Albion’s Alchemist

Well friends - I’ve been toying with the idea of seting up an IRC channel for this blog for a few months - generally I have dismisssed the idea since I seem unable to give this blog the time I should. My reasoning is along the lines of ‘I cannot even take 15 minutes to bitch about some current evil - why should I do any better patrolling a specialsit irc channel?’ I also remind myself that the site gets only a small number of hits every day.

Still, who dares wins, eh? And perhaps the channel will prove a catalyst to make me update more often, you never can tell. The chances are higher if someone drops in to the channel to tell me what a chap I am…

Anyway, the channel is there for you - you can look in, and say hello if there are any other Alchemy readers in there, and if I am in there you can order me to update more often, and point out my spelling mistakes.

S’possible I’ll set up a special time to drop into the channel and hear your complaints, but in the meantime it’s dumb chance.

The link is just to the left.

For IRC most people seem to like mIRC - but the Alchemist is a grown up, so he recomends Chatzilla for those of you with Firefox, and Firefox for those of you without.

Hell & Damnation!

I honestly intended to write immediately after that last post, but, well as regular readers (which is to say anyone who reads at the irregular rate at which I post) will know, I’m unreliable.

Thank you to Mr. Free Market for that swift verbal kick – it seems to have done the job.

So… What shall we discuss?

Ah! I know just the thing. Any of you who have read or watched coverage of the latest atrocities committed in the name of animal rights will have been as appalled as the Alchemist, I’m sure. BUAV typically wash their hands of such violence, in public at least, but it still goes on, and one doubts that they are really that upset about it at Anthropomorphist HQ. The trouble of course is that there is no organized body to stand up for the rights of those Humans who don’t want to die from some ghastly, but potentially curable morbidity.

But wait! What’s that in Cyberspace? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a website!

Fear not citizens, for Pro-Test.org is here to stand up for your right to health. This is the project of one ‘Sqrrl101’ who prefers to remain anonymous (and the Alchemist understands why, long time Alchemy readers will recall that your author has himself been threatened for holding views out of harmony with those of another).

Last month our heroic Sqrrl101 and some colleagues, armed with almost £2 worth of protest gear, held a counter-demonstration during an animal-rights march in Oxon.

Doing so earned him a spot on the radio (credit where credit is due – I don’t like a lot of BEEB policies, but they gave him a voice) and an attack from SPEAK, who style themselves ‘the voice for animals’ – one wonders why they did not go the whole hog and call themselves SPEAK ‘the spray can and threatening letter for animals’. You can read the whole thing via the link from Pro-Test.org, I’m not linking to it because I don’t feel like giving them even one additional unique hit.

At the end of the day, the Alchemist likes animals a lot (I could eat a whole one), but he cannot bring himself to see them as people – this is because they are not. It is within Human power to save lives, but, as with any power, comes responsibility (oh dear, oh dear, oh dear). In this case our responsibility comes in the form of a choice – we can either save Human lives, or animal lives. It’s really that simple. One might argue that there is no shortage of Humans (I quite agree – and I am 100% in favour of birth control and abortion), however, by the same token, there are no shortage of rats, mice, fruit flies, dogs and cute little apes. So all we have to ask ourselves is, ‘which is more important?’ The answer, and it seems obvious enough to me, is ‘Humans’.

As an afterthought on my part, Pro-Test has a list of medical hoo-haa which has resulted from past vivisection (medicine is not the Alchemist’s strong suit, but he suspects the list is just a bare sampling of the whole) – and I defy any animal-rights activist to swear off the treatments on that list.

I almost take it as my due to get an email from some yahoo wanting to take me up on that – so let me make this clear, when I say I want you to swear off those treatments, I mean forever, you cannot change your mind when your diet of organic grasshopper’s ears gives you colon cancer.

