on to great things, and deserves an even better house than the one used in the film, or to buy that one if it does not belong to one of the cast! Katie Featherstone was very good too I think, and I could completely forget it was a film at times, suspend disbelief an actually get interested in the case.

But it won’t scare you, unless you a bigger wuss than even me, a noted self confessed coward who was terrified by and screamed out loud to Lisa’s horror…

cj x

Christmas Shopping, CJ Style

Bah Humbug! OK, I have to accept that now it’s December people are going to talk about Christmas. Unlike Lisa I love Christmas – and as her birthday is three days before and no one is ever available to go out or do anything for that reason, I can see why she is not keen on it. I have favourite Christmas Songs – I think Greg Lake’s I Believe In Father Christmas (Youtube: contains sound) is my favourite, which will surprise nobody.  Still having to listen to them every time I leave the house is enough to kill anyone. If I had the money buy a copy of Lou Reed’s album Berlin and Pink Floyd’s The Wall just to cheer myself up. (Incidentally if you don’t know those records, don’t try this at home. I mean it folks!)

So we are back to that time of year when I have to listen to all the bollocks about the pagan origins of Christmas from people who think QI is a reputable source on second and third century Roman Festivals – yes I like Stephen Fry, but he dislikes Christianity intensely and lets his prejudices show occasionally. I will blog on this later, I can’t be bothered today, but anyone mentioning the word Mithras round me may end up brutally slain, unless they can actually come uo with some hard evidence, or indeed any evidence, other than the generations of pseuds who misread Cumont. OK, rant over.

Yet I still like Christmas. Admittedly, and Greg Lake excepted, because he did it with wry humour, I can’t stand to be told again “Christmas is too commercial”.  In the first case, sure, I agree, but what are you going to do about it? Live a life of monastic austerity through the whole season and refuse to step outside the door? Stop sending cards? (or perhaps in my case, start?) Become a Jehovah’s Witness? Or if already one, avoid every shop in town? I admire the JW’s courage in avoiding Christmas sometimes, even if  think their reason – that Christmas has pagan origins- is a complete nonsense historically.  I know! I know – take a flame thrower to Marks & Spencers and blow up Tesco?! I guess my problem with people who think Christmas is too commercialized is that they lack courage in their convictions – we can all resent it maybe, and yearn for something simpler, but have you actually tried it?

The Simple Non-Commercial Christmas As It Really Is

Flashback a few years: on the way back to Suffolk for Christmas, Christmas Eve. Hugh driving, and Lisa has decided to come with us, but Liz (now Jake) remained behind.  It’s in the days when we lived at Pete’s. About twelve miles out of town Lisa gets really ill – she had been feeling bad before we left – so we turn back, and Hugh drops us off. We wander in, to find the freezer has broken down sometime in days before I presume, and in the hour or so we have been gone it has leaked all over the floor. Not that we actually had any food, we were planning to go to my family for Christmas. Hugh got back safely to Exning, and  at about eleven on Christmas Eve I went out in search of food. I somehow talked a pizza shop manager who was juts closing up in to giving me a big discount, opening up, and cooking. Given my sob story his heart must have melted – anyway we got a lot of pizza. And we ate it that night, and as I recall Christmas Day, sitting around a house with just an electric fire for heat while Lisa lay in bed ill, watching the rain hit the window. I even overslept and I missed church. On Boxing Day I braved the couple of miles walk to Sainsburys-on-the-edge-of-forever as they were open, bought a load of shopping, and in the absence of buses trekked back. It sleeted and rained, freezing me, and I became really ill and was miserably unwell over New Year, as was Lisa. We did not have any presents (they we gave were in the back of Hugh”s car and Hugh dropped them off) we had precious little money, no decorations, no heating and almost no food as most shops closed.  So I have done the simple noncommercial Christmas, and I would not wish it on a banker. It’s a romantic ideal – so is dying young of tuberculosis, which to be fair may well feature in this Christmas plan. Seriously, forget it.  Campaign to get a bylaw passed banning Christmas window displays before December 1st by all means, and feel free to moan at Christmas shoppers, but unless you are going to start blowing up Santa’s Grottoes or holding hunger strikes against it, I’m just going to out whinge you. Because I can… you think you can do bleak and cynical? Hell I’m like the lovechild of Leonard Cohen and Charlie Brooker. Oh no, sorry, that’s Lisa…

