The War Hound and the World's Pain

Michael Moorcock
New English Library

"The forest flourished, a lush and spreading refuge from the Wars, coolly green and welcoming. Beyond its borders the land burned flame red, blood red, ghastly black. Men and women, hacked to death, choked the paths and streams as the Armies of Religion clashed and slaughtered. Carrion-hung gibbets loomed starkly through the smoke and all the land was desolate. The forest was a refuge. Yet silent, utterly silent and without life, as through it wearily rode the War Hound, Graf Ulrich von Bek. To come suddenly on a castle."

This is the story of Ulrich Von Bek and his quest for the grail at the behest of his master Lucifer who has tired of Hell and wishes to return to a state of grace.

Von Bek is a soldier of the 100 year war, a mercenary captain of some skill but no reknown.  Finding his way to a deserted castle he meets his love and acquires an insight into the fate of his soul and a bargain that would enable him to avoid it.

In the great fantasy tradition this is a quest book but one that is more travelogue than most.  We are subjected to little, very little, of the tedious hacking and slashing and girding of loins that generally comes with the territory and in it's place is a tour of the worlds that Bek must traverse and a meditation on just what the grail is when he eventually finds it.

It makes for an enjoyable read for a non fantasy head like me.  There are links to the Elric books in the manner of the world - not to mention the Elric / Ulrich hint - but strangely for a book about Heaven and Hell and all points in between this is a much more grounded read than I was expecting and is all the better for it.

Buy it here - UK / US.

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Gloriana, or The Unfulfill'd Queen

Michael Moorcock
Fontana

A fable satirizing Spenser's "The Fairie Queen" and reflecting the real life of Elizabeth I, tells of a woman who ascends to the throne upon the death of her debauched and corrupted father, King Hern. Gloriana's reign brings the Empire of Albion into a Golden Age, but her oppressive responsibilities choke her, prohibiting any form of sexual satisfaction, no matter what fetish she tries. Her problem is in fact symbolic of the hypocrisy of her entire court. While her life is meant to mirror that of her nation - an image of purity, virtue, enlightenment and prosperity - the truth is that her peaceful empire is kept secure by her wicked chancellor Monfallcon and his corrupt network of spies and murderers, the most sinister of whom is Captain Quire, who is commissioned to seduce Gloriana and thus bring down Albion and the entire empire.

With a noted debt to both Mervyn Peake's 'Gormenghast' and Edmund Spenser's 'The Faerie Queene', 'Gloriana' is Moorcock's reinvention of the reign of Elizabeth I relocated a hundred or so years later.

The setting of the novel is in the massive palace, the seat of governance for Albion's globe spanning empire.  Within its confines Gloriana rules by day and seeks relief from her sexual frustration by night.  The land is at peace and the Queen is beloved by the populace following depredations of the despotic reign of her father.  Working to keep this newly peaceful empire safe is her loyal chancellor Montfallcon and through him his most talented agent, the sociopathic Captain Quire.  It is when, at a moment of pique, Quire takes a new master and from his nest literally within the walls of the palace plots the ruin of Albion's peace. 

Many of the cast of the novel have their origin in real life personages such as John Dee but beyond a few references to interdimensional travel - which aren't taken seriously by most of the cast - and the Queen's best friend the 'Countess Una of Scaith' sharing her name with Moorcock's recurring character, the temporal adventurer Una Persson - and they may in fact be one and the same - there's little obvious connection between this story and his wider multiverse.

Following a bit of a sluggish slog of a start I came to thoroughly enjoy this.  As much fun as the shorter fantastical tales of Elric and the like are, for me, Moorcock comes into his own when he allows himself a larger canvas (and page count). The scope of his story here is global even whilst it remains almost entirely within the confines of the palace and the intricacies of Quire's 'art' are slowly revealed.  The ending to the scheme when it arrives is sudden and jarring although in the older edition that I read the final scene between Quire and Gloriana is horrendously unpleasant and I'm intensely pleased that it was excised and rewritten for subsequent editions as it really did marr what had been up to then a glorious romp of a book.

Buy it here -  UK / US

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Elric

Michael Moorcock
Grafton

Elric the albino emperor of Melnibone an island of decadent elven-ish sorcerors has long been the most beloved of Michael Moorcock's creations.  Armed with his black soul-eating sword Stormbringer  Elric is one of the aspects of Moorcock's Eternal Champion charged - whether they like it or not - to maintain the balance between order and chaos across the multiverse.