As a very few of you will know - next month is Albion’s Alchemist’s first aniversary - because of the nearness of this prestigious date your Alchemist is going to try to update his blog again. Those of you who have visited from time to time over this last year are fully aware of my failings in this regard. Three times I have left this blog un-updated for weeks at a time. Once it was because I was threatened with premature and permanent death and I took some time to hide under my bed and buy a tin hat etc. The other two times were just lazyness. For whatever reason I missed a couple of updates and once that happens I simply fall out of the habbit of writing. In my defence, the last time this happened, in November, I had commited to participate in the Nanowrimo - that is, I had commited to write a 50′000 word novel in thirty days, and it was this which caused me to miss the updates which precipitated my recent silence.

In any event, I am, for the time being , back. Usual Alchemical goodness to follow.

There is a church in a town near to the Alchemist (near in a purely geographical sense you understand) – the church sits in a church square.

This square is a very convivial spot in almost every respect. There are sunny benches and shady trees – there is a chip shop, a sandwich shop and a bakery – there is an endless supply of anonymous passers by to entertain one. It is, in short a nice place for a weary Alchemist to eat his lunch, even on a mid November day when the sun sheds not an erg of warmth.

There is only one element which keeps this place from perfection, or something very like it.

It’s the rats. Hundreds of ‘em.

Sometimes it seems like I am the only man who sees them, but this cannot be the case, for other people feed them. I saw it today, a woman had finished her lunch, and had a handful of chip-detritus, little slivers of crispy chaff which one finds at the bottom of the styrofoam dish. Without a though she cast these fragments to the ground. Instantly there was a flutter as the rats abandoned the church roof and flew down to consume the fried treat.

Bated now the rats cast about for more food – they spy the Alchemist and thirty seconds after that unthoughtful woman finished her lunch, I find myself besieged by diesis-spreading crap-disseminating airborne rats. Well tank’ee very much missy, I was enjoying my lunch.

Naturally I have a crack at kicking those rats within range – their reflexes are superior (remember, they are used to people trying to kick them), and their courage such that I cannot dissuade them with mere violence. I know that the only thing which can dispel the flock of rats is someone else drawing them off with food.

I suppose it never occurs to these beneficent fools that the reason the church square is full of vermin is that people keep feeding them – these philanthropists probably imagine that the rats are there to make the place a more entertaining and enlivened centrepiece for the town.

I suspect that today is the last time I will eat in the square for many a long and wintry day, however, the next time I go I will bring my bum-bag. Y’see, although the rats are generally too quick for me to get my Doc Martins to tell against them, I have had some luck with the long nylon strap on m’bag. Let me tell’ee, that makes the feathery bastards think twice.

Anyone who has ever wanted a t-shirt with Boris Johnson’s face on it (and who hasn’t?) will be as delighted by Teemarto.com as the Alchemist is.

Whether you are looking for some no-nonsense euroskeptic glad-rags or merely wish to make the point that Teflon Tony is a lying toe-rag you will find what you seek.

I’d like to point out to m’readers that the site’s proprietors have in no way paid or coerced be into plugging their site, however, should they feel the need to send me an Iron Lady shirt, then let the record show I am ready to accept.

Sois Musulman et tais tois! You cheese eating surrender Muslims…

Ooh, controversial!

In may of nineteen sixty eight the students of France, almost as one man, went on the warpath. No two people will ever agree on what exactly they were angry about, generally things like the Vietnam War and anti-fascist ideologies are cited and then the respectable historians move on to something more fun. So far as we are concerned the causes don’t really matter.

The recent riots in France are generally blamed on the poor conditions in which immigrant Muslims live. Commentators cite low income, unemployment and racism.
The Poosh makes a good point when he says that these privations are suffered by people who are neither immigrants, nor Muslims, yet they do not riot. In fact one imagines they are rioting, but they did not start the riot, and this is the good point.

France’s reaction to the riots has been execrable. In ’68 de Gaul reacted by laying down the law. He set up a military counter-riot office, and he authorised the police to use all necessary force. The riots nearly cost him his office (in fact they may have, but not immediately), but he crushed them swiftly enough. He prevented the sort of death and carnage which would have grown even greater had he pussy-footed around like the current administration.

