A TIME FOR CHANGE (AGAIN)

My fellow Amalgamates .... it's a time for change. A time to sweep away the .... empty brown envelopes that have been pushed beneath the .... hand-woven carpets of .... those who believe that .... to serve their country is a private gateway to a better lifestyle.

It's a time to gather our strength .... to muster our resources .... to open our bulging wallets and invest in shares of companies that stand to benefit from our pseudo radical proposals.

It's a time for change .... loose change .... lots of loose change .... jingling like the jackpots flowing from the fruit machines in our .... brand new, highly rewarding, carefully placed casinos.
For me the world is a kitchen ... a zoo ... a playing field ... an expenses paid trip to Dubai ... a limo through an orchard ... gathering fruit ... gathering speed ... gathering autographs for my children so that ... god forbid ... when I'm gone ... these autographs will be another little nest egg.

It's a time for change ... for pausing before we act ... for pausing to enhance the effect of total sincerity ... for pausing before pressing the "transfer" button while online banking.

It's a time to gather all the like-minded self-serving cronies around me ... Scots, women ... more Scots, more women ... sod it ... Scottish women.
I ask for your vote, your X in the box, your fingerprint and DNA - I stand before you as a leader ... a fresh breeze and a faceful of hot air ... a blast from the past.

BBC FUTURE PROGRAMMING

Dear Old Auntie Beeb – I’ve got a great idea, how about sending me and the family on a round-the-world trip to check out the facilities in the best hotels in six or seven capital cities? Informative and educational, a fleeting glimpse of an unattainable lifestyle for the average licence payer – and think of all the future contacts that can be added to the executive phone book. Great idea, don’t you think?

Dear Luvvy Central – I’ve got a great idea, how about letting me write the script for Eastenders one of these days? My knowledge of the interaction between people from many different backgrounds stems from personal experience and I used to read comics and play with puppets when I was young, so I’m more than qualified. A reality check for the average licence payer. Great idea, don’t you think?

Dear BBC Commissioning Officer – I’ve got a great idea, how about turning me loose in the long frock cupboard to produce another helping of Dickensian drama? It’s my opinion that one more version of David Copperfield, Bleak House or Great Expectations would go down a storm with the average licence payer and bodice-ripping scenes are always a tremendous boost for the viewing figures. Great idea, don’t you think?

Dear Beeb – I’ve got a great idea, how about a game show where z-list celebrities have to impersonate a well-known politician while cooking a meal on ice? Yes, I’m quite aware of the health and safety problems involved with using paraffin stoves on a slippery surface (didn’t I mention paraffin stoves?) – but these could easily be overcome with a three-month SAS training session for all the contestants. What a laugh it would be for the average licence payer, and think of all the free tabloid publicity when the sexy co-host is photographed holding a meat and two veg. Great idea, don’t you think?

Dear BBC – I’ve got a great idea, how about sending me and the family on a sun-drenched cruise around the Aegian Sea retracing the route of Jason and his Argonauts on their mythical quest for the golden fleece? Historical, cultural, classical, a fleeting glimpse of life 2500 years ago for the average licence payer – and I promise to send you a few bottles of Ouzo. Great idea, don’t you think?

Oops! Skip that last one – it’s already been done by Michael Wood at Mentorn. Yes, I know it was rubbish, but at least I wasn’t paying for it!

KING ARTHUR PENDRAGON

Channel 4 producers, Time Team ... STOP! Who really wants to hear about the undersoil content of the well-cropped lawns of Windsor? Why do you persist in serving up a soggy biscuit of history when the viewers deserve a thick juicy steak? And it's about time you stopped supporting the ridiculous, childish, unsubstantiated beliefs surrounding the romanticised tales of Arthur Pendragon. Station bosses, perleez get wise, why not just save yourself time and money and re-run the film "Merlin," or the ridiculous "King Arthur" (I'd rather see Keira Knightley on a horse than Bishop Baldrick in a trench). Both of these films hold about as much historical credence as the theoretical ramblings of modern-day archaeologists.

So here is the question - Arthur Pendragon, did he exist?
Well, a king existed, but his name was not Arthur. The words Arth ar pen draig are more of a postal address than a name, and it dates back at least to the Younger Dryas period (11,500BC-9600BC). Whatever the name of this king, the remnants of an ancient civilisation indicate that the country was united, one tribe, one belief system and therefore one leader. Far from being ignorant hunter-gatherers the advanced mathematics, astronomy and geography involved in the accurate nationwide placement of settlements across the southern half of Britain tells a very different story from that dished out by the Time Team.

