Read It In Books:We Need New Stories:Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent.

Has our freedom of speech become a tool for prejudice? Is our media reliable? Is our history a fiction?

These are the questions on the back cover of Nesrine Malik's We Need New Stories:Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent and, though they're certainly not the only questions she asks in the book, they are three questions of great interest to me. I was in Waterstones, Leadenhall Market looking for a new book to read and as those were themes I'm curious, and as I'd often enjoyed Malik's Guardian columns, I thought I'd give it a go.

I'm glad I did. It was an easy, enjoyable, and sometimes challenging read. I agreed with a great deal, if not all, that Malik had written and even when I didn't the book gave me plenty to think about. The bulk of We Need New Stories is split into six chapters (The Myth of Gender Equality, The Myth of a Political Correctness Crisis, The Myth of a Free Speech Crisis, The Myth of Damaging Identity Politics, The Myth of Virtuous Origin, and The Myth of the Reliable Narrator) and, in an introductory session which address Malik's upbringing in Sudan and her disappointment on reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel, the writer explains that "individually, and collectively, we need stories".

That telling stories is a "universal impulse". We need some galvanising, sense-making framework, a narrative, in order to instil order and a sense of purpose to our lives. But she goes on to argue, and I agree entirely, that some stories are "dangerously regressive" and are used to "preserve the status quo" (despite often pretending to do the exact opposite. It probably won't be a surprise that, as examples of these, she cites Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.

Regarding gender equality, Malik believes that the social contract between most countries and their female citizens is broken, that the system doesn't provide happiness, or even safety, for women. She cites gender pay gaps, abortion rights being rolled back in America, the bargaining women must do if they are to be both caregivers and workers, and cyber sexual harassment and shes makes clear that these are as common in the UK and the US as they are in, for example, Sudan or Iran.

She cites Jordan Peterson (who's hardly impartial) using twisted 'science' to argue that inequality is hardwired (Peterson also suggests men should 'toughen up' so his work is at best useless, at worst dangerous for both women and men) and elsewhere looks at how the likes of menstruation and the differences between male and female brains have been used to argue the case that there are some jobs, some roles, that women should not do.

There are some truly disturbing statistics (in England and Wales - between 2010 & 2015 - 64% of all women murdered were murdered by their partner or ex-partner) and if some of Malik's points seem a bit obvious, there are other occasions when she points out things I didn't expect. In Sudan, she found women to be the strongest advocates of female genital mutilation.

In the chapter titled 'the Myth of a Political Correctness Crisis' Malik, quite rightly, points out that the rise in racist abuse since 2016 is a far more concerning crisis - and a real one. When Cambridge student Lola Olufemi wrote an open letter to her facility requesting non-white authors be added to the curriculum, the Telegraph put her picture on its front page under a headline which read 'STUDENT FORCES CAMBRIDGE TO DROP WHITE AUTHORS'.

But Cambridge had not dropped any white authors and Lola Olufemi had not asked, let alone forced, them to do that. The eventual clarification in the Telegraph was, as these things so often are, tiny and, anyway, it didn't matter, the damage had been done, a narrative (an incorrect one) had been created. 

That's how it works. Twist a story. Put your enemy, one who is simply asking for better representation or a more level playing field, on the defensive. Create a wide held belief in a grievance against others. Malik describes how a long nourished grievance boiled over in 2016 when the US elected Trump and the UK voted for a disastrous Brexit.

Brexit happened and Trump won but in the UK and in the US during the Trump presidency, the supporters of Brexit and Trump didn't celebrate their victory so much as they looked for new enemies to attack. High court judges, liberal elites, the media, the blob, the anti growth coalition. Many of these were simply made up and many of the people who attacked 'elites' were millionaires, nobility, and extremely influential politicians. Or, to use a more simple collective term, - the elite.

That's all stuff most of us already know but Malik is even better when she turns to 'frequency scrambling' and cites an example of Hillary Clinton talking about curbing immigration because it had created grievances for Trump and the far right. She had played straight in to their hands when, in Malik's view - and mine, she should have been defending immigration and the benefits it brings. "Frequency Scrambling", Malik writes, "makes values negotiable".

Regarding "the myth of a free speech crisis", Malik talks of receiving personal and abusive comments online. Those people, quite clearly, didn't think "you can't say anything these days" and nor do any of the people who send racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and ableist abuse to people they've never even met on a regular basis. Though despite saying whatever they want, no matter how disgusting, they quite often add "you can't say anything these days". It's the new "I'm not racist but...".