Where are the water cannons? Where are the legions of armoured riot police? Where is the flash and staccato rhythm of sub-machineguns felling the unassimilated Mohammedan horde? I’ll tell you. Nowhere. Y’see Chirac has looked at the past, oh yes, and seen that de Gaul’s more, er, robust, response to the rioters made him unpopular with the left wing. Now the left wing are a powerful bunch in France today, and Chirac will not risk his les than sound position by doing his job.

In short, Chirac would rather people die than loose his job, and the left wing (not to mention the larger part of the global media) would rather see people die than see poor immigrant brown people made to abbey the law.

Actually, that’s not true, because of course the media, and the left wing, and most everyone else will not see anybody die. That don’t mean there will not be any death, just that the media will turn a blind eye, and no-one else will look.

This is the essence of the matter, regardless of the privations one might suffer, nothing grants the right to riot, to steal, to burn or to kill. If a man riots, then the Alchemist for one will look upon his plight with less, rather than more sympathy.

Today I shot over to the CEP News Blog - I haven’t visited in a little while, largely because it makes me angry when I do, and you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. Well, I don’t like me when I’m angry and I know what a splendid man I am, so it stands to reason you wouldn’t like me either.

If you have been there recently (and I highly recommend it, for those of you with high-capacity spleens) you will have seen the polls on the right hand side. One asks about the concept of an English National Anthem. No-doubt you recall we sang ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ at the last Commonwealth Games, and that served to highlight our lack of an official Anthem.

I added my two penneth worth just to see the results of those who had voted before. I voted for ‘Jerusalem’.

One hundred and twenty-nine other people have also voted for that particular song – fifty-nine percent of those who have expressed an opinion. ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ is a rather asthmatic second place with fourteen percent.

Leaving for the moment the question of why we need an official National Anthem for England (and I leave it because it is not worth the pixels) I took to wandering what it is about Jerusalem that holds me, and so many others so.

Famously, the words started as a poem by William Blake at the start of the nineteenth century, and remained so for a long time, languishing in semi-obscurity.
The poem is based upon the rather risible legend that Jesus Christ came to Britain at some point, unremarked by scholars or theologians ever since. Nevertheless Blake apparently believed the legend to be true and wrote a poetic précis of his thoughts on the matter.

There probably would the tale have ended if it ere not for a minor composer called Hubert Parry. It seems odd to us today that men could have looked at this poem, obviously a masterpiece, and then flicked over the page without a second thought – but the Alchemist has noticed that art in general only becomes a masterpiece when someone declares it so. Artists who we today think of as old masters were all but forgotten a century ago, and those we pass by in the galleries today will be called geniuses by the children of our children.

Where was I? Ah yes, Parry was so taken with the poem that he set it to music. The First World War was in full swing at the time and our man knew his audience. The new song Jerusalem was an instant hit, as such things are reckoned and this was certainly helped by Blake’s masterful wordsmanship. Anyone can learn the poem, and thus the song in twenty minutes or less, yet there is a real depth of feeling therein. More than would be thought commensurate with the plain text.

The version which we are all familiar with today appeared in nineteen twenty-two. Sir Edward Elgar arranged the popular song for a full orchestra and gave it the real presence and majesty which had been lacking since it was first penned, Now there was a melody the equal in power of the words.

And the words – oh yes. Y’see, generally a patriotic song has a very plain subtext, something along the lines of ‘My country is pretty damn good and if you don’t think so, well your only a foreigner’.
Don’t miss-understand, the Alchemist can get behind this sort of song, and indeed has done on many occasions. However, Jerusalem is different.

Take out that bit about Christ and Jerusalem boils down to ‘My country is pretty damn good and if you don’t think so, well, I’ll make it better’.

That’s it, really. Yes, there are the Dark Satanic Mills, yes, but underneath there is good earth, a green and pleasant land. No, Jesus never walked here, but that does not matter. We walk here – and we don’t need a messiah, because we will make our world a better place!

We are English and we will not cease from the good fight! Our swords shall not sleep, and neither shall our spades or our pens or our computers or our hearts. We will go on because it is the personal, sacred duty of every English man and every English woman to make England greener and more pleasant.