Apart from the first book (published in 1972) the stories were originally published in the pages of Science Fantasy magazine in the early 1960s as a series of novellas and then collected together into the series of books below with their iconic Michael Whelan covers in the 1970s.

My partner bought me the almost set of the Grafton Elric books for Xmas after we found them in a junk shop last November.  It was unfortunately missing the first book and it's taken me several months to track a copy down.  I've long had a hankering to re-read the full series and once I finally had the set in my hands I dove right in and read the lot in a week and thought I'd lay them all on you in one go.

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Elric of Melnibone

This is the tale of Elric, later called Womanslayer; of his love for Cymoril and of the rivalry with his cousin Yrkoon, a rivalry that was to bring the Dreaming City crashing in flames, destroyed by the reavers of the Young Kingdoms.
Elric, red-eyed, albino, the inheritor of waning powers, his strength precarious, sustain by arcane drugs. A hero seemingly unfit for his role. His story treats of monstrous emotions and high ambitions, of sorceries and treacheries, agonies and fearful pleasures - an adventure that Elric was to remember on in his darkest nightmares.

Elric, the fey albino king of a fading island power, Melnibone, is beset by challenges on all sides.  From without by the humans of the 'young kingdoms' jealous of Melnibone's wealth and vengeful for its past despotism and from within by his covetous cousin Yrkoon who believes Elric unfit to rule and it is he who drives the story.

As Elric strives to foil the usurper we are introduced to mythology that feels real and which is lacking in the tedious cod-Arthurian / Robin Hoodisms that make much fantasy literature such a bore.  The Chaos Gods seem suitably quixotic without being tediously evil and even at this early point there feels to be a fully developed and complete vision of all levels of the world.

The story itself is fairly slight and tells quite a straight forward story but that's not the joy here.  The joy is the invention and the bold vision that has created so singular a character as the albino king.

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The Sailor on the Seas of Fate

Leaving his cousin Yrkoon sitting as regent upon the Ruby Throne of Melnibone, leaving his cousin Cymoril weeping for him and despairing of his ever returning, Elric sailed from Imrryr, the Dreaming City, and went to seek an unknown goal in the world of the Young Kingdoms where Melniboneans were at best, disliked.

After rescuing Cymoril and rather stupidly placing his treacherous cousin on the throne of Melnibone Elric begins his year long odyssey to try and understand the new world.  Unfortunately fate has other plans for him as he finds himself aboard a strange boat alongside other incarnations of the Eternal Champion, Erekose and Corum.  It's a quest book but one with a bit of a difference as Elric is a truly unwilling participant especially after events take on a bafflingly cosmic turn.

The second of the trio of tales here is by far the weakest.  Indeed in the time between reading the book and writing this review I had completely forgotten about a large section of the story where Elric and his new companion Smiorgan rescue a young girl who may or may not be the reincarnation of someone from an ancient Melnibonean myth from someone who was actually there.

The book ends strongly with a journey into the history of Elric's race as he accompanies explorers to his race's ancestral homeland.  Again the story is a pretty linear journey, a from points A to B sort of deal, but one that feels like a crucial step in the development of the overarching story.

Another fun instalment with a not unenjoyable middle section buoyed up by the two very enjoyable tales either side of it.

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The Weird of the White Wolf

"We must be bound to one another then. Bound by hell-forged chains and fate-haunted circumstance. Well, then - let it be thus so - and men will have cause to tremble and flee when they hear the names of Elric of Melnibone and Stormbringer, his sword. We are two of a kind - produced by an age which has deserted us. Let us give this age cause to hate us." 
Imrryr, the dreaming city; Yyrkoon, the hated usurper; Cymoril, the beloved... all had fallen to the fury and unearthly power of the albino prince and his terrible sword. An Elric faced at last the fate that was to be his in this haunted era - that he must go forth, sword and man as one, and havoc and horror would be forever at his forefront until he found his Purpose that was yet obscured to him.

The third Elric book finds him suddenly heading back to Melnibone all tooled up with an army of Young Kingdom fighters at his back to exact revenge on his cousin who had been just as awful a ruler as everyone except Elric had predicted.  The raid has typically tragic consequences but a depressed Elric is soon drawn into another quest.