Malik points out, quite correctly, that what people are really complaining about is not that they no longer have freedom of speech (because they do) but that they don't feel their speech should have consequences or be questioned. You can call somebody a racist or homophobic slur if you want - but you shouldn't expect to not be picked up on it and you certainly shouldn't expect to be applauded or treated as some kind of maverick because you're espousing the same tired old views we all heard back in the playground as kids.

False equivalence is the idea that every opinion must have a counter opinion, must be allowed a counter opinion. When it is raining, you may look out of your window and objectively observe it is raining but if somebody else was to say that, no, it's not raining their view would be equally valid. It doesn't matter that they are demonstrably lying.

Probably the clearest and most dangerous example of that these days is the phenomenon of climate change deniers. Another example would be the neo-Nazi BNP leader Nick Griffin appearing on Question Time in 2009 (a show I watched, he made a sweaty fool of himself). Griffin's appearance caused outrage back then but now, as Malik writes, it would barely raise a shrug. Griffin's views have now become mainstream. Party policy even in the case of our current government.

Then there's the new popular technique of complaining you're being silenced by the establishment while being very much part of the establishment and having your views amplified by the establishment. Nigel Farage has appeared on Question Time thirty-two times (joint top with Kenneth Clarke) despite never being an MP even after having stood seven times to be one. Yet he regularly complains that the establishment are against him.

When it comes to the myth of damaging identity politics, Malik correctly points out that people like the killer of Jo Cox and the man who plotted to murder the MP Rosie Cooper and their identity politics (white supremacism, Nazism) are not an established part of the popular discourse. She makes the case that those in the majority (heterosexual white people) don't see that as their identity at all while, say, a black gay person may feel very defined by their identity. Crucial to the misperception, writes Malik, is a belief that whiteness is the default mode.

On the myth of virtuous origin, Malik starts by declaring that "there is no mainstream account of a country's history that is not a collective delusion". The UK, or a huge part of it, cannot admit to itself that its 'greatness' was built on global expansion, slavery, and resource extraction. To ignore that, to opt for a culture that is unable to self-reflect, is to take part in a corrosive myth.

Sometimes it's a case of intentionally ignoring the history that doesn't suit the narrative. Sudanese school curricula doesn't mention the Al Mahdi massacres, in Saudi Arabia mention of the storming of the holy mosque in Mecca in 1979 is banned from all books, and Chinese history omits the bloody purges of the Cultural Revolution. In the UK it's a little more nuanced, a little more insidious even.

Debates about empire take place but the establishment narrative is that empire was a mostly positive, civilising force for good. One that not only made Britain Great but one that made all the nations that Britain colonised great as well. In fact it made them British citizens but when British history is told those parts of Britain (those parts that were British) don't seem to feature in a long line of kings called Henry, Edward, and George, two World Wars, and an Industrial Revolution.

This came to a head in 2016 with, you guessed it, Brexit. Where the Brexit brigade somehow convinced enough people that we were being occupied, in a sense, by the EU. Rather than that we had been occupiers of many other countries over many centuries. Some of them went mad. Michael Howard threatened war with Spain over Gibraltar, others talked about the Dunkirk spirit even though the Dunkirk evacuation was, as described by Winston Churchill, a "colossal military disaster" in which 68,000 British soldiers lost their lives. Was this something we should try and repeat?

Concerning the myth of the reliable narrator, Malik turns on her own - the press. How the press didn't see Brexit coming, how they didn't see Trump becoming President, how they didn't see Corbyn's "success" in the 2017 election (if not the 2019 one), and how they backed George W Bush and Tony Blair in their invasion of Iraq. This is because, she says, the media class and the political class are, essentially, the same class and they're a class that doesn't represent huge swathes of society.

It's just one more good point made in a book that features lots of good points a lot of truly awful, and some vaguely awful, people. Trump, Douglas Murray, Peter Hitchens, Oswald Mosley, Steve Bannon, Peterson, Richard Nixon, Ann Coulter, Enoch Powell, George Wallace, Boris Johnson, Saddam Hussein, Alex Jones, Nick Griffin and Lionel Shriver through to Rod Liddle, Roman Polanski, Michael X, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Milo Yiannopoulous, Michael Gove, and Mike Pence, Isabel Oakeshott, Roger Ailes,Ben Shapiro, Nigel Farage, Richard Spencer, David Duke, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, Cecil Rhodes, and the Koch brothers. Even Anders Breivik. Even Hitler. 

But are there any positive role models? Male or female? Thankfully, yes. If not as many as the bad guys. There's Simone de Beauvoir, Malcolm X, Hannah Arendt, Harriet Tubman, and Barack Obama (give or take Guantanamo Bay) as well as lesser known positive and progressive voices like Reni Eddo-Lodge, Gary Young, David Olusoga, Fintan O'Toole, and James O'Brien. There are others that sit in the middle. People who have done good but perhaps have also done bad. Have said fine things but have also said problematic things. Here we find Germaine Greer and Hillary Clinton.

