Monthnotes: August 2021

August felt like a return to normality, as I’ve felt able to socialise with large groups again. It’s a strange time, as it’s hard to tell what I should be doing to protect myself. Cases are high and rising, vaccination effectiveness is fading, and the government has not said anything about how things proceed in the long-term. Being the only person in a supermarket wearing a mask has felt weird. But, while I’m still resolved to avoid coronavirus, I’m also reluctant to keep my life in suspension forever.

This month saw a fair bit of travelling. I visited Brighton twice – once to see Tom, the other time for a hike with Emma. Hiking with Emma was part of her MA, so the walk was written up in her research blog. I also visited Norwich, where we celebrated Rosy’s daughter leaving home (such emotion!) and ate some great meals. I spent some time in Hebden Bridge (Hepstonstall, actually), where I learned a valuable lesson about not trusting Calder Valley weather. I visited the offices of my new employer, Mindera, and loved meeting my colleagues in person. There was even a bit of camping in a field near where I’m living, and the Blame Blake event in Sheffield on Bank Holiday Monday. That’s a lot of travelling.

I continue to feel like I’m struggling with the new job, although the feedback I’ve had has been excellent. I’ve never had such a slow ramp-up to the point where I feel I’m contributing to a project with my full ability. I do love working on a mature microservice set-up – although I also feel a little awed by how much work it has taken the client to reach that point. Successful cloud architectures are not easy.

I’m continuing to write, and focussing on sending things out. I’ve had a small piece, Alex and the Face, published in Microfiction Monday and there are seven other stories out for submission. I’ve decided that writing should be at least as much fun as playing video games, and will let that idea guide what I work on from now on.

Other than the hike with Emma, I’ve mainly been keeping to my regular daily walks. My total for the month is 407,230 steps, with a daily maximum of 33,634 (thanks, Emma!) and an average of 13,136 steps (compared with 11,342 in July and 10,766 in April 2020’s lockdown).

I finished six books – highlights were Heroic Failures and CJ Stone’s Fierce Dancing, which was a great portrait of a lost culture. The Final Girl Support Group was a brisk read, which was great, but it wasn’t quite the book I’d hoped for. I wanted more revisionist slasher fiction (like the first series of the Nailbiter comics) but the novel was somewhat overwhelmed by the plot.

I watched very little TV, slowly making my way through Pose. I did watch the movie Pig, which was a wonderfully weird film about food culture, featuring an understated performance from Nicholas Cage. Music-wise, there were long-awaited releases from Kanye West and Lorde, both of which I’m finding hard to get into. The Lorde album feels a little too dreamy, possibly due to sharing a producer with Lana Del Rey.

Quitting caffeine last month was a successful experiment. I am sleeping better and less tired during the day than usual. It’s not cured my headaches, but they have been less frequent and less severe, so that is a definite win.

I’ve been replaying The Last of Us Part 2, this time on a harder difficulty level. I’m definitely better at it than I was the first time round, but it feels like a dumb way to spend my time. Video games are compulsive and gripping, but developing skills in them feels kind of pointless. I have considered getting a new game, but can’t see anything that won’t just devolve into repetition. As I said above, I’d rather focus on the sort of writing that is more interesting than games.

Overall, August felt pretty good. Now, with Summer coming towards an end, it’s time to start planning my next move.

Ley-lines, Brexit and the Right

Back in July, I wrote a post on Ley lines and Brexit. This was retweeted by Matt Pope, which produced some interesting discussions. While my initial alignment was tenuous, further reading showed more points connecting these two topics; as well as leading me into reading more widely about the links between earth mysteries, paganism and right-wing groups.

The main, obvious, link between ley-lines and Brexit is the work of John Michell, whose book The View over Atlantis launched the 1960s earth mysteries boom. His writing is explored in depth in Amy Hale’s essay John Michell, Radical Traditionalism, and the Emerging Politics of the Pagan New Right, originally published in Pomegranate.

