Black Sabbath Live 1970

Way back in the mists of time when I was a young fella of 11 or 12 (around about 1982) and just getting into music my Uncle Mike gave me a (blue EMI) cassette tape of two of his favourite bands.  On side one Led Zeppelin (young me thinks, funny sort of name) and on side two Black Sabbath (young me thinks, now that's a cool name).

I tried and tried with Zeppelin but never could quite understand the appeal - even to this day - but Sabbath on the other hand.  It was love at first listen.

I can't tell you what it was that grabbed me, the lyrics, the vocals or the heaviness but I can tell you what has kept me listening all these years later when it is a real rarity for me to put on any sort of rock album and that's the groove.  That rhythm section just kill it every time and if there's one thing guaranteed to put a smile on my face it's watching Bill Ward drum.  So, with that in mind here's a show from Paris (or possibly Brussels) sometime in 1970 with the band, young, keen and on the top of their game roaring through a set that features pretty much all the classics including a version of War Pigs with different lyrics which almost certainly dates this to before the October 1970 release date of the Paranoid album.

Enjoy.

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Transition

Iain Banks
Abacus

There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse. Such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?
Among those operatives are Temudjin Oh, of mysterious Mongolian origins, an un-killable assassin who journeys between the peaks of Nepal, a version of Victorian London and the dark palaces of Venice under snow; Adrian Cubbish, a restlessly greedy City trader; and a nameless, faceless state-sponsored torturer known only as the Philosopher, who moves between time zones with sinister ease. Then there are those who question the Concern: the bandit queen Mrs. Mulverhill, roaming the worlds recruiting rebels to her side; and Patient 8262, under sedation and feigning madness in a forgotten hospital ward, in hiding from a dirty past.
There is a world that needs help; but whether it needs the Concern is a different matter.

I have a slightly problematic relationship with Mr Banks' work.  Many years ago I tried reading 'The Wasp Factory' which failed to grab me at all and which I never finished. The paucity of pages in that particular book will give you some idea of how little I liked it.  Of his M. Banks books I've physically read one, 'Matter', which was OK but I've listened to several as audiobooks and found that to be far more enjoyable an experience.  I'm not, and never have been, a fan of space operas but as a big old thing I can listen to whilst otherwise occupied they worked well.

I'm not sure what caught my eye about this one but it did and a glance at the back got me intrigued.  I do like an alternative worlds / multiverse story and so, as I was done with my previous read and wanted something different I dove in and was reading it before I even left the shop.

Transition tells the stories of several people in particular of Temudjin Oh who works for 'The Concern' as a dimension hopping assassin / operative doing their bidding and nudging each world onto The Concern's preferred path.  The narrative alternates between several core characters but all are destined to become part of Oh's story.

The book is definitely flawed; there are several points that feel underdeveloped and the ending is more than a little unsatisfying as it takes slightly too long to arrive and then is over far too soon.  It is however an enjoyable trip getting there.  Banks can tell a tale that is complex yet accessible and whilst this isn't so to the extent of his Culture novels it certainly has it's moments.

Buy it here -  Transition

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The Blood on Satan's Claw

When Ploughman Ralph (Barry Andrews) uncovers a strangely formed skull with one staring eye in the field he's tilling he sets in motion a series of events that culminates in one of the most revered of 1970s UK cult horrors.

Patrick Wymark plays the local judge who is dismissive of the local yokel's tale even after a young girl staying at the same house (Tamara Ustinov) goes crazy and his host goes missing.  Meanwhile teenage temptress Angel Blake (Linda Hayden) finds a claw (no prizes for guessing who that belongs too) in a field that slowly works it's magic on her and her friends turning them into a coven of furry devil worshippers.

The film was released to little acclaim but over the intervening years has achieved notable cult status and is beloved of fans of the British horror movies of the 1960s and 70s.  Originally planned as a trio of tales, a late decision to amalgamate them into one narrative has left things a little cluttered and there are some dubious make up (Hayden's 'evil' eyebrows) and effects (the revealed creature) but writer Robert Wynne-Simmons and director Piers Haggard crafted a script and a film where you can almost smell the earth, taste the blood and feel the devil's claws scratching on your neck.