This time out he again tangles with the minions of chaos and makes a friend in the shape of Moonglum a cheerful little chappie who provides a perfect foil to Elric's morose nature.

Like the previous book this is essentially several novellas detailing adventures along the way of Elric's life which makes them fast and fun to read as they refuse to allow themselves to get bogged down and instead revel in their pulpy glory.

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The Vanishing Tower

Elric of Melniboné, proud prince of ruins, last lord of a dying race, wanders the lands of the Young Kingdoms in search of the evil sorcerer Theleb K'aarna. His object is revenge. But to achieve this, he must first brave such horrors as the Creatures of Chaos, the freezing wilderness of World's Edge, the golden-skinned Kelmain hordes, King Urish the Seven-fingered with his great cleaver Hackmeat, the Burning God, the Sighing Desert, and the terrible stone-age men of Pio. Although Elric holds within him a destiny greater than he could ever know, and controls the hellsword Stormbringer, stealer of souls, his task looks hopeless - until he encounters Myshella, Empress of the Dawn, the sleeping sorceress.

The fourth of Moorcock's Elric novels continues the albino's pursuit of the of the magician who had plagued him in the previous volume.  This time across the three novellas that make up the book Elric battles him at the world's end, in the city of the beggars and in Tanelorn the eternal city beyond the battle between chaos and order.

We get to meet several aspects of the Eternal Champion - Corum and Erekhose - and learn slightly more regarding Moonglum and the nature of his link to Elric.

As ever Moorcock delivers a super fast and very readable romp filled with hacking and slashing and soul stealing which is, as always, great fun.

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The Bane of the Black Sword

Elric returns to Yishana, and finds peace at last. Meanwhile, at the world's rim, dragging red horror in its wake, a horde unimaginable moves on the fabled, gentle, impossible city Tanelorn.

Continuing directly on from the fourth volume Elric is once again being plagued by the twin threats of the sorcerer Theleb K'aarna and his spurned once lover Queen Yishana a reckoning with whom brings the albino back in contact with the remnants of his former people.

The second story finds the albino falling rapidly in love with a stranded maiden, Zarozinia, in the hellish Forest of Troos where he and Moonglum are forced to fight the dead.

The third tale tells of a break in Elric's newly idyllic existence in the arms of his new lover as he is once again forced to take up his sword to defend his new home.

The book ends then with an epilogue that allows us to revisit the land of Tanelorn and those that live there as the beggars of Nadoskor march on the city to take it for Chaos.  It's a lovely little diversion from the Elric stories and gives us a glimpse of the wider world of the Eternal Champion that exists in Moorcock's mythos and the ways in which he thinks of the roles of Order and Chaos within his tales.

As with the other four books, these Elric novellas are fleeting and fun twists on the whole girded loins, hack 'n' slash brand of fantasy with the added extras of Moorcock's deliciously anarchic sensibilities at the helm.

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Stormbringer

The epic tale of Elric of Melniboné, albino prince of ruins, moves to its awesome conclusion - with the whole of the natural and supernatural world in mighty conflict - the final conflict, Armageddon. Elric holds the key to the future: the new age which must follow the destruction. To turn that key he must sacrifice all that he loves and risk his very soul.

Stormbringer is the final part of the original Elric stories and tells of the final battle between the albino misery guts and the forces of chaos that are rapidly turning the world into tentacles and ooze.

As with the other books in this run Stormbringer is split into several (four) novellas each telling another step in Elric's journey to the final reckoning

As an end to the series it's quite satisfying but there are a few hiccups along the way, two of the turning point battles are very much glossed over with both using unwielded floating magic swords to win the fights.  It does feel very much like Moorcock has lost interest in that side of things which I suppose is entirely understandable, I imagine there's only so many ways you can write about Elric stabbing someone.

It does though come to an entirely apt conclusion.  The end when it comes is definite and true to what has gone before and wrapped the legend of Elric up perfectly right up until Moorcock decided to write some more.

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Moorcock and Moore in conversation

Dating from 2006 and convened to mark the publication of his 3875th novel* (that week) 'Vengeance of Rome' (the fourth of the Pyat Quartet) this video shows Michael Moorcock and Alan Moore engaged in a wide and free roaming conversation about Moorcock's life and work that takes in his post-war childhood, his editorship of 'New Worlds', modernism and the modern author, Jerry Cornelius, being left wing in Texas and of course, due to the occasion, Colonel Pyat and the holocaust.