As I wrote before, through his work on earth mysteries, Michell believed in the significance of ancient measurement systems, becoming an enthusiastic anti-metrication campaigner, as well as being suspicious of Europe’s Common Market. As Hale writes:

[Michell] argued vehemently against the metric standard, believing that it was erasing not only a uniquely British measure, but also one of the few remaining links to the traditional measures which were related to the divine order and sacred kingship.

I’ve just finished reading Finlan O’Toole’s excellent book on Brexit, Heroic Failures. In this, O’Toole talks about the competing images of Britain that each side had in the 1975 European Communities membership referendum. Those resisting joining the European union often had a belief in Britain’s significance. Michell’s claims for the importance of England were inspired by Anglo-Israelite theories and the work of William Blake. To quote again from Amy Hale:

While Michell did not evidently share the White supremacist sentiment of many contemporary Anglo-Israelites, he did feel that the British are the chosen people and, echoing Tudor Pole, that Britain (with particular emphasis on Glastonbury) is the spiritual centre of Europe if not the world, which he gives as a justification for remaining separate from the emerging European superstate.

Michell was also a nativist who believed in some level of racial segregation and a return to ‘traditional’ societies. Hale writes in detail about Michell’s views:

Michell also felt that each race has its own characteristic traits and areas where they excel, and that it is important to the restoration of divine law that each group of people is situated within their homeland, because it is their indigenous quality that connects them to their particular sacred landscape. As far as Britain is concerned, Michell admitted that he perceived multiculturalism as a far-from-ideal social model, and that within England different ethnic groups should remain segregated and geographically separate, which would replicate Britain’s village level diversity from the pre-Reformation period. He seems to justify this by arguing that if various groups of people are allowed to remain together that their traditions will remain vibrant, however he also states that it is crucial for the indigenous majority, in this case the British, to enforce the rule of law.

While he was aware that these views would appall some of his friends and readers, Michell was also tolerated – I mentioned in the previous post about the book of Hitler quotes that he published. After the rise in right-wing groups over the past fear years, I suspect (and hope) someone doing the same things as Michell nowadays would be less indulged.

In her conclusion, Hale looked at Michell’s relationship to a broader spectrum of right-wing thought, writing that “within the extension of Michell’s beliefs about tribalism, sacred landscapes, ecology, anti modernism, and conservation—all themes which underpin the values of many Pagans—that we see this fascinating convergence of right-wing and left-wing politics

Hale has written elsewhere about this convergence of views between wildly different political groups, exploring the intersections between extreme right and the left on issues such as anti-capitalism, ecology and folklore. She warns of the need for vigilance where such crossovers mean that ideas and works intended as non-political can actually end up supporting the right.

This tension was apparent in the ley-line community in the 1980s, when the British fascist movements attempted to use earth mysteries to support their racial theories. This is discussed by Paul Devereux in an interview with Chris Aston in QuickSilver Messenger. Devereux was asked about earth mysteries and ideology. He replied that the ley hunters he knew covered “all social groups and all age groups and all political views” and aspired to be non-political. But, despite this, he acknowledged a political angle. Talking about a rightward drift among sections of the British people, Devereux continued:

I’m getting exchange magazines now produced by Nazis – Facists I should say. They’re offering 10% reduction to the Police and Armed Forces – saying Auschwitz never really happened. They’re producing articles showing that Arian blood is superior to Jewish blood. They’re talking about leylines – it’s all deeply in it. People like Tony Roberts have been approached by the National Front- he was one of their heroes – Tony Roberts was on the street as a long-haired leftie – fighting in the streets back in the 60s. We’re in a very curious phase- and there’s no doubt that this material – this Earth Mysteries stuff – can – would fuel a new sort of Fascism. I mean I’m not a Fascist – I’m anything but – I’m the other end of the political spectrum if anything. But I’m aware of this danger and I’m just afraid it could be used in a dogmatic way…

All this makes it apparent that anyone writing on landscape, folklore, or even ley lines needs to be aware of a choice in how to be approach it. Even if you aspire to be apolitical, as Devereux longed to be, there are people who may try to use your writing for their own extremist ends. I should say that this isn’t a revelation, and that people have been talking about this a lot over the past few years (just search for “folklore against fascism” or read Cat Vincent’s essay). Seeing how even ley-lines became political makes me more aware of a need to be wary in my own writing, even for a small audience. As much as I’d considered certain aspects of my writing are non-political, that’s not necessarily a choice I’m free to make.