What Christmas is Really About

Anyhow where was I? Oh yes, full of festive jollity! Actually one more whinge – people who say “people forget what Christmas is really about”. Usually this is followed by “it’s for the kids” or “it’s a time for sharing” or sightly more accurate “it’s remembering the birth of Jesus”. Actually Christmas is about whatever you want it to be about. Ronald Hutton’s superb Stations of the Sun will give you a good overview of the last few centuries of history of the festival in England, and it’s a fascinating story. There may well be other books which deal even better with the pre-Reformation Christmas — if anyone has one, I’d like to read it. Obviously it’s a religious festival, with a clear Christian context – but that does not mean that people should not celebrate it however they want, and indeed many folk of other faiths which acknowledge Jesus in some role do mark it, but even devout atheists should have a good and enjoyable Christmas season, even if they must call it Winterval or Festimas or whatever. Hey, just, eat drink and be merry, I doubt the Archbishop’s secret police are going to kick your door in for sacrilegious consumption and exchange of gifts without proper theological license. Though if Rowan Williams does I want to be there to see it! I know some atheists seems to believe the CofE wants nothing more than the godless roasting on an open fire but it’s a bit nippy for open air barbecues and would you really want a slice of Dawkins with Cranberry sauce? I’ll stick to the turkey.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams - not Santa Claus, us Anglicans don't ask children to sit on our knees.

Anyway, woke up this morning to a rejection letter – always a good start to the day, only two weeks after the interview, a triumph of good administration that – actually pretty typical of the wretched state of British universities, but hey anyway – so I decided to go out and as the rent has gone out and I have paid the bills I thought I’d take the little  I had left and get my chicken kebab.

It is NOT the Thought That Counts

Except then as I stood on the High Street under the Christmas Lights a wonderful thought hit me, and it came as a stunning revelation – “it’s almost Christmas!” Somehow I had sort of failed to take this on board, so I realised I must do shopping.   OK I’m lousy at cards, if anyone has ever received one from me frame it, it might be worth a lot of money, but I do usually buy my family and friends little presents. And boy are they little – my shopping budget is rather sparse. Still I try, even if not really convinced it is the thought that counts. I know when presented with a pullover which does not fit or something which doe not work I say that, but I’m not sure if I actually mean it or not? I think I may do.

So with that in mind, to any of my friends and family, let it be known that this year I have Thought long and hard about all the wonderful presents I want to buy you. As I no longer have any money left that is all I am going to do though. I hope you appreciate my Thought,and it counts, and if you don’t like it parcel it up, send it back, and i’ll send a replacement Thought ( –like “what an ungrateful bastard.” )

Oh and just in case anyone was thinking that I might like to count on a Thought myself for Christmas this year – actually, I am rather overrun with thoughts right now. I have so much thought I am often lost in it -please don’t send me any more. Just money would be nice, or better still non-fiction books on almost anything, or roleplaying game products (Sartar Kingdom of Heroes anyone?), from http://www.leisuregames.com, or blondes in Christmas stockings tied up with a nice ribbon.  But please, please, please — no more thoughts — I have plenty!

So What Went Wrong With CJ’s Christmas Shopping?

So I was standing there on Cheltenham High Street, suddenly struck by the Christmas lights (not literally or I would sue Cheltenham Borough Council and be a lot richer), with a tenner in my pocket, thinking I needed to buy Christmas presents.  OK, a tenner might have not gone far, but still – what happened? Er, I spent it. On myself. Yeah I know.

I went in to Banardo’s charity shop to get out of the cold, and inevitably I bought books.  Erasmus wrote “When I get a little money I buy books; if any is left I buy food and clothes”. Oh too true, too true! Still at least Tiny Tim will benefit – it is hard not to think of the orphans at Christmas, yes? For a tenner I got a copoy of The Book of Common Prayer, The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, Trolley Wars: The Battle of the Supermarkets, Chorley & Smart’s Leading Cases in the Law of Banking and finally NASA’s Selected Documents in the History of the US Civil Space Program, Volume III: Using Space – hence covering a number fo my interests. I’m sure i’ll still scrape around to buy my parents and friends something but if you planned to buy me something, then previous jokes aside, please don’t!