This is why Jerusalem holds me – in this case the truth really is beautiful, and beauty really is the truth. This is why I am proud to sing this song and why it is the only choice four our Anthem.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land

I’m sorry.

There, I said it, and I really am. By web connection was restored a fortnight ago, but I have not been blogging. Y’see, it is hard to keep going. To write every day, or every other day, so when there is some sort of natural interruption, I tend to get out of the habit - before I know it, it has been two weeks since I posted. I’ll try harder in the future.

Today’s post is sparked by an email from Alchemy correspondent in Germany, Fräulein Merci H. She believes she has formulated a solution for France’s current problems.

At it’s most basic level it does involve foreign soldiers marching down the Champs Elise. Fräulein H forces the Alchemist to admit that this has done France a power of good in the past, and that said soldiers would be far more orderly than the current rif raf who are rioting nightly. Now typically the flaw in plans such as this is Albion – give us a few years and we can generally drive the invaders out of France. Therefore Fräulein H has charged me with rallying my countrymen to her side, and the glorious cause of sorting Marcel out once and for all. We’ll cross the channel at the start of December, the French will surrender after a fortnight and we’ll meet the Germans in Paris for Christmas. We could play football - that was fun last time.

Now, in case you cannot tell, Fräulein H and I are joking. We both of us think it is a very fine thing that we can make jokes about this sort of thing.

It is November, the month when we ought remember that millions have died for us, for our right to make cheep little jokes. I’d like to offer some thoughts not about those who have given their lives for us – I’m far to poor a wordsmith to do the least of them justice – so instead I will talk about the organization which represents them and their dependants.

The Royal British Legion is quite simply, one of the most magnificent institutions which has appeared in our age of the world.

Many years ago I decided that as far as charity goes, one can either give a little to everyone, or give all one can spare to one charity. I choose the latter, and I chose the Royal British Legion. Animals and children have many charities but what the devil have animals and children done for The Alchemist? I might donate to the Earth-lobby, but they are a pack of soap-dogging weirdoes and the Earth is big and old enough to look after herself. After decades of pouring money into Africa where has that got us, I will not put my donations into the African black hole. As for the homeless, well I have been known to buy lunch for one particular vagrant, but she is a friend so it is not proper charity.

No, as far as I am concerned the only people worthy of my money are those who have done something for me.
The Royal British Legion represent those people. People who have had the courage to make MY safety their personal responsibility. People who have DIED for me. I don’t believe in an afterlife, but I know there are uncountable millions who have spent the only life they will ever have, just to secure a little peace and safety for your author.

When you see a politician wearing a poppy, he is only wearing it for appearance sake, after ordering British and Commonwealth soldiers to die in some god-forsaken Iraqi sandpit more than likely.

When I wear it, it is real.

Let’s look at the Royal British Legion.

It was founded in 1921 to support veterans and their families and to make sure that we do not forget those who have sacrificed themselves for us.

The Legion is almost the UK ’s largest membership organisation, with 519,000 members (including the Women’s Section this total is 589,000). twenty percent of people in the UK are eligible for it’s help in some way, 5.5 million ex-service people and 7.5 million dependants.
In total it spends more than £50 million a year but the poppy appeal raises less than half of that. the rest comes from year-round donations.

The 38 million poppies, 98,000 wreaths and sprays, 730,000 Remembrance Crosses are all made in a factory in Surrey. The factory, owned by the Legion employs about 60 people more than half of whom suffer from serious disabilities or illnesses as a result of their work, defending you and I around the world. It was designed to offer such people jobs and it always will.
Which is good when you consider that There has only been one year since the Second World War when a British Service person hasn’t been killed on active service, and that was 1968. There has not been any year since the inception of the United Kingdom when no British service person has not been injured.

So read this, and then, when Children in need or Live aid or comic relief or any of these other big-impact high-fat television extravaganzas ask you for money say no. Give Geldof a dose of his own foul language and damn Pudsey’s remaining eye.

Instead think about those who have died for you, and who are remembered not with a night of television fun, or a star studded concert, but with a simple paper flower, and give your money to the Royal British Legion.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.