Buy it here - The Blood on Satan's Claw - or watch it below.



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Arthur Machen: A Biography

Aidan Reynolds & William Charlton
The Richards Press

One of the real joys of the whole Wyrd Britain project I embarked on a few years back has been the discovery of a couple of authors of the wonderful that are ... well ... wonderful.  Algernon Blackwood is one, A.M. Burrage is too and Arthur Machen is most definitely another.

This biography, published in 1963 some 16 years after Machen's death, is a fairly dry affair but then I wasn't expecting an extravaganza of rock 'n' roll excess.

What we have is a fairly steady and affectionate retelling of his working life with a small amount of personal details and a fairly personal (on the author's parts) take on the relative merits of his work but little in the way of analysis.  This was entirely what I was expecting from the book and indeed what I was hoping for as I wanted something that would give me some background info on the man to help me when I came to read his classic novel 'The Hill of Dreams' - which is waiting here on the shelf - and for which I understand he drew heavily on his own life.*

As I said it proved to be a slightly dry and maybe a little pedestrian but ultimately an interesting overview of the life of a very intriguing man.

*I've since read the book (review to follow) and I wasn't misinformed.

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Prince Zaleski

M.P. Shiel
Tartarus Press

Arguably the most decadent of all fictional sleuths, Prince Zaleski relies upon the methods of ratiocination so beloved of Sherlock Holmes. But unlike his deer-stalkered colleague, Zaleski rarely needs even to leave his divan to solve the perplexing mysteries that Shiel brings before him. Rather than give crude chase to the perpetrators of these sophisticated crimes, Zaleski reclines elegantly in his semi-ruined abbey, ‘a bizarrerie of half-weird sheen and gloom,’ smoking hashish and fashioning solutions from his encyclopedic knowledge of the esoteric. Although he is in this respect akin to Edgar Allan Poe’s detective, Auguste Dupin, Zaleski is primarily an up-to-the-minute 1890s aesthete, prompting one critic to suggest that he is based on that tragically extravagant poet of death, Count Eric Stenbock.

 My fascination with psychic / supernatural / occult detectives continues unabated and I've finally got my hands on one I've been coveting for some time.    As it turns out my understanding of it as being of that particular genre is somewhat in error as there are no supernatural elements here although within the world of the character there are a number of spiritual or mystic aspects.

Zaleski is a decadent savant who lives  hermit-like existence removed from society with only his servant, Ham, and his occasional visitor, Shiel, for company - at least in the three canonical stories; the other two and a bit stories introduce another character as a friend and frequent visitor.

In character the Prince seems most to resemble Mycroft Holmes as he is able, in the three stories, to deduce the causes and perpetrators of the conundrums Shiel lays before him, almost, without rising from his daybed or relinquishing his hookah although the third, and most esoteric, case does require subsequent actions that leave him exhausted.  Transplant his secluded home to the Diogenes Club and he'd be the heart of the British intelligence but Zaleski has no interest in the world outside his doors other than as a source of intellectual stimulation.

The final two and a sliver stories are purportedly written by Shiel but reworked by John Gawsworth and they present a very different character.  Written some many years after the initial trio the language and indeed the character are much changed.  Gone are the verbose, flowery monologues and the decadent ennui and in their place is a faster, almost pulpish, style with a Zaleski who is keen to not only abandon his seclusion but engage in physical confrontation which in neither case rings true of the man we've previously become acquainted with.

Aside from my slight disappointment at not encountering any supernatural shenanigans I was most pleasantly enamoured of the initial three stories - less so the others - and once I got into the rhythm of the dialogue I was happily drawn along by the mysteries.

As a side note, one of the things in particular that struck me was the ways in which Shiel's creation has impacted on one of our favourite writers here at Wyrd Britain, Mark Valentine, and his own supernatural sleuth, 'The Connoisseur'; in his manners and particularly by the mystery at the heart of the third story, 'The S.S.' (no, not them) which resonates with the DNA of Valentine's creation and serves to provide and extra smidgen of heritage to the younger creation and ancestral gravitas to the elder.

