When the Peach Preached, and the Equinox Expressed (Or: Fruit and the Funny Man): A Sermon for Harvest 2020

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/when-the-peach-preached-and-the-equinox-expressed

The last couple of Harvests have been memorable for me.

Harvest is a familiar time, coming from a farming family. Most churches, of all denominations, celebrate Harvest Sunday sometime in September or early October. In the rural Baptist churches I was brought up in, our Harvest Sunday had direct meaning as several of the congregation really had just put their combine and beet harvesters away, and the fruits of their labours – along with various garden produce from other members – festooned the chapel. Festooning is rare in these churches – weddings, Christmas, and the weekly flowers were the only other excuses for adornment in buildings that were deliberately plain. Our simple but polished communion table was attractively arrayed with big marrows and pumpkins and sheaves of corn, and we heartily sang about bringing in the latter – a nonconformist knees up hymn alien to churches who decorate year round. As I grew older and moved away, I was intrigued to know what happened in city churches. Twenty years ago, they too had real produce…. but these days, it’s tins for all. Blessing a stack of aluminium doesn’t feel the same as real, straight from the barn or earth stuff. Processed vs produce; raw vs regulated. It’s a distinction to watch for, on many levels – now especially. The offerings are provided by the congregation as gifts for the local needy, but long life food doesn’t provide for long life: a hungry, unwell person’s body cries out for real food, as much as it does real love and connection. Again, health rules and convenience stifle our needs; and the giving of pre-packaged fare comes from a different place to personally tended items from your own soil.

Last autumn, I watched a live online offering from a temple. I got out my ironing, as I often do to listen to spiritual events. A priestess came into the lens, dressed like those Scottish Widow insurance adverts – the most perky bereaved I’ve seen, more in the manner of the Wife of Bath. “Put it down!” she commanded from within her face scarf. Could she see me ironing? This wasn’t on Zoom and I had switched off my web camera and covered it. I gingerly swerved my iron some more.

“Put it down,” she commanded again.

“But I need to get this done,” I replied.

After a dramatic pause, she said it a third time. Now quite perturbed, I carried on pressing my clothes with a little trepidation.

But she was not watching or admonishing me – she was telling all the sisterhood to let go of what we’d brought – our burdens, our lower energies conditioning.

She dramatically popped out of her shawl to tell us so.

I pressed on through her effervescent chatter, punctuated by the ringing of bowls.

Then she got her harvest basket out – with real fruit and veg, often from her own home. I sat down for this. A show and preach – just like the children’s talks of my youth! This wonderfully ebullient sister lifted an item out at a time, and shared how each fruit has something to teach us. “The peach preached” about juiciness with great effervescence; the parsnip’s roots was easy to opine on, but she said the parsley challenged her vocabulary. She held up an apple which was red and sun kissed on one side but also green and with a worm hole, saying we can be ripe and not yet ready and ridden with issues all at once (amen, Californian sister); her pepper turned out a different colour to what she expected when she planted it; and she reminded us of the unseen seed growth which finally bursts into the unique plant we’re meant to be. So I felt blessed, and entertained – thank you sister, and I hope you do another soon!

I had only recently started to register the main reason for this sacred screening – the equinoxes. I knew of the word, and that it meant ‘equal night’ – ie the two points of the year, in spring and autumn, when the length of day and dark were the same. I’d heard a Unitarian service on one, but it wasn’t yet in my own calendar as something to mark, and it didn’t yet have any spiritual significance.

Through seeking out Mary Magdalene, I joined some priestess temples in 2018, who very much mark these as two of the 8 high holy days in the wheel of the year. I discovered that these festivals all coincide with church ones, although you need to be up the candle to have them fixed in your minds and diaries.

I’ve been thinking about wheels much more, and how we were encouraged to not worship nature when I was growing up, and that perhaps made me a little wary of it. I have long been drawn to Celtic ways, and like that the Celtic Christians follow this wheel, this natural rhythm. Thus they can incorporate Pagan thought with their own practice. It’s something that I’m integrating and exploring.

On my quest, I came across something that I’m writing a full essay on, but I would like to share it here in a condensed form.

As children, having a rare Saturday off around harvest, we would drive to the sea; and this would often involve passing a strange village sign. In East Anglia especially, most villages and smaller towns have a sign at a focal point, painting, carving or hammering out the story or character of the village visually – a message on a stick. Literally.