It's fascinating stuff that finds these two fantastic writers, counter cultural icons and, I think most crucially here, friends really connecting in a way you don't often see in these sort of things. 

*please note that it wasn't actually his 3875th novel.  No one actually knows the true number of Michael Moorcock novels as it's potentially greater than mathematics can accomodate.



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Time Out Of Mind

'Time Out Of Mind' was a short, 5 episode, BBC2 documentary series that gave a brief career overview along with interviews with 4 key science fiction authors of the day, Arthur C. Clarke, John Brunner, Michael Moorcock and Anne McCaffrey.  We get to see each relaxing in their own spaces talking about their inspirations, their motivations and their distractions with occasional talking head interjections from other authors such as M. John Harrison, Thomas M. Disch, Frederik Pohl, Brian Aldiss, Harry Harrison and Fritz Leiber and in the final episode we are shown around the science fiction convention 'Seacon 79' at the Metropole in Brighton which also includes glimpses of folk like Tom Baker and Christopher Reeve.

I found this whilst searching for Michael Moorcock videos who's the only author here that I'm a fan of.  The others are either not my particular cups of tea -  Clarke and McCaffrey - or have long languished on my 'must get around to reading him one day' list - Brunner.  It makes for interesting viewing filled with nice little insights that will give fans and the curious alike a glimpse into the worlds of these creators of worlds and back to a time when science fiction conventions were less of a movie marketing enterprise and more concerned with the ideas behind them.



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Other Edens

Christopher Evans (ed)
Robert Holdstock (ed)
Unwin

This 1987 collection of sci fi and fantasy shorts was produced to address a perceived gap in the availability of a mass market anthology collection at the time.  A hark back to the myriad of books of shorts that covered book shelves of the 1970s.  It went on to spawn two sequels over the next two years.  This first one boasting a line up entirely consisting of UK based - not necessarily British - authors proved to be an enjoyable if slightly inconsistent read.

The standout story here is Robert Holdstock's 'Scarrowfell'. Having just emerged from his 'Mythago Wood' I was enthused to read more and it certainly delivered with another piece of pagan Celtic fantasy that felt both uncontrived and remarkably fresh.

I'm a huge Michael Moorcock fan so the biggest disappointment here is undoubtedly his 'The Frozen Cardinal' which I thought was just daft although the treatment of women in many of the tales was an equally disappointing experience with both Tanith Lee's 'Crying in the Rain' and Christopher Evans' 'The Facts of Life' reducing them to mere property and Lisa Tuttle's 'The Wound' to that of a mutation.

Ian Watson's 'The Emir's Clock' is an interesting piece with a dumb ending and R.M. Lanning's 'Sanctity' was an interesting set up to an ending that reminded me of  Monty Python joke and David Langford's ' In a Land of Sand and Ruin and Gold' owed a real debt to Moorcock's 'Dancers at the End of Time' series.

Graham Charnock's 'Fulwood's Web' was an entertainingly old fashioned bit of 'man shouldn't meddle' fun. David Garnett's 'Moonlighter' gave a tweak to the hoary old parallel dimension trope whilst M. John Harrison's 'Small Heirloom's' was intriguing but needed far more room than it had here. Gary Kilworth's 'Triptych' was one interesting idea sandwiched between two lesser ones but Keith Roberts' 'Piper's Wait' was very much the redemption of the book's latter half.

As I said an inconsistent read redeemed entirely by Holdstock's tale but not without a smattering of other interests strewn across it's pages.

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Legends from the End of Time

Michael Moorcock

A few months ago I revisited a book I had first read in my teens that I'd enjoyed but not fully 'got'.  'The Dancers at the End of Time' was Moorcock's tribute to the decadents of the closing years of the 19th century such as Wilde, Beardsley and George Meredith.  It told the story of the inhabitants who lived lives of blissful, artistic anarchy in a world reshaped to their every whim at the very end of everything.