There's a few things in the book I disagree with but the main one is my belief that it is acceptable to critique the beliefs of a religion without being called Islamophobic or anti-semitic. Although it's very different if you start making threats or untrue accusations about individual people and I think those that criticise religion should at least be consistent, Christianity has a horrific history and some utterly vile practitioners.

But if anything, Malik could have been even bolder and the book, already a very good read, would have been even more compelling. But Nesrine Malik wanted to write a book about creating a fairer society, about truth and justice. So she, quite correctly, felt it important to be truthful and fair when doing so. She managed to do so right up until the final page. A recommended read.

Here Be Dragons:A Journey Into The Highest Strangeness.

Bigfoot piloting a UFO, werewolves in Northumberland, giant glowing floating crabs, demons in Cheltenham, fairies dressed as monks caving rabbit's heads in, and a hellhound having a run in with an exorcist on a desolate Yorkshire beach.

Welcome to the world of The Highest Strangeness, a land where normal Forteana (UFOs, sea serpents etc;) is turbocharged into what last night's speaker for the London Fortean Society, Richard Freeman - an unreconstructed cryptozoologist, describes as 'batshit' crazy. Freeman, who sometimes bogs his interesting talks down with anti-woke rants (last night it was how Dr Who has been ruined in recent years but a few years ago I heard him tell an audience how disappointing it would be for a woman to be raped by a mythical ape that only had a very small penis), is the zoological director at the Centre for Fortean Zoology (that's a real job!?) and he was at The Bell in Whitechapel to tell us all about some of the weirdest cases he'd encountered, ones he's been collecting and forming into a book.

Judging by the length of the speech (it was a long one - and he cut loads out) it'll be quite a hefty tome. What we were getting was, in Freeman's words, "the tip of the tip of the iceberg". It was quite a tip. He began by talking about monsters. Not normal Fortean monsters like the Yeti or animals believed by scientists (if not Freeman) to be extinct like the Tasmanian wolf but monsters like the owl man and the moth man and Freeman's favourite of all - dragons.

Dragons exist in every culture on Earth and the ones Freeman spoke about included a gigantic white dragon seen flying over car parks in Wisconsin and breathing out balls of fire. He mentioned that a similar dragon had been seen flying in the ash clouds of Iceland's infamous Eyjafjallajokull volcano in 2010 though, for me, none of them held a torch to the flying snake of Namibia:- a winged serpent with a glowing light in its head that is said to have attacked many people and whose existence, apparently, is widely accepted throughout Namibia.

Then there's our old friends the werewolves. One was sighted in Hexham and the story was reported on Nationwide. When two stone heads were dug up in the same town (a story I've written about before) it was first believed they were supposed to represent a witch and a skull and soon "a hairy man" appeared as if awoken from his slumber by the digging up of the stones.

Dr Anne Ross believed a 'Celtic head cult' had been discovered so she took the heads and soon found herself haunted by that same hairy man. But it soon transpired that the heads were made of concrete, were made in the 1940s, and were supposed to be crude caricatures of Hitler and Mussolini. 

So the werewolf visions remain, like most in this talk, unexplained. As does the story of a werewolf in Hull called Old Stinker who is believed to be able to jump thirty feet into the air. We didn't get long on the poltergeists of New South Wales but there was an interesting digression, there were lots of digressions, into Bigfoots. They crop up everywhere and Freeman believes they do exist in places like Bhutan and Sumatra but he has no time for the Bigfoots that have been spotted in Leicester, Sussex, and Cannock Chase. The Cannock Chase Bigfoot, according to reports, was described as a "shambling apeman". Which presumably doesn't mean he's a big fan of The Pastels.

In the world of Forteana you can have monsters and you can have ghosts but you can also have ghost monsters and few can compare to the giant glowing floating crab seen in Durban, South Africa in the 1890s. The mischievous spectral crustacean would float over a young girl's bed at night and even tie her hair to the old fashioned brass bedstead.

 

Another one who reported a very unusual ghost sighting is Freeman's favourite Dr Who, and former Worzel Gummidge star, Jon Pertwee! As a child, Pertwee was staying with friends in Sussex when, during the night, he smelt putrefying flesh in his bedroom. He didn't say anything but on the second night the smell came back and looking to the bottom of his bed he saw a ghostly tree trunk that was undulating and spewing bubbles out. It was also moving towards him.