We knew that our inevitable juvenile question ‘are we nearly there yet?’ was answered positively when we saw what we called The Barsham Funny Man sign. Barsham is a hamlet between Beccles and Bungay in north east Suffolk. The sign seemed to us as a scarecrow, an axis of heavy logs, and an odd round head. It was thus quite different from the signs which depicted in wood or wrought iron scenes of harvesting horses, old airfields, ancient legends or royal visits, or simply the village church, pond and windmill. And there is a memorable church here to depict, if not much else.

I’d had reason to travel through Barsham in 2018 and see this odd sight, which now appeared to be less of a scarecrow. So I looked it up: what did it mean? It was more recent than some signs – 1980s rather than the 1930s and 50s – and by a resident called Keith Payne who had set up neo-medieval fairs here, because of the energies. It is a Pagan symbol – the torso and arms are a cross, and the double sided round head is the rising or setting sun, depending on which way you are travelling.

This area is called ‘land of the rising sun’ for we are England’s far East. Keith realised the importance of the sun to the long arable farming tradition here, as well as to the fisher folk and holiday makers. Keith explained that the energies he sensed were to do with the round towered church, and possible henge on the site, and the Michael leyline which runs through the parish.

The East of England is famous for its round towered churches, the only place in Britain to have circular medieval church towers, although they are also found in Ireland, and elsewhere. Why isn’t the connection between us and other parts of Europe investigated? It’s something which I’m doing.

I’ve read and heard many unsatisfactory treaties on these churches’ odd shape, which are most prevalent in Norfolk – we have two thirds of the country’s total. They are most concentrated in the most easterly bump, close to the Suffolk/Norfolk border – just where Barsham is situated.

Barsham may be one of 180 odd round towered churches and 1100 medieval parish churches in these two counties, but it has something that makes it stand apart. It took the previous vicar 15 years to work out and to make public, for which he had to seek permission from the church. When it was, in 2007, it hit international news.

Now, at each of the equinoxes, Barsham holds a three day viewing of this special event. The time and date change, but it’s normally around 5pm, and the 20^th of both March and September. I found this via The Gatekeepers’ Trust, who sometimes visit; and one year, a few of their members enhanced the event via bespoke unaccompanied choral pieces. This choir is called Anam Cora.

What do we see? What is this equinox ephemera, as I like to call it?

It’s a light show. The tower becomes a projection box, and through a small window, a ray of light hits the figures on the rood screen (which divides the nave and chancel) for a few minutes. Even if you’re not very into statues, this is still a remarkable occurrence which is hard to encapsulate. What was special was the waiting. This must be the key to Quaker meetings, I thought: the expectant hush, the absolute concentrated stillness as the lights went off and we sat in advent. It wouldn’t have mattered if the beam hadn’t really shown up – it doesn’t every day and every year. The expectance brought us together, focussed our thoughts in a spiritual excitement that I have not felt before.

I’ve been wondering if this ephemera isn’t in fact common, but it could be hard to discover, and the church may be resistant to it. It involved being in the church at the right time, and being aware of the equinox (or solstice – I’ve heard a claim for Framlingham in Suffolk on the summer one); and one needs the right windows and something for the light to play on. In Barsham, there are small windows in the outside of the tower, at belfry height, and then an off kilter one high up on the west wall inside – later than the tower, it’s thought – which was covered up for many years. Many churches have filled in windows here, or they are obscured by organs or pictures. Rood screens with figures aren’t that common, but at Framlingham, there’s a mystical painting on the reredos (behind the altar). I started to research churches, especially with round or Norman towers, and found that many simply don’t have the apertures or a suitable surface. Were all churches made thus, and many have lost this ability? I do have a list of those which might still have it.

It seems to be a clearly Pagan piece of astrological calculation. Was this a Christian/Pagan hybrid, or did one take over from the other? The Gatekeepers’ presence made that link between the Christian community – who hosted the event – and an earth based spiritual group. I liked this apparent evidence that both paths could be walked, and that one could accommodate the other.

The historical and archaeological persons who often dominate our heritage try to downplay energies and the esoteric, even ridiculing it. But I think that we can’t make sense of the world without it. The former vicar found that his church-related festival knowledge simply wasn’t going to give him an answer to the reason for this light shaft which plays at sunset so precisely at the equinoxes. No, harvest time reminders or whatever other weak suggestions given by ministers and historians won’t explain this. As if those who live by the land would need a symbol inside the church to call time! This is about time, but it’s not calling to do; it is not a warning or a curtailment. It is a call to be. It is more akin to ancient henges and barrows than a sanctus bell. Yes, it announces a moment of holy mystery, but there’s nothing jangling here. Strange that the higher end of the church expects us to accept that human operated tinkle – I thought it was the phone ringing! – is God entering the bread and wine because a priest says particular words…and yet struggles to honour this automated astrological recurrence. It seems it needed the more acceptable and familiar trappings of papist faith – the rood and statues – to transubstantiate a heathen rite into a holy one. For me, it works despite, not because, of the crucifix.

