All successful people are targets for being shot down by their detractors and those who are jealous of them. It has happened to me recently by certain self-important busybodies at a university where I was until recently injecting some badly-needed motivation and charisma into their rather humdrum, banal and ineffective courses. Some just didn't like the fact that I had a good relationship with the students and that my courses were over-subscribed. Oh yes, and one of the lesser staff members (whose whole philosophy on life is already a little backward-thinking) was investigating my private life, trying to find something to prove I was unsuitable for the position. Eventually they got me on the fact that I didn't have the word "doctor" before my name... As if a higher qualification matters to the overall ability to train and nurture 90 university undergraduates. All the qualifications in the universe do not make a good coach. I wrote a departure letter to my colleagues and left them to stew in their own self-obsessed juices. Still, whatever floats their boat.
And now, to my disbelief, I need to come to the aid of a group of people whom I have not considered to be a part of, but are the indigenous tribe to the place I was born, the English. I have forever classed myself as a British citizen. I think the word "British" is an inclusive, universal term for people who live in the British Isles and even beyond. You can be Scottish first and British second, or the other way round. Same for English, Welsh and dare I say Irish. But you can also be Jamaican and British, Kenyan and British, Canadian and British, Pakistani and British and even Polish and British, why not? It is an advantage we have over other countries in Europe, and makes us more ethnically versatile, tolerant and multi-faceted than the United States.
And this is why I consider it a crying shame that now the English (let's face it, the central pivots on whom their co-inhabitants spin) are feeling threatened, intimidated, spurned and unloved in their own backyard as well as far away.
There is firstly the West Lothian Question, the term coined by Enoch Powell about the paradox that Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish MPs in Westminster have as much say over what happens in England as an English MP, but the same is not afforded to the English themselves as their own local questions are debated in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Stormont. This was tolerated until recently but more and more English people are becoming disenchanted with this situation. Why can that be?
It is simple. For ages now, the Scottish have always enjoyed support from the other Home Nations when competing in sports tournaments. The same for Wales and Northern Ireland, but the English have always been out on their own. This year, one Edinburgh company has made some t-shirts for the World Cup called "ABE", meaning "Anyone But England", a blatant message to those down south about where the Scottish loyalties lie. The English kind of know who they are and are quite comfortable with this, unlike the other areas of the UK, so they could swallow this type of tongue-in-cheek banter.
But the fact that the English are starting to feel that the Scottish are creaming state funds away from English areas to support their own projects, with a cry of indignation and a new round of discussions over independence if they don't get their wish is making the average English a little tired of the continual barrage of anti-Sassenach rhetoric. Taking into account that a person resident in Scotland can go to any university in the UK for free whilst English residents must pay (often running into ten thousand pounds of debt) is forcing English hearts to turn to stone.
And who can blame them?
But it is not just the Scots who are cranking up the anti-English sentiment. The Australians are playing their part too. In the recent Olympic Games in Beijing, the Australians fell behind the British in terms of medals and that made them determined to do something about it. So, as the British won a lot of cycling medals, the Australians have invested hundreds of thousands of their Australian dollars into building up their cycling unit, to the extent that only two years later they have gained three times more medals at the World Cycling Championships as the British team. OK, this is aimed at the British in general, but deep in their minds, it is because the English make up most of the team. The truth of this can be seen in the final of the Australian Open tennis in Melbourne, where the crowd took to singing support for Andy Murray. When asked why this should be so, many said because he's a non-English, English speaker, and therefore one of them.
How cynical.
So, let me tell you this: I have always stuck up for the underdog, if the cause was justified. That means even French and Russians, Poles and Americans, when being needlessly picked upon. The English have put up with others' detractions for a long time but nobody has defended them. This has caused a notable rise in the amount of English people who, even only ten years ago would have never considered the dissolution of the United Kingdom, see it as a necessary step in their rights to reclaim some dignity. You can impose yourself on one nation's hospitality and tolerance for only so long, before they tell you to go off and bother someone else. That is where England happens to be today.
Beware, the Scottish National Party, you may just get your wish, and then who will subsidise your lavishly extravagant social democratic state?
Reasons to be proud of being British:
1. The BBC.2. The tolerance and open-mindedness afforded to all-comers of any nation if they are prepared to work.
3. Religious freedom, even to the point of being over-tolerant to fundamentalists.
4. British philanthropy and charity rundraising - Comic Relief, Sport Relief, Band Aid, eccentric events and feats to raise money for worthy causes.
5. Christie, Hardy, Thomas, Burns, Austen, Rowling, Pratchett, Bateman, McDermid, etc...
6. John Cleese, Rowan Atkinson, Billy Connolly, Dawn French, Tommy Cooper, etc...
7. Sir Chris Hoy, Jenson Button, Gareth Edwards, George Best, Ryan Giggs, Sir Steve Redgrave.
8. The pound Sterling.
9. The Commonwealth.
10. The English language.
11. Keynes, Rutherford, Newton, Macadam, Darwin, Berners Lee, Brunel, Adams, etc...
12. Flower of Scotland, Land of my Fathers, Danny Boy, Land of Hope and Glory
13. The Sunday trip to the garden centre
14. Womens' Institute, Scouts, Girl Guides, Salvation Army, etc...
15. Rugby, Curling, Tennis, Golf, Snooker, Badminton, Bobsleigh, Cricket, Darts, Table Tennis.
16. Sir Mick Jagger, Sir Elton John, Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Tom Jones
17. The Industrial Revolution.
18. Common Law and precedence
19. Sir Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Margaret Thatcher, Benjamin Disraeli
20. Fair play.
These are just some reasons why we should be immensely proud of our heritage, why we need to put our differences behind us and start working again as a team. Because although the British saved the world from the ravages of totalitarianism, nobody will save her from herself.
Sunday, 28 March 2010
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Coming out of the (broom) closet
I think it's about time I let you into a secret. I am a practising Pagan. I have been for nearly three years now, and I don't think I will ever go back to the mysogynistic, male-centric, patriarchal religion I was duped into believing as a child (duped not by my parents, I hasten to add).
Paganism comes in many forms: it is a free-thinking religion. There are many core beliefs which most Pagans adhere to, but on the whole, it is a pretty diverse crowd of people that are involved in it.
Ages Old:
Paganism is older than many people care to think - it stems from pre-historic times and has taken on various forms throughout history, some as insults by members of new religions, some as code names in times of the rise of Christianity's pious leaders who tried to do away with the old ways. Witch. Wise Woman. Druid. Pagan.
The Insult That Became Fashionable:
The word "Pagan" itself is supposed to come from the French word "paysan", or "peasant" in English. The gentrified city folk in the Middle Ages were often God-fearing, French-speaking
Christians and wanted to label the country-dwellers, who often adhered to the old religion, with something insulting and demeaning. So labelling them peasants was one way. They often had red faces due to their winter-scarred skin and many had long implements they used for their occupation, maybe brooms or pitchforks or scythes. And here lies the myth about the devil. The urban Christian priests used to condition their students that the devil was in those people and this was evident in these analogies.
The sure way to tell a Pagan is by the horned animal (the male symbol) they would place in a visible location and use in ceremonies. This is where the idea of the devil with horns comes about. So as you see, with the full might of the Roman Catholic Church attacking them, our predecessors had it tough.
The strange thing is that although the word "Pagan" has dubious origins, it is now one of the main names we call ourselves with.
Mistaken Identity:
We have many annoying stereotypes which follow us around: we're supposed to be long-haired, long-bearded bards with a love of lurid naked dancing and wild sex in the forest. The truth is, I wear a shirt and tie to work and prefer a ceremonial cloak to cover my nakedness. Wild sex is an optional extra (joke). Truth is, most of us do have an area we are interested in. For some it is natural medicine, for some it is philosophy, for some art and crafts, for some music, for others it is advice. I specialise in advice and art.
Beliefs - Look Down
Another myth about the place "Hell" occupies is that it is under the Earth. Another cunning spin from the Catholic propaganda machine. We Pagans don't look up to a god for our inspiration; we look down. Not to Hell, whose existence we don't even acknowledge. We look down to the Earth, the great life-giving planet bumbling through the Solar System. We look at Her abilities to regenerate, to give us the resources needed to survive on Her surface. We wonder at the small things all around. A cat as a whole is a lovely creature. But look closely at the fur, at the nose, at the shape of the ears, and you see why every aspect of Mother Earth's contents should make us want more and more to nurture and sustain what is left in this age of mass de-forestation, urbanisation and economisation.
Beliefs - Global Warming?
Many Pagans believe global warming to be a reality. Many believe the Earth is an intelligent organism capable of giving coded messages to those on Her surface. I fall into the second category, and although I believe in the fact that the planet is in peril, I prefer not to call the process global warming, but meteorological extremification.
There are now on Earth more people alive than people who have lived and died since the Phoenicians started to write. When we move, in transport or just walking, we create heat. Our office blocks generate heat through air conditioning, server use, computer use, heating and anything else in there plugged into the mains. Our homes generate heat when we cook, when we switch on the boiler, when we turn on the radiators, when we play games on the Wii, when we run a bath. A thousand years ago, one house here and there would have had no effect. In fact, right up until the Industrial Revolution reached the USA and even beyond, we were probably doing OK. But now, with us almost unable to go anywhere on the planet without encountering another human being, the Earth is getting a bit fed up.
On top of this, the trend towards a warmer planet is evident whether we were there or now, but we are accelerating this by being so numerous. The Earth is intelligent. She has a thermostat. In the summer of 2003, Europe was barbecued by three months of unbroken sunshine. I was lucky enough to be between jobs and took full advantage of it. But for the summers since then, we have been mostly subjected to temperate, cloudy, rainy affairs in the bulk of the normally hot summers. She is not stupid, our Earth!
We can point towards many phenomena which have occurred probably as a warning to us: earthquakes (see previous post), melting glaciers and ice caps, species suddenly dying out and others thriving, often in unusual places (insects making it much further north, for example). We need to cut certain things out of our lives to slow the process down.
Beliefs - Matriarchal Society:
Our rejection of the man as only rightful head of the family/clan is well-documented, and for good reason: look at the world around you. It is a man-made world, and I use the words wisely. Politics, war, sport, architecture, science, religion, to name a few - these are male-dominated areas. They are not all bad, that is not what I am saying: I merely wish to point out that these areas are male-specific. They could have had many more females in them if the Judaeo-Roman ideology of "strength = power" were not so inherent in our society, even in our enlightened times. Some religions promote male-only heads, stating that the female is too wishy-washy, too capricious to lead or to conduct serious research. Tell that to Margaret Thatcher or Marie Curie. It is a nonsense. Women have just not been given a proper chance.
Beliefs - Not Feminist But Feministic
And here is the main theme here: feminism was the worst thing to happen to the re-establishment of women in all areas of modern society. It made men, and traditionalist women, look down on feminism with such distain that it could have set the agenda back 20 years. Things could have happened much faster had feminists not made a point of making themselves look ridiculous by their often unrealistic demands and bra-burning rants, broadcast to millions, which instantly put most people off the idea.
Fortunately, in this new age, equality means a lot for our society, and most women know in a more dignified, confident manner who they are without the help of the feminists. In this new era of prudence and re-establishment of traditional ideals and family life, this period of coming down off the post-war cloud of decadence and hubris, the family is once again taking centre stage, the childhood stability offered by loving parents is a meaningful and honourable reason for bringing our world full-circle, back to its origins: the mother in her vital central role.
The seasons and their connection to woman:
The seasons of our temperate northern climate also share an important bond with the symbolism of womanhood.
Winter: Our year begins on the night of 31 October-1 November, when we experience the advent of winter, a time of reflection and inner contemplation. At the darkest point of the winter we celebrate, lighting fires and erecting a tree with decoration and light to drive off the negative feelings and bad spirits, welcoming in the period of the Sun, symbol of light, heat and masculinity, the fertiliser. The symbolic woman is still very young.
Spring: The arrival of spring is a joyous occasion, a period when the female is still a girl child, blooming into an adolescent and then a fully adult young woman. The flowers, animals and surroundings all suit the idea of fertility and growth. That is, until the arrival of summer.
