Abbot's Bromley is a small village in Staffordshire which has held an annual Horn Dance since 1226. Twelve dancers, including six Deermen (from the Bentley family up until 1914, from the related Fowell family up to the present day) are accompanied by a hobby horse, a bow man, a Maid Marian (a bloke in drag) a Fool, a boy with a triangle and a man with an accordion. The ensemble perform their rites at various stops on a prescribed route. After a twenty mile round trip, they go to the pub.
The antlers used in the dance were carbon dated in the seventies, and found to be from circa 1065 ad. They are Reindeer antlers, which must have been imported from Scandinavia (even in 1065, Reindeers had been extinct in Britain for about 8,000 years). As ever with these ancient rituals there is an ongoing debate about just how ancient it is, with some experts suggesting that the dance may have originated much later in the 16th century, making it a mere 500 years old. Either way, it's the oldest traditional dance we have in this country.
Since 1660, it has been celebrated on Wakes Monday, which is today, so you'd better get your skates on if you want to see it.
At the time, Freddie Mercury (who would have been 67 today) always struck me as the archetypal 1970’s rock superstar: arrogant, self-indulgent, out of touch, excessively hairy. I scoffed at him and his fans because I liked new working class groups like The Specials and Madness and ‘middle aged’, University educated Queen seemed like posh dinosaurs, punk dodgers, old top hat.
I was wrong, of course, and I realised this soon after Freddie died. You don't miss your water and all that. Twenty odd years on, I’m still wearing that old hat and loving it, enjoying their early albums and marvelling at their preposterous blend of pomp, speed metal and dungeons and dragons.
Released in 1974, 'Queen II' has a white side and a black side (not literally, it’s an artistic notion rather than a novelty pressing). The white side is okay, but the black side is (literally) fantastic. Written entirely by Freddie Mercury, we are caught in a landslide of multi-tracked vocals, mantelpiece guitar, piano, harpsichord and big drums, all linked together by clever production and lyrics that reflect the 28 year old Mercury’s obsession with fairytales and mythology, and set in his very own imaginary world of Rhye.
‘Ogre Battle’ is a rip-roaring tale that tells of every wizard’s idea of a great night out: a ringside seat at a big old scrap between club wielding giants. One can only hope that elf and safety rules were followed. This segues into the centrepiece of the album, the epic (in scope, not timing) ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke’.
'The Fairy-Feller's Master Stroke' (1855-1864)
Based on the painting of the same name by Richard Dadd, this remarkably overblown song tells the story of the titular faery, his associated band of dilly dally-o’s, dirty laddios and quaere fellows, and the mighty axe he uses to crack Queen Mab’s walnut. Yes, I know. But it’s as brilliant and as unhinged as the artist Dadd himself, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, killed his father and continued a long career from the confines of various asylums.
The bombast and driving harpsichord of ‘Feller’ gives way to a ballad, ‘Nevermore’ that sounds like its being performed on a crystal grand piano at the top of a very tall tower and could have been done by The Beach Boys if they came from Narnia rather than California.
Anyway, don't take my word for it --
Listening to the black side of this album has led me to revaluate my feelings about Freddie, banishing my image of him as a strutting, moustachioed rock knob and instead revealing a far more sympathetic figure: a somewhat lonely and out of place person who retreated into a fantasy world to find somewhere his difference didn’t matter. & Freddie was different: born in Zanzibar, brought up in India, Parsi, Zoroastrian, buck toothed, gay (or bisexual, he had a long term girlfriend at this point). If the record hadn’t been so perfectly realised, or he didn’t have the rest of the group behind him, he could have been the archetypal outsider artist.
These are very early Edwardian postcards, the second one being postmarked 1902, the first taking its detail from an item in 'T.P's Weekly' originally published on June 17th, 1904. It says it all so much better than I could, so here it is in full:
Near the eastate of Earl Dudley, at Himley, there is a very curious habitation known as 'The Crooked House'. It is a red brick building with a wide passage right through, leading to back premises. It is altogether out of the perpendicular, and slanted towards the south end, which is heavily shored up with thick red buttresses. Some part of the outer wall is buried several feet in the ground.
These peculiarities are the result of mining operations - the under-stratum of the earth is these parts being completely 'honeycombed'. It is as difficult to walk steadily through the doorway as to pace the deck of a vessel in a rolling sea. as you walk along the warped floor your head and shoulders lean very palpably across the passage, and to maintain the equilibrium is a matter of the greatest difficulty. The rooms of the house are equally out of joint, and present some remarkable optical illusions.