In our world, we have excluded the spiritual from so much, and I say again: this is where we go wrong. It’s not in our government, in our banking, in our law; and it’s often not in our education (which is a form of proselyting, with or without being a faith school), and it’s not in our health systems. We seem afraid of astrology, caricaturing it to three line proscriptions on the puzzle page of a tabloid, or the tassled tent of a charlatan at a fair; or, in my upbringing, an area as forbidden as the tree in the Garden of Eden.

I think that both fruits are misunderstood, and that the forbidding is not of God.

We must be wary of those claiming a higher mandate and whose restrictions are clearly motivated by their own fear and foibles, rather than our wellbeing.

We are aware of being in a ripe for harvest time globally, a time of falling away of the old in a season of great beauty as well as new starts. If we share our harvest, if we enjoy rather than panic, if we allow the Light to show up as it was long set up to do, at exactly the right moment; if we find the still point and the collective waiting, and allow ourselves to feel unity rather than division; to see the colours of the curling leaves, the searching beam of the setting sun on the old day, and be confident through the coming ones of another equinox… this too can be a hallowed time, a time of peace, a time of trust, and a time of transformation. We too can come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves and preparing for a new Earth.

Listen at https://yourlisten.com/BetweenTheStools/harvest-equinox-sermon

The next planned sermon will 8th November – unless I feel constrained to preach sooner

A sermon for Truth Telling Sunday 2020

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/a-sermon-for-truth-telling-sunday-2020

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/a-sermon-for-truth-telling-sunday-2020

I was informed by text one September 11^th that if I were a good Catholic (instead of a proudly wicked nonconformist) that I would know this day was St Clara’s day – patron saint of journalists and those who write for the truth to be known. Now, I note that there are several St Clara or Claires, but I don’t really care who this saint is and when her day is. I just love what she stands for. As a writer and a truth teller, I was pleased that the church [no big C], which I disapprove of more than ever, has given a day to at least one saint who upholds truth telling and speaking out.

The irony is not lost on me. As I began preparing for this, I watched the Anglican church come out of lockdown and the local diocese’s ordinations. I was aware of acute discrepancies between what the candidates swear to do and be, and what actually happens. The church has conformed to covid controls, and made its own – one in particular was unworthy of its inclusive church pretensions because of its disability discrimination regarding masks and toilet use. Yes, it is the exact opposite of all you’re supposed to stand for. And yet, head touching of multiple candidates was still allowed, because zapping with authority and the apostolic succession is so important to conformist churches.

I noted the church’s use of [no sainting here] Peter’s phrase – the ‘royal priesthood, holy nation’ that I was used to crooning in the 1980s. As a nonconformist, it had never occurred to my younger evangelical self that this quote from 1 Peter 2:9 could mean that the priesthood of any established chain, such as Anglicans, Catholics, or Orthodox, is royal and passed like a bloodline, Reiki master style, or something out of the Da Vinci Code. ‘Royal priesthood’ seems much more of a feature of the old Jewish religion than the new Christian Way that was offshooting from it. ‘Holy nation’ feels like a reference to the Jewish people. Writing as and to those familiar with Judaism, Peter’s words, for me, say: I am equating this new kingdom of God with what we are used to. He also seems to say that Gentiles are included in what had been a closed camp. All believers belong to the holy nation now – it’s not about ethnicity and geography any more. Amen!

But I’m aware of Peter being misused and also that he deliberately took mantles not given to him. I again mention Lauri Ann Lumby’s understanding of Peter in her novel, Song of the Beloved: a Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which draws on extra canonical sources and her own considerable knowledge. I have great respect for Lauri’s work, and she is not alone in the opinion that Peter’s version of Jesus – along with his brother James – is a skewed one, which suits people trying to build another hierarchical ownership system, just like the one they broke away from.

I am seeing this thread in British history, which I hope is meaningful and transferable for all my readers/listeners, wherever you are. I’d like to take 4 points from it and weave these questions:

1) How do we please God? 2) How do we please our rulers? 3) How do we live well? 4) How do we recognise one who lives well and pleases God and his ruler? (They probably do say ‘his’).