Pertwee wet the bed, told the owners of the house who seemed to know about this ghost tree anyway and then promptly closed that 'wing' of the house forever. But it's not only men who went on to make a living playing scarecrows and timelords that spot bizarre apparitions. In 1925, in Pennsylvania, two women were out on a 'moonless' night when they saw a vast snake that coiled its body round houses and even a school. Others reported seeing it too. Others said they couldn't see it but they could feel its presence.

The story fits nearly with an old Scandinavian legend about a ghostly megasnake that would coil round churches and crush them. Equally bizarre are the reported sightings, from all over the world, of black dogs with glowing red eyes. The best one, perhaps, being the story of a UFO landing and ten black dogs disembarking the spaceship.

In Todmorden in West Yorkshire, a policeman reported being abducted by aliens, taken on to their spaceship and hypnotised. While on the spaceship he reported seeing a black dog with glowing eyes. Other similar sightings have been reported in Cannock Chase which is either a hotbed of weirdness or has some very effective bullshitters living nearby.

But it's not just dogs and bigfoots flying around in UFOs. Freeman told us about the Mince Pie Martian of Rowley Regis in the West Midlands. This dude would wear a fairly standard silver space suit but with a pointed hat and he also had a set of wings. Presumably he'd landed in the Black Country during the festive season because he became fascinated by Christmas trees and enjoyed eating mince pies.

But one thing the Mince Pie Martian didn't like is fire and when he saw a cigarette he ran away never to be seen again. It seems odd that an alien civilisation could be so advanced as to send a spaceship to another planet but had yet to understand how to harness fire.

Aliens spotted in Florida were said to be in league with robots and even a dissolving alien craft was reported in Philadelphia. Then there's the UFO that was said to be seen floating over the stone circle at Avebury. A woman who claimed to have seen this told the police she's seen a monstrous 5ft long worm come out of its doors. When the police investigated they found no sign of a worm but they did find a slimy trail on the ground - similar to one a snail might leave.

Fairies may not sound as terrifying as some of these rather ludicrous creatures but fairies can be right bastards. Disney have done a good job of cleaning up their image but folkloric fairies are nasty, mean spirited, jealous little thugs and they are, apparently, very commonly sighted in modern times.

Freeman's best fairy story (possibly in more than one sense) is about a man who had several pet rabbits. He'd regularly wake up to find one of them had had their head caved in. Suspecting a fox, or perhaps a badger, he placed a piece of wood over the hutch and a brick on top but the rabbits still kept getting killed. One morning he came downstairs and saw a fairy (or a goblin), wearing a monk's cowl, wielding a massive hammer and preparing to turn poor old Thumper's brains into soup.

Time was running out so Freeman had to rush through the stories of demons in Cheltenham, Gef the talking mongoose (though I've written about him before so click here for more on that fellow), and a headless talking badger (how does he talk with no mouth?) called Geoffrey but he wasn't going to let us go without telling us about the giant cat (four times the size of your average domestic tabby) with human eyes who could talk and warned children about a paedophile hiding in the woods.

Which turned out to be true. Though my friend Alex pointed out, quite reasonably and accurately, that this simply sounds like a description of Charley from the Charley Says public information films in 1973. Though admittedly Charley was called Charley and the cat in Freeman's story was called 'the Venom of God'.

Most of the talk was given over to telling these fantastical, bizarre, and mostly unbelievable, stories but Freeman did, at the end, briefly ponder what gives rise to these stories, why they crop up all over the world and have done so for tens of thousands of years. He had a few theories but, for me, the one that held the most water was that these fabulous beasts, aliens, and ghosts were distorted analogues of things that preyed on our distant ancestors.

To be afraid of a snake, a crocodile, a poisonous frog, a lion, a killer dog, or a spider is not irrational because these things can, and do, often kill us. For our distant ancestors who lived much closer to and with nature, and at a time when medicine was rudimentary at best, these fears were even more a part of everyday life. Over the years these stories have been twisted, elaborated, and inverted and we end up with giant ghost crabs, goblins with hammers, and martians scoffing mince pies while black dogs fly around in spaceships.

It'd been a fun, and interesting, talk but on the way home I was more concerned about getting to Tesco before it closed than being attacked by a werewolf or chased by the bubbling ghost of a tree trunk. Thanks to Richard Freeman, thanks to host David V Barratt and the London Fortean Society, and thanks to Jade, Dewi, Paula, Michael, Tim, and Jackie for keeping me company on my journey into the highest strangeness.

Kakistocracy XLVII:Fuck Off Back To Opposition.

Endless strikes, schools and hospitals on the brink of collapse, a cost of living crisis (though not for the megarich - who are doing very well out of it all), an HS2 railway line built for the North that won't even go to the North, and a Prime Minister who is now lying as regularly and as barefacedly as Boris Johnson did (and still does).

Can you think of one single thing that has improved in the thirteen years and four months since the Conservative Party have been running the country? Can you think of one single thing that has improved since Brexit? Can you think of one single thing that has improved under David Cameron, under Theresa May, under Boris Johnson, under Liz Truss, or under Rishi Sunak?

Of course you can't. Because NOTHING has improved and everything has demonstrably got worse. Most of the country seem to have wised up to that now and it seems almost inevitable that the Tories will have their arses handed to them on a plate come the next General Election (an event I'm looking forward to immensely) but, in the meantime, they've decided to smash the country up a bit more. All the better for when they're out of power and they can start blaming the new Labour government for all the things they fucked up.

Or simply saying vile and nasty things to keep the right wing gutter press and its readers on side. They're in campaign mode, they're certainly not bothering to do any governing - or in some cases (Nadine Dorries) any work at all, and, for this bunch of Tories, that means throwing red meat out to their most basest of supporters.

Let's take Lee Anderson, the Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party. Anderson recently told asylum seekers they can "fuck off back to France". Notwithstanding the unparliamentary language, is this really the sort of message elected MPs should be putting out there. Encouraging racists and xenophones of all stripes. 

I couldn't help thinking of what happened to Matthew Simmons and the time, at Selhurst Park, he suggested Eric Cantona could "fuck off back to France". I couldn't help wondering where Eric Cantona is now when we really need him. I'm not saying Lee Anderson deserves to be kung-fu kicked by a professional athlete but I am saying if it was to happen it would be very funny - and Anderson would deserve it. Fuck off back to opposition, Anderson.

What about Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary? Wallace has been complaining that Ukraine hasn't shown enough gratitude to the UK for helping them in their defence against Putin's horrific invasion of Ukraine. Wallace then went on to announce that he was leaving cabinet and resigning from politics at the next General Election before, seemingly quite joyfully, announcing Britain would be at war, possibly in three wars, by the year 2030.

Forget Net Zero (Sunak certainly seems to be trying to do so) and focus on all the money that can be made by one, two, or even three lovely wars where Britain can prove itself to be Great again. A great country where we'll no longer be forced use seven different types of bin and where we don't have to pay a meat tax. Two things we obviously already don't do but Rishi Sunak seems to be gaslighting us in to thinking we do by announcing he's scrapping laws that don't even exist.

What about Suella Braverman, the actual Home Secretary of a real country (the UK may be an international joke thanks to these clowns but it is still real - even though sometimes it doesn't feel it)? Braverman has said that women and LGBTQ+ people should not be able to claim asylum here just because they're being discriminated against. Even though that discrimination may include imprisonment and the threat of being murdered.

These are all people that have been enabled under the cult of Boris Johnson (who's still chipping in from the sidelines, refusing to hand his phone over to the Covid enquiry - claiming (lying) he's forgotten the password, and trying to make life as difficult for Sunak as he possibly can. Sunak, however, is doing a good enough job at fucking things up on his own.

What an amoral nest of vipers. What a completely disgusting bunch of crooks, criminals, cruel cowards, and charlatans. What a mess they have turned this country in to. How much must they hate the country to do this to it? If you vote for them at the next election I can only assume you hate the country too and wish to see it destroyed. Fuck off back to somewhere much further away than France.

 

 

 

The Hen Diagram:Henpocalypse!

"Those are solid norks. Any man would be honoured to splash himself over them" - Gary

"That's the nicest things anyone's ever said to me" - Shelly

That's the funniest line in the entire series of Henpocalypse! (BBC2/iPlayer, written by Caroline Moran and directed by Jack Clough and Holly Walsh). The fact that it's not actually all that funny and the fact that it's very crude will you give you a good indication of what sort of comedy programme Henpocalypse! is.

I'm not offended by crude jokes (I love crude jokes) and I'm not offended by women making crude jokes (which other reviewers seem to have taken as the unique selling point of Henpocalypse!) but I do expect the jokes to be at least funny. Or at least funnier than most of what's been offered up here. Rampant Rabbits, putting codeine up one's bum, Kegel balls, and aerolae are all utilised for humour but two things seem to crop up more than anything else:- fannies and spunk.

Fannies, fannies, fannies, spunk, spunk, spunk. I'm not saying you can't make good humour out of vulvae and sperm. I'm just saying Henpocalypse! isn't quite as edgy as it likes to think it is. There are some mildly amusing lines and some enjoyably ludicrous plot twists but there was also some desperately unfunny slapstick and if I'm honest with myself I didn't laugh out loud more than once during the entire six episodes.