Christmas Shopping for CJ

Instead go to a charity shop, and spend that money buying yourself something you really want, so that the charity benefits, and you benefit, and I’m happy that I did not leave you out, even though I could not afford to buy you anything. Christmas is a hard time when you have  little, and I really can’t afford to buy people much this year, there are so many of you, so I hope you understand. This is the best solution.

So I wish you a Merry Christmas, and will sign off with the lyrics of Greg Lake - do buy a download of  his song if you can –

I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave New Year
All anguish pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear
They said there’ll be snow at Christmas
They said there’ll be peace on Earth
Hallelujah! Noel! Be it Heaven or Hell
The Christmas you get you deserve.

cj x

Religion is NOT a mental illness

OK, a word of explanation. Lisa was doing a pharmacy paper on this subject, and I thought I’d do my version, using some of her notes and stuff. See what you think!

The argument that religious belief is a form of delusion is a common one. In psychiatric terms it is not correct; DSM IV clearly states that this, where delusions are stated not to include ‘articles of religious faith’. (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 765)”

DSM IV does contain a new category of religious or spiritual problem –

“V62.89: This category can be used when the focus of clinical attention is a religious or spiritual problem. Examples include distressing experiences that involve loss or questioning of faith, problems associated with conversion to a new faith, or questioning of other spiritual values which may not necessarily be related to an organized church or religious institution. (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 685)”

This was adopted for the fourth edition. It has proven controversial – but this refers to psychiatric problems related to religious belief, not religious belief in itself. Delusions can of course take on religious aspect, and some religious beliefs may be delusional, but a standard definition of delusion,

“A delusion is a false, unshakeable idea or belief, which is out of keeping with the patient’s educational, cultural and social background; it is held with extraordinary conviction and subjective certainty” (Sims 2003)

Cultural and social background clearly excludes most ‘mainstream’ religious beliefs. A woman who believes her cat is a deity may be delusional; a man who rips out the hearts of victims to offer them to the sun god is delusional, unless he happens to be an Aztec priest of a former era, in which case arguably the definition would endorse his beliefs. Religious belief in itself is clearly not a delusion. in psychiatric terms.

Are religious people, if not delusional, still psychotic? Some have argued that the religious are neurotic, and that religions roots lay deep in personality issues ( for example, (Freud, 1939)). Others have looked for neurological and organic problems, most famously Michael Persinger with his ‘God Helmet’ experiments. These however were not double blind, and when replicated without the subject knowing if the machine was running or not or the purpose of the experiment did not work, showing suggestion at the root of the claimed results. (Granqvist 2005)

At the heart of the discussion of whether those who believe in a God are psychotic must be whether that belief, theism, is a false belief. Richard Dawkins has become famous for asserting “there is no evidence for God”, (Dawkins, 2006) but the claim is clearly untrue – many people claim to have experienced gods, and there is much evidence offered. When challenged he asserts he means “there is no scientific evidence for God”. This however is equally problematic – the basis of all modern Science is methodological naturalism –

“It is an epistemological view that is specifically concerned with practical methods for acquiring knowledge, irrespective of one’s metaphysical or religious views. It requires that hypotheses be explained and tested only by reference to natural causes and events.” From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)

As such questions of God’s existence can not be admitted as scientific questions, and no scientific evidence can be offered. Also The Problem of Induction is settled in all modern Science by Hume’s assumption (see http://18th.eserver.org/hume-enquiry.html) of a universe governed by Natural Laws which are uniform and constant, which precludes direct Divine Intervention. If a God or Goddess exists it will be invisible to Science because of the axioms underlying all Science.

Science is not the only way of understanding however – the questions “how do I feel today?”, “what caused the First World War?”, and “does my mother love me?” are meaningful but not scientific. One can quite rationally argue a proof of a Creator using modern cosmology,  (see Davies 2006, Rees 2000)  or philosophical arguments. such as the Kalam Cosmological Argument  – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam_cosmological_argument

References

American Psychiatric Association (1994) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, DSM IV. Washington: American Psychiatric Association.

Davies, P (2006) The Goldilocks Enigma, Allan Paul

Dawkins, R (2006) The God Delusion, London, Black Swan

Freud, S, (1939) Moses and Monotheism, London, Routledge.