And the answer for each is the same – for them. It is not the same for me.

The traditional answer to those four questions is:

For 1-3: keep the law; and 4 is – by ease, wealth and status in their lives.

For the traditionalist, 1&2 are entwined: God leads via those he ordained, in a hierarchy, whose status shows the favour found with God. Hear my duck noise!

Let me start with the Roman empire, which links Jesus and the early church’s day, and the first stop in my land’s history. When I’ve heard historians speak of Rome, it’s often with some admiration. Not: here was an atrocious, hard, ruthless people who ruled much of Europe, the Middle East and even parts of Africa, and tried to squash our indigenous way of life – and charged us for it, calling it ‘protection’.

We seem to admire the people who were organised and tactical fighters with shields that tessellated, who built straight roads and our first towns and lasting buildings. Because they had underfloor heating, we somehow think that if they were technologically ahead, that these people are worthy of our respect. Because they did what we did – rule a vast area with might and wealth, supplanting natives – we quite like our Italian tin and brush hatted not quite friends.

There was a TV and book series: What The Romans Did for Us. It extended to the other eras which I’m going to visit.

My answer to what these people did for (or to us) is similar for each:

They introduced hierarchy and homogeneity (and yes, hypocausts).

Forts and towns followed a pattern; soldiers followed a pattern; residents followed a pattern. It’s called the laws of the New Leadership. Do as you’re told and you may live, even thrive. We’ll rename your geography, bring our uniforms, language, gods.

I note Rome’s own gods, and how Christianity and Judaism often portrays its One True one. Please God (in both senses). God needs obeying and placating. Give up something to him/her. A sacrifice, a present. Praise him; make a promise of allegiance. Offer yourselves. If you want something, a certain outcome in war for example, you must follow these guidelines. If you don’t get what you wanted, your god is displeased. You must work out why and ameliorate before you suffer more.

Another irony is that Rome, who persecuted Christianity, became its headquarters. And Christianity advanced in the way that the Roman Empire did: spread and conquer. Accept this system or die. Even in less aggressive forms, there is something tactical and militant about mission. The Church of England’s tagline is: “A Christian presence in every community.” I’d once have found that comforting, but it now sounds ominous. There’s a sense of ownership of their patch, even of nonworshippers. When a new couple told a minister that they’d just moved into the parish, the minister said, “So that means we own your soul.” It’s just what some churches think.

The were 2 different styles of mission in Britain: one from Ireland, starting at Iona; and one from Rome, starting in Kent. One wanted to supplant the extant Pagan beliefs; the other incorporated them. Whilst I critique both, it’s my understanding that the Celtic way was a less authoritarian and more egalitarian form of faith. Sadly, the Celtic way lost out. Their military leadership may have receded, but Rome found a new way into Britain. Now the church – considering itself worthy of a capital C [snort] – had councils, and made decisions about the Good Book and what was considered acceptable belief. In Northumbria, the Roman way won in another council – the synod of Whitby – and the Celtic church was superseded.

Yet it’s not forgotten, and like Mary Magdalene, it’s enjoying a resurgence.

My next stop is 1000 years on from the Roman invasion. I’m intrigued that when they left four centuries later, Britain returned to its Celtic ways. I’ve seen reconstruction pictures of Canterbury and Colchester – large walled Roman towns – lying in ruin with thatched huts and pigs running round in gardens, where once side by side houses of tile and brick stood. Towns were abandoned with the cessation of the military and central administration.

But then new invaders came, with almost the same name as those in AD 43.

They even copied the architecture of Rome, which is knowns as Romanesque.

Another group from continental Europe, this time from the North.

They had the same game plan: conquer in battle, claim the capital, and then start building – motte and bailey castles instead of milecastles, replace churches with bigger ones, our style. Claim Pagan holy spots with sites of our own.

As I read about Dunfermline in Fife, I was sad to realise that a famous Queen – Margaret – and her son, David, did Scotland what I think is a disservice. Margaret was sainted for her piety, which really meant that she set up monasteries. Both she and David had spent time in England, and they took what they found there to their homeland, instead of the preferable reverse.

