I had my hearing tested yesterday.

You sit in a box with a glass window- a sort of man-sized microwave- and press a button every time you hear a beep through the earphones you've been fitted with. 

It could almost be mistaken for fun. 

The verdict is I have a degree of hearing loss- somewhere between mild and medium; nothing unusual for my age. It's not disabling and hearing aids are not recommended....

 Satanism is also one of the Abrahamic religions- its mythology derived from Judaism, Christianity and Islam with more a dash of Milton. Could it be suffering- as its cousins are- from the quiet rebellion of the young against organised religion? 

Satanism, huh? Robes, chanting, sacrifice- that's what our parents did.....

I ask because, having watched Wexner bumble through the hearing yesterday, I found myself wondering where all the young people are. Even Andrew, who represents the younger end of the Epstein class, is already 66. 

Which leads to the happy thought that if the courts don't put a stop to their carryings-on pretty damn soon the reaper will- and then one way or another they'll all be gone. 

 Picture Diary 119

1. Hi there, kiddo



2. Tightrope walker



3. Disks



4. Bad apple



5. Poppies



6. Orion

 Damian has gravel at the front of his house. We were standing talking to him when a particular chip caught my eye. It's about an inch across. A fossil? Yes, what else could it be?



Not an important fossil, not a spectacular one- but still the trace of something that was alive and growing millions and millions of years ago.....

 Most of the time the night sky over Eastbourne gets blanded out by light pollution but yesterday, around ten o'clock, I happened to look out the south-west facing window and there, floating over Beach Head, for the first time this winter, I saw Orion with his entourage- and they were all so sharp and clear that even the Pleiades were visible.

Hey, I've suddenly- just this instant- had a flash of inspiration or knowing. The Long Man of Wilmington, our ancient hill figure: might he not be a representation of Orion? They're the same sort of shape....

OK, I've just checked and it's not a new idea- how could it be?- but it's new to me.....

Because if Orion floats over Beachy Head there must be times, if you're standing in the right place, you'll see him floating over Windoor Hill- further along in the chain of the Downs- with the Long Man right below him- the one shining in the sky the other, outlined in chalk, shining ghostly out of the grass.....

I think the Long Man is a portal, a gateway to the stars....

Go sit at his feet. Ingest some mushrooms. See what comes next.....



The Long Man by Eric Ravilious

 Oh, and by the way-  Happy Valentine's Day.



Hail Bishop Valentine, whose day this is,
All the air is they diocese,
And all the chirping choristers
And other birds are thy parishioners..."

John Donne

 Michael Wolf says he met the Dalai Lama at Uncle Jeffy's New York pad only his Holiness's office says he had no contact whatsoever with Uncle Jeffy.

Know what, I'm inclined to believe Michael because he's got nothing much to gain or lose by putting this out there.

And if his Holiness is telling a fib that's not very holy of him. 

Looks like I'm going to have to cross him off my Christmas card list.

Same goes for Deepak Chopra.

It's a mistake to be calling people "Holiness" or treating them like a guru. Fact remains that no-one walking this earth is ever more than a human being. Spiritual (so called) power is no less corrupting than political power. 

Priestly hierarchies? Pah!

Anyone can talk spirituality. I can talk spirituality. Doesn't mean I'm living it.

 Ailz purchased a TV license last year so she could watch the tennis with a clear conscience. I may have watched a movie or two on the BBC over the past 12 months. I forget. Modern movies are pretty forgettable, don't you find?

But yesterday I binge watched Mackenzie Crook's new series Small Prophets- which is going out on BBC 2. I like Mackenzie Crook so much that I'm willing to overcome my disgust with the Beeb for his sake. Small Prophets is gentle, mischievous, magical and funny in an Ealing sort of a way. Crook himself has a supporting role, as does Michael Palin. No-one else in the cast is hugely well-known, but they're all terrific. I have two episodes still to go. There's a mystery of seven years vintage hanging over the characters and some dodgy business underway but I don't expect any of it to be resolved by gunplay....

 They say (Suetonius says) that the Emperor Tiberius had his own Epstein island. It was called Capri. 

There are those who have thought, "No that can't be true. No-one could be as depraved as Suetonius makes out". Among them was the doctor/writer Axel Munthe- who had a home on Capri and wrote a sort of autobiography called The Story of San Michele- which happens to be a favourite book of mine. He presents Tiberius as a philosopher king, too good for the dirty world of politics, who took to his island to think deep thoughts. When I was a kid there was a TV show called The Caesars, later eclipsed by I Claudius, which took the same line. Tiberius was played by Andre Morrell- now best known for his roles in Hammer horrors- and I still fondly remember the aura of kindliness and wisdom he gave off. 

But now- after Epstein- what reason can we have for doubting Suetonius? People with unfettered power- emperors and suchlike canaille- will and do behave atrociously. And it serves nobody to be in denial.

Another example from history: In the 15th century there was a French nobleman called Gilles de Rais, who rode with Joan of Arc then retired to his castles in Brittany and- well- never mind. He got caught and made an example of, perhaps because he wasn't quite rich and powerful enough to deter the law. Or perhaps because he was an outlier- and not part of an organisation or brotherhood that knew how to protect its own. 

It's become a cliche to say we live in dark times. No we don't. This is the end of the dark times. Light is being  beamed into the secret places. And we need to pay attention and say "Enough!" 

 I don't think I want to write too much about the Epstein files. The revelations just get darker and darker. We need to acknowledge them and face up to them, because unacknowledged demons just keep hanging around, but I'm not going to do it here in a blog where I aim to keep things cheerful. 

But I do just want to say that I'm less interested now in revelations about the sitting president (whose goose is cooked) and increasingly in what we're learning about the ruling class to which he sort of belongs. Uncle Jeffy knew everybody. A journo who has done the deep dive says his friends fall into three categories- or circles. There's the outer circle of people who had dealings with him and may have known who he was but didn't get deeply involved, there's the middle circle consisting of people who availed themselves of his hospitality (a euphemism) and then the inner circle who it may be inaccurate to call Satanists but who were certainly committing abominations. None of these people- from the lightly tainted to the deeply disgusting- seem to have known or cared that Uncle Jeffy was recording everything. Stupid or complacent- or are those two things the same?  What all these people have in common is money. Lots and lots of it. 

In property news the media this morning have been posting pix of Uncle Jeffy's New Mexico ranch. Ranch? No, more like an effing palace. Then we learn that his Paris flat (which has a red room, I wonder why) has just sold for $2 million under the original asking price; if I were the new owner I'd be going round smudging everything with sage. Finally it seems that somebody is offering guided tours of Little St. James Island. What fun!