Granqvist et al (2005) ‘Sensed presence and mystical experiences are predicted by suggestibility, not by the application of transcranial weak complex magnetic fields’ in Neuroscience Letters, 379(1), p.1-6

Persinger, MA (1983) ‘Religious and mystical experiences as artifacts of temporal lobe function: a general hypothesis. in  Journal of Perceptual and  Motor Skills. Vol 57( Pt 2):p. 1255-62.

Rees, M, (2000), Just Six Numbers : The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe, Phoenix

Sims A (2003) Symptoms in the Mind: An Introduction to Descriptive Psychopathology.3rd Edition,  Saunders.

Insomnia, Indecent Exposure & A Bad Reception

Let us start at the beginning – whatever the faults of such a strategy, there is tradition upon its side…

Once upon a time there was a boy called Christian Jensen Romer, and he almost deserved it. It was late on Wednesday night, and he was terribly excited. A book he much admired (despite reservations given Gray Barker who was heavily involved known propensity for hoaxing), The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel, had been made in to a movie. Christian was very excited; three times that day he had been reminded of the book, which in some ways is the closest thing he has ever read to his own rather bizarre ideas on ‘the paranormal’.  He was now thinking of buying the DVD, but whilst flipping through channels on TV, he found that BBC 1 was screening it at 10.45pm!

Oh joyous day! Calous, Calay! He galumphed down to his basement chortling, and posted a Facebook posting tipping people off, and settled down to watch the film. Lisa was in the house, asleep upstairs with the cats, and I watched alone. Every someone commented on my Facebook status, and I replied via my mobile, texting a comment reply.

And then it all got very weird. Suddenly a whole string of random numbers appeared on his status as a comment supposedly from him, and he pondered on what was happening. A cat on the keyboard? Stephen Atty’s suggestion was reasonable, but no cat and how did it hot the post button? That would require a mouse. It happened twice more. As far as I can make out my Facebook account is un-hacked – it’s hard to imagine any change to my details that would be funnier than the truth anyway. A long discussion develops between Parasoc Bruce and Stephen, with myself making passing comments – the film sadly bears almost no resemblance to the book, and I had by this time lost interest. I was talking to Becky about how disappointed i was by text message.Everyone agreed it must be something to do with my phone…

And it was. When Becky Smith goes quiet one knows the world has ended or the phone is not working. Furthermore this morning I was due to see Postman Ben, the man with the bleakest attitude I have ever encountered, someone who makes Marvin the Android look like an exponent of the power of positive thinking. He had asked me over for breakfast today, but when he failed to text or call to confirm I suspected something must be wrong…

The insomnia did not become apparent until 3am. Try as I could, I could not sleep. I have a few tiny revisions left to make on a manuscript I’m working on, and email to reply to, and an event I’m organising to finish arrangements for. Somehow, I could not concentrate. I was too tired to work, too awake to sleep. I watched TV till 6am – still no calls, no texts.  At 7am I decided I may as well just give up on sleep and try to work – and I then wake at half ten, confused to find I still had no calls, and no texts. What was going on? Clearly my phone reception had failed? A few ‘phone calls to Becky confirmed all calls to me where going straight to answerphone. Oh well, I was already late for my breakfast time discussion of misery with Postman Ben, so I threw some clothes on, and in that state of mild anxiety being left incommunicado usually provokes in me  hurried to catch the college bus.

I’m not sure exactly when my trousers gave up the ghost…

Now of course anyone who knows me knows that “builders bum” is a curse I inherited from my father, a very talented and clever man who for many years had a small firm of builders. I assume it’s genetic – why else would my arse so steadfastly refuse to remain properly ensconced in fabric. It is something of a joke among my friends, and a source of constant horror and shame to my girlfriends, that my trousers sometimes slip a bit, revealing not the whole of the moon but more than is generally considered fashionable if you are not an 18 year old girl prowling a nightclub like a wolf on the pull. (I like that actually – “The Assyrians came down like a wolf on the pull”). Anyhows…

SO I enjoyed my breakfast with Ben, who seemed in someways positively chirpy – misery is still his favourite word, and when I asked why he was off work he assured me it was through anal warts contracted cottaging – the truth was a chest infection, but it gives you a good idea of his general demeanour and personality. I stepped outside his house, directly opposite the uni campus, to make a call – no reception in there even if my phone was working, and I noticed a white van driver who came in giving me really funny looks. Sure I’m unshaven and scruffy – but this seemed rather direct even for that. Then I realised. My jeans had torn from almost waist to knee, and were flapping open, revealing my underwear, buttocks, and shapely legs. Now I’m not Kylie Minogue I admit – I don’t think my arse is that horrific though. Sadly the world disagrees with me.