Much like at Durham, the largest church yet seen was built on the site of a simpler, older one; and a palace complex was mixed in with the monastic accommodation and leadership. (David did the same at Edinburgh). Kings started being buried at Dunfermline abbey, as they were at contemporary Westminster. It tied secular and sacred power together; it made a statement via a building, towered in both senses. God is mighty, we are mighty. Masonry might costs. You might want to think about that when visiting, and contribute whilst you contemplate how vast and untouchable God is in the long dark space where words of another tongue will be said amidst flashes of colour and smelly mist (what the Welsh call incense). Hence God is mysterious, and those who enact his mysteries are to be revered because of the glorious robes they wear, the words they utter that you don’t understand, the ceremonies that they do – although they’ll be behind a screen, and you can’t see.

Just like the Jews had wrongly taught that God’s name is unsayable – lest its power be accessed by all; just like the Bible wasn’t in the common tongue and could only be read by priests; now they said: God is at the altar, and the altar is very far away. You won’t be able to get to the High one (of course, there are hierarchies – the ones in the nave you use aren’t as holy as the one up the far end for the important people, where all the gold is).

As a cathedral lover, I’m struck by how reprehensible this view of God is, and how unlike the New Testament, and the God of my understanding.

Margaret introduced the Benedictine Rule (note the word, it’s true in both senses) – more Italian monopoly, like the board game, for this was the predominant monastic system which also was about hegemony and homogeneity. These buildings had a set shape, as did their service patterns, and their trappings of worship, familiar today but alien and offensive to those of nonconformist and Celtic understanding.

Thus queen and king imposed a foreign way which was part of the conquerors’ world, to a place that wasn’t even conquered. This was the era of private ownership. This was the time that both Scotland and England had a unified single sovereign each over the whole land, which had hitherto been a group of tribal kingdoms. I note that early abbots and bishops were Norman or Italian – thus preserving and imposing the nationality and ways of the incoming nation.

They brought back walls, in all senses. They brought in feudalism.

So what did the Normans do for us? They reintroduced a system, secular and sacred. They were even prepared to fight so-called holy wars to defend territory from other would-be acquisitive and not dissimilar religions of the book with theocratic rule and proselytising tendencies. Now sacred and secular were really muddled.

My next stop is half a millennium later. At last rid of being someone else’s empire, we began to make our own, which continued for half a millennium. The Church – for there was but one way allowed to worship God – badly needed reform, as much of Christendom recognised. But we didn’t really reform here, we just changed its name and its head. It drowned all music but its own, including adherents to the extant version, and those would-be more radical reformers. This was an opportunity to reset, to develop anew, but it was missed. Hitherto church wealth went into private hands. You might call it redistribution, but it was just another group having unequal power, another group who felt that conformity and homogeneity – and surveillance – lead to safety. You can have the Bible in your own language, and services, but there are only state approved ones. Anything else is forbidden, and will be punished. Whereas Britain now stood alone from continental rule, it was making itself insular and ruled by another tyranny. (Familiar?) Whereas those powerful rich monasteries might have been corrupt and unaccountable, the real issue was that they didn’t answer to bishops or the king, and they also preached to the community, things which might have given the populace freer ideas. However, despite further attempts at tightening and persecution, by the end of the next century, new Christian groups prevailed and had at last a modicum of freedom…

But it took until my last stop – the 19^th Century – for full emancipation. Catholics and Unitarians had to wait until Regency times to practice legally; under George IV, Celts were freed to speak their language and wear their dress, and the first new university in England was founded, finally ending the stranglehold of Oxbridge. That same decade – the 1830s – the Reform Bill was passed; and our Houses of Parliament were burned. By the end of the century, under Victoria, we had a new set. And what did they say? We are the head of an empire, with buildings which reflect the start of it. We are a wealthy nation, thanks to our expanded territories and industry. We try not to think about the inequalities in our land. Some of us do, and we call the generous endowments ‘philanthropy’ – but how much love of fellow humans is there really in these foundations? For it means that rich individuals, church, and state control more – education, welfare, health – whilst puffing up the name of the endower, as medieval sponsors did with their fat cat tombs and almshouses (read: get out of Hell card). Look at the offices, banks, town halls of this era, and how the railways stations and factories have cathedral-like qualities, which say: we are proud of where we’ve come from and where we will go.

What can I say of the Victorians? Another opportunity missed; a time of two halves. A time where technology and growth were put before equality, and attempts at righting the balance were avuncular and patronising at best; a time when dangerous new health practices were begun. Hysteria is homogeneity, and straight jacketing is metaphorical. Yet it was also a time of broad spiritual resurgence.

The next century soon started breaking down the strata so proudly preserved by the Victorians and ensuing Edwardians. The Empire fell apart; women got the vote and increasing equality. Conservatism was shaken by left wing ideas and flower power. Welfare was born, of the non workhouse variety. Yet as improvements seemed to be made, strictures tightened elsewhere, and ominious new structures were created.

