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Mike and Su and Sej are visiting for the first time this year. It was Mike's idea to have a cook-out. I don't know if he was thinking 4th of July but he's half American so he may have been. We borrowed the portable barbeque from Damian- and Sandra, Damian's wife, fired it up for us because neither Mike nor I could figure it out.

Damian and Sandra and Aoife were at the party along with Mark (who is fully American) and Dawn and Danny from Quakers. We were a really disparate group but everyone seemed to get along.

Su is booking a seat at a Spurs home game for a visiting nephew. Seems that the cheapest seat is £100. Football used to be the people's game. 'T'ain't any longer.

Steve Judd, the astrologer, is excited about the present relationship of the outer planets- Neptune, Uranus and Pluto- and especially about the conjunction of Neptune and Uranus, which is something that has never happened before- at least not in a very long time. It means Change- Change with a capital "C". Out with the old and in with the new.....

He believes (and I believe) that's what we're seeing everywhere now- event after event after event.

The old order in its death throes, wriggling and snapping- like the dragon impaled on the end of St Michael's lance

The_Archangel_Michael,_St_Leonard's,_Seaford.jpeg

The_Archangel_Michael,_St_Leonard's,_Seaford.jpeg

Steve, who is 70- says he's been waiting 40-50 years- so all of his adult and professional life- for this moment to come round.....

As have we all- all of us born into this Time- consciously or unconsciously- even those of us who are not astrologers. It's why we chose to be here.....

Ailz's work as a trustee of a local care home generates lots and lots of paper- most of which has to then be shredded because it deals with confidential matters. There's so much of it that our shredder regularly over heats.

Shredding paper generates dust.

A-tishoo!

I was sitting out on the patio in the cool of the evening and there was a snapping noise coming from my left- tiny, irregular, continuous- like small arms fire. Eventually I got up to see what it was. At first I thought it was coming from behind the gorse bushes- like some bird was doing it- but it wasn't, it was coming from the bushes themselves- and was the sound of the pods that had once been flowers popping open to release the velvety seeds inside.

"Well" I thought, "I didn't know that was a thing..." and then I remembered John Davidson's poem "The Runnable Stag"- the first line of which is "When pods went pop in the broom, green broom" and realised I'd known it since forever but discounted it- because who'd have thought that poets might have anything to tell us about Nature?

P.S. I've been told since first posted this that broom and gorse are two different plants. Drat! Still they do look very similar- and both have pods that pop.

Damian found a Roman coin while digging foundations somewhere in the Eastbourne area.

We researched it for him.

It's a silver denarius, minted by Octavian to commemorate his naval victory over Mark Antony at Actium in 31 BC. For further details consult Shakespeare W. "Antony and Cleopatra"

On the one side we have a male figure representing Octavian himself, with his foot on the terrestrial globe. In one hand he holds a staff of office and in the other an object I took to be a whip or flail but is apparently the stern post of a war galley. The inscription reads "Ceas. divi. f"- which translates as "Son of the Divine Caesar".

And if Caesar is a god what does that make his son? Octavian lets you work that one out for yourself.....

On the other side appears the bust of a winged female who is variously identified as Victoria (Victory) or Pax (Peace).

The coin was struck sometime between 31 and 27 BC- after which Octavian was no longer Octavian but Caesar Augustus, first Emperor of Rome.

Picture Diary 97

1. Who you lookin' at?

2. At the crossroads

3. Passing through

4. Levitation

5. Breaking through

6. The Stinging Nettle fairy

7. The warrior gene

We've been using more gas than we've been using- if you see what I mean. The central heating has been turned off for the summer and yet the boiler has been running almost continuously. We indulged ourselves in various theories, then called Sergei in to give us an informed opinion- and, incidentally, service the boiler. He suggested something we hadn't even considered- that there's a leak somewhere on the hot water system. OK, that makes sense- and now I know what I'm looking for I think I know where it is. It's in the area where Damian will be working over the next few weeks- converting the garage and adjoining areas into a bedsit- and if I'm right he'll be able to sort it along with everything else- and I can dial down the anxiety levels. The worst thng in a situation like this is not knowing- and feeling powerless.

I watched a bit of Wimbledon yesterday. It gives me an excuse to be sitting indoors out of the lovely sunshine. There exist pictures of me as a teen with my shirt off- and they shock me rather because it's been many decades now since I've enjoyed being out in really hot weather. I think the horseflies in Switzerland may have cured me of sunbathing. If one of those 'orrible little fuckers bit you you stayed bit.....