One place these issues played out was in the row over Paul Kingsnorth’s now-withdrawn essay Elysium Found, written to promote the film Arcadia. Kingsnorth wrote about tradition as under attack from modernity, but also from invaders, including the Spanish Armada and the Nazis. While Kingsnorth protested at being accused of racism, the essay casually evoked a nativist view of Britain under attack from the outside. The piece would have benefitted from being a little less ambiguous on some of these points.

Another example has been the correspondence about ‘blackface Morris’ in a particular earth mystery magazine a few years back. Some people seemed angry that blackface Morris was under attack as racist and exclusionary despite what they claimed were non-racist origins for the make-up. Regardless of the historical origins (which are contested), these people found themselves on the side of a rather distasteful view: that being faithful to tradition was more important than not offending or excluding other people from these traditions.

A more explicit and shocking example such exclusion in a landscape/nostalgia context was the TV show Midsummer Murders, whose producer, Brian True-May, stepped down after an interview with the Radio Times. This was discussed by David Southwell in his introduction to one of Paul Watson’s books (although my copy is currently in storage). It’s an explicit and appalling example of someone excluding people from the landscape, and it’s shocking that this was just ten years ago. To quote from the BBC news story:

Mr True-May added: “We just don’t have ethnic minorities involved. Because it wouldn’t be the English village with them. It just wouldn’t work.” Asked why “Englishness” could not include other races who are well represented in modern society, he said: “Well, it should do, and maybe I’m not politically correct. I’m trying to make something that appeals to a certain audience, which seems to succeed. And I don’t want to change it.”

(I’ve never understood the idea of ‘cosy’ murder mysteries, but True-May was ahead of a lot of people in linking rural England with slaughter, something that Nick Haye’s Book of Trespass explored in detail).

Jonathan Last’s essay Et in Avebury ego… is a brilliant exploration of how heritage exposes itself to being appropriated by nationalism through the use of nostalgic (small-c) conservative views. He suggests that we need to make people aware of how the landscape has changed over time and to make it explicit that these things belong to everyone. He is clear about what is means to belong to a place:

making a connection with an ancient place does not depend on ancestry, it is about dwelling – which may simply take the form of visiting. Of course understanding and a sense of belonging are deepened by spending time in a place but it is not a quantitative matter to be measured in generational time.

Book Review: Heroic Failures by Finlan O’Toole

While Tim Shipman’s (as-yet unfinished) Brexit trilogy is the best history of Brexit, the most enjoyable analysis I’ve read is Finlan O’Toole’s Heroic Failure. O’Toole’s writing has the virtuosic enthusiasm of good literary criticism – his comparison of Britain’s EU membership to the bureaucracy in Fifty Shades of Grey is hilarious; and I loved his description of Boris Johnson being cross-examined in a select committee by Andrew Tyrie: “like watching a kitten bouncing into a combine harvester”. There are also considerations of Britain’s obsession with World War 2, punk and more.

The book’s main thrust is that post-Imperial Britain has become trapped by an ideal of ‘heroic failure’. “The English could afford to celebrate glorious failure because they were actually highly successful – the myths of suffering and endurance covered up the truth that it was mostly other people who had to endure the suffering.”

O’Toole is particularly good at showing how Englishness in particular is responsible for Brexit, and how England’s presence in the EU relates to its membership of the United Kingdom. O’Toole also puts forward the case the “gradual marginalisation of open racism” was one of the things that led to the EU being scapegoated instead. Ultimately, the problems that led to Brexit are too deep to be solved by so simplistic a solution:

Brexit is a crisis of belonging that was configured as merely a crisis of belonging to Europe. No outcome from it will really address that question of belonging – if anything it will become deeper and more urgent.