Summer: This is when the female is a fully fertaile woman, a child-bearer, a giver of life. All around, life seems to be thriving, all around creatures reap the benefits of a plentiful supply of food, as if the mother has provided it for us. Midsummer is the time the sun starts to take longer to come up, but the preparation made by the introduction of spring and summer nurturing means life can go on much longer.
Autumn: The woman is becoming old, the days are getting shorter. She is a lot wiser, having experienced it all. The leaves are falling from the trees, the nuts are being gathered by the forest creatures. People harvest the fields and orchards to stock up for winter, and slowly the woman goes red, orange, then grey, then white. This is the moon time. Although the moon time started in mid-June, it is in September than it comes in earnest.
This is a shortened form of the cycle, but I hope it explained a few things. This is why places like Stonehenge and Avebury have lunar and solar calculations written into them. This is what they were for: deciding when the seasons changed and when certain agricultural tasks were necessary.
The Gods:
We do not believe in one god or one goddess, but in a series of gods and goddesses building up to a whole. This does not mean we see them in the same way as the Abrahamic God(s), or in the same way as the Greeks and Romans, with their myths and fables. We see the divine in small things, which form a huge entirety. We give thanks for the small things and salute them. We look after the small things in nature so they look after us. The large things in nature will then gain strength. This is why wine can gain in quality, through this process. This is why meat is much tastier if the animal is happy and well-fed in life. In total though, there are two main goddesses: the Earth and the Moon, and one main god, the Sun. Other planets and stars naturally form links to the seasons here on Earth.
Being a Pagan:
You don't need formal training to be a Pagan. You should not be weighed down by inhibitions, conventions and ideologies to be a Pagan. You don't need to have a supernatural talent to be a Pagan. You must not be self-righteous or opinionated. You just need:
Paganism comes in many forms: it is a free-thinking religion. There are many core beliefs which most Pagans adhere to, but on the whole, it is a pretty diverse crowd of people that are involved in it.
Ages Old:
Paganism is older than many people care to think - it stems from pre-historic times and has taken on various forms throughout history, some as insults by members of new religions, some as code names in times of the rise of Christianity's pious leaders who tried to do away with the old ways. Witch. Wise Woman. Druid. Pagan.
The Insult That Became Fashionable:
The word "Pagan" itself is supposed to come from the French word "paysan", or "peasant" in English. The gentrified city folk in the Middle Ages were often God-fearing, French-speaking
Christians and wanted to label the country-dwellers, who often adhered to the old religion, with something insulting and demeaning. So labelling them peasants was one way. They often had red faces due to their winter-scarred skin and many had long implements they used for their occupation, maybe brooms or pitchforks or scythes. And here lies the myth about the devil. The urban Christian priests used to condition their students that the devil was in those people and this was evident in these analogies.
The sure way to tell a Pagan is by the horned animal (the male symbol) they would place in a visible location and use in ceremonies. This is where the idea of the devil with horns comes about. So as you see, with the full might of the Roman Catholic Church attacking them, our predecessors had it tough.
The strange thing is that although the word "Pagan" has dubious origins, it is now one of the main names we call ourselves with.
Mistaken Identity:
We have many annoying stereotypes which follow us around: we're supposed to be long-haired, long-bearded bards with a love of lurid naked dancing and wild sex in the forest. The truth is, I wear a shirt and tie to work and prefer a ceremonial cloak to cover my nakedness. Wild sex is an optional extra (joke). Truth is, most of us do have an area we are interested in. For some it is natural medicine, for some it is philosophy, for some art and crafts, for some music, for others it is advice. I specialise in advice and art.
Beliefs - Look Down
Another myth about the place "Hell" occupies is that it is under the Earth. Another cunning spin from the Catholic propaganda machine. We Pagans don't look up to a god for our inspiration; we look down. Not to Hell, whose existence we don't even acknowledge. We look down to the Earth, the great life-giving planet bumbling through the Solar System. We look at Her abilities to regenerate, to give us the resources needed to survive on Her surface. We wonder at the small things all around. A cat as a whole is a lovely creature. But look closely at the fur, at the nose, at the shape of the ears, and you see why every aspect of Mother Earth's contents should make us want more and more to nurture and sustain what is left in this age of mass de-forestation, urbanisation and economisation.
Beliefs - Global Warming?
Many Pagans believe global warming to be a reality. Many believe the Earth is an intelligent organism capable of giving coded messages to those on Her surface. I fall into the second category, and although I believe in the fact that the planet is in peril, I prefer not to call the process global warming, but meteorological extremification.
There are now on Earth more people alive than people who have lived and died since the Phoenicians started to write. When we move, in transport or just walking, we create heat. Our office blocks generate heat through air conditioning, server use, computer use, heating and anything else in there plugged into the mains. Our homes generate heat when we cook, when we switch on the boiler, when we turn on the radiators, when we play games on the Wii, when we run a bath. A thousand years ago, one house here and there would have had no effect. In fact, right up until the Industrial Revolution reached the USA and even beyond, we were probably doing OK. But now, with us almost unable to go anywhere on the planet without encountering another human being, the Earth is getting a bit fed up.
On top of this, the trend towards a warmer planet is evident whether we were there or now, but we are accelerating this by being so numerous. The Earth is intelligent. She has a thermostat. In the summer of 2003, Europe was barbecued by three months of unbroken sunshine. I was lucky enough to be between jobs and took full advantage of it. But for the summers since then, we have been mostly subjected to temperate, cloudy, rainy affairs in the bulk of the normally hot summers. She is not stupid, our Earth!
We can point towards many phenomena which have occurred probably as a warning to us: earthquakes (see previous post), melting glaciers and ice caps, species suddenly dying out and others thriving, often in unusual places (insects making it much further north, for example). We need to cut certain things out of our lives to slow the process down.
Beliefs - Matriarchal Society:
Our rejection of the man as only rightful head of the family/clan is well-documented, and for good reason: look at the world around you. It is a man-made world, and I use the words wisely. Politics, war, sport, architecture, science, religion, to name a few - these are male-dominated areas. They are not all bad, that is not what I am saying: I merely wish to point out that these areas are male-specific. They could have had many more females in them if the Judaeo-Roman ideology of "strength = power" were not so inherent in our society, even in our enlightened times. Some religions promote male-only heads, stating that the female is too wishy-washy, too capricious to lead or to conduct serious research. Tell that to Margaret Thatcher or Marie Curie. It is a nonsense. Women have just not been given a proper chance.
Beliefs - Not Feminist But Feministic
And here is the main theme here: feminism was the worst thing to happen to the re-establishment of women in all areas of modern society. It made men, and traditionalist women, look down on feminism with such distain that it could have set the agenda back 20 years. Things could have happened much faster had feminists not made a point of making themselves look ridiculous by their often unrealistic demands and bra-burning rants, broadcast to millions, which instantly put most people off the idea.
Fortunately, in this new age, equality means a lot for our society, and most women know in a more dignified, confident manner who they are without the help of the feminists. In this new era of prudence and re-establishment of traditional ideals and family life, this period of coming down off the post-war cloud of decadence and hubris, the family is once again taking centre stage, the childhood stability offered by loving parents is a meaningful and honourable reason for bringing our world full-circle, back to its origins: the mother in her vital central role.
The seasons and their connection to woman:
The seasons of our temperate northern climate also share an important bond with the symbolism of womanhood.
Winter: Our year begins on the night of 31 October-1 November, when we experience the advent of winter, a time of reflection and inner contemplation. At the darkest point of the winter we celebrate, lighting fires and erecting a tree with decoration and light to drive off the negative feelings and bad spirits, welcoming in the period of the Sun, symbol of light, heat and masculinity, the fertiliser. The symbolic woman is still very young.
Spring: The arrival of spring is a joyous occasion, a period when the female is still a girl child, blooming into an adolescent and then a fully adult young woman. The flowers, animals and surroundings all suit the idea of fertility and growth. That is, until the arrival of summer.
Summer: This is when the female is a fully fertaile woman, a child-bearer, a giver of life. All around, life seems to be thriving, all around creatures reap the benefits of a plentiful supply of food, as if the mother has provided it for us. Midsummer is the time the sun starts to take longer to come up, but the preparation made by the introduction of spring and summer nurturing means life can go on much longer.
Autumn: The woman is becoming old, the days are getting shorter. She is a lot wiser, having experienced it all. The leaves are falling from the trees, the nuts are being gathered by the forest creatures. People harvest the fields and orchards to stock up for winter, and slowly the woman goes red, orange, then grey, then white. This is the moon time. Although the moon time started in mid-June, it is in September than it comes in earnest.
This is a shortened form of the cycle, but I hope it explained a few things. This is why places like Stonehenge and Avebury have lunar and solar calculations written into them. This is what they were for: deciding when the seasons changed and when certain agricultural tasks were necessary.
The Gods:
We do not believe in one god or one goddess, but in a series of gods and goddesses building up to a whole. This does not mean we see them in the same way as the Abrahamic God(s), or in the same way as the Greeks and Romans, with their myths and fables. We see the divine in small things, which form a huge entirety. We give thanks for the small things and salute them. We look after the small things in nature so they look after us. The large things in nature will then gain strength. This is why wine can gain in quality, through this process. This is why meat is much tastier if the animal is happy and well-fed in life. In total though, there are two main goddesses: the Earth and the Moon, and one main god, the Sun. Other planets and stars naturally form links to the seasons here on Earth.
Being a Pagan:
You don't need formal training to be a Pagan. You should not be weighed down by inhibitions, conventions and ideologies to be a Pagan. You don't need to have a supernatural talent to be a Pagan. You must not be self-righteous or opinionated. You just need:
- an open mind and heart
- not to be afraid of your body and that of others
- a willingness to observe the Earth and the nature on Her
- to follow your sensitivities and let your emotions and instincts guide you
- a goal to find more of your inner strengths and accept your weaknesses
- a willingness to follow the seasons and the cycle of the sun and the moon
- an openness to a possible supernatural world beyond ours
- a firm understanding of right from wrong
Being a Pagan means there is no overall book as such. Most Pagan beliefs and philosophies have been handed down through the centuries to us from those who went before. We are free to interpret them, and nobody will tell you. Only you yourself can judge, using your innermost instincts and judgements. This is letting the animal in us rise nearer the surface, and all the while being a civilised human being. We need to acknowledge the instinctual part in us. With this, we are able to interpret the future better. Sensitivity and an ability to deduce from a set of circumstances is the secret to successful divination and prediction, not the "conventional" biblical prophecy that certain people try to claim is a God-given gift. It most certainly is not. It is something that requires learning and study, maybe even a lifetime of knowledge-gaining.
Natural/Supernatural?
Many people talk about fairies and pixies, ghosts and spirits. This is another thing which needs answering. I want to concentrate on the fact that we believe very strongly in an afterlife, and some believe in a beforelife too. Many Eastern philosophies and wisdoms transfer themselves into Paganism with ease. The beliefs of reincarnation, is one, and karma is pretty much an integral part of our philosophies. The belief of doing to and having a positive attitude towards not only other people but many things and even concepts (which is where we diversify from Christianity) as we would want for ourselves makes us a very peaceful and contemplative group of people.
Finally...
I would like to finish by making categorically clear that our beliefs are not set in stone, that our conventions do not always fit the average person's ideas on life and personal conduct, and every one of us will have a different belief to another.
Being associated to Paganism is something I take pride in, and something I will not give up so easily. Having made it this far, I realise just how far-sighted I have become, how much easier it is to know if someone is telling the truth or not, and how walking alone in the forest in the still of the night is a frequent pleasure of mine, something others find very difficult to do.
But if you intend no harm, nothing will harm you.
Sunday, 17 January 2010
This week, God finally died.
Once in a generation, there comes an event so horrifying, so mind-bendingly stomach-churning, that you hope it never reveals its ugly head on this earth again.
In the early and mid 20th century, we saw two world wars which thankfully are past us now and almost out of living memory. In the fifties, sixties and early seventies we had the haunting images of those vicious fights over Korea and Vietnam. In the early 21st century we watched in disgust as some monstrous fundamentalists used planes as their weapons to bring down two towers in New York. These five events were brought about by ideology. Although not all religious, ideology has been responsible for the five most unnecessary losses of life in one hundred years. World War 1 was responsible for between 15 and 25 million deaths, World War 2 for up to 70 million. Korea for about 3 million and Vietnam for up to 5 million. This is excluding the Russian Civil War (up to 8.5 million) from 1917 to 1924 and the Second Congolese War of 1998 to 2003 (5 million est).