The clocks on the walls, although absolutely perpendicular, as their pendulums testify, appear to be hanging sideways at a very pronounced angle. A short glass shelf, one end of which appears to be a foot higher than the other, proves to be absolutely level, while in the tap room, is a table which is apparently slanting, but on which if round marbles are placed at the seemingly lower end they roll to all appearance uphill to the top of the table, and fall over with a bump. These do not exhaust the remarkable features of this curious tenement, but those quoted fully justify its title to the name of 'The Crooked House'.
Remarkably, despite modern ideas about about Health & Safety, The Crooked House is still in situ and, even better, it's now a pub!
The back of this postcard threw up one of those haunting messages from the past that collectors sometimes find. It's not terribly clear, but it appears to say:
Dear Aunty, am sorry to tell you that Frank was killed on Thursday and is going to be buried at at Pensnett on Tuesday at 3.30.'
I can't really read the rest, but it signs off 'love to all'. Fancy using a postcard of a Crooked House to convey all of that pain. Over a hundred years later, it still hurts to read.
'Crime and banditry, distress and perplexity will increase until the Bishops open Joanna Southcott's box'
The Second Coming has always struck me as an administrative balls up waiting to happen. I mean, everyone seems to have a different idea of when it's happening, what Jesus will do and who will be affected, and they can't all be right, so I think there will be an awful lot of disappointed people and no little embarrassment on the part of the Messiah. What is clear, however, is where He will stay once he gets here: 18 Albany Road, Bedford, a neat end of terrace house owned and maintained by The Panacea Society.
The Panacea Society have been waiting for Jesus since the 1920's. The Society began as followers of Joanna Southcott, a Devonshire prophetess who died in 1814. Joanna used to make her predictions in rhyme, a bit like a cosmic Pam Ayres, but her apocalyptic pronouncements were taken very seriously in some quarters, and she gathered around a 100,000 dedicated acolytes.
Joanna's path took an even stranger turn in the last year of her life, when she claimed to be pregnant with the new messiah, Shiloh. She was 64 years old at the time. Shiloh failed to materialise, however, and, within a couple of months, Joanna was dead. Ever mindful of the dangers of the future, she left her followers a sealed box containing prophesies that would steer the world once the Day Of Judgement came. Her strict instructions were that the box should only be opened at a time of national crisis and in the presence of 24 British Bishops. Failure to meet the strict criteria would result in disaster. Despite numerous crises and related attempts to assemble the required quorum, the box has remained firmly closed for almost 200 years, and the secret contents stay secret.
In 1919, an unhappy and intermittently mentally unstable widow called Mabel Barltrop became fascinated by Joanna Southcott’s prophesies. In time, she realised that (somehow) she was actually Southcott's miraculous child, Shiloh, although she took the more feminine name of Octavia. Mabel, sorry, Octavia, presided over a community of up to around seventy followers, all based in Bedford which, they believed, was the site of the Garden of Eden. Bedford. Eden. Yes, I know.
The Southcottians became The Panacea Society and Octavia began to speak to God every day at 5.30pm, writing copious notes and then passing on the messages to the faithful. The Society gained charitable status in 1926 and the Bedford community grew to around 70 people who spent their time amassing Southcott memorabilia, campaigning for the powers that be to facilitate opening the box, piecing together a multi million pound property portfolio (including ‘The Ark’, Jesus’ proposed pied-a-terre) and starting a Ministry Of Healing.
'The Ministry Of Healing' is rather interesting: Octavia would pray and breathe onto small squares of cloth which could then be sent all over the world. Once combined with water and drunk, the holy cloth samples would cure any sickness. Or not – surprisingly, there’s little empirical evidence on the results. Octavia obviously prayed and exhaled onto a lot of cloth, as they were still sending out samples until 2012, when the Ministry officially closed.
Mabel / Octavia died unexpectedly in 1934 (like I said, she breathed on a lot of cloth), and her followers kept hold of her body for three days just in case she came back. She didn't. Like many religious organisations who lose a driven, charismatic and supposedly divine head, the Panacea Society slowly began to decline in terms of membership and dynamism, circling around the same ground and waiting, always waiting for the moment promised to them to materialise.
In 2002, the charities commission ordered the Society to sell some off some of its assets or lose their charitable status. This subsequently led to a fundamental reorganisation and a rebranding as a charitable trust outside of the now-defunct religious society.