Towards the end of the book, O’Toole lays out the challenge for the English, particularly those on the ‘progressive’ side, to define what Englishness is:

One of the side effects of Brexit is to make progressives recoil even further from English nationalism, which they never trusted and now blame for the disaster. But they need to do what they mostly did not do in the pre-Brexit decade: take it seriously. Address it. Precisely because it remains so poorly articulated and self-contradictory, it is up for grabs. And there is surely enough in the English radical, socialist and liberal traditions – the traditions of John Ball and the Suffragettes, of Mary Wollstonecraft and John Maynard Keynes, of Stuart Hall and Thomas Paine, of Jo Cox and George Orwell and generations of fighters for dignity and equality – to inspire a more positive sense of national belonging. There is surely, in one of the world’s great cultures, enough wit and energy and creativity and humour to infuse Englishness with hope and joy instead of pain and self-pity.

Monthnotes: July 2021

I stayed close to home during July, not travelling more than a handful of miles away. While I did the same thing during a few months of 2020/1, this feels very different. I’m in the middle of the countryside which feels much less stressful than a large town. I’m enjoying time in nature, spotting new flowers and mushrooms appearing as the summer rolls on.

A lot of my walks have been with two dogs, Blue and Rosie. Rosie is too young for much walking, but I’ll take Blue out for a couple of miles most days. While my weight remains constant, Blue is looking good (the only Labrador I’ve met with hips). Stats wise, I’ve not done much: a total of 340,287 steps, with a daily maximum of 18,068 and an average of 11,342 steps (compared with 10,766 in April 2020’s lockdown). The main issue is that walking is all intentional and takes up a lot of time compared with, say, going to the shops or meeting up with friends for daily exercise.

Media wise, I’ve only finished a couple of books and don’t think I’ve watched any movies. I do read a lot of articles from RSS feeds on my kindle, and I’ve been getting back into watching TV again. The Mandalorian was an excellent fusion of space opera and spaghetti western. Atlanta was far weirder than expected and I’m looking forward to season 3.

I managed to watch two whole seasons of Snowpiercer, based on a recommendation on the Technoccult newsletter. It’s a fun show and compelling enough for me to keep watching. It’s set in the future, when a failed climate change solution has sent global temperature plummeting. The only remnants of humanity are living in a giant metaphor for the class system (a train that travels round the world).

A lot of this makes no sense – why would you use glass so much when it can’t be replaced easily? Who maintains the track? It’s nonsense, but it’s brisk, well-made nonsense. The acting has gripped me too, making it easy to believe when characters are seeing sunlight for the first time in years.

In the midst of everything, I also spent a week playing the rest of The Last of Us. I written in the past about what a nasty, cynical game I found it. I found aspects of the story revolting, particularly how the player was railroaded into immoral and wanton revenge, but the action setpieces and horror were compelling. But I suspect I’m done with PS4 games for a while. Nothing has come close to Death Stranding.

I’m finding the new job a little harder than expected. I think that’s a combination of moving to a new platform and remote onboarding. One of the things I was aware was lacking at Amex was the onboarding, and I tried to improve that as we expanded our teams. I now see that I should have been trying even harder than I did. Still, I have this weekend to recharge, and I’m going to try some new things next week.

One other thing I did this month was quit caffeine. I decided to stop immediately and deal with it. In retrospect, not a good idea. I lost a couple of days to a vicious headache, although I’d timed the acute phase to be over a weekend. I then had a while feeling laggy, sleeping through my alarm. I already feel positive changes – mostly smoother changes in energy through the day – but I’m still not feeling as alert as I was. If past experience is any guide, I’ll soon be waking up more easily, have more energy in the afternoons, and feel less caffeine jankiness.