Ideology, whether over ethnic superiority, political belief or religion, has been responsible for the deaths of over 120 million people in 100 years. The human being is the most destructive, most murderous animal alive. Fighting for ideology is futile in this world though, and always has been, although nobody has noticed it. There is another murderous force, so mighty, it can wipe us out in the space of seconds. It discriminates against no-one and never picks a target. We call it nature. Some call it God.
The search for God is useless because there can be no God. You cannot blame a war on a god, but if there were God, a natural disaster cannot be anyone else's fault but His. And what exactly have the Haitians done to deserve such a battering of these proportions? Haiti was a fairly peace-loving nation of individuals with a strong sense of community, recently tormented by hurricanes, floods and disease. Not to mention an angry run of dictators.
So after all that, why do they deserve such an earthquake which, if it had happened four hundred or more years ago would have been called divine retribution? What would an author of the Bible have made of it? What would God be divinely intervening in down there in Haiti? Why not London's banking zone or Seattle's Microsoft HQ? Surely they deserve it more...?
If there is a God, then "He" sure has some strange ideas about who should get payback. I mean, if God were around, wouldn't He have had a hit-list which would include:
Bankers
Landmine manufacturers
People traffickers
Oil profiteers
Extremists and fundamentalists
Greasy western and northern democratic leaders
Nasty eastern and southern despots?
And wouldn't He try to protect the harmless:
Pacific islanders from sinking
Caribbean islanders from being blasted by hurricanes
Equatorial dwellers from famine
Peasants from starvation
Victims from criminals
People affected by earthquakes?
So if anyone should ever wish to try to convert me to a monotheistic religion, especially one with an ideology that God will protect us, then they are wasting their time with me, because I cannot stomach such dangerous, unrealistic nonsense.
This week, if He ever existed in the first place, God finally died in the hearts of many decent, law-abiding people, in the minds of many charity donors and aid workers. For those poor inhabitants of Haiti, He obviously never wanted to be acknowledged in the first place, let alone worshiped. He has certainly never really been there for us, so why should people still continue this futile belief in Him?
Would the last one to leave the Church please put the lights out?
In the early and mid 20th century, we saw two world wars which thankfully are past us now and almost out of living memory. In the fifties, sixties and early seventies we had the haunting images of those vicious fights over Korea and Vietnam. In the early 21st century we watched in disgust as some monstrous fundamentalists used planes as their weapons to bring down two towers in New York. These five events were brought about by ideology. Although not all religious, ideology has been responsible for the five most unnecessary losses of life in one hundred years. World War 1 was responsible for between 15 and 25 million deaths, World War 2 for up to 70 million. Korea for about 3 million and Vietnam for up to 5 million. This is excluding the Russian Civil War (up to 8.5 million) from 1917 to 1924 and the Second Congolese War of 1998 to 2003 (5 million est).
Ideology, whether over ethnic superiority, political belief or religion, has been responsible for the deaths of over 120 million people in 100 years. The human being is the most destructive, most murderous animal alive. Fighting for ideology is futile in this world though, and always has been, although nobody has noticed it. There is another murderous force, so mighty, it can wipe us out in the space of seconds. It discriminates against no-one and never picks a target. We call it nature. Some call it God.
The search for God is useless because there can be no God. You cannot blame a war on a god, but if there were God, a natural disaster cannot be anyone else's fault but His. And what exactly have the Haitians done to deserve such a battering of these proportions? Haiti was a fairly peace-loving nation of individuals with a strong sense of community, recently tormented by hurricanes, floods and disease. Not to mention an angry run of dictators.
So after all that, why do they deserve such an earthquake which, if it had happened four hundred or more years ago would have been called divine retribution? What would an author of the Bible have made of it? What would God be divinely intervening in down there in Haiti? Why not London's banking zone or Seattle's Microsoft HQ? Surely they deserve it more...?
If there is a God, then "He" sure has some strange ideas about who should get payback. I mean, if God were around, wouldn't He have had a hit-list which would include:
Bankers
Landmine manufacturers
People traffickers
Oil profiteers
Extremists and fundamentalists
Greasy western and northern democratic leaders
Nasty eastern and southern despots?
And wouldn't He try to protect the harmless:
Pacific islanders from sinking
Caribbean islanders from being blasted by hurricanes
Equatorial dwellers from famine
Peasants from starvation
Victims from criminals
People affected by earthquakes?
So if anyone should ever wish to try to convert me to a monotheistic religion, especially one with an ideology that God will protect us, then they are wasting their time with me, because I cannot stomach such dangerous, unrealistic nonsense.
This week, if He ever existed in the first place, God finally died in the hearts of many decent, law-abiding people, in the minds of many charity donors and aid workers. For those poor inhabitants of Haiti, He obviously never wanted to be acknowledged in the first place, let alone worshiped. He has certainly never really been there for us, so why should people still continue this futile belief in Him?
Would the last one to leave the Church please put the lights out?
Saturday, 21 March 2009
How to find your family history
I have just been on a trip back to London for the first time in 8 years. I have been back to visit the UK on numerous occasions, but this time I went as a tourist, and boy does it look good. I can't stand those who talk down the place. It's got more potential than any other city on earth and is, and will always be, this planet's capital.
On a more personal note, the spring sunshine was tremendous, the flowers were in full bloom and the trees were blossoming like adolescent shrubs awaiting full adulthood.
My purpose of visiting was to go to the National Archives in Kew, a place which, when the underground is shut for the weekend, requires a course in mapreading just to locate the place. I have been researching my family history for years, but unfortunately have had little opportunity to do it. At last, a period of time when I have the funds and the time.
We stayed in a delightful bed and (enormous) breakfast just two minutes away with a delightful room containing a bed whose mattress was so thick you couldn't get gamma rays to pass through it and when you lay on it your eyes instantly closed in some deft pavlovian manoeuvre only outdone by the effect of the smell of coffee, which naturally had the opposite effect.
On day one, I spent the morning getting acquainted with the place, learning the ropes and understanding that it wasn't going to reveal some Dan Brown-esque code to th esecret of my family. Chances were, I'd have had a stroke of luck finding anyone in the 1911 census, which was the obvious place to start. But find we did, and we recorded several generations of my paternal grandmother's family. It turns out that she was from a fairly well-to-do lineage.
The afternoon of day one passed quite slowly, trying to trace my grandfather's passage into London in 1915. He was a Russian Pole by nationality, but (and here is where the trail goes cold for now) he was born in Batumi, Georgia, then in the Russian Empire, and his last place of residence was Montréal, Canada. That is going to take quite a bit of unravelling. So, I have a very special footsoldier on the ground in Georgia as you read these lines, who is dedicating days to travelling from Tbilisi to Batumi and back again, a four-hundred kilometre journey, just to check out the records for me. He happens to be a professor of history, presidential medal-winning genealogist and speaker of Georgian, Russian, English and Hungarian. Pretty good credentials, and someone I have the ultimate faith in. If anyone can solve the riddle of my grandfather's birthright then he can. If he is unable to find any trace of him there, I will probably have to go back to Moscow.
Either that, or I will need to contemplate the unthinkable: that he lied about his past. You never know, it might be for a good reason. But I think we're far enough in the future to realise that it has no consequence in the present.
Now stay with me in this next bit: my grandfather made the journey to London on Merchant Navy ships, arriving on 22nd December 1915. He was about 25 years old. Within three years he had swept a married woman with one child off her feet and she had divorced her poor husband, serving King and country in France. The divorce proceedings were quite fiery, especially considering the period in history. Back then it was pretty difficult to get a divorce, and adultery was one of the only ways. It was still a man's world, so once for a woman and she was shelved, whereas a man could do it as often as he liked and only when he became a local scandal maker could the wife divorce him. In my grandmother's case, a child was evidence enough for the divorce.
The rhetoric spewed in the proceedings say, that my grandmother was "guilty of adultery" in "divers (sic) locations". Wow, they really knew how to write seriously in those days.
The second day was spent checking my grandfather's Merchant Navy records. I went through about 400 documents, spread over 8 records and found very little. I need to return there in the coming months.
The Eurostar terminal at St Pancras is a delight. You really feel like you're going on a great journey when you arrive there. It sort of harks back to the glory days of rail travel: the great old iron and glass roof, the iron pillars and the brickwork on the cathedral-like station make it a pleasure, despite the bustling concourse full of shops.
So, finally, I have decided that the following course of action needs to be taken to get to the secret of my grandfather's ancestry: I am going to Marseille soon, Poland soon after, and I will take my main holidays in Georgia if the professor comes up with some interesting evidence.
On a more personal note, the spring sunshine was tremendous, the flowers were in full bloom and the trees were blossoming like adolescent shrubs awaiting full adulthood.
My purpose of visiting was to go to the National Archives in Kew, a place which, when the underground is shut for the weekend, requires a course in mapreading just to locate the place. I have been researching my family history for years, but unfortunately have had little opportunity to do it. At last, a period of time when I have the funds and the time.
We stayed in a delightful bed and (enormous) breakfast just two minutes away with a delightful room containing a bed whose mattress was so thick you couldn't get gamma rays to pass through it and when you lay on it your eyes instantly closed in some deft pavlovian manoeuvre only outdone by the effect of the smell of coffee, which naturally had the opposite effect.
On day one, I spent the morning getting acquainted with the place, learning the ropes and understanding that it wasn't going to reveal some Dan Brown-esque code to th esecret of my family. Chances were, I'd have had a stroke of luck finding anyone in the 1911 census, which was the obvious place to start. But find we did, and we recorded several generations of my paternal grandmother's family. It turns out that she was from a fairly well-to-do lineage.
The afternoon of day one passed quite slowly, trying to trace my grandfather's passage into London in 1915. He was a Russian Pole by nationality, but (and here is where the trail goes cold for now) he was born in Batumi, Georgia, then in the Russian Empire, and his last place of residence was Montréal, Canada. That is going to take quite a bit of unravelling. So, I have a very special footsoldier on the ground in Georgia as you read these lines, who is dedicating days to travelling from Tbilisi to Batumi and back again, a four-hundred kilometre journey, just to check out the records for me. He happens to be a professor of history, presidential medal-winning genealogist and speaker of Georgian, Russian, English and Hungarian. Pretty good credentials, and someone I have the ultimate faith in. If anyone can solve the riddle of my grandfather's birthright then he can. If he is unable to find any trace of him there, I will probably have to go back to Moscow.
Either that, or I will need to contemplate the unthinkable: that he lied about his past. You never know, it might be for a good reason. But I think we're far enough in the future to realise that it has no consequence in the present.
Now stay with me in this next bit: my grandfather made the journey to London on Merchant Navy ships, arriving on 22nd December 1915. He was about 25 years old. Within three years he had swept a married woman with one child off her feet and she had divorced her poor husband, serving King and country in France. The divorce proceedings were quite fiery, especially considering the period in history. Back then it was pretty difficult to get a divorce, and adultery was one of the only ways. It was still a man's world, so once for a woman and she was shelved, whereas a man could do it as often as he liked and only when he became a local scandal maker could the wife divorce him. In my grandmother's case, a child was evidence enough for the divorce.
The rhetoric spewed in the proceedings say, that my grandmother was "guilty of adultery" in "divers (sic) locations". Wow, they really knew how to write seriously in those days.
The second day was spent checking my grandfather's Merchant Navy records. I went through about 400 documents, spread over 8 records and found very little. I need to return there in the coming months.
The Eurostar terminal at St Pancras is a delight. You really feel like you're going on a great journey when you arrive there. It sort of harks back to the glory days of rail travel: the great old iron and glass roof, the iron pillars and the brickwork on the cathedral-like station make it a pleasure, despite the bustling concourse full of shops.
So, finally, I have decided that the following course of action needs to be taken to get to the secret of my grandfather's ancestry: I am going to Marseille soon, Poland soon after, and I will take my main holidays in Georgia if the professor comes up with some interesting evidence.