Whereas I'd enjoyed the novelty of it as a young man I adored the very heart of it as an older one.  It's a beautiful book and I didn't want it to end.  So, imagine my joy when a few months later I discovered that in some ways it hadn't.  Here, in this companion volume we have several extra little stories involving many of the supporting characters and vistas of the main story arc.  We have stories of time travellers and champions, of visitors and residents, of restraint and abundance, of foolishness, of grace and of beauty.

It's too disjointed to be entirely engrossing and the individual stories exist sideways to what we know which robs them of some of their power but Moorcock is a writer who makes words dance and from whom ideas pour and who can, I think, be summed up - at least a little - in this speech by Lord Jagged of Canaria...

'Explore all attitudes my dear.  Honour them, every one, but be slippery - never let them hold you, else you fail to enjoy the benefits and be saddled only with the liabilities.  It's true that canvas against the skin can be as sensual as silk, and milk a sweeter drink than wine, but feel everything, taste everything, for it's own sake, and for your own sake, then no one thing shall be judged better or worse than another , no person shall be so judged and nothing can ensnare you.'

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The Rituals of Infinity

Michael Moorcock
Arrow Books

It is nearly three decades since the discovery of the sub-spacial alternatives - twenty-four lumps of matter hanging in a limbo outside of space and time, each sharing the name of Earth.
Now there are only fifteen of them - the rest blown to extinction by the ruthless attacks of the D-squads. Even the surviving planets are doomed to a cruel, mutilated existence.
Standing between them and their final destruction at the hands of the merciless demolition teams is Michael Moorcock's zaniest hero - the brilliant, offbeat physicist Professor Faustaff.

In many ways I treat Moorcock books as a form of therapy.  They are one of the things I reach for when I'm feeling a bit down because they are fast, fun, are full of inventive adventure and are pretty much guaranteed to cheer me up.

'The Rituals of Infinity' or 'The New Adventures of Doctor Faustus' (which is an odd title as the main character is actually called 'Faustaff) is a multiple Earths story but not part of Moorcock's multiverse books.  Here we have a group headed by the aforementioned Doctor, a Doc Savage style pulp hero, dedicated to saving the now 15 Earths from another more shadowy group that seems hell bent on destroying them.  As he hops back and forth between Earths Professor Faustaff uncovers a conspiracy of cosmic proportions that results in a final act quite unlike anything else.

This is an early novel and it certainly isn't anywhere close to Moorcock at his best.  The story is pretty thin but the bonkers finale is a whole heap of fun and wraps the story up nicely.

Dancers at the End of Time

Michael Moorcock
Orion Books

Enter a decaying far, far future society, a time when anything and everything is possible, where words like 'conscience' and 'morality' are meaningless, and where heartfelt love blossoms mysteriously between Mrs Amelia Underwood, an unwilling time traveller, and Jherek Carnelian, a bemused denizen of the End of Time.
The Dancers at the End of Time, containing the novels An Alien Heat, The Hollow Lands and The End of All Songs, is a brilliant homage to the 1890s of Wilde, Beardsley and the fin de siècle decadents, satire at its sharpest and most colourful.

 I first read this a few decades ago when I was about 19 or 20 and it blew my mind.  I'm not entirely convinced I understood everything but it certainly made an impact.

Here we have a collected edition of the three novels and across them Moorcock tells the story of Jherek Carnelian, a denizen of the utopia that exists on Earth at the end of time.  Into his perfect life is thrown an unwitting time traveller in the shape of a married, Victorian, Englishwoman named Mrs Amelia Underwood.

On a whim, which is how Jherek and his peers do everything, Jherek decides he's going to be in love with Amelia and to that end pursues her through various trials and tribulations from one end of time to the other and beyond.

Jherek is one of the most endearing heroes I've ever come across.  He has no understanding of hate, jealousy, rage or any other negative emotion and when faced by adversity his response is either gentle perplexity or smiling wonderment; he is, in all ways, nice.

Mrs Underwood on the other hand is a woman trapped.  Where Jherek has been raised in an environment of utter anarchy she is the product of the most restrictive societal and familial mores and when confronted by Jherek's purity, born from what she sees as sin, her reaction is to bury herself in her faith and her heritage until his relentless love soon begins to chip away at her resolve.

This is the most wonderful (3) book(s).  It is filled with joyous invention, Moorcock's words dance across the page and his character sparkle.  I am a long time fan of his work and regularly dip into one of his, many, books especially as they tend to be fairly short and fast reads that you can devour in a couple of hours.  I poured over this one and eked it out over a good few days allowing the humour to percolate and the ideas to insinuate and at the end of 665 pages I was still desperately craving more.