Today will be hot. Tomorrow, they say will be even hotter. I looked out and the air was so clear it seemed the hills had moved a mile closer.

A Friend gave us a talk yesterday about the Samaritans and their work in prison. At least one of our other friends said, "Suicide and prisons? No thanks. I'll give it a miss." But the talk was inspiriting. Our prison system is horrible. It shuts up unhappy people in conditions guaranteed to make them even unhappier. But the Samaritans- who train inmates to be "listeners"- bring a little light into the gloom. Our friend says the work keeps him sane.

Here's Lewes Prison (not my picture)

It makes me think of my boarding school. For two reasons.

1. We used to drive past it on the way to school- and as we turned the corner by those high, horrible grey walls I knew my own incarceration was only half an hour away.

2. It's a building of the same period (mid-19th century) and of a similar design. The Victorians thought you could terrify people into good behaviour. It doesn't work.

Unbelievably... no, scrub that and substitute all too believably....Lewes Prison is a Grade Two listed building, which means the fabric can't be altered without permission from on high. In consequence the people who run the prison have to pay a recurring fine to the authorities for further uglifying their ugly building by topping it off with razor wire.....

When I was chopping the tall grasses down a week or two back I left a clump of barley standing next to the bird bath. This morning I watched a jackdaw jump up, pull a stalk down onto the path and proceed to peck away at it. Clever bird!

"I dodn't suppose anyone falls out with you," said Mark. "Oh, but they do," I replied,"And especially since I became a Quaker elder." I forebore to mention that he'd come close to falling out with me himself a few weeks before.

I'm reading Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour. It's not what you expect. There's comedy, but it's no longer heartless- and there's an understanding- that there rarely was in the earlier books- that people, even obnoxious people, are trying their best. When Waugh divests himself of farce he stands revealed as deeply unhappy. It's not exactly autobiographical- Crouchback is very much not Waugh himself- but it follows the trajectory of Waugh's own wartime experience- which wasn't glorious- and gives a lot away. It's a stoic book. I'd even call it brave......

I walk with a stoop. I've done it all my life. Comes of being a bookworm.

But now I'm 74 people see me prowling around with my eyes on the ground and mistake me for an old man- and we can't have that. Time to straighten up.

Picture Diary 96.

1. Forward to the Past

2. CAN

3. Romantic composer

4. Avians

5. Autumn

6. New Ice Age

Judy is annoyed about a book that says Hollywood is finished because in a few years time movies will be entirely constructed in AI- with no need for actors or cinematographers and- what hits her hardest- screen writers.

I'm not going tp play the prophet but I'm inclined to think- as she does- that old-style movie making will continue as a craft- just as other things superceded by the machine have done- like cabinet making or lace making or watercolour painting.

All the same I cannot help noticing how AI image-making proceeds by leaps and bounds. I have been making AI pictures for less than two years and when I started it was cutting edge and now the things I'm producing are looking a bit old hat. This morning on YouTube I was watching some nice little clips of people walking with dinosaurs that were created using MidJourney. Very good they were too. Effects that once cost millions can now be knocked off in someone's back bedroom.

According to the media the mysterious bottle that cleared several streets in the heart of Eastbourne was found in a house previously occupied by squatters. The contractors tasked with clearing the property called the police who summoned the bomb squad who sent in a robot to blow it up.

Was there a mighty explosion?

Apparently not.

The police had discovered a bottle of "mysterious liquid" in a house in the centre of town and had sealed off and evacuated the surrounding streets. It was all very discreet and if the Daily Mail hadn't told us to look left as drove up Grove Rd we'd not have guessed anything was out of order. Entrance to the afflicted area was sealed off with tape and a single affable copper was standing by to deter the general public from ducking under it.

Nothing to see here. Now move along please.....

We were on our way to the tennis. The Eastbourne Open has been downgraded this year but a good number of top players have shown up anyway. I sat myself down alongside Court 4 and watched this match....

Note that Rakhimova doesn't get a flag which means she's Russian.

Here she is

And here's Cocciaretto....

Rakhimova won.

I've never been to Wimbledon. A friend who has been to both says Eastbourne is quiter, more relaxed and better tempered. There's no champagne, no strawberries and cream, but the sea-food infused mac and cheese I bought off a kiosk was perfectly nice. They have a big screen so that those who haven't paid for seats on Centre Court can watch the action at one remove. No extra charge is made for the very comfortable deckchairs.....