Sunday, 28 December 2008
Evil disguised as good disguised as evil
BEWARE OF FALSE PROPHETS - namely those who believe in false prophets
I would like to draw your attention to some rather disturbing events that have come to light recently. It seems that the God botherers are on the march once more. It seems to come in waves, but this lot are a bit more organised and a lot less academic than the clergy. This makes them highly dangerous. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are what the average science fiction superhero would have as a worst enemy, because they keep regenerating and no matter how many you successfully wipe out, another one is being brainwashed elsewhere.
We firstly need to look at some behind-the-scenes detail – I have first-hand experience of the JWs as some are members of my own family – there is room for everyone who is a social outcast, bitter at society for its evils, fed up with failing politicians, but especially the vulnerable minded, who usually fall into one or other of their target categories. These are people who are looking for the reasons for their misery, or who are acutely aware of their own need for guidance, being unable to take decisions of their own without firstly consulting someone who they believe has authority.
This means, the ideal candidate for recruitment to the Jehovah’s Witnesses has everything to gain and nothing much to lose. In other words, they don’t have much of a life. Furthermore, there are some significant reasons for wishing to team up with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the main one being that they provide continued support for their fellowship and thus to the needy individual who is unable to find his/her own source of solace. The final, and main source of recruitment, is amongst those who do not have such a high amount of education. By recruiting from this sector, the Jehovah’s Witness leaders are able to airbrush, manipulate and modify any fact they wish to purvey, dressing it up as “education”.
" Christians should regard education as a means to an end. In these last days, their purpose is to serve Jehovah as much and as effectively as possible. If, in the country where they live, minimal or even high school education will only allow them to find jobs providing insufficient income to support themselves as pioneers, then supplementary education or training might be considered. This would be with the specific goal of full-time service. "
--Watchtower 11/1/1992 p.18
POWERS OF PERSUASION - conspiracy theories are just the start
They have extremely potent powers of persuasion. By dressing up a scientific fact with religious implications, they are able to find God’s (or Jehovah’s) work in everything. Or indeed the devil’s. I am quite sure that a thousand Jehovah’s Witnesses will now condemn everything I say as being the work of the devil, and to be honest, if I believed in anything of what they spew out as their “Truth”, I still wouldn’t be quaking in my boots. We have to put everything into perspective here, and the fact of the matter remains that they are able to quote any verse of the Bible at will to counteract most signs of disobedience. This seems like a great skill to the great uneducated masses, longing to be led, but it is more evil than anything else I can think of. If I were given the choice of spending an hour in a room with either a Jehovah’s Witness, a possible Islamist terrorist or Stalin himself, I think I would be far more scared of the JW’s effects on my psyche than the other two, even though I am educated enough to realise that the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ view of life is so addled, warped and beset with flaws that I could pick it to bits in an hour if I were allowed a word in edgeways.
You see, the other way they drag you in is by pressing the buttons that are most appealing to you, and then if you are making your own point, they interrupt you to continue bombarding their views upon you. By continually showering you with their notions they are slowly breaking down your barriers of defence and without you knowing you find yourself either agreeing wholeheartedly or admiringly saying, “well, I never thought of it like that”. And once you say that, they’ve got you hooked. They can feed you with other misguided pieces of recruitment jargon skilfully wrapped up in an appealing package and float it out into your waters, where the under-educated or weak-minded will pick open the ribbons and from then on you’re forever in their service.
Oh yes, you will praise them, you will sing their glories. You will tell everyone that they are the happiest, most well-balanced and caring group of people you have met. But let us face facts here: it is a well-known actuality that strong, close-knit religious groups of all kinds, whether fundamentalist or puritanical, liberally or directly commanded, provide the most amount of well-mannered and obedient people. That is a cunning way to disguise the fact that this is also because they are the most heavily manipulated people.
ONLY MEN ALLOWED - women aren't to be taken seriously
The leadership of fundamentalist groups is usually full of men and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are no exception. One of the earliest beliefs of the ecclesiastical setup was that women were inferior to men. I remember going to one Witness wedding, where the presiding minister said, in his sermon, “the man is the head of the household and what he decrees will be done. He should consult his wife, but he has the ultimate decision”. He said that because of women’s monthly cycles and common hormonal chaos, men were the only ones who could provide stability. And people sat there taking this without a single eyebrow raised in disbelief. Now dub me a feminist or a traitor to my sex if you wish, but I think there are just as many intelligent women about as men.
The Judaeo-Roman belief that strength is more important than method, which led to the macho concept today, is looking increasingly tired and worn out in the 21st century world. Women have kept their lights under bushels for centuries in most parts of the world, deferring to men and all our exigencies. But when I confronted a Jehovah’s Witness with the idea that there have not been enough women leaders, he said that Margaret Thatcher was a good enough reason not to have any more. And Pol Pot? And Benito Mussolini? And Josef Stalin? What about them then? Honestly, I kid you not, the Jehovah’s Witness idea of counteracting opinions against their beliefs is as old and as worn out as the Patriarchal society which has led us to wars and economic turmoil, rich-poor divisions and the materialism they so long to rid us of. A piece of good advice: no, we don’t want Thatcher back, and that’s why ALL women should not become leaders. What utter rubbish.
I have barely broken through the surface of their religious beliefs – I will leave that to other people, as I have much more work to do with the temporal side of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ attitudes. Let us also take into consideration their own future council, the 144,000, who will take over the earth’s governance at the End. How many are women? None. Oh yes, and what about the palace that was built for the Second Coming in a push suburb of California’s largest city, Los Angeles? It was to welcome the arrival of the heavenly hosts who were to stay there when they came to take back the earth. When they so rudely didn’t show up at the predicted time, the worldwide leader of the Jehovah’s Witnesses moved into it to personally welcome their late arrival. They still haven’t turned up, and the house has since been sold and the details covered up.
"Treat Him Respectfully ... a woman should not cower in fear and permit a rapist to intimidate her, at the same time she should treat him understandingly as a fellow human."
-- Awake! 22/2/84 p.2
KEEPING YOU ON SIDE - disfellowship
Oppression of the people is easy if you withdraw the one thing they came to you for, and this is how they skilfully keep you on side: by threatening you with a return to normal, you will hang on to every tether of support they provide you with. If, once you become a member, you step out of line, or disagree, or even decide to go to a non-approved university to do a non-approved university degree, you will be shunned, ignored or even mocked. Yes, they will provide you with ways back, but that is hardly good enough if once you get there you will be carefully scrutinised, and your deeds placed on file for future reference if you dare do it again.
By leading exemplary lives and doing exemplary deeds, the outer surface of the Jehovah’s Witnesses is whiter than white, but underneath there is a huge amount of dexterous, cunning and experienced manipulation to keep you on-side and on-message.
One deviation from the idea and your perfidiousness is dealt with by the council, all men, and all capable of making your life miserable. I heard of one particularly bad case of a woman who was not a JW and a man who became one. As the patriarchal nature of this relationship took hold through his belief of being superior, she was slowly wound down by his gradually destructive behaviour as the household self-designated leadership: banning Christmas for the entire family, not co-operating in schemes not organised by him, and eventually she caved in and joined up, for the sake of the family, who had all been coerced into becoming members. That too happened to an elderly lady I know who once she had joined up, decided it was not for her and upon stepping out of the organisation was spurned by that part of her family for ever more after that.
We must also not forget one of the “principles” upon which a Jehovah’s Witness builds his/her life: that all other religions are false and there can only be one truth. Who says? Can anyone provide me with a statistic that says this? Can anyone prove all other religions wrong? I am not a betting person, but I would put a great amount of money, pride, self-worth and even my own reputation on the line in my total conviction that the whole charade enacted by the Watch Tower, its society and council, its people and their “benevolence” is nothing more than a money-spinning ploy with serious Big Brother overtones, where they gauge the “faith” of their subjects through distressingly clandestine methods of indoctrination.
HANDS OFF MY BLOOD - gauging your faith
Let us take the old cliché itself, blood transfusion. This is one of the definitions of Jehovah’s Witnesses, that they will not “eat blood”, because it says so in their version of the Bible. If a family member is in hospital and needs a blood transfusion, they are supposed to refuse it, as human blood is sacred, according to them, and should not be mixed. Sounds a lot like something Adolf Hitler would have gladly said, but it means that you cannot dilute it with others’, even if it means you’ll die. This is because your heavenly life is more important and of course more permanent than your earthly one, according to them. Now call me a nasty old cynic, but if a family member of mine were going to die, I don’t think an unverified principle like this is going to stop me from saving them. Indeed, if the spiritual life is more important, then a silly little blood transfusion isn’t going to stop my ascent into the afterlife. So the fact that you let a family member die due to your refusal to allow a long-established scientific marvel get in the way of your religious beliefs will give you extra status in religious circles. The eye of the needle is surely opening up for you because you let someone die. How nice for you – I’m sure Jehovah will fast-track you into His Kingdom. The fact that human life is sacred has no importance compared to allowing the death of an innocent victim of circumstance.
"The blood in any person is in reality the person himself. ... poisons due to personal living, eating and drinking habits ... The poisons that produce the impulse to commit suicide, murder, or steal are in the blood. Moral insanity, sexual perversions, repression, inferiority complexes, petty crimes - these often follow in the wake of blood transfusion." (Watchtower, 1/09/61 page 564) [Remember that JWs believe man is monochotomous, wholly physical]
COMMITMENT OR ETERNAL DEATH - well I'll take the chance thanks
And that is how they gauge your faith: if you so blindly permit the unnecessary death of a member who needs a blood transfusion, you must be committed. There are other little assessments like these, all which go on file and, like a spiritual credit rating, permit you to ascend the ranks of their society. But I am sure if there is someone up there, they've got paper party hats and red noses on and are having a real laugh at the gullibility of these individuals.
The chances are high that I am now to be condemned as a heretic and a disbeliever. And that I am also proud of, because it means I at least have a mind of my own, able to make up my own decisions without wondering what the leaders will say about it. And moreover, I am probably to be condemned to the eternal suffering the Jehovah’s Witnesses profess we disbelievers will end up in. Well I’ll tell you here and now – I am so convinced in my unreserved scepticism of any of their immoral and misguided ideals of the fate that awaits us after death that I am unequivocally willing to take that chance and lead a wholesome, secular and worldly life to the full here and now. We only have the one life and it should be spent very wisely indeed.
"Without religion, we'd have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion" - Stephen Weinberg
Just remember one thing, and this is from me, a person who has renounced all of this science fiction and moved on to other things: if you are a Christian, the will of the God of Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed will NEVER take you where the grace of God cannot protect you.
I would like to draw your attention to some rather disturbing events that have come to light recently. It seems that the God botherers are on the march once more. It seems to come in waves, but this lot are a bit more organised and a lot less academic than the clergy. This makes them highly dangerous. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are what the average science fiction superhero would have as a worst enemy, because they keep regenerating and no matter how many you successfully wipe out, another one is being brainwashed elsewhere.
We firstly need to look at some behind-the-scenes detail – I have first-hand experience of the JWs as some are members of my own family – there is room for everyone who is a social outcast, bitter at society for its evils, fed up with failing politicians, but especially the vulnerable minded, who usually fall into one or other of their target categories. These are people who are looking for the reasons for their misery, or who are acutely aware of their own need for guidance, being unable to take decisions of their own without firstly consulting someone who they believe has authority.
This means, the ideal candidate for recruitment to the Jehovah’s Witnesses has everything to gain and nothing much to lose. In other words, they don’t have much of a life. Furthermore, there are some significant reasons for wishing to team up with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the main one being that they provide continued support for their fellowship and thus to the needy individual who is unable to find his/her own source of solace. The final, and main source of recruitment, is amongst those who do not have such a high amount of education. By recruiting from this sector, the Jehovah’s Witness leaders are able to airbrush, manipulate and modify any fact they wish to purvey, dressing it up as “education”.