It is believed that there are only two original Panacea Society members left, presumably pretty elderly now, but still faithfully waiting for the new tenant to move into number 18. I wonder if He'll have to leave a deposit to cover any damage?
It's May 29th, Oak Apple Day, the public holiday held between 1660 and 1859 which celebrated the restoration of King Charles II. Castleton Garland Day is a Derbyshire custom which combines 'modern' elements of Oak Apple Day with much older May Day 'Jack in The Green' Paganism.
'The King' is put on a horse then festooned in a heavy garland of flowers topped with a smaller wreath. Thus 'crowned', he goes from pub to pub with great pomp and circumstance, with a Queen, a band, and most of the village following behind him. Music is played, songs are sung, ale is imbibed and, eventually (much to the relief of 'The King', no doubt) the larger garland of flowers is taken from him and put on top of the tower of the church, and the smaller wreath placed on the War Memorial (i.e. where the Maypole would have once been).
Castleton is generally a very interesting place: it has a ruined castle and four impressive show caverns which used to serve as Lead and Blue John mines. It's one of my favourite places, although it can get very touristy - that said, I don't live there, so I suppose I'm part of the problem.
On Flora Day (today!) in Helston in Cornwall, the whole town take to the streets from seven am to seven pm and hold a series of mass dances to a melody called 'John the Bone' performed by local brass and silver bands (the tune was incorporated into the more famous Floral Dance and taken into the charts by Terry Wogan).
A wearying, hypnotic, ancient tradition its origins are, of course, mysterious, but the dance serves a dual purpose: a Pagan celebration of Beltane (the triumph of light over darkness, life over death, i.e. the end of Winter) and a Christian festival for Saint George, who reputedly saved the town from Satan, and the archangel Michael, the patron saint of Cornwall.
‘Sightseers’ is, in many ways, the perfect ‘Island of Terror’ film. It’s dark and funny and its locations are camp sites, roadside cafes, ruined abbeys, viaducts, slate mines, owl sanctuaries, tram and pencil museums, show caves and stone circles. I got excited just typing that. It’s also very good, not perfect, but something that I am more than happy to recommend to anybody who likes the idea of a film that combines sudden death and National Trust properties.
Angry Tina and ginger faced Chris are a couple of downtrodden misfits who set out on a ‘sexual odyssey’/ road trip across the North of England. In a caravan. Compulsive knitter Tina (Alice Lowe) is happy to escape her oppressive and manipulative mother, who blames her for the death of their beloved dog, Poppy. Heavily bearded plastics nerd Chris (Steve Oram) is apparently writing a book, and Tina is to be his muse. As they set off, Tina says ‘show me your world’, barely realising that Chris’ world is a strange and violent one, and that he uses murder as a way of getting his own back on litterers, snobs and people who are more successful than him.
Mordantly funny, extravagantly bloody, the film was scripted by Lowe and Oram but many of the scenes are improvised, and this lends immediacy and realism to the film, an approach consolidated by director Ben Wheatley, who shoots on the hoof, capturing some wonderful scenery and, in particular, some truly awful weather, both of which add immeasurably to both the veracity and the atmosphere (it never rains, but it pours, and when it isn’t pouring, it’s hailing). It’s rare to see Britain presented like this, but I like it: the banality and beauty of our sceptered isle in all its damp glory – an ancient and primeval landscape criss crossed by motorways and studded with brown heritage road signs indicating points of (selective) interest.
If you’ve ever wanted to see a woman write a letter with a four foot long pencil, or see crotchless knitted lingerie, then you won’t be disappointed. A great little film, I love it.
Incidentally, Ben Wheatley’s next film is called ‘A Field In England’, and is, apparently, a tale of hallucogenic drugs and necromancy set during the English Civil War. I can’t wait.
Some stills from the 2011 documentary 'Way Of The Morris', about the folk dance tradition of Addebury, Oxfordshire (from the distant past to 1914; revived in 1975 and still thriving).
Nicely shot and put together, the film is very interesting when sticking to the point but slowly drifts into becoming more about the presenter and co-director than the dance, eventually degenerating into a shot of him wandering thoughtfully through the long grass with a Morris stick over his shoulder, like an outtake from a David Soul video.
Jimmy Savile was a very bad man, there seems little doubt about that. So how did he hold such an elevated place in British society? Was it hypnosis or misdirection, blackmail or sheer force of will? Did he groom the UK? Are we all his victims?