So I panicked, ran back in, showed Ben who fell about laughing – his misery lifted as my acute embarrassment and discomfort became obvious – and in the best traditions of tabloid journalism I made my excuses and left. Now Ben’s flat is directly opposite the Park Campus, which seems to be filled with plump identikit 18 years olds with the same peroxide blonde hairdo.  I’m sure they are all lovely, and have very distinct personalities, but they are far too young and impressionable to be faced with my bare buttock – and here I was facing the Hiroshima of trouser malfunctions. Luckily I was wearing my coat…

So hurrying off my bus home, which happens to be the Uni campus bus as well, I wrapped my coat round my waist as a sort of makeshift skirt. Now I’m unshaven, unkempt and feeling rough – and after I asked some students where the bus stop was these days, I am horrified to notice there reaction. Yes I look like a stereotypical flasher! At any moment people probably assumed I was going to throw open my caot/skirt, revealing my shortcomings to the world… Luckily in a few seconds a bus arrived, and clutching desperately at my coat I jumped on, showed my ticket and sat down. Students were now joined by a young mother with children who eyed me warily, and a host of little old ladies all of whom appeared to be looking at me oddly and giggling. Still, the bus stops just a minutes walk from home – almost safe!

Except…

I had caught the number 10, which dropped me straight in the middle of town, a town it seemed populated entirely by pretty female office workers enjoying their lunch who looked at my strange shambling figure desperately clutching a coat around me with obvious suspicion. I made it down a couple of streets, and then thought “I know! I’ll call someone on my mobile, and seem to be  normal and unconcerened!” So I phoned Becky, who seemed thoroughly unimpressed as I had phoned her not long before. So I remembered Lisa was on lunch-break, and called her, but she was having a bad day, 15 minutes late for lunch and in a foul mood – I ended that call just as quickly.

I have rarely been so relieved to pass through the arch in to Normal Terrace. I bumped in to Chris as I came in, and I think she is still recovering from laughing at me after I showed her why I was holding my coat like that.

Oh well, at least my other phone works now I have transferred the sim. I have had better days though.

cj x

CJ crashes his bike: a blackly comic end to his cycling days? or a murder plot failed? :)

OK, I’m a bit too hot, after nearly an hour in the sun. I also seem to have a lot of road on me, and grease all over my hands. Most annoyingly, I have a bicycle that sounds like Einsturzende Neubauten (did I spell that right?) in concert when I even push it down the road which is all I am likely to be doing with it for the foreseeable. If I try and ride it it sounds like Sooty & Sweep meets the Velvet Underground crossed with Stockhausen on amphetamines. Still apart from that, a few bruises and a twisted ankle are the extent of the damage.  I can still hobble about, for which the world can be grateful or callous as the mood takes them. So what happened?

I have no idea. The facts are simple. Took bike out for spin. Notice odd clanking. Get off bike, look, not much wrong, apart from my back brake cable has been taken out – that requires considerable force, but could have happened I guess somehow. My front brake is fine. I turn for home, and noise gets worse, but luckily I’m almost outside Paul Wheeldon’s flat. I decide to wander in and see if he has a moment and any tools, and to see if I can fix it, at least reconnect the back brake. I say hi to Paul’s landlord, a nice chap, and then park my bike by the kitchen window (in the yard) and knock. No reply. I curse my luck! I knock louder, still no reply, so finally remembering Paul is at the back of the house i try the door, and finding it open wander in. Him or Rob might be asleep, but with a spoon I can always fix it. I don’t normally burgle people’s  houses! Then I hear someone out back, so I shout “Paul, yahoo, it’s CJ!” And he appears, looking like I have just shot him. Maybe he thought I was a very cheerful homicidal maniac come to slay him in his bed, or in true Mayor Quimby style his bed was actually filled with sexy young interns? Or maybe he really was juts trying to prepare his pub quiz for tonight, and could not be disturbed.  He explained politely, but in that manner people have when flustered by unexpectedly being visited by people they really do not want to see right now that he was really busy and I’d have to go. I looked around for a spoon or something, but he did not seem very amenable to any further discussion, just kept repeating “you have to go I’m busy” so I left. And then things got worse.