This image is the origin of the name Arth ar pen draig,
an address, the bear at the head of the dragon.

KICKING IN THE DOORS OF HISTORY

On the box Friar Baldrick leaps from shallow trench to shallow trench - strangely-garbed west-country Phil says "ear, look at this, ear's another piece of partery" - and the viewing public is transfixed as the ancient artefact is proclaimed to represent the kitchen of a Roman villa belonging to a high-ranking Latino invader .... I yawn.

It's like watching an hour-long documentary about the chemical constituents of the cracked varnish on the Mona Lisa - mmm varnish, mmm cracked, mmm more varnish - I yawn again.


I sometimes wonder if they know that the painting exists, but there's a gentleman's agreement that the first person to mention the historical anomalies is an archaeological cissy!


Britain is the Mona Lisa, the enigmatic key that can unlock the past - contrary to the blinkered beliefs of those who hide behind the well-paid solid oak doors of universities - it is the cradle of civilisation, the birthplace of astronomy and mathematics. It is Plato's Atlantis, the Garden of Eden, Noah's paddling pool - it's where it all began.


On a daily basis I attempt to inform those lettered Edwardians hiding behind the parapets about my discovery - when it was designed, where it travelled, what it means and the uncomfortable future consequences that the theory represents ... I kick doors.


Take five minutes to peruse the jewel in the crown - the centre of a prehistoric national scheme. It's accurate, it's ancient astrology and astronomy, apparently produced at a time when simple-minded hunter gatherers were hurling flints at tomorrow's dinner - maybe they had some spare time on their hands - "Oo look, ear's a door and someone's garne an kicked it!"

To get a closer look check out the video on Myspace.com/alangripton

ADVICE FOR THE KIDS

The family are absent, the cats are asleep - I'm just reflecting on a visit to a collectors' fair in the middle of Norwich that I visited yesterday. I wandered around the flintknapped cobbled yard of what used to be the printing department of Norwich City College before it was incorporated into the main block of buildings across the other side of the city.
I was stepping back in time - it had been forty years since my feet had touched the uneven history-soaked walkway. Three floors up on the tiled roof was a tiny skylight window - and the memory of hanging my head out into the cool autumn sunshine and vomitting freely into the gutter will never leave my brain. This was the result of a lunchtime spent pickling my teenage-angst powered broken heart in glass after glass after glass of double whiskey with dry ginger - it was not clever - but it did succeed in wiping clean the name of a lady called Barbara from my thoughts - so, mission accomplished.
The stone steps to the old wooden door of the canteen looked inviting - I wanted to go inside, get a cheese and onion roll, a cup of black coffee and settle down with Wrighty, Mobsy, Kraut and Taffy Evans for an hour long session of three-card brag - the freedom, wit and laughter of those days can never be replaced.
Forty years - just a click of the fingers, blink and it's gone - how do I impart this uncomfortable fact to my two twenty-something kids? Yesterday you were at school, today you're free to shake the world, tomorrow you'll have grey hair and two twenty-something kids - and what's more, you'll be standing where I am today, looking up at a skylight.
Use this time of freedom, stand proud and impregnable - don't take any crap from people whose motives relate to their own needs - and don't take advice from people who have failed to achieve inner happiness. Nobody will give you respect unless you deserve it. Avoid the trends of mass movement, most people are sheep heading for the metaphorical slaughter-house. The difference between a diamond and a lump of coal is only where it's been and what it's seen.
Be diamonds - so when you look up at that skylight in the future - like me, you can smile.

DNA - GRAMMATICAL SUBTERFUGE

Beware the grammatical trickery - they've used this phrase before!
The words "The government has no plans," used as a reply to public worries concerning a compulsory national DNA data base is a smoke screen. Of course they've looked into it - that's what they do - you know they do! The only problem these control freaks have is balancing its introduction against the number of lost votes at the next election.
Scotland is chilly, beautiful, but chilly. However, the thought of "heading to the hills" is becoming more and more attractive by the day - I must remember to buy a warm jacket.