Well, you'd think so. Whenever the issue is raised everyone now jumps to say that they suspected him all along. Nobody ever liked him or trusted him, everyone always found him creepy - so why was he on telly in the most prominent possible position for nearly forty years? Why did we all used to watch him? Why did Britain lower its collective head when he died, and play along with the outrageously self-serving funeral rites he had put in place?
I don't have any answers, and there are simply far too many questions. I don't believe that it was all a massive conspiracy, because that way madness lies, but I also can't think it could have been possible without some sort of collusion. That said, Savile was clearly a resourceful and horribly self-possessed kind of monster - he almost seems capable of anything. Perhaps that's why they concreted his grave, not to keep thieves out, but to keep him in.
What I keep coming back to is his public persona: how very weird it really was and how very normal we all once believed it to be. Was it a case of misguided faith in the tradition of British eccentricity, in the notion of the card, the character? Or was it that, without knowing what he was really capable of, we were happy to balance his good works against his obvious personality issues and, because we are predominantly a fair minded people, consider one adequate compensation for the other? Some sort of strange national psychological shift must have taken place, as Jimmy Savile, loner, oddball, misanthrope, exhibitionist, bully and narcissist (these are just the traits he freely exhibited, the ones he showed us) somehow became a man qualified to tell the nation how to behave - a person chosen to warn us against danger.
It would have been the bitterest of ironies if Savile had ever presented a public information film about stranger danger or not accepting sweets from people you don't know (he didn't, although he did write the foreword for some cautionary books on the subject), but it still seems incredible to me that he was ever allowed to present anything, simply because he was such a deeply and unapologetically strange person. Take a look at this PIF from 1971. Try and watch it as objectively as you can, judge him on what you see, not what you now know.
So, objectively, what is going on here? Forget the mismatched outfit and the jewelry and the dirty white Perkin Warbeck haircut, these are as much props as his cigars and that chair he used to have that made cups of tea. What we have is a brittle, brusque man, full of anger, seething with contempt. When he starts shaking the box he becomes visibly agitated, his shoulders squaring as if ready for confrontation. He doesn't smile once, not even when his serious point is made. He's all stick, no carrot - and if you don't listen to him you're going to get smashed to bits: very unfunny.
In the second clip he's het up about women and their inability to shop and pick up the kids without causing an accident, although the idea that they might be badly disfigured seems to satisfy his desire that they get what's coming to them. And is it just me, or do they hold the final shot a little too long? Don't look into his eyes, you will start to feel that he is unblinkingly appraising you, and that you are not coming out of it at all well. Basically, he hates you, regardless of whether or not you wear a seatbelt.
Here's a short clip from his Saturday primetime variety show 'Clunk Click'. This is a low-key, more adult Savile than we're used to. He's actually quite somber and thoughtful, which is much more disconcerting than his usual sinister tomfoolery, especially if you listen to what he's actually saying. He's basically comparing himself to Jesus, and telling Uri Geller to use his gift to heal the world, just like Jimmy has. Savile seems convinced that he has overcome incredible odds to be on the telly, but he may of course be thinking of his double life, which must have been extremely difficult to maintain.
When he stops talking about himself and lets Uri do his thing, the subject of his drawing gets some indulgent titters from contemporary audiences used to the idea of Jimmy as a 'ladies man', but it obviously gives pause now. Interestingly, this clip (and the next) were taken from the BBC tribute show broadcast a couple of months after he died when he was still considered a high achieving weirdo and national treasure rather than an evil monster.
Finally, here he is in conversation with Russell Harty, one of the most apparently artless but insidiously offensive interviewers who ever lived, a man who was always pissing off his subjects. There's something chilling about the control Savile exudes in this sequence: he's being interviewed live on national telly in front of a hundred people in person and millions at home, and he doesn't even bother to stop eating his dinner. When Harty puts his foot in it, Savile destroys him. It's all done under the pretence of banter, but his eyes aren't smiling - he's deadly serious, even about the chips - and the message is quite clear: this is not a man to be fucked with. If he was this aggressive offscreen, it is perhaps not surprising that people waited until he was dead to tell the truth about him.
I don't have a conclusion. I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist or even a particularly astute people watcher. I'm also looking at a completed jigsaw, not trying to work out what the picture should be, so it's easy to see everything as a puzzle piece. But it bothers me this Savile business: the awful things he did; the impunity with which he did them; the fact that he got away with it his whole life, and that he implicated us all simply by being such a public figure, the fact that it was 'good while it lasted', and it lasted so very long. Like I say, it bothers me. It bothers me a lot.