" Christians should regard education as a means to an end. In these last days, their purpose is to serve Jehovah as much and as effectively as possible. If, in the country where they live, minimal or even high school education will only allow them to find jobs providing insufficient income to support themselves as pioneers, then supplementary education or training might be considered. This would be with the specific goal of full-time service. "
--Watchtower 11/1/1992 p.18
POWERS OF PERSUASION - conspiracy theories are just the start
They have extremely potent powers of persuasion. By dressing up a scientific fact with religious implications, they are able to find God’s (or Jehovah’s) work in everything. Or indeed the devil’s. I am quite sure that a thousand Jehovah’s Witnesses will now condemn everything I say as being the work of the devil, and to be honest, if I believed in anything of what they spew out as their “Truth”, I still wouldn’t be quaking in my boots. We have to put everything into perspective here, and the fact of the matter remains that they are able to quote any verse of the Bible at will to counteract most signs of disobedience. This seems like a great skill to the great uneducated masses, longing to be led, but it is more evil than anything else I can think of. If I were given the choice of spending an hour in a room with either a Jehovah’s Witness, a possible Islamist terrorist or Stalin himself, I think I would be far more scared of the JW’s effects on my psyche than the other two, even though I am educated enough to realise that the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ view of life is so addled, warped and beset with flaws that I could pick it to bits in an hour if I were allowed a word in edgeways.
You see, the other way they drag you in is by pressing the buttons that are most appealing to you, and then if you are making your own point, they interrupt you to continue bombarding their views upon you. By continually showering you with their notions they are slowly breaking down your barriers of defence and without you knowing you find yourself either agreeing wholeheartedly or admiringly saying, “well, I never thought of it like that”. And once you say that, they’ve got you hooked. They can feed you with other misguided pieces of recruitment jargon skilfully wrapped up in an appealing package and float it out into your waters, where the under-educated or weak-minded will pick open the ribbons and from then on you’re forever in their service.
Oh yes, you will praise them, you will sing their glories. You will tell everyone that they are the happiest, most well-balanced and caring group of people you have met. But let us face facts here: it is a well-known actuality that strong, close-knit religious groups of all kinds, whether fundamentalist or puritanical, liberally or directly commanded, provide the most amount of well-mannered and obedient people. That is a cunning way to disguise the fact that this is also because they are the most heavily manipulated people.
ONLY MEN ALLOWED - women aren't to be taken seriously
The leadership of fundamentalist groups is usually full of men and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are no exception. One of the earliest beliefs of the ecclesiastical setup was that women were inferior to men. I remember going to one Witness wedding, where the presiding minister said, in his sermon, “the man is the head of the household and what he decrees will be done. He should consult his wife, but he has the ultimate decision”. He said that because of women’s monthly cycles and common hormonal chaos, men were the only ones who could provide stability. And people sat there taking this without a single eyebrow raised in disbelief. Now dub me a feminist or a traitor to my sex if you wish, but I think there are just as many intelligent women about as men.
The Judaeo-Roman belief that strength is more important than method, which led to the macho concept today, is looking increasingly tired and worn out in the 21st century world. Women have kept their lights under bushels for centuries in most parts of the world, deferring to men and all our exigencies. But when I confronted a Jehovah’s Witness with the idea that there have not been enough women leaders, he said that Margaret Thatcher was a good enough reason not to have any more. And Pol Pot? And Benito Mussolini? And Josef Stalin? What about them then? Honestly, I kid you not, the Jehovah’s Witness idea of counteracting opinions against their beliefs is as old and as worn out as the Patriarchal society which has led us to wars and economic turmoil, rich-poor divisions and the materialism they so long to rid us of. A piece of good advice: no, we don’t want Thatcher back, and that’s why ALL women should not become leaders. What utter rubbish.
I have barely broken through the surface of their religious beliefs – I will leave that to other people, as I have much more work to do with the temporal side of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ attitudes. Let us also take into consideration their own future council, the 144,000, who will take over the earth’s governance at the End. How many are women? None. Oh yes, and what about the palace that was built for the Second Coming in a push suburb of California’s largest city, Los Angeles? It was to welcome the arrival of the heavenly hosts who were to stay there when they came to take back the earth. When they so rudely didn’t show up at the predicted time, the worldwide leader of the Jehovah’s Witnesses moved into it to personally welcome their late arrival. They still haven’t turned up, and the house has since been sold and the details covered up.
"Treat Him Respectfully ... a woman should not cower in fear and permit a rapist to intimidate her, at the same time she should treat him understandingly as a fellow human."
-- Awake! 22/2/84 p.2
KEEPING YOU ON SIDE - disfellowship
Oppression of the people is easy if you withdraw the one thing they came to you for, and this is how they skilfully keep you on side: by threatening you with a return to normal, you will hang on to every tether of support they provide you with. If, once you become a member, you step out of line, or disagree, or even decide to go to a non-approved university to do a non-approved university degree, you will be shunned, ignored or even mocked. Yes, they will provide you with ways back, but that is hardly good enough if once you get there you will be carefully scrutinised, and your deeds placed on file for future reference if you dare do it again.
By leading exemplary lives and doing exemplary deeds, the outer surface of the Jehovah’s Witnesses is whiter than white, but underneath there is a huge amount of dexterous, cunning and experienced manipulation to keep you on-side and on-message.
One deviation from the idea and your perfidiousness is dealt with by the council, all men, and all capable of making your life miserable. I heard of one particularly bad case of a woman who was not a JW and a man who became one. As the patriarchal nature of this relationship took hold through his belief of being superior, she was slowly wound down by his gradually destructive behaviour as the household self-designated leadership: banning Christmas for the entire family, not co-operating in schemes not organised by him, and eventually she caved in and joined up, for the sake of the family, who had all been coerced into becoming members. That too happened to an elderly lady I know who once she had joined up, decided it was not for her and upon stepping out of the organisation was spurned by that part of her family for ever more after that.
We must also not forget one of the “principles” upon which a Jehovah’s Witness builds his/her life: that all other religions are false and there can only be one truth. Who says? Can anyone provide me with a statistic that says this? Can anyone prove all other religions wrong? I am not a betting person, but I would put a great amount of money, pride, self-worth and even my own reputation on the line in my total conviction that the whole charade enacted by the Watch Tower, its society and council, its people and their “benevolence” is nothing more than a money-spinning ploy with serious Big Brother overtones, where they gauge the “faith” of their subjects through distressingly clandestine methods of indoctrination.
HANDS OFF MY BLOOD - gauging your faith
Let us take the old cliché itself, blood transfusion. This is one of the definitions of Jehovah’s Witnesses, that they will not “eat blood”, because it says so in their version of the Bible. If a family member is in hospital and needs a blood transfusion, they are supposed to refuse it, as human blood is sacred, according to them, and should not be mixed. Sounds a lot like something Adolf Hitler would have gladly said, but it means that you cannot dilute it with others’, even if it means you’ll die. This is because your heavenly life is more important and of course more permanent than your earthly one, according to them. Now call me a nasty old cynic, but if a family member of mine were going to die, I don’t think an unverified principle like this is going to stop me from saving them. Indeed, if the spiritual life is more important, then a silly little blood transfusion isn’t going to stop my ascent into the afterlife. So the fact that you let a family member die due to your refusal to allow a long-established scientific marvel get in the way of your religious beliefs will give you extra status in religious circles. The eye of the needle is surely opening up for you because you let someone die. How nice for you – I’m sure Jehovah will fast-track you into His Kingdom. The fact that human life is sacred has no importance compared to allowing the death of an innocent victim of circumstance.
"The blood in any person is in reality the person himself. ... poisons due to personal living, eating and drinking habits ... The poisons that produce the impulse to commit suicide, murder, or steal are in the blood. Moral insanity, sexual perversions, repression, inferiority complexes, petty crimes - these often follow in the wake of blood transfusion." (Watchtower, 1/09/61 page 564) [Remember that JWs believe man is monochotomous, wholly physical]
COMMITMENT OR ETERNAL DEATH - well I'll take the chance thanks
And that is how they gauge your faith: if you so blindly permit the unnecessary death of a member who needs a blood transfusion, you must be committed. There are other little assessments like these, all which go on file and, like a spiritual credit rating, permit you to ascend the ranks of their society. But I am sure if there is someone up there, they've got paper party hats and red noses on and are having a real laugh at the gullibility of these individuals.
The chances are high that I am now to be condemned as a heretic and a disbeliever. And that I am also proud of, because it means I at least have a mind of my own, able to make up my own decisions without wondering what the leaders will say about it. And moreover, I am probably to be condemned to the eternal suffering the Jehovah’s Witnesses profess we disbelievers will end up in. Well I’ll tell you here and now – I am so convinced in my unreserved scepticism of any of their immoral and misguided ideals of the fate that awaits us after death that I am unequivocally willing to take that chance and lead a wholesome, secular and worldly life to the full here and now. We only have the one life and it should be spent very wisely indeed.
"Without religion, we'd have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion" - Stephen Weinberg
Just remember one thing, and this is from me, a person who has renounced all of this science fiction and moved on to other things: if you are a Christian, the will of the God of Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed will NEVER take you where the grace of God cannot protect you.
Tuesday, 29 July 2008
News from the country
THE FRONT OF OUR HOUSE
In Kaufland nobody can hear you scream
Let me take you on a journey to a place so remote that there isn’t even a signpost to it. A place so out-of-the-way, that it is unreachable by car. A place so far from everything, that the only way to get there is on foot. A place so distant from anything else that you wouldn’t know it were there had you not been told of its existence. But when you arrive, you will be so overwhelmingly rewarded that the extensive time spent looking for it will be instantaneously forgotten. No, I am not talking about the Grand Canyon or Stonehenge: for one thing there are enough signposts to the former to almost block it out and there is very little reward when arriving at the latter. I am in fact talking about the fruit juice section at Kaufland supermarket in Konz.
Boy, do they know how to make you work for your reward. You need to trudge a very long way to find the fruit juice section, which is only slightly smaller than the VAT office in Luxembourg. In all honesty, Kaufland is simply a million miles away from anything remotely associated with the average Belgian supermarket. The word “supermarket” in Belgium is a bit misleading. For one thing, it is hardly a market. And it is by no means super. It is more like a cartel of bad quality consumer products giving you a choice of one, and if that happens to be bad or out of stock, well, you’ll just have to wait for the next delivery. In Kaufland, there is everything. You want a barbecue? It’s near the front. You want milk? There is a four-metre-long fridge containing a dozen sorts, all stocked up. You want a satellite dish? It’s on the right just next to the customer services department. Orchids, did you say? They’re next to the fresh yoghurt and the milk, just by the fruit and veg.
In Kaufland nobody can hear you screamLet me take you on a journey to a place so remote that there isn’t even a signpost to it. A place so out-of-the-way, that it is unreachable by car. A place so far from everything, that the only way to get there is on foot. A place so distant from anything else that you wouldn’t know it were there had you not been told of its existence. But when you arrive, you will be so overwhelmingly rewarded that the extensive time spent looking for it will be instantaneously forgotten. No, I am not talking about the Grand Canyon or Stonehenge: for one thing there are enough signposts to the former to almost block it out and there is very little reward when arriving at the latter. I am in fact talking about the fruit juice section at Kaufland supermarket in Konz.
Boy, do they know how to make you work for your reward. You need to trudge a very long way to find the fruit juice section, which is only slightly smaller than the VAT office in Luxembourg. In all honesty, Kaufland is simply a million miles away from anything remotely associated with the average Belgian supermarket. The word “supermarket” in Belgium is a bit misleading. For one thing, it is hardly a market. And it is by no means super. It is more like a cartel of bad quality consumer products giving you a choice of one, and if that happens to be bad or out of stock, well, you’ll just have to wait for the next delivery. In Kaufland, there is everything. You want a barbecue? It’s near the front. You want milk? There is a four-metre-long fridge containing a dozen sorts, all stocked up. You want a satellite dish? It’s on the right just next to the customer services department. Orchids, did you say? They’re next to the fresh yoghurt and the milk, just by the fruit and veg.
THE HORSE PADDOCK
A little salute to Luxembourg
Most people when thinking of Luxembourg either comment on it as a tax haven, a banking paradise and a money launderer’s boudoir. Having spent some time there, I can certainly see this is but an urban myth. It is a triumph of small government over burdensome red tape with added anti-corruption airbags equipped as standard. It is very hard to fool the system there although I am sure some do. But this is not my reason to salute Luxembourg.