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Omnibus: Life, The Universe and Douglas Adams

How many works of fiction can you name that are equally as famous as a book, radio play and TV show although not so much as a movie?  I can name one, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which I've featured here on Wyrd Britain a few times but today I thought it about time we stopped and turned the spotlight on it's creator, Douglas Adams.

Made just a few months after his death in May 2001 this episode of the BBC arts show Omnibus is a celebration of Adams' life and work.  With contributions from a wide variety of his friends and colleagues such as Terry Jones, Stephen Fry, Richard Dawkins and many more it is an affectionate homage to the man and his ideas.



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The Wine-Dark Sea

Robert Aickman
Faber and Faber

Peter Straub called Robert Aickman 'this century's most profound writer of what we call horror stories'. Aickman's 'strange stories' (his preferred term for them) are a subtle exploration of psychological displacement and paranoia. His characters are ordinary people that are gradually drawn into the darker recesses of their own minds.
First published in the USA in 1988 and in the UK in 1990 The Wine-Dark Sea contains eight stories that will leave the reader unsettled as the protagonists' fears and desires, at once illogical and terrifying, culminate in a disturbing yet enigmatic ending.

Over the last few years I've read a fair few of Aickman's strange tales both in the wild as part of various anthologies and caged inside the first two volumes of this quartet of reissues, 'Dark Entries' and 'Cold Hand in Mine'.  They've been an enjoyable if often slightly frustrating read.  he was a craftsman par excellence, his skill in building a story into an oppressive and bizarre atmosphere is astounding  but I've often been left unsatisfied by the conclusions he fashions for them.  I don't mean this in the same way as say Stephen King who simply cannot write a satisfying ending but more as an observation that the almost perfunctory endings he gives the stories cast both us and his characters out into the cold having been utterly changed by the experience we've just shared.

This third collection contains what felt - I've not checked so I may be factually wrong but it certainly felt - like a set of longer and more deliberate stories.  They were, not to put too fine a point on it, excellent.

From the opening paean to a simpler, spiritual experience in the title piece, via the old fashioned, and a little obvious, horror of 'The Trains' , the growing madness of the slavery of the telephone in 'Your Tiny Hand is Frozen' and the silliness of 'Growing Boys'.  Through the isolation of 'The Fetch' and the neglect suffered in 'The Inner Room' and the acceptance and rejection of 'Never Visit Venice' to the insomniacs rambles 'Into the Wood' this proved to be a most satisfying and immersive read and easily the most enjoyable so far of the quartet.

Buy it here - The Wine-Dark Sea

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Astercote

Penelope Lively
Piccolo Books

A brother and sister discover that nearby woods not only hide the site of a medieval village but also a well-kept and potentially dangerous secret.

 Peter and Mair Jenkins are new to the village of Charlton Underwood but have found a home there roaming the countryside.  In the woods nearby they make friends with an odd young man with his two large dogs and tame hawk who shows them the secret of the dead town of Astercote.

Coming into this book with no knowledge of what to expect I was kind of thinking it was going to be a lost world or time slip sort of thing but what I actually got was something quite different.  Astercote is a story of beliefs.  Belief in the the past, in heritage, in ideas, in selflessness and selfishness, in protecting ones own and in getting ones own way and at the heart of it all in community and friendship.

It makes for an interesting little read and a very enjoyable one.

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The Tractate Middoth

With it's long history of producing M.R. James stories for it's 'A Ghost Story for Christmas' and with horror aficionado Mark Gatiss on the payroll it seems strange that it took the BBC so long to pair the two together but for Christmas Day 2013 they did just that.

The Tractate Middoth is the story of the search for a missing will, disguised and hidden inside a Jewish text, that will deprive villainous John Eldred (John Castle) of a misappropriated inheritance and instead allow it to pass to it's rightful recipient Mary Simpson (