You know, I think this is the very first time I've attended a professional sporting event of any kind.

I remember a blind man telling us that what he saw- in his mind's eye- was not darkness- as we'd presumed- but a "wonderful golden light".

A "wonderful golden light " is what I "see" when I close my eyes in the Meeting House.

"Golden" is not quite right. There are other colours there. You know when you look at a sunset and you can't tell where one colour ends and and the next begins and you call it golden because words fail? Well, its a bit like that- only the colours don't shade into one another but are all present at once. Also it's soft and deep, as gold, the metal, isn't.

And I don't just see, I also hear and feel. And all these verbs are approximate. The light is bound up with the silence and has dimensions beyond the senses. It has consciousness, an internal movement as of motes in a sun beam- and is somehow involved with Peace and Love....

I dreamed I was attending a church service. It was sort of Anglican, sort of Methodist, sort of Quaker. The building was very grand. I was sitting next to an old lady who was being friendly and I was racking my brains to remember her name. A snarly man stood up and made a nasty comment and someone else started arguing with him and I thought, "This is horrible. I need to get back to my own Meeting House...."

Next to the church the nudists were lying on the grass, sunning themselves and indulging in rough horseplay. "I can't go that way..." I thought.

The route I took led up hill, through town. It was a very large town. I had been separated from my wife (who wasn't Ailz) and this bothered me....

I woke and there was a thunderstorm going on.

The Summer Solstice- and it's going to be another in this run of very hot days.

Yesterday we drove across the County to buy the intensely local cheese they make in Rudgwick up against the Surrey border. The cheese is called Sussex Charmer and I've been eating it at the Long Man Inn. The outlet in Rudgwick has a cafe alongside where the speciality is toasted cheese and just about everything they serve is finger food. Where are the knives and forks? we wondered. But, of course there aren't any. This fed into the dream I had last night where I was working at a school and my job was to give out cutlery to the children then collect it up at the end of the meal. It was a peach of a job (though it entailed early rising) and I got on wonderfully with the kids.

Rudgwick has a church. I thought it a very average sort of a church. The pictures I took of it were very average too (the sort of uninspired, documentary pictures I've taken in a hundred different places: view of the tower from the south-west, check, close up of tower, check, view looking eastward down the nave, etc.....) so I wasn't particularly upset when I got home and found I'd been snapping away without a memory card.

We hadn't seen Joyce in something like 30 years. No problem. It could have been 30 minutes. We just carried on as we always have done. Friendship never ends (that's Yeats again) or as I said to her (and it's one of my favourite things to say) "Time is an illusion."

She's been visiting Eastbourne with a bunch of "wrinklies" (her word) on a coach holiday. Yesterday she spent the morning with us at the Meeting House. Our Quakers were lovely with her. They're a friendly crowd.

She's had good weather for it. Temperatures in the mid 20s.

I've had Maxwell's Silver Hammer popping into my head for weeks now.

It's a song the other Beatles hated- mainly because McCartney took it so seriously and made them work overtime to get it right.

They thought it was a throwaway bit of Granny music, but it ain't. For one thing it's about a mass murderer, for another it treats its subject with unbecoming levity. It's nihilistic but cheerful with it- in the best tradition of Mr Punch and the English music hall.

And this morning I stumbled across a piece of info that pulled everything together:

Macca had been taking an interest in Alfred Jarry, That's why "pataphysical"- a Jarry coinage- crops up in the first verse.

Jarry, you may or may not know, wrote a play called Ubu Roi- about an obscene little fat man who murders his way to the throne of Poland. It is absurd, scatalogical and an affront to all the decencies. Yeats was at the first night in 1896, cheering it on, but then went away and was sad because he knew it meant the end of the Celtic Twilight and all that greenery-yallery stuff that was his stock in trade and he'd have to toughen up if he wanted to survive in the new artistic environment. "After us," he wrote, "The savage gods."

Ever since he erupted onto the political scene I've thought of Donald Trump as Jarryesque. He's the living image of Pere Ubu. The savage god come into his own at last, or- Yeats again- the rough beast prophesied in "The Second Coming."

So here's the whole lineage: Mr Punch, Pere Ubu, Maxwell Edison, Donald Trump....

Maxwell's Silver Hammer is a song for our times.