The 20^th Century was a roll towards the Age of Aquarius – or God’s New Kingdom. Still the prevailing beliefs are that hard work and productivity please your rulers and your God, and each other; that sacrifice is at the heart of life as much as faith; that rule keeping is right action, endorsed by the judiciary as much as Judaeo-Christian belief; and that wealth and health are signs of God’s blessing – in the New Age thinking as much as the Prosperity Gospel. Hence, we’ve not moved far.

And we need to – for it’s not truth. God is love, not fear; love does not need placating. God doesn’t care about status – She rather likes upending that value.

Shaken pillars are now being dismantled. We are at a very exciting time, a real watershed moment. I’ve often wondered how close to those previous moments – when an army is coming, when new scary laws come in – are the times we live in. Would we recognise it and what could we do? Not live another 400 years in their thrall, that’s something I’m certain to not let happen. And although we must be responsible with what we say, I’m aware that so-called alternative or conspiratorial ideas are being censored, whilst newspapers – yes, even you, Guardian – are not truth telling. (And yes despite a crap attempt at a dissemination website, I note that there’s a correlation between Gates funding and how outspoken you are.) We need truth tellers, so thank you to all those websites and other channels who have spoken out – but mind that you don’t keep us in fear. I’m wary of double agents.

I am practising truth telling, as I hope I always do, in my blog and elsewhere; but truth telling also means speaking positive truth, and I hope that when I call into question and affirm our worth and sovereignty, that my readers and audience feel empowered, as I do writing and speaking it.

I’m seeing lots of links, and that the things I write about – from tipping to television licences to antiterrorism to tracing and testing – all have a similar undergirding. There is an imbalanced contract, where the few are not really giving us a service, but tacitly expect us to serve them. There is a cost to the ‘service’ – which is fiscal, and/or compliance. It’s time that we woke up from the deep state, deep church (I note that the Anglican church is one of the world’s richest ‘endowers’ – a corporation set up in 1948.) We are not in bond, we are free.

Sept 12^th is St Elspeth’s day, according to role playing. She watered through a long drought, knowing that plant was not what it seemed. There’s also a warrior Queen Elspeth who fights injustice. I hope that I embody both. Whether your birthday is around now – and I’m aware of two local people in office I’ve mentioned in this blog with a birthday whose behaviour clashes with the saint of that day – this is a time for you to start truth telling, standing in your truth, and making sure that history won’t look back on this era as a going back to what was worse, or allowing the advancement of technology or keeping us safe to really be about the advancement of the interests of the few. Let us move back and forward, to the best of what was, and innovate something we’ve not yet dared try, and push out of this broken, fear based system for once and for ever.

I’ll have more to say on all this.

The next sermon is the last Sunday of the month for something harvest and equinox

The Gene Jeanie – police (de)programming

I contine my police reform series: see the tag cloud to the right.

I want to share my police history: not my own record, but how they tried to do a Miss Jean Brodie on us as children.

“Give me a girl of an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.”

Police came into my primary (first) school to teach us about safety (Jean’s heidie would approve), using the stories of Minnie Mole and some more realistic videos to instil care in road crossing, avoiding pylons, and what I later realised was paedophilia. (The latter worked: I am proud to have told the Duke of Edinburgh that I don’t speak to strangers). We had a class visit to the police station where our fingerprints taken (I’m cynical enough to wonder if they were retained) and we were handcuffed and put in cells for ‘fun’ and were implicitly told, don’t have this done for real.

I had the excuse to watch British cult children’s television – not as much fun as I hoped. I found these cartoons and animations boring, but there was another kind of boring, of the drilling kind – the installation of values. The gentle paeans to idyllic English life taught us that police were part of the community; perhaps a little stiff and severe (and even thick), but that they were on our side.

Like the local constables who had came into school, these programmes (interesting word) taught us that our Bobby was an avuncular counterpart to Auntie Beeb, the national broadcasting corporation who made many of the shows we watched. (It also created Gene Hunt, contemporary bully cop).

American imports criticised the police more: Top Cat and the Dukes of Hazzard were constantly outwitting their cops, and that the latter set were corrupt. CHIPS tried to make these hard hated highway patrols into cool heroes both sides of the Atlantic. But I saw through the mirror glasses.

I think there’s literally been a game of good cop/bad cop between Britain’s police and America’s.