History rewritten - Malvern Zodiac

Straight to the point, I'm not here to rock the boat - but take a look around, it's a rotten boat, it's leaking, it's sinking, it's been going round and round in circles for 5000 years with those overweight, holier-than-thou, cross-dressing, finger-wagging thought-marshalls sitting around the captain's table and gorging themselves on the hard labours of the less fortunate.
Let me lay my cards on the table - I'm not unreligious, I sincerely believe that this is just a physical training ground, a level of existence that we all have to go through to achieve a higher state. Life after death? Yep, I'm pretty certain that it exists, personal experience has shown me that those who have passed on can reach back to touch, guide, protect and encourage you in the right direction - it happened a long time ago, but that's almost irrelevant to this piece of work.
I'm a patient man, I believe that you get what you deserve (eventually) - but to have 20 years of research dismissed by the words "I've got a doctorate, so you're wrong" used as a weapon of reasoning made me want to spit!
What use is a doctorate when the information that earned this bright shiny "club card" is built upon lies and subterfuge? Please Yahoo, give me a "Punch the idiot" button - if that's not technically possible how about a "Slap this emailer" code.
If you've seen the profile you'll know where my interest lies - it's history - not the stuff you find in books, the real old stuff, the difficult unanswered questions that get conveniently boxed and placed out of the way by those eager to gain acceptance and climb the academic ladder leading to the chandeliered top deck.
There's been 5000 years of symbolic narrative used to control the thoughts and actions of the great unwashed, the hungry, the illiterate, the hard-working community builders, the soldiers, the misled masses that hold the ship's timbers together so that some of those with a theology doctorate can stuff their faces with blood-stained sandwiches.
A symbolic narrative that started so very innocently - a tribal storyteller's tale, an easy method of recalling the ancestry, cosmology and geography of distant homelands - how could this poor soul have known what was to become of his carefully-worded repetitive chants that informed, amused and entertained those sitting around the camp fire? Surely, if he had been aware of the future mis-use and purposeful misinterpretation to falsely justify the sea of bloody millennia that followed, he would have cut his own tongue out.
The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, the first authored literature in the world - a symbolic narrative, a graphic allegory, a moralistic tale formed around the ancient constellations found in the Malvern Zodiac. A tale from the imagination of a storyteller's finger wandering around the disc of an ancient astrolabe, a navigational tool, following the path of the sun - the one true giver of life.
That's where it all started - damn to hell the greedy opportunists who grabbed the astrolabe ball and ran with it. They made up new stories, they changed the names, they changed the locations, they raised its profile, they used it to justify mass control and mass murder, it was a need-to-know system - and then, after all the damage had been done and the money was rolling in, they went and hid it to cover their tracks. My question is: When the hell is it going to end?
In my head it's akin to the uncomfortable situation of explaining to a young child that Santa doesn't really exist - but let's calm the infant by telling the truth. Santa is a software plug-in - designed to make your life better in the darkest, coldest part of the year. It's a great time for a warm fire, a feast, a celebration of family union, of safely reaching the winter solstice without anything untoward happening - a time to look forward to the longer days of glorious summer sunshine. Who needs Santa?
No matter how deep the truth has been hidden, it will always come out. Who could have known that the design on the prehistoric astrolabe had also been carved into the green fields of England? There have been hints and suggestions over the years of something "not quite right" with the layout of the land in this country - strange ley lines, weird shapes that look like dogs, long-distance measurements that are too accurate to be purely coincidental and then there's Glastonbury - what's that all about?
If you want to know about Glastonbury go to my pictures, the "Malvern Zodiac" album and check out "The Secret of Glastonbury" - it will put you on the right track.
If I had a doctorate would it make me more believable? Is it too uncomfortable to hear that the "Wondrous star in the east" is Vega? - and that Mary placing the infant into the manger is really the inverted image of the Watermaiden and Dogs?
Will I be pilloried for bringing to people's notice that the Three Wise Men (in Phrygian caps) is actually the tails of three bulls? What about St. John the Baptist - covered in hair, standing in water, in subservient pose waiting for his master to arrive? Three thousand years earlier in Sumeria his name was Enkidu.
How about walking on water? What about the donkey ride and the palm leaves, the scourging, stumbling and being helped to his feet on the trip to the green hill outside the city walls? What about the thieves on either side at the crucifixion? What about the cock crowing? What about the sign over JC's head pinned to the cross? What about the gash to the torso or the crying out as death arrived? What about the storm clouds that followed?
Ancient symbolic narrative - do I really need to spell it out?
But hang on a second - I haven't got a doctorate - so what do I know.