Buy it here -  The Dancers at the End of Time: Written by Michael Moorcock, 2013 Edition, Publisher: Gollancz [Paperback]

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The Time Dweller

Michael Moorcock
Mayflower

The Earth rolled, salt-choked, round a dying sun. On its bleak inhospitable surface the last lonely remnants of mankind resigned themselves to extinction. Time, it seemed, had run out for humanity. Yet Time itself held the key to survival. If man was to be supplanted from his native planet, perhaps only infinity would afford him a refuge. Only the age-long clichés with which his mind was fettered barred him from a whole new dimension--and a future of unimaginable splendour.

I return to Moorcock every year or two when I find one that I haven't read (there are many) and I found this one in a charity shop during a shopping excursion a few months back.  There were a few different ones on the shelf but the hideousness of the cover art on this one made it a sure thing.

It's a selection of shorts and is a bit of a mixed bag in terms of quality but all erring on the side of readability.  All 9 stories date from the 1960s and (with two exceptions) were first published in New Worlds magazine of which Moorcock was the then editor.

The first 2 stories share a setting of a future earth where the sun is dim and humanity's days are numbered.  It's a nice showcase for Moorcock's more baroque flights of imagination but as a story world it's just too bleak and lackadaisical to make for a satisfying environment.

'The Deep Fix' is a much more interesting prospect of cross dimension shenanigans that falls apart utterly at it's conclusion which was one small step away from '...and it was all a dream.'

'The Golden Barge' felt like vintage weird fiction and presents a delightful and odd little tale of obsession as does both 'Wolf' and 'Consuming Passions' in their ways.

'The Ruins' utterly failed to grab my attention before the book's stand out story, 'The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius', took me to a world where Adolf Hitler is a police officer working under Bismark, Kurt Weill runs a bar and an investigation is underway into the death of a man with paper lungs in a garden full of alien plants.  Even writing that makes me happy.

The books ends with another slice of sci-fi tinged weird fiction in a tale - 'The Mountain' - that reminded me of Algernon Blackwood's less supernatural moments.

One of the things I like about Moorcock's books is that they rarely have a page count that outstays their welcome.  They're quick, imaginative flashes that I can disappear into for a short excursion and emerge sated and refreshed and happy to go elsewhere until I feel the itch again.

The Chronicle of the Black Sword

By 1985 the links between British space rockers Hawkwind and author Michael Moorcock were very well established with collaborations between the two stretching back to the early 70s. Moorcock had supplied lyrics for and performed on stage with Hawkwind numerous times over the years, got them an appearance, albeit in the background, in the 'Jerry Cornelius' movie 'The Final Programme' and even contributed towards them being featured as the heroes of a novel (The Time of the Hawklords by Michael Butterworth).  It is then surprising that it took these two giants of the British psychedelic scene so long to fully commit to an album based around Moorcock's most beloved creation, Elric of Melnibone, but 1985s 'The Chronicle of the Black Sword' saw them finally take the plunge and create an album that was (almost) entirely based around Moorcock's series.



Buy it here -  The Chronicle Of The Black Sword

I have to admit to not being a huge fan of the album - it's OK but I find it all a little lacking in fire - it's what came next that hooked me.

In late 1985 the band headed out on the road in support of the album taking with them various dancers to 'act out' the Elric storyline and Moorcock himself to provide spoken word interludes.  They recorded two of the shows and released them as the album 'Live Chronicles' and as the 'Chronicle of the Black Sword' live video.

The album features the '...Black Sword' tracks but they've woven some classic Hawkwind songs such as 'Angels of Death' and 'Master of the Universe' into the narrative.  It is everything the studio album is not.  It's filled with lively, urgent performances of both the old and the new songs and the band seem on tip top form and fully committed.



Buy it here -  Live Chronicles

The video is the same but personally I've never been hugely enamoured with interpretive dance (or any sort of dance really) and so the guys and gals writhing around the band are something I find more than a little distracting.  Pair this with mid 80s video technology, dodgy post-production effects and Hawkwind's psychedelic light show in full force and you get a colourful but restless and slightly nauseating experience.  It does have it's charm though.


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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain