"what manner of beasts cowes be"

Well, blow me down with a feather, I have a comment from Ben Fairhall. I assume he was looking for blog that link to his own. I only wish I could tell him more about the double Ms found at Temple Bruer, Brueria, but I only read about them yesterday in a little book I came across just across the way in this here library. "In Search of the Knights Templar" by Simon Brighton, that's where I read it. They were positing, I believe, that "M" means Mary and therefore a double M is probably Magdalene. Incidentally I went to Mary Magdalene CofE Middle School, when I wasn't playing truant, and the town is dominated by the third tallest church spire in the country, that of St Mary Magdalene. I'm a fount of local knowledge. James the first, for example, caused trouble by hanging someone without trial when he stopped here on the way to be crowned down london way. The castellan during the civil war was supposedly a Mason. I'm going off on a tangent, here. Rosemary Robb, does very good book on the local legends, albeit with too much focus on ghost stories. And how fortuitous that Ben Fairhall and remarksman/retardsman have come together here, with their complementary positions on matriarchy and various feminine esotericisms.

I know other things about Brueria. I know it has seven streets, or possibly houses. I know of my family connection to it. I know it was one of the four sites the Templars confessed to holding an idol at within England. I know that some relic was brought from there to Newark Castle, before it was smashed out of the hollow in the wall where it had been hidden and taken off by a member of the royal family in 1906. Those dungeons are still now occasionally opened to the public, although a bottle dungeon with a hole in the wall isn't a particularly edifying sight.

Ah, I've become distracted. I've been back to the New Deal office and have the usual collection of observations to impart.

"Titles are hard." -- Marge Simpson

She's right. You may notice that my titles are mostly random. So are the background images in an Adam Curtis documentary, but mine are of less artistic merit.

There, I've got one. Random, of course. I read it in a book about the civil war, during which our town put up a heroic resistance. The London militia, who were on the other side, came out of London and the immediately dropped their weapons and raced into the fields to see "what manner of beasts cowes be". It's a good story, that. Reminds me of an episode of "Goodnight Sweetheart", a mediocre BBC sitcom.

I've been trawling the web for articles by former San Francisco Bay Guardian columnist "nessie". Found a few. Still quite a few AWOL, though. If you know where any are, make sure to inform me.

But back to the New Deal office. Someone reappeared who had previously got himself a job, or rather the temp agency had got him a job. He's been sacked. Crashed his forklift into a steel column. For those who haven't seen the German short film "Fork Lift Driver Klaus", I highly recommend it.

I managed to occupy the greater part of the afternoon wandering around town. The old Wimpy is still in place. Haven't been there in ages. Didn't think Wimpys were still around. There's a local company, I imagine they're local, called "AVG UK". Anti-virus something or other. They have an office just beneath the A4E office. A4E/Instant Muscle, officially, I believe. They have another office a couple of streets away. Both upstairs behind security doors. The one below A4E would make a good place to watch us in the office. Remember the Stanford Prison Experiment? The BBC did a version of it a few years back and the results were the opposite of those the Americans reached. A world run by empathy, rather than the abuse of power.

There's a local charity called the Emmaus Trust. Don't know who they are.

A nice thread in soc.men. I like to provide links. I think that's enough for one day.

Edit: Something else, I see Senator Alvaro of Columbia has been brought down in circumstance that remind me of the Barry Seal affair. That is all.