I’d hurt my foot wearing some shoes which are not utterly disgraceful when I went to Dudley on Friday – the wrath of Becky is far worse than sore feet – and my left foot must be bigger than my right, for it currently has plasters on – so I was limping a little. I climbed on the bike, and gingerly set off up the road, when three things happened at once – firstly a car came down the (dead end to traffic) street far too fast, on my side of the road as people are parked on the other.  Secondly my back wheel suddenly stopped turning, and then as the wheel left the ground as I put the front brake on, came off my bike entirely. I’d like to say it went rolling down the road in a cinematic manner – in fact it just seems to have fallen over on the spot, being already stationary.  I leapt left, in to a wall, entirely unnecessarily as the oncoming driver stopped, and I believe nearly died of apoplexy laughing at the sight of my ungainly impact with the road. Well actually I think it was quite graceful? Who knows. Of course I land on my bad foot and twist my ankle…

OK, so just superficial bruising, and a twisted ankle. If it had happened on the Tewkesbury Road could have been fatal, but it didn’t, it happened at really slow speed in an alley.   I now stood up, and found that my back wheel had come entirely off – the noise was caused by the nuts working free. Someone must have loosened them? That and the back brake not being attached led to the rather odd crash. Never had anything like that happen before! For a paranoid second I wondered if someone was trying to kill me. I keep my bike in the living room, and I never ever leave it unsupervised outside – I don’t even carry a lock nowadays. I just use it for pleasure jaunts. It has no panniers, and it’s hard to ride with shopping balanced on the handlebars. If I leave it at Richard’s while i go to TESCO he stands and frets over it like a mother hen guarding her young.   If it was sabotaged it was done in the house – but who would have any reason to kill CJ? Not Lisa for sure! She has access at work to far better methods anyway.

So a homicidal visitor? A mental review does not suggest any! In fact, I am totally puzzled. Yet there is one prime suspect.  A young lady, from Somerset, who has a known history of sabotage…

I have an exercise bike here. Occasionally we ride on it – I used to use it a bit till one day it fell apart under me. Lisa had exactly the same experience.  We tighten the bolts, and yet it falls apart as soon as we are riding. And one day we found out how.

The young lady, who is two years old, has uncanny strength in her paws. Hansine, a small tabby cat is also a gremlin with an amazing ability to destroy things. Unlike other cats he does not just chew them – she undoes them, with her paws. She has no malicious intent – she just plays with any loose nut, working at it till the object in question falls apart. I don’t believe she could have disconnected the brakes, but if a nut was loose, she would have amused herself for ages unscrewing it. I would not believe a word of this, had we not witnessed repeatedly her sabotaging the exercise bike.  So is she trying to kill me? Nope. But if there is a prime suspect, well Hansine is it. (NB: My cats are rather dangerous. I recently had to inform Cuddles he was not Corgi registered when he started to get very interested in the gas pipes.)

Part cat, part gremlin? Hansine the Feline Assassin?

Well I got too hot standing on that blasted road. I would normally have wheeled the bits of my bike back to Paul’s, but he was VERY busy and quite insistent. So I wandered home, having reattached the back wheel after a titanic struggle in which I discovered the British public has an amazing capacity for telling you what you know and stating the obvious “wheel come off?”, “you got  a problem with the bike?” and one girl who nervously said “do you live round here?” Yes, of course. I live just opposite. That’s why I’m standing by the side of the road sweltering covered in grease with a dismantled bicycle. I thought it so much more fun than repairing it with tools in the privacy of my own garden! One cheerful bearded fellow offered to help, but that was just as I finally got the wheel on and the forks bent back enough to actually wheel it home, and coast the last few triumphant yards down the alley where I live, bring Tina out to see what the noise was. Maybe she thought a scrap iron merchant pulling a wagon load of metal with a boneshaker, or the Angel of the Millennium heralding the Last Trump. Whatever she thought was drowned out in the cacophony of my triumphant arrival back!