I grew up being encouraged to think that this country was just and safe and sane; and that our police were like my description of a city gate in my novel: a burly but friendly doorkeeper.

Recently, I posted my change of view on city walls. My police views altered some time ago.

In some shops here, there are lifesize cardboard cut outs of police officers. These really say: we haven’t got security staff here, but we want you to feel the presence of the law, should you be tempted to thieve. I was dismayed to see a child told: there’s a police officer, so you’d better be good. Even though he was as flat as Mavis Cruet under one of Evil Edna’s spells (in Will O’the Wisp, a cartoon about a fat fairy and a wicked witch in the shape of a walking television set).

Police are the inverse Santa.

Police didn’t come into my later schools, when we were capable of committing crimes, but I began to learn of police in other ways. I knew that to report assault could mean a second ordeal at the hands of law, where finding evidence was more important than thinking what it felt like to suffer.

I knew firsthand that police were given quotas of motorists to stop on their shifts.

The most shocking thing I learned was also direct, from the wife of the officer involved – here in provincial England. She boasted to colleagues about how her aspirant husband had publicly decrutched a woman on suspicion of drugs.

Whether he found them or not is irrelevant. This is abuse, rape, of the most despicable kind.

Drug users are still people; their human rights are not waived. This breaks several, and other rules.

I can recall the details of the persons concerned and when I was told.

Such a person should not be ‘serving’. If one abuses someone supposedly in your care then you should step back and make amends. Especially if this wasn’t an isolated incident, you should be considering whether you should still hold that job, or if even your pension at public expense is appropriate. The answer is no.

Throughout the following years, I have read so much about police brutality. I’ve had OK encounters with police, and even had them apologise to me. But I’ve also had angering encounters, and others I know have built up a resentful view of the police from their experience.

The pettiness, the unhelpfulness, the insensitivity, the overkill reactions, the got’cha mentality.

And this is not to violent crime, but minor misdemeanours.

This is a point I’d like to stress: much of policing isn’t about real safety and the crimes that we would unamimously consider obviously wrong.

I also query how helpful they are when violence does occur.

I am aware of course of those who have been brutalised and traumatised by the police, and that many have been actually killed by them.

So I’m wanting to ask: what are the police for, and what should they be for?

What good – in the moral sense – do they actually do?

If the police were more like the officers of Trumpton and Rupert the Bear – the community worker we could rely on for any problem and felt relieved to see – would police be worth keeping and even increasing (as opposed to the calls to defund if not abolish, which I support)?

This would be much preferable, although there is an intruding side to this sort of police too. Are they best placed to take on the matters which are given to them? There is an ever widening remit, and I especially worry about so-called mental health being entrusted to the police.

But we know that police are not really about safety, but conformity. Law and Order means: do what you’re told; comply.

On one level, I feel sorry that police are constantly being asked to enforce changing and perhaps obscure rules that they don’t make without having much freedom to question them. But I am concerned that police, who I think are encouraged not to be thinkers, and certainly not to publicly raise their views, are the method in which these undemographic rules are transacted. And they also expect the same military model of compliance from us that they receive in their own ranks.

Much of police life is about meeting targets, telling people off for whatever they’re told to tell us off for. So police are thinking: ‘is anything wrong here? Do I see the breaking of a rule?’ before: ‘can I help?’ and, moreover ‘is anyone in danger, and am I the right person to handle this?’

Police talk into radios and begin procedures, perhaps without asking the ‘victims’ what they’d like to happen; we’re encouraged that all emergency services are systems to be complied with and to enter without choice or question. Of course we do have a choice, and should question.

The mindset that’s comfortable to burst into a violent situation is perhaps not the same person who can comfort a victim. Police often come in larger groups and use more force than is necessary, which causes more distress – and advertising. It’s tempting to wonder if a show of strength is more important to them than the problem. I am always concerned by solving and fixing mentality. Their blazing sirens – now that dreadful wail – their aggressive door knocks, their outfits (notice the change in uniform) all say: we’re tough, fear us. This is not discretion!

Whereas it’s tempting to believe that Britain’s police have worsened with their changing dress, I note that the old Bobby tall hats, smart buttons were worn by those who force fed Suffragettes and broke up pickets and rioters in the last century – whilst Chigley’s whistle called the stop motion factory workers to dance and gentle steam engines onto the tracks. I had to wait almost three more decades before I understood the truth of how our police and army had behaved in contemporary political situations that I was only dimly aware of from school.