Which is a shame because Henpocalypse! had potential. It could, and should, have been so much better. The story begins with Zara (Lucie Shorthouse) and her friends heading off to a cottage in North Wales for her hen party (even though Zara had wanted to go to Lanzarote) and, to begin with, everything is much as you might expect for one of these events. Pink cowboy hats, cock shaped drinking straws, blow up men, a male stripper, personalised t-shirts, and a penis pinata.

But when a global outbreak of 'crab measles' happens everyone is ordered to stay indoors. We see government officials standing behind rostrums with 'AVOID CRABS/STAY HOME/STAY SAFE' written on them and then we see the Health Minister (disappointingly not Matt Hancock) drop dead live on TV. 

He's not the only one. We rejoin the hens nine weeks later and almost every single person on Earth has died. It's never fully explained how this hen party survived but, never mind, this is a silly comedy not a serious piece of science fiction. The cottage is now a complete mess, the inhabitants washing their hair with Toilet Duck, the stripper has been tied to the radiator, and the only food they have is the remains of a chocolate penis and an owl they've managed to catch.

Zara's sniffing felt tip pens and her teeth keep falling out, Zara's mum, Bernadette (Elizabeth Berrington), has got shingles, and Zara's Danny Dyer obsessed cousin Jen (Kate O'Flynn) is in bed with a very gammy (and smelly) leg. She's handed a hammer to kill herself if it all gets a bit too much. When you've heard her use the word 'wazzock' for the twentieth time you start wishing she'll use it.

The other two hens are Veena (Lauren O'Rourke) and maid of honour Shelly (Callie Cooke). Veena has practical skills, a detective instinct, and ends up pimping up their car up to look like something from Mad Max(ine) while Shelly has father issues, self-esteem issues, and guilt issues relating to an incident at Zara's 30th birthday party to which we regularly flash back to.

Nevertheless, Shelly is the dogsbody of the group who organised, and paid for, the hen do and is tasked with looking after both Jen and Drew (Ben McGregor) the stripper. Who, by this point, is being fed owl, pissing in a Big Yellow Teapot, and shitting in an Alvin and the Chipmunks caravan.

Don't feel too sorry for him though. His main concern about the apocalypse is that it means we'll lose great men like "Jeremy Clarkson, Jordan Peterson, and Russell Brand. All the great thinkers" before going on to admitting he also likes Joe Rogan, Nigel Farage, and Elon Musk. When he later talks about going to a Super Furry Animals gig I feel the band have been slighted. SFA are a great band. They deserve much better company than that bunch of rotters.

Despite being a bit of a dick, Drew is kept just in case the world needs repopulating. Gary (George Somner), Zara's fiance - mostly seen in flashback, is also a bit of a dick. The sort of man who gets a tattoo of his fiancee's dead dog across his chest in order to impress her. 

There's a reasonably decent, and intentionally hammy, guest appearance from Danny Dyer but the only other character of any real significance is pilates instructor Nesbit (Mariam Haque). Nesbit, or Nezzie, was enjoying a solo walking holiday when the apocalypse struck and, like the hens and their stripper, somehow survived.

Though she visits the cottage to look at Jen's leg, she and the hens do not become allies. In fact they'd fallen out even before doomsday when Zara did a piss in front of her and Veena drove the car into her. From just that last sentence you'll see that the humour is often painted in very broad brush strokes and some of these jokes, like the girls wearing their knickers as face masks, must have worked better on the page than they did on the screen.

There's a decent hen-adjacent soundtrack (Britney Spears, Icona Pop, Jamelia, Tom Jones, The Dixie Cups, Liberty X, Petula Clark, Girls Aloud, Take That, and, of course, Abba's Dancing Queen) and there's some reasonably decent observational humour made about things like Gogglebox, Wetherspoons, Fray Bentos, ayahuasca, spaghetti hoops, putting fireworks up one's bum, Marie Kondo, sporks, Bestival, Paul Hollywood, ketamine, and Carl Jung but the overall feeling I took away from Henpocalypse! was an opportunity missed. Not a complete failure, not the end of the world, but it really should have been so much better. If Henpocalypse! had been a hen night accessory it would have been a huge inflatable penis - but it would have been a half-deflated one.

The Thames Path Part VI:Staines-Upon-Thames to Windsor (Castles In The Air)

169 (ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY NINE) days had passed since our last Thames Path walk (Walton-on-Thames to Staines-upon-Thames took place on Good Friday back in April) and if arranging another date, what with train strikes and extreme weather conditions, had been something of a pain then I'm happy to report that yesterday's walk (stage six on our slow moving Thames Path odyssey) was an absolute pleasure. I hope we don't take anywhere near as long getting round to the seventh section.