Anyway enough. I’m going to the pub. I know I don’t drink, but hell, I think I might tonight. I won’t be repairing the bike in my perilous current financial state for  a month or two, but I might ask DC over to have a look. For now, I’m just glad to be in one piece!

cj x

5,000 visits!

Just glanced at the hits counter on the blog and it has reached 5,000 visits to the blog.  When I hit 2,000 we had a celebration of sorts – so I guess 5,000 needs marking as well! So a little celebratory wittering about my recent activities seems in order!

The blog has changed in character a little in recent weeks – other commitments have kept me from posting regularly, and when I do post it has been more personal CJ stuff about my day to day activities, and less of my lengthy essays on science, religion and parapsychology.  I certainly will be blogging on those subjects again, and I have a whole new series to try out – I’m going to interview a number of people, some of whom readers of the blog may know, but all of whom have achieved eminence in their fields.  The People: series will start soon, and will cover many of the unlikely and fun folks I know from the worlds of Science, Media, Games and History. Amusingly some of the people I have approached to interview actually seem quite flattered — and none have refused to date!

So what else is going on? I have pretty much quit the Richard Dawkins forum now, as I said I would, happy to let my record stand — I have made rather a lot of posts there, and I am happy that anyone who wants to can read them. I have been helping an old friend, making a lot of phone calls, and hoping some good comes out of it for him – I won’t say more – and this weekend is Lorna’s birthday, Becky is coming to visit and I will get to see Clare “Goldfish” Hatfield for the first time since my thirtieth birthday while she is in town. Been a while! Lisa is up to her neck in nationality paperwork, the cats are loud and demanding as always, but just as lovable, and generally “all quiet on the Western Front.”

Today was supposed to be busy with work, and a couple of hours out to go do a piece for an American ghost show. I met Dave Williams a lovely guy who gave me  a lift to where we were filming in the south of the county, but we left early to be there on time, and by the time we had finished well that has put back work a good day. I’m going to have to work like crazy tonight to catch up — so naturally I’m blogging instead.  The TV show was one of these  Most Haunted format things – I signed no NDA and can comment freely, but I will wait till after it airs before naming it, but the usual rules apply — the distinction critical to normal TV between talent (on screen) and crew (off screen)is lost, the guys filming the show are the stars of the show, and they spend a night in  a haunted location.  With Most Haunted of course (for which I was briefly a researcher for Hanrahan Media on the early Most Haunted Lives, and then later for ANTIX on the series) one of my criticisms was that the experience of the crew takes place largely in a vacuum – you see and hear little about earlier experiences, or how the claims tie in to the parapsychological literature and other cases. (OK, not always, sometimes they interview witnesses – but not much).  This show does not take that approach – I was asked about an experience about sixteen years ago, which I related to camera, and then talked a lot about the history of the area, the building, and so forth. It will be cut to a thirty second snippet if I am lucky – which reminds me of a funny story…

In 1993 I set up a psychic research group in Cheltenham. The Cheltenham Psychical Research Group to be exact, or CPRG. My then landlord Derek Newman was terribly “busy and efficient”,  and soon we had a full blown office and a seriously impressive organization. (later it all went pear shaped, but more of that another time!) Unfortunately our press releases went out to the local media on April 1st, and I’m sure some of them thought it was an April Fool’s Joke. Back in those pre-Most Haunted days ghost groups were still rare, and people used to offer to pay us to visit their properties! (For those who don’t know, some owners of reputedly haunted houses are booked solid every weekend till next year with fee paying investigators nowadays…)

Anyway a week or two later I did an interview I will never forget. It went something like this–

Journo: So you study ghost and poltergeist cases?
CJ: Well I study alleged ghost and poltergeist experiences yes.
Journo: What would you do if you were in someones haunted house and a ghost threw an axe at you?
CJ: Pray and duck! I’m pretty confident that won’t happen though. (laughing)
Journo: So can you get rid of a poltergeist?
CJ: When I start to investigate the phenomena seem to invariably end. Maybe the spooks are shy?
Journo: So how do you deal with cases?
CJ: I sit down, have a coffee with the witnesses and try to work out what they experienced, record testimony and understand the claims fully…

Next day I was less than delighted to read in the paper “Local Ghostbuster …(CJ)… says he can cure any poltergeist with prayer, optimism and a cup of coffee!”