Policing involves them having power over us. Their asking our name and address gives them knowledge which they will not reciprocate. I’ve known them to hide the identifying number on their epaulettes when they misbehave. They (wrongly) believe they have the power to make us stop our walk, our vehicle, ask for proof of who we are, ask what we’re doing, to look at our belongings, even bodies, and take them (or us). I’ve already commented on the ironic disparity of this, but I again say

NO TO STOP AND SEARCH

Why do they ever need to do this, except to instil in us that we, the citizens who pay for them, are under their control, and that they are the visible arm of those in power – and we don’t have any.

In a book called Londoners by Craig Taylor, a Metropolitan police officer said of arresting and searching: take away someone’s liberty for a few moments and they’ll soon see who’s boss. What needs taking away is that officer’s badge. Clearly, he has no business in policing and this quote should be an embarrassment to the Met. It proves searching isn’t about safety, but status.

I don’t look to stats to see if crime rates lower because of stop and search, because I believe in qualitative first and I know that stats are malleable. It’s because of our broken systems that we require proof, and perhaps police forces feel that by doing something proactive that they can count and we might see that they may have a measurable way in reducing crime.

I note the assertion that these powers are in fact a legal fiction – ie something presented to be true, but which is not. I’ll write more about this anon, but we do have the right to stand up to this fallacy.

I hate the notices: plain clothes police operate here…. we are watching you…

Is that meant to scare the would-be vehicle thief, the pimp and kerb crawler, or are those eyes next to the black and white chequer really meant to scare us all?

Eyes worry me as they are not necessarily under helmets (or the newly favoured bully boy caps).

Nor even under unidentified unhatted fringes – I am not sure that plain clothes police are ethical – for surely it clashes with their ethos of being recognisable and transparent?

The watching eyes could be far away, from the many cameras – I’ve noted a new literally all-seeing sort appear since lockdown. In Jersey during that period, police said: no need to report on your neighbour (amen) – we’ve a pretty good idea of what’s going on.

Is this meant to comfort us?!

A friend suggested that the civil liberties abuses come from the firms who make security technology as much as the police. I’m deeply concerned about what they try to sell as desirable ‘solutions’ – what is the real problem?

Inequality. Fearful controlling governance that thinks that they must know what we’re all doing to feel any security of its own. That is a weak and immature way of ruling; such stifling leads to eruptions and to loss of relationship, and ultimately, to loss of power – theirs.

Recent months have exemplified the auntie-authoritarian gamut of our rulers.

This lockdown has been: get in your room so that you’re safe. (And we’ll make some changes to the house whilst your door is closed). Now you may step out, carefully, on the markers provided. Wash your hands and cover your face. Let us know who you’re with and where you are.

And this says so much about how we’re treated generally. We’re expected to look away whilst the experts work out what to do, and to trust them, even though we know we’re stifling in our rooms. Note that confining to rooms is the way that much of the world has historically dealt with people that it doesn’t want on the loose, people they want to ‘exclude from society’ and have most rights taken from them.

And note how many so called offences are politically motivated, and that we wouldn’t consider many people who’ve been caught and convicted by police as wrong or dangerous. If they are, we might wonder how shutting them up and bullying them at public expense ameliorates at all.

As this is a thesis length issue I’ll need to return to, I end by asking these questions:

• Is safety something to bully us over?
• Is stopping us and punishing us over arbitrary and changing rules something we want to pay our police for? Is this a worthwhile use of public funds?
• Does anyone have the right to random shows of strength in the name of something nebulous and arcane – namely terrorism, and now health?
• Do the police have the moral right to violently hold us against our will, to throw us down, bind us, humilate us, take off anything and go into anything?
• Is it right that this group is given wider powers and remits, when often their mindset and training is inappropriate to the task?
• Should law keeping be done by those who have little understanding of those laws?
• Should we allow enforcement to be done by those whose profiles often include people who enjoy having power and authority, enjoy chase and catching, and who have aggressive and even psychopathic tendencies? (Note how many enneagram type 8s are in policing)
• Why do we support a group infamous for prejudice and which often isn’t very effective?
• Should we accept that a group of society can break the very rules they’re here to enforce and have greater liberty than the rest of us?

Clearly, these are rhetorical: the answer in each case is a clear NO, NON, NU.

In a future post, I’ll think about what we could do instead… and then, what they could do instead.

In the meantime, let’s be aware that current policing is ultimately about giving our power away, and they should not and cannot take it. You do not have power over those whom you serve.

I remind that the police are here to serve us, the people – not the other way round.