 

The day had started pretty early for me and I was on the 63 bus to Waterloo not long after 8am. Killed a bit of time there before jumping on the 1003 train to Staines where, at Clapham Junction, I was joined by Pam. After I briefly took us in the wrong direction from the train station, Pam corrected us and we took the short walk into the town centre. Pam's phone took us through a car park and into the middle of the Two Rivers shopping centre  (one street lined with umbrellas - solidarity with Hong Kong?) where, eventually, we found the Eggham on Toast Cafe and, as predicted, Shep and Adam were sat there with empty plates in front of them.

They'd arrived, with Laura - who was out and about handing out Buddhist leaflets, at 1020am and would end up spending more than two hours (!) in the cafe. It was a nice cafe but it wasn't the easiest to find so several people turned up late and then, because they cooked each brunch individually, it took a while for each to come. They were tasty though. I had a veggie breakfast (beans, bread, fried egg, one good veggie sausage, a couple of hash browns, two mushrooms, and some tomatoes).

As I was having to answer calls and send messages to ensure people found the place it was cold by the time I finished it and the mushrooms and tomatoes were left on the plate but the nice cup of tea was certainly drained. As we ordered, ate, and chatted the others arrived:- Bee, Dan (my nephew making his debut on a Thames Path/TADS/LbF walk - hopefully he'll come again soon), Simon, Sharon, and Jason.

It was good to have the band back together but two people were missing. Mo was on a work trip to Canada (we'd gone ahead with her full blessing and she intends to catch up and rejoin us soon) and Dave Fog had mistakenly gone to the Egham branch of Eggham On Toast instead. We'd catch up with him en route - when we finally got going.

Still in the shopping centre we paused, briefly, to take in a statue that celebrates Frederick Walton, the man who invented Linoleum (in 1864) and opened a factory in Staines to produce it. He died in 1928 and thus will remain forever ignorant of his contribution to hip-hop and b-boy culture.

As we made our way down to the banks of the Thames we crossed the two rivers (the Wraysbury and the Colne) which give the shopping centre its name and we saw a guy with a t-shirt boasting of how proud he was to have been born in Staines in 1968 (the same year as at least three of our gang). We crossed Staines Bridge and soon we were back on the Thames Path. It felt good to be back.

 

It was, as with the rest of the day, a very pleasant and picturesque stretch. The autumn sun glistened on the river's surface, abundant greenery and boats silently gliding downstream and up made photography almost compulsory but I was aware of upping the pace as we'd lost time in the cafe. Most of us completely missed the replica London Stone and the white iron 'coal post' that was once used to warn merchants that, under an act of 1831, they were now entering London and, therefore, due to pay a levy on their coal.

We passed underneath the M25 and came out by the Runnymede-on-Thames Hotel where Dave Fog was waiting to join us. We were in Magna Carta country and the first sign of it was a statue, possibly a very rare one, of Elizabeth II which was part of a set piece which listed the reigns of all British monarchs since 1066 and other relevant moments in British history and their contribution to the advance of democracy and freedom. Thinking about it now it seems odd that the liberty of the British people should be linked to the monarchy when, if anything, the existence of a monarchy at all is the antithesis of the concept of liberty.

 

Still, it was interesting. Not that Laura and Dan seemed to think so as, deep in conversation, they walked straight past it and sped off far ahead of the rest of us. That means they also missed the American Bar Society's Magna Carta Memorial and the sculptural set piece known as The Jurors (a series of twelve chairs placed in a field and as if round a table) to celebrate eight hundred years since Magna Carta.

Created by the artist Hew Locke, I'd like to have crossed the (fairly) busy A308 and gone and had a closer look but with time not on our side, and Dan and Laura getting ever further ahead, we decided against it. One for another day, perhaps!

At this point, and as planned, it was time for Simon to say goodbye (he had stuff on) so we posed for a few photos (Simon, Sharon, Pam, Dave Fog, and I had all worked together for several years - and Jason had been in the same company too) which Shep managed to obscure with his finger (or thumb) as he took them. Dan and Laura, I thought, were now probably a good mile ahead.

We rang them. They weren't. They were only a couple of hundred of metres ahead and just before we entered Old Windsor (home of Saxon kings) we caught up with them. Several of us remarked on how nice it would be to take a ride on the Lucy Fisher paddle steamer though the price (£9.50 for forty-five minutes) was not so nice.