The only good news about all the press coverage was they usually got my age wrong, making me  a couple of years older than I was. I once got in to an over-25′s night at Gas Nightclub with cheap drinks (I was 23 at the time) by waving a set of newspaper clippings giving the wrong age at the bouncers. Oh to have people believe I was under 25 today!

Anyway, back to the filming. It was ok, and it was clear sensation was the order of the day. Luckily I had quite a sensational story – nah, ok, it was interesting though. Dave had a fantastic story — I was jealous. Mine was “mildly interesting”. So I got to double up as historian.   I seemed to spend an awful lot of the day standing under a tree sheltering from the rain, and a fairly short period in a graveyard being filmed. Of course the graveyard had nothing to do with the story, but it did remind me of sitting chatting to Clare the Goldfish there, some sixteen years ago, the night Derek and Harry were “busy and important” and Dave “the Munchkin” Aukett was swallowed by blue ectoplasm. OK, he got in his blue sleeping bag, but recorded it as the former!  People were fairly bored and constantly told to write down ANYTHING that happened – which led to vigil record sheets with things like 1.06pm “fly enters room”. 1.07pm “fly buzzes Dave”.  1.08am “fly deceased.”  I ended up chatting to people, and amusingly when who was with who as vigil partners was randomly drawn ended up with the very pretty Clare for almost all the sessions – my then girlfriend Sarah was not much impressed as I recall!

Heck, I suppose in my twenty years of ghosthunting I have a lot of anecdotes  but like these ones, they really are only of interest to my friends, and the people who were there. Anyway I enjoyed the day, met a witch and talked incubi and pagan politics – not so much “Wicca  and Witchcraft” as “Bicker and Bitch-craft” – and a chap called Alan who took a photo of the building which showed a figure looking out of the window. Even while they were doing interviews stuff was happening apparently, but I was not really privy to it until I was briefly filled in by one of the three main investigators later. Nice chaps, but I never really felt I got to know them at all – us “witnesses” talked among ourselves mainly, and I spoke to the crew quite a bit – but fun all round. Many thanks to Jeff Belanger for setting it up – I really enjoyed it even if I now have to work hard to catch up and not let my current employer down.

And on that note – well I enjoy blogging I guess, though I suspect i have very little worth saying, but maybe my life has a few moments which might amuse. It was nice to come home and find a comment from Keith Hitchman, who I have not seen in a long time, and I have been to TESCO. I shall resist the urge to coment about that. Yet, mundane or a little screwball as my life may be, a blog would be nothing without he readers and commentators. Whereas Beast has long wonderful academic discussions, my blog is a more light hearted affair, and I thank you all for reading.

And just before I say goodnight and do some work ready for more of the interminable phoning tomorrow, what search terms bring people here?

“how to use vacuum nipple clamps”
“transvestite swindon”
“richard wiseman spanking”
“bottomless bathing suits”

are among my recent favourites. Shame it oes not tell you who searched – I’d like ot meet Swindon’s  lonely transvestite, and say “good luck!” I have a transexual friend, but as far as I know no tranvestite ones – yet.

“anna richardson sexy” got many hits which must do wonders for her ego – her career is going well, though I’m more disturbed by people searching for her address! Maybe they just want to write for an autograph.  Over seventy people have looked for the Rev. Keith Hitchman – “revd keith hitchman 2009 cheltenham” was one search string from tonight, and “cress seeds experiment” is pretty popular.  People are still looking for the Science of Ghosts website, and parapsychology, atheism, “was easter pagan?” and “bonze age myths” all rank highly in searches bring people here. Some people are looking for Jerome – friends from Richarddawkins.net I guess, or enemies from the same – and my esays on “Science and Religion” do very well. The highest ranked search term though? “Lord Kelvin”! Given the number of wonderful sites there are on Kelvin, that really surprises me. He massively outdoes “Darwin” as a search term.  Maybe some school has a Kelvin essay title? I’ll add a good Kelvin link in the morning.

Night all , and thanks for reading!