I wish to tell you about the most picturesque country in continental Europe. Luxembourg is God’s own country, and probably the reason why a little flat in the middle of nowhere costs 250,000 euro. I understand why: there is no place on earth which has been blessed with such an aesthetic landscape; sanctified with such lush greenness and consecrated with herds of such exquisite cows, all mooing in perfect harmony. The fact is, even the urban areas of Luxembourg are pleasant places. Grevenmacher reminds me of a typical Mediterranean village, bordered by wine groves on steep hillsides, even though it is on the Mosel facing Germany. Roodt sur Syre is a splendid town encircled by hills, forests and farms. The industrial zones near Münsbach and Wasserbillig have an cleanliness about them which makes you want to spend a day cycling over there to see them in more detail.
All-in-all, a marvellous country to live in. Except....
Well, you know that joke where God is asked by the angels why Canada seems to have been granted too many good things by God, and they ask him why, whereby he replies “wait until you see their neighbours”, well that seems to be little Luxembourg’s lot too, although even worse, because the country is overrun by them too, bringing all their bad habits with them. This is one of the reasons why the Luxembourgish language has taken off in a big way recently: they need to keep secrets from the French, who seem to have imposed themselves heavily on the place. Bad driving, sloppy customer service and a hierarchical system only found in the Hexagon are highly prevalent. They even force the language on the people. Where there are a hundred Germans, fifty Brits, twenty Dutch and one French person, the language of Dumas and Descartes will take precedence, in order to, as the official line goes, preserve the French tongue. Rubbish! If there was any danger of French dying out, imagine poor Luxembourgish: a couple of hundred thousand speakers and it still has only semi-official status in its own country.
A little salute to LuxembourgMost people when thinking of Luxembourg either comment on it as a tax haven, a banking paradise and a money launderer’s boudoir. Having spent some time there, I can certainly see this is but an urban myth. It is a triumph of small government over burdensome red tape with added anti-corruption airbags equipped as standard. It is very hard to fool the system there although I am sure some do. But this is not my reason to salute Luxembourg.
I wish to tell you about the most picturesque country in continental Europe. Luxembourg is God’s own country, and probably the reason why a little flat in the middle of nowhere costs 250,000 euro. I understand why: there is no place on earth which has been blessed with such an aesthetic landscape; sanctified with such lush greenness and consecrated with herds of such exquisite cows, all mooing in perfect harmony. The fact is, even the urban areas of Luxembourg are pleasant places. Grevenmacher reminds me of a typical Mediterranean village, bordered by wine groves on steep hillsides, even though it is on the Mosel facing Germany. Roodt sur Syre is a splendid town encircled by hills, forests and farms. The industrial zones near Münsbach and Wasserbillig have an cleanliness about them which makes you want to spend a day cycling over there to see them in more detail.
All-in-all, a marvellous country to live in. Except....
Well, you know that joke where God is asked by the angels why Canada seems to have been granted too many good things by God, and they ask him why, whereby he replies “wait until you see their neighbours”, well that seems to be little Luxembourg’s lot too, although even worse, because the country is overrun by them too, bringing all their bad habits with them. This is one of the reasons why the Luxembourgish language has taken off in a big way recently: they need to keep secrets from the French, who seem to have imposed themselves heavily on the place. Bad driving, sloppy customer service and a hierarchical system only found in the Hexagon are highly prevalent. They even force the language on the people. Where there are a hundred Germans, fifty Brits, twenty Dutch and one French person, the language of Dumas and Descartes will take precedence, in order to, as the official line goes, preserve the French tongue. Rubbish! If there was any danger of French dying out, imagine poor Luxembourgish: a couple of hundred thousand speakers and it still has only semi-official status in its own country.
A RIVER RUNS UNDER MY TERRACE
There be dragons...
Although I live in the most marvellous of places, there are a couple of things which get on my nerves, and following the theme of the previous section, it’s the neighbours too, which are causing great chagrin on this side of the stream flowing past our house. On our farm complex there are nine or ten families, all living in this little corner of paradise amongst the fruit trees, the vineyards, the horses and the forests. The people immediately next door, the Weingut Schmitz-Simon, are prone to holding parties on their property. I wouldn’t mind, considering I lived in Paris, Prague, Moscow and London, but now that there is a smoking ban, people come outside for a puff, end up taking their drinks with them and produce a lot of noise through incessant laughter and loud chatter. Some even keep the doors open so they can listen to the music.
One weekend a camper van with Luxembourg plates pulled up in our parking area and remained overnight, taking up three parking spaces. The next morning the occupiers poked their heads out and announced they had been at the wedding – wasn’t she so sweet in that gown? I hadn’t noticed, because this has nothing to do with next door – oh, said he, whereby he said I should have come and found him. How could I when I didn’t know who or what he was doing in the area. Yes, but the flowers on the wing mirrors, said he, should have made me realise he was with the wedding. To which I replied “yes, but lots of gypsies have flowers on their camper vans”. I think I upset him a bit...
This weekend was the worst of the lot. They not only kept the doors open, but they started group singing at midnight. I witnessed one guy throwing an empty bottle into the river. I told some guy I would call the police if they didn’t calm down and it did some good... for a while. A lot of disco music and empty bottles later, and one of my co-inhabitants went over to complain. It was half past four. No apology ever comes from them, no solution is ever suggested. So I have decided to call them at 2 in the morning to see if they like being disturbed at that hour. I intend to tell them that I will call the police to come round and close their parties down. I will also ask the police to stand guard at the end of the street and breath-test everyone exiting that property: I think they will get a lot of money in fines. Finally I intend bothering them as much as I can, because it is obvious that their only interest is money, to the detriment of the neighbours.
They should also be aware that I am filming them and recording the noise at different times and days. In any case, this lack of neighbourly behaviour is very rare here, and all the other people in the area are so civilised, so practical and so community-minded, that it puts the Schmitz-Simon firm to shame. If anyone is reading this, and they want to book a stay at Schmitz-Simon, may I recommend they look around first, because their wines are at least a euro over the price of other winemakers in the area, and that’s just their take-away produce.
There be dragons...Although I live in the most marvellous of places, there are a couple of things which get on my nerves, and following the theme of the previous section, it’s the neighbours too, which are causing great chagrin on this side of the stream flowing past our house. On our farm complex there are nine or ten families, all living in this little corner of paradise amongst the fruit trees, the vineyards, the horses and the forests. The people immediately next door, the Weingut Schmitz-Simon, are prone to holding parties on their property. I wouldn’t mind, considering I lived in Paris, Prague, Moscow and London, but now that there is a smoking ban, people come outside for a puff, end up taking their drinks with them and produce a lot of noise through incessant laughter and loud chatter. Some even keep the doors open so they can listen to the music.
One weekend a camper van with Luxembourg plates pulled up in our parking area and remained overnight, taking up three parking spaces. The next morning the occupiers poked their heads out and announced they had been at the wedding – wasn’t she so sweet in that gown? I hadn’t noticed, because this has nothing to do with next door – oh, said he, whereby he said I should have come and found him. How could I when I didn’t know who or what he was doing in the area. Yes, but the flowers on the wing mirrors, said he, should have made me realise he was with the wedding. To which I replied “yes, but lots of gypsies have flowers on their camper vans”. I think I upset him a bit...
This weekend was the worst of the lot. They not only kept the doors open, but they started group singing at midnight. I witnessed one guy throwing an empty bottle into the river. I told some guy I would call the police if they didn’t calm down and it did some good... for a while. A lot of disco music and empty bottles later, and one of my co-inhabitants went over to complain. It was half past four. No apology ever comes from them, no solution is ever suggested. So I have decided to call them at 2 in the morning to see if they like being disturbed at that hour. I intend to tell them that I will call the police to come round and close their parties down. I will also ask the police to stand guard at the end of the street and breath-test everyone exiting that property: I think they will get a lot of money in fines. Finally I intend bothering them as much as I can, because it is obvious that their only interest is money, to the detriment of the neighbours.
They should also be aware that I am filming them and recording the noise at different times and days. In any case, this lack of neighbourly behaviour is very rare here, and all the other people in the area are so civilised, so practical and so community-minded, that it puts the Schmitz-Simon firm to shame. If anyone is reading this, and they want to book a stay at Schmitz-Simon, may I recommend they look around first, because their wines are at least a euro over the price of other winemakers in the area, and that’s just their take-away produce.
MY TERRACE
Perfect cycling territory
This year I will not be going to my usual haunts, Venice and Prague, because there is just too much to see and do around here. So I bought a bike. Here are some tips:
TRIER
In the valley of the Mosel, surrounded by forests and streams, lies the oldest city in Germany and a beauty. Roman ruins, a hilltop monument and UNESCO World Heritage sites all over the place, Trier is outstanding. It has a unique atmosphere and an area offering a more enjoyable shopping trip than the average town. One thing I love about Trier is its mix of old and new. Kaufhof sits in the street to the Roman-built Porta Nigra. The open air museum at the site of the Roman ruins has been subtly modernised to make the experience more pleasurable without destroying the ancient structure.
For walking and eating, I can recommend two areas of the city: firstly work up your appetite by taking a walk from the Roman ruins to the embankment and following the path along the side of the river under the trees. When you arrive at the river cruiser area just past the bridge towards the motorway, there is a line of restaurants all offering good, wholesome local food with a smile. If you were to cross the bridge and head up towards the city forest, there is the Gillenbach stream, also a delightful walk. Just in there is also a well-hidden restaurant with an excellent atmosphere and decently priced menu. The other area of the city is the centre itself. Full of all kinds of eateries, it is difficult to choose, but if you are there in winter, go to the Frankenturm restaurant. The produce comes from a butcher in the Hunsrück National Park and it is all freshly delivered.
NITTEL, GREVENMACHER AND WINCHERINGEN
Just a 25-minute ride from Trier is the natural amphitheatre housing the delightful villages of Nittel, Grevenmacher and Wincheringen, with a Mediterranean feeling all of its own. The views are spectacular from any angle and the places to stop off on the way numerous. In fact, this part of the Mosel is without rival. Temmels, Oberbillig, Nennig and Perl are all worth a visit. I recommend cycling – there are cycle paths everywhere and you get really up close to the environment. I suggest stopping off at the Mühlenbach in Nittel, a palatial guesthouse with a tremendous front veranda for eating amongst the pot plants and a cosy back garden for relaxing with a glass of Spätlese and a book.
THE LOWER MOSEL
Bernkastel-Kues, Piesport, Longuich, Traben-Trarbach, Koblenz... So many places to visit. Again, bike is the best way but I could imagine doing it in a convertible MG sports car. Just do a search on these places and you’ll see why they deserve a visit.
THE RHINE VALLEY: KOBLENZ TO BINGEN
This is where I intend spending at least a week of my summer holiday – cycling and boat trips along the UNESCO-listed valley of the Rhine. More castles than villages, more history, more nature and more dramatic scenery than anywhere else I can think of.
SAARBURG TO KONZ
Saarburg: if you like castles on craggy hilltops and villages nestling in perfect harmony with the surrounding nature, this is where you should come. With a delightful waterfall in the centre of town and a cable car to the top of the largest hill, you are going to enjoy yourself whatever. In fact, as I live six minutes away by train, I spend far too little time in this delightful town.
Schoden: a perfectly situated village on the junction of the Saar river bend and the straight Saar canal. In the village you will find some little streets and alleys making you wonder if you had just made it to a Tuscan mountaintop hamlet until you see the German street signs. There is more atmosphere in this little village than in all the villages in Flanders.
Ockfen: find a T-shaped valley, hone it until it curves like a bobsleigh course, put a village at the point the two lines of the T meet with chocolate box houses and that is Ockfen.
Wiltingen: the village where I live is the jewel in the winemakers’ crown. The wine made in this area is some of Germany’s finest. Although the railway line runs straight through the middle of town, there is a certain rural charm about Wiltingen. Rosi’s Weinstube is a good place to sit admiring the valley opposite, or take a walk along the riverbank. The vineyards rising up at the back of the village lead up to the majestic monument at the Galgenberg, a place you can see for miles. I often go up there to watch the birds of prey swoop down upon their victims; to listen to the unmistakable sound of the cuckoo; to catch sight of the reclusive rabbits and the majestic deer, the animal I hold most in esteem. One night I accidentally ran into one, frightening it, and me, almost to the point we both ran off in different directions.
Kanzem: is this the real location for The Wind in the Willows? Set on the most rapid part of the stately Saar, this village has won numerous in-bloom prizes. At the river bank is a pleasant eatery, stocked up with local food. It contains a few streets of the most desirable houses in the region. I wish to retire here!
Konz: although heavily criticised for its nondescript centre and charmless urban features, there are pockets of Konz which are underestimated. Roscheid, straddling the top of the hill, is full of the most imaginative architecture in the region. Every house is different. Further down, the Russian shop Julchen sells some fine Russian food and drink. The town hall square is always full of parents with their kids playing in the fountains and the town hall itself has a wine cellar and restaurant whose terrace occupies the front of the building.
Perfect cycling territoryThis year I will not be going to my usual haunts, Venice and Prague, because there is just too much to see and do around here. So I bought a bike. Here are some tips:
TRIER
In the valley of the Mosel, surrounded by forests and streams, lies the oldest city in Germany and a beauty. Roman ruins, a hilltop monument and UNESCO World Heritage sites all over the place, Trier is outstanding. It has a unique atmosphere and an area offering a more enjoyable shopping trip than the average town. One thing I love about Trier is its mix of old and new. Kaufhof sits in the street to the Roman-built Porta Nigra. The open air museum at the site of the Roman ruins has been subtly modernised to make the experience more pleasurable without destroying the ancient structure.
For walking and eating, I can recommend two areas of the city: firstly work up your appetite by taking a walk from the Roman ruins to the embankment and following the path along the side of the river under the trees. When you arrive at the river cruiser area just past the bridge towards the motorway, there is a line of restaurants all offering good, wholesome local food with a smile. If you were to cross the bridge and head up towards the city forest, there is the Gillenbach stream, also a delightful walk. Just in there is also a well-hidden restaurant with an excellent atmosphere and decently priced menu. The other area of the city is the centre itself. Full of all kinds of eateries, it is difficult to choose, but if you are there in winter, go to the Frankenturm restaurant. The produce comes from a butcher in the Hunsrück National Park and it is all freshly delivered.
NITTEL, GREVENMACHER AND WINCHERINGEN
Just a 25-minute ride from Trier is the natural amphitheatre housing the delightful villages of Nittel, Grevenmacher and Wincheringen, with a Mediterranean feeling all of its own. The views are spectacular from any angle and the places to stop off on the way numerous. In fact, this part of the Mosel is without rival. Temmels, Oberbillig, Nennig and Perl are all worth a visit. I recommend cycling – there are cycle paths everywhere and you get really up close to the environment. I suggest stopping off at the Mühlenbach in Nittel, a palatial guesthouse with a tremendous front veranda for eating amongst the pot plants and a cosy back garden for relaxing with a glass of Spätlese and a book.
THE LOWER MOSEL
Bernkastel-Kues, Piesport, Longuich, Traben-Trarbach, Koblenz... So many places to visit. Again, bike is the best way but I could imagine doing it in a convertible MG sports car. Just do a search on these places and you’ll see why they deserve a visit.
THE RHINE VALLEY: KOBLENZ TO BINGEN
This is where I intend spending at least a week of my summer holiday – cycling and boat trips along the UNESCO-listed valley of the Rhine. More castles than villages, more history, more nature and more dramatic scenery than anywhere else I can think of.
SAARBURG TO KONZ
Saarburg: if you like castles on craggy hilltops and villages nestling in perfect harmony with the surrounding nature, this is where you should come. With a delightful waterfall in the centre of town and a cable car to the top of the largest hill, you are going to enjoy yourself whatever. In fact, as I live six minutes away by train, I spend far too little time in this delightful town.
Schoden: a perfectly situated village on the junction of the Saar river bend and the straight Saar canal. In the village you will find some little streets and alleys making you wonder if you had just made it to a Tuscan mountaintop hamlet until you see the German street signs. There is more atmosphere in this little village than in all the villages in Flanders.
Ockfen: find a T-shaped valley, hone it until it curves like a bobsleigh course, put a village at the point the two lines of the T meet with chocolate box houses and that is Ockfen.
Wiltingen: the village where I live is the jewel in the winemakers’ crown. The wine made in this area is some of Germany’s finest. Although the railway line runs straight through the middle of town, there is a certain rural charm about Wiltingen. Rosi’s Weinstube is a good place to sit admiring the valley opposite, or take a walk along the riverbank. The vineyards rising up at the back of the village lead up to the majestic monument at the Galgenberg, a place you can see for miles. I often go up there to watch the birds of prey swoop down upon their victims; to listen to the unmistakable sound of the cuckoo; to catch sight of the reclusive rabbits and the majestic deer, the animal I hold most in esteem. One night I accidentally ran into one, frightening it, and me, almost to the point we both ran off in different directions.
Kanzem: is this the real location for The Wind in the Willows? Set on the most rapid part of the stately Saar, this village has won numerous in-bloom prizes. At the river bank is a pleasant eatery, stocked up with local food. It contains a few streets of the most desirable houses in the region. I wish to retire here!
Konz: although heavily criticised for its nondescript centre and charmless urban features, there are pockets of Konz which are underestimated. Roscheid, straddling the top of the hill, is full of the most imaginative architecture in the region. Every house is different. Further down, the Russian shop Julchen sells some fine Russian food and drink. The town hall square is always full of parents with their kids playing in the fountains and the town hall itself has a wine cellar and restaurant whose terrace occupies the front of the building.
THE SUNSET OVER OUR VALLEY
Saturday, 10 May 2008
A million miles from reality
After a rather traumatic period in my adventurous life,
I have reappeared in Germany.
Vineyards at the edge of the property
Wiltingen village from the other side of the river
Greetings from Wiltingen!
I send you all my most charismatic greetings from the Saar valley in south western Germany! What a difference from the previous place, whose name I shall avoid writing for fear of a Pavlovian attack of depression and angst...
Moving was a real ordeal: I asked a friend to drive a hire van with all the stuff in it and got some neighbours’ youngsters to help me load up. However, on closing up the back, it was noticeable that there were three flat tyres. On going to the hire company, they accused us of driving over stones or some other objects and refused to co-operate because we had signed the contract. When I pointed out that their contract was not totally legal due to the overuse of small writing, and that the truck had not been properly checked when they gave it to us, he got on the phone to his boss and had a ten-minute complaining session about us using expressions like “yeah, I know...” and “but they just don’t want to”. At the end of his rant, he handed us some more keys to a different truck, checked it over properly and shook our hands as if to capitulate to a higher psychological power. It helps when the person accompanying you to the hire shop used to be one of the leading experts in European consumer rights, often appearing on television channels all over Europe...
In any case, the last person I spoke to in Belgium (there, I finally got the courage to write it) really confirmed my decision to leave: in the petrol station on the E40 just before Liège, we pulled in to fill up. A stupid argument ensued because the cashier didn’t want to accept that my card was rejected by his machine. I told him he was a first class imbecile and asked him if the glass screen was to protect him from gunmen or the wrath of his clients. He told me from gunmen, who come from time to time, upon which I told him they had my full support and next time if I were there I’d tell them to wait in the car while I did the ******* job myself.
This lack of community spirit and utter contempt for one’s fellow human being went into total reverse upon crossing the frontier into Germany. What a total irony, verging on the paradoxical. When we arrived at my new place, we were just wearily bringing in the last few items when a neighbour came to greet us and immediately offered his assistance. He even offered to cook us a meal. The weekend after, some other neighbours invited us to join their barbecue having only said hello once before. Her husband works in the same area of Luxembourg and offered me a lift to work.
Greetings from Wiltingen! I send you all my most charismatic greetings from the Saar valley in south western Germany! What a difference from the previous place, whose name I shall avoid writing for fear of a Pavlovian attack of depression and angst...
Moving was a real ordeal: I asked a friend to drive a hire van with all the stuff in it and got some neighbours’ youngsters to help me load up. However, on closing up the back, it was noticeable that there were three flat tyres. On going to the hire company, they accused us of driving over stones or some other objects and refused to co-operate because we had signed the contract. When I pointed out that their contract was not totally legal due to the overuse of small writing, and that the truck had not been properly checked when they gave it to us, he got on the phone to his boss and had a ten-minute complaining session about us using expressions like “yeah, I know...” and “but they just don’t want to”. At the end of his rant, he handed us some more keys to a different truck, checked it over properly and shook our hands as if to capitulate to a higher psychological power. It helps when the person accompanying you to the hire shop used to be one of the leading experts in European consumer rights, often appearing on television channels all over Europe...
In any case, the last person I spoke to in Belgium (there, I finally got the courage to write it) really confirmed my decision to leave: in the petrol station on the E40 just before Liège, we pulled in to fill up. A stupid argument ensued because the cashier didn’t want to accept that my card was rejected by his machine. I told him he was a first class imbecile and asked him if the glass screen was to protect him from gunmen or the wrath of his clients. He told me from gunmen, who come from time to time, upon which I told him they had my full support and next time if I were there I’d tell them to wait in the car while I did the ******* job myself.
This lack of community spirit and utter contempt for one’s fellow human being went into total reverse upon crossing the frontier into Germany. What a total irony, verging on the paradoxical. When we arrived at my new place, we were just wearily bringing in the last few items when a neighbour came to greet us and immediately offered his assistance. He even offered to cook us a meal. The weekend after, some other neighbours invited us to join their barbecue having only said hello once before. Her husband works in the same area of Luxembourg and offered me a lift to work.
View of the Saar valley from Saarburg castle
Where did all the energy come from?
I get up at 5.45am to go to work, although I only work Monday to Wednesday. However, on my days off I get up relatively early and 8.00am is positively a lie-in for me. I do so much more in one day that I’m starting to wonder how I could have wasted seven years of my life shut away in that other place. The difference is overpowering: I step out of the door and I am immediately confronted with nature – hills with vineyards rise up in a stately fashion for miles around, interspersed with woods, meadows and rivers. Villages with local shops, guesthouses and inns play a major part in the local fabric of life. Events are often looked forward to as they don’t bombard people’s lives each week with something new. The village May fair takes place this weekend, and I have already been invited to participate by setting up my own stall. I politely declined, as I am not ready with the new photos for this year, but it really made me feel like I belong, something which took over a year in Belgium. Who wouldn’t want to get up early to squeeze every last drop of enjoyment out of the place?!
Where did all the energy come from?
I get up at 5.45am to go to work, although I only work Monday to Wednesday. However, on my days off I get up relatively early and 8.00am is positively a lie-in for me. I do so much more in one day that I’m starting to wonder how I could have wasted seven years of my life shut away in that other place. The difference is overpowering: I step out of the door and I am immediately confronted with nature – hills with vineyards rise up in a stately fashion for miles around, interspersed with woods, meadows and rivers. Villages with local shops, guesthouses and inns play a major part in the local fabric of life. Events are often looked forward to as they don’t bombard people’s lives each week with something new. The village May fair takes place this weekend, and I have already been invited to participate by setting up my own stall. I politely declined, as I am not ready with the new photos for this year, but it really made me feel like I belong, something which took over a year in Belgium. Who wouldn’t want to get up early to squeeze every last drop of enjoyment out of the place?!
Our paddock
Nobody wants my money
People here are so civilised and trusting. On Tuesday evening I went to one of the local vintners and asked to buy a few bottles of wine. I said I only had a fifty euro note and she couldn’t change it but when I was passing next time I could drop it off. How refreshing, I thought.
It didn’t end there: the next morning I arrived at the station with the aforementioned fifty euro note and tried to purchase a €2.25 ticket with it. The stationmaster said not to worry as he couldn’t give change but if I were to meet with a ticket inspector I should just mention the fifty euro note. Remarkable, I thought. Then a lady sitting on the bench said she had seen me before and she said she could lend me a couple of euro until next time and so I could buy my ticket. Extraordinary, I thought.