The houses facing out to the river were looking resplendent (and expensive) on a Goldilocks day for walking and we continued along a gentle stretch of river for another mile or so until we reached the Albert Bridge and crossed over to the other side. A few paths which cut through some fields and a brief roadside walk took us to Datchet, a place I'd never visited before and had barely ever given a second thought.

It looks a pretty, and well-to-do, kind of town. One house looked like something from a gothic horror and another, right next to it, cream mansion looked fairly imposing in its own way. The village green was flanked by Tudor (or maybe mock-Tudor) terraces and shop frontages and it almost felt as if a game of cricket should be taking place. Our main attention, however, predictably, was, of course, the pub.

The Royal Stag served a lager called Royal Stag so it seemed only right I take one. The ten of us took a table in the beer garden (in truth a car park - but a very nice one) and we'd made up enough time to make a good ol' two pint mistake (well, some of us). It was observed that Bee and Sharon both, quite unusually, had a pint though Bee's was a lager top and Sharon's a lager shandy.

We sat chatting about music, football, awful bosses from the past, and all manner of other nonsense (including Adam's favourite subject of the day - tissues - be they Kleenex or Handy Andies) for a good ninety minutes as British Airways planes regularly zoomed over the spire of St Mary the Virgin Church. Shep trying, and mostly failing, to get a good photo of them (though Pam got one). Like a man who'd never seen an aeroplane before.

5pm, as planned, it was time to hit the road again and I'd estimated (for once correctly - or within about five minutes) that it would take us another hour to reach Windsor/Eton where we'd be meeting Cath (the artist formerly known as Catherine) and Eamon in Eton's George pub.

We cut through a forest and back to the riverside, the sun now lower in the sky and giving the whole scene a rather gorgeous golden hour kind of feel. We crossed the river again on Victoria Bridge (obviously a companion to Albert Bridge) and into Home Park with our first views of Windsor Castle and the none more English sound of a a game of cricket playing out.

This was an easy stretch (though we still managed to get quite spread out) and that was just as well as I felt either my feet were expanding or my boots were shrinking). The riverside path took us, as with so many walks, though a yard full of industrial equipment and when we came out of a brief track into Windsor proper the river and the sky both looked absolutely glorious.

We crossed Windsor Bridge into Eton and into the George. There's a lot to see in both Windsor and Eton (it's not all about the castle) and another time I'd like to do the circular walk around both towns as suggested in our trusty Thames Path tome (it takes in stories about Henry VI, David Cameron (boo), William the Conqueror, Elizabeth II, Sir Christopher Wren, Shakespeare, John the Baptist (he knows the score), George V, and Queen Victoria) but nobody was up for an extra five miles so instead, with another local beer on the go - Capital, we took to the pub's beer garden where we met with Cath and Eamon.

As with the Royal Stag, it would have been easy to stay there shooting the breeze for another couple of hours but I'd booked the Viceroy for Indian food so we headed off, through Windsor and past its ginormous castle - it really amazes me how anything so large gets built and it horrifies me that most of it sits empty as Britain's streets are lined with homeless people - for food. Eamon, handily, guiding us down Peascod Street and on to St Leonards Road to the curry house.

 

The Viceroy was bustling, and huge, and we arrived in dribs and drabs but we all arrived - except Eamon who was never planning on joining us for curry and Shep and Laura who decided to head home at this point. A pity because I think they'd have enjoyed the food and drink at the Viceroy.

A couple of poppadums each and it was on to the mains. I had a veggie dansak and paratha and Dan kindly shared some of his boiled rice with me. Every third or fourth mouthful was pretty spicy but I did okay as I had a brace of Cobras to wash it down with. As far as I could gather, most of the others were happy with their food (as well as the post-prandial Murray Mints and After Eights) and then, as so often on these walks, it was time to rush back to the station.

Me, Dan, Pam, Sharon and Jason made Windsor & Eton Riverside station in good time and Dan hopped off at Staines to drive home while the others changed at Clapham Junction. I continued on to Waterloo and then, resisting a friend's request to join him for a nightcap in an undisclosed location, I took the 63 bus home, brushed my teeth, put my phone on charge, and went straight to bed. I'd notched up a reasonably decent 30,407 steps during the day but more importantly I'd seen some beautiful buildings and countryside. More importantly still I'd shared the day with twelve absolutely lovely people.

Thanks to Pam, Dan, Sharon, Jason, Bee, Dave Fog, Simon, Shep, Laura, Adam, Eamon, and Cath for a brilliant day out and thanks to Bee, Pam, and Sharon for some of the snaps and maps I've included in this blog. Look forward to doing it all again in much less than 169 days!