When I arrived in Konz, the town where my bus to Luxembourg leaves from, I walked with the lady who lent me some money to the bakery, concluding our chat, and I got a coffee and a cherry Streusel (Germany’s best kept secret is the cakes) for breakfast. I proffered the fifty euro note and the lady behind the counter said she couldn’t change it but I could pop in over the next few days and give her the cash. Not to worry, she said, these things happen. Quite amazing, I thought.
I went over to the bus stop and awaited the bus to the Luxembourg border where I had to change buses. My German colleague was there and we exchanged early summer salutations before the bus’s arrival. When I offered to driver the same note, he told me tongue-in-cheek that he was not an exchange bureau and told me I’d have to unfortunately go free of charge to the Luxembourg border that morning. Fortunately my German colleague came over to me and lent me three euro or I would have suffered the ignominy of repeating the conversation with the driver of the bus to the European Quarter in Luxembourg. Utterly astonishing, I thought.
And then I thought No, it’s actually quite normal. It’s just that I haven’t had that kind of experience since I left the UK.
Nobody wants my moneyPeople here are so civilised and trusting. On Tuesday evening I went to one of the local vintners and asked to buy a few bottles of wine. I said I only had a fifty euro note and she couldn’t change it but when I was passing next time I could drop it off. How refreshing, I thought.
It didn’t end there: the next morning I arrived at the station with the aforementioned fifty euro note and tried to purchase a €2.25 ticket with it. The stationmaster said not to worry as he couldn’t give change but if I were to meet with a ticket inspector I should just mention the fifty euro note. Remarkable, I thought. Then a lady sitting on the bench said she had seen me before and she said she could lend me a couple of euro until next time and so I could buy my ticket. Extraordinary, I thought.
When I arrived in Konz, the town where my bus to Luxembourg leaves from, I walked with the lady who lent me some money to the bakery, concluding our chat, and I got a coffee and a cherry Streusel (Germany’s best kept secret is the cakes) for breakfast. I proffered the fifty euro note and the lady behind the counter said she couldn’t change it but I could pop in over the next few days and give her the cash. Not to worry, she said, these things happen. Quite amazing, I thought.
I went over to the bus stop and awaited the bus to the Luxembourg border where I had to change buses. My German colleague was there and we exchanged early summer salutations before the bus’s arrival. When I offered to driver the same note, he told me tongue-in-cheek that he was not an exchange bureau and told me I’d have to unfortunately go free of charge to the Luxembourg border that morning. Fortunately my German colleague came over to me and lent me three euro or I would have suffered the ignominy of repeating the conversation with the driver of the bus to the European Quarter in Luxembourg. Utterly astonishing, I thought.
And then I thought No, it’s actually quite normal. It’s just that I haven’t had that kind of experience since I left the UK.
Saarburg waterfalls
Becoming a local
Signing into a local community is sometimes quite a hassle. Having lived in a lot of places I think one of the worst countries to legalise your status is Belgium although France comes out top of that ignominious list. The Czech Republic is also not particularly good. I remember going to register in Leuven for the first time at the foreign nationals desk, which was one of the most visited council services and yet the least staffed. I arrived first thing in the morning at 8.45 and along with thirty other people from Congo, Japan, the USA, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Sudan and Indonesia, ran forward as fast as possible to grab the queuing tickets, being threatened with a fatal stabbing by one menacing brute. I waited three hours and at the end was told to come back because I didn’t have all the required documents.
In France, I had to get my landlady to come to the local town hall to register me because in France you can’t get a job without the residence permit and you can’t get a residence permit without a job. No wonder why there are such a lot of people who feel disenfranchised from the French way of life there. In Prague it was a similar story, but fortunately that seems to have changed now they are part of the EU.
On the contrary, upon going to the local council building in Konz, I walked into a virtually empty room with more staff than visitors, I signed two pieces of paper (address) and put two crosses on the questions of my religion (church subsidies) and my tax status. I didn’t have to show any proof of contract, I didn’t have to show any proof of address, I didn’t even have to bring a photo. Nope, I don’t have any ridiculous carte de séjour like in France and I didn’t have to humiliate myself by showing my private affairs like in Belgium.
As I walked out of the council building, I felt quite overwhelmed by the whole experience. I became a little lightheaded by the simplicity of everything in Germany; that nothing was too difficult for people; that things which take forever elsewhere only take a few minutes here; that you can keep your dignity in the local government offices; but most of all, that you feel part of the community from the moment you arrive.
Becoming a localSigning into a local community is sometimes quite a hassle. Having lived in a lot of places I think one of the worst countries to legalise your status is Belgium although France comes out top of that ignominious list. The Czech Republic is also not particularly good. I remember going to register in Leuven for the first time at the foreign nationals desk, which was one of the most visited council services and yet the least staffed. I arrived first thing in the morning at 8.45 and along with thirty other people from Congo, Japan, the USA, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Sudan and Indonesia, ran forward as fast as possible to grab the queuing tickets, being threatened with a fatal stabbing by one menacing brute. I waited three hours and at the end was told to come back because I didn’t have all the required documents.
In France, I had to get my landlady to come to the local town hall to register me because in France you can’t get a job without the residence permit and you can’t get a residence permit without a job. No wonder why there are such a lot of people who feel disenfranchised from the French way of life there. In Prague it was a similar story, but fortunately that seems to have changed now they are part of the EU.
On the contrary, upon going to the local council building in Konz, I walked into a virtually empty room with more staff than visitors, I signed two pieces of paper (address) and put two crosses on the questions of my religion (church subsidies) and my tax status. I didn’t have to show any proof of contract, I didn’t have to show any proof of address, I didn’t even have to bring a photo. Nope, I don’t have any ridiculous carte de séjour like in France and I didn’t have to humiliate myself by showing my private affairs like in Belgium.
As I walked out of the council building, I felt quite overwhelmed by the whole experience. I became a little lightheaded by the simplicity of everything in Germany; that nothing was too difficult for people; that things which take forever elsewhere only take a few minutes here; that you can keep your dignity in the local government offices; but most of all, that you feel part of the community from the moment you arrive.
View from hillside towards my house on the right
Getting used to the new surroundings
Some of the changes, though, have been more difficult to come to terms with. I live in a village with no buses and a train an hour in both directions and I don’t have a driving licence. You are probably asking yourself why on earth I chose to come here in the first place. I start work at 8.30am in another country, for Pete’s sake: I must be off my tree. But no, I just have to get up that bit earlier. 5.45am as I said. But it’s worth it: I get the train at 6.29am to Konz, arriving at 6.35am, where I walk seven minutes to the bakery at the bus stop, have a coffee and a cake or two, get the 7.00am bus to Grevenmacher, change to the bus to Luxembourg, arriving at 7.50 in the European Quarter of the city. I have my second coffee, make my photocopies, chat to a few colleagues and await the arrival of my participants. But considering the place I live in, it is a sacrifice worth making.
Another disadvantage is that the baker and the butcher’s shops in the village are only open in the morning from 6.45am to 12.30pm. They only sell basic provisions apart from their usual fare so I need to get food on my way home of an evening. Even that is no trouble really, because I buy my food in Knospe in Konz, a typically German shop, selling organic food from local producers. I could also visit Kaufhof, Lidl, dm or Rewe in Konz depending on the amount of time I have before the train. If it took my fancy, I could stop off at the Ratskeller restaurant for a giant Schnitzel or a truly filling salad. I could hop off the train at the next stop in Kanzem and head for the Saarterrasse, a delightful riverside eatery. However, the greatest pleasure is arriving in Wiltingen where I live and heading for Rosi’s Weinstube for a glass or two of their grape juice. No, I mean it. It’s not a euphemism for wine, it’s really juice although not out of a carton but straight from the grapes. It is the taste equivalent of being caught in a vineyard in a sudden heavy shower.
Getting used to the new surroundingsSome of the changes, though, have been more difficult to come to terms with. I live in a village with no buses and a train an hour in both directions and I don’t have a driving licence. You are probably asking yourself why on earth I chose to come here in the first place. I start work at 8.30am in another country, for Pete’s sake: I must be off my tree. But no, I just have to get up that bit earlier. 5.45am as I said. But it’s worth it: I get the train at 6.29am to Konz, arriving at 6.35am, where I walk seven minutes to the bakery at the bus stop, have a coffee and a cake or two, get the 7.00am bus to Grevenmacher, change to the bus to Luxembourg, arriving at 7.50 in the European Quarter of the city. I have my second coffee, make my photocopies, chat to a few colleagues and await the arrival of my participants. But considering the place I live in, it is a sacrifice worth making.
Another disadvantage is that the baker and the butcher’s shops in the village are only open in the morning from 6.45am to 12.30pm. They only sell basic provisions apart from their usual fare so I need to get food on my way home of an evening. Even that is no trouble really, because I buy my food in Knospe in Konz, a typically German shop, selling organic food from local producers. I could also visit Kaufhof, Lidl, dm or Rewe in Konz depending on the amount of time I have before the train. If it took my fancy, I could stop off at the Ratskeller restaurant for a giant Schnitzel or a truly filling salad. I could hop off the train at the next stop in Kanzem and head for the Saarterrasse, a delightful riverside eatery. However, the greatest pleasure is arriving in Wiltingen where I live and heading for Rosi’s Weinstube for a glass or two of their grape juice. No, I mean it. It’s not a euphemism for wine, it’s really juice although not out of a carton but straight from the grapes. It is the taste equivalent of being caught in a vineyard in a sudden heavy shower.
Galgenberg
Walking in the hills
There are tracks everywhere through the vineyards along the Saar valley. You can walk for a whole day without ever standing aside for a car. I like to go up to the top of the Galgenberg, our local prominent hill and scene of witch executions in the Middle Ages, and watching the sun go down and the moon rise. I am so fortunate that I am the only person for at least a kilometre to be up there after dark. You can admire the three rivers, wonder at the shape of the sheer valleys and listen to the trains, cars and pedestrians going by below without them ever knowing you were there. You can hear a lot more up there than down on the ground level. There is a spot, through a grove of trees that obviously very rarely gets visited, where you feel like you are hovering above the earth. The only sounds are of local birds, and after dark the sky is covered with stars as though the Almighty has dropped a glass on the floor, shattering into millions of pieces. At the Galgenberg summit itself, there is a statue of some steps leading to nowhere, a symbol of the executions, and a lookout parapet with railings and a telescope. I often go up there to feel totally at one with my surroundings and look down upon the wonders of Mother Earth.
Walking in the hillsThere are tracks everywhere through the vineyards along the Saar valley. You can walk for a whole day without ever standing aside for a car. I like to go up to the top of the Galgenberg, our local prominent hill and scene of witch executions in the Middle Ages, and watching the sun go down and the moon rise. I am so fortunate that I am the only person for at least a kilometre to be up there after dark. You can admire the three rivers, wonder at the shape of the sheer valleys and listen to the trains, cars and pedestrians going by below without them ever knowing you were there. You can hear a lot more up there than down on the ground level. There is a spot, through a grove of trees that obviously very rarely gets visited, where you feel like you are hovering above the earth. The only sounds are of local birds, and after dark the sky is covered with stars as though the Almighty has dropped a glass on the floor, shattering into millions of pieces. At the Galgenberg summit itself, there is a statue of some steps leading to nowhere, a symbol of the executions, and a lookout parapet with railings and a telescope. I often go up there to feel totally at one with my surroundings and look down upon the wonders of Mother Earth.
Home, the Kochsmühle
To conclude
With all these possibilities, there is not even a stampede of wild buffalo or a plague of dung beetles that could force me to leave this corner of earthly paradise. I came here to restart my own business in a less stressful environment and to work at the European Institutions in Luxembourg, giving up a more high profile career amongst the politicians and powerbrokers of the EU in Brussels for a statelier pace of life albeit not such an intriguing, exciting and vibrant place to work. And I don’t regret it for one minute.
To concludeWith all these possibilities, there is not even a stampede of wild buffalo or a plague of dung beetles that could force me to leave this corner of earthly paradise. I came here to restart my own business in a less stressful environment and to work at the European Institutions in Luxembourg, giving up a more high profile career amongst the politicians and powerbrokers of the EU in Brussels for a statelier pace of life albeit not such an intriguing, exciting and vibrant place to work. And I don’t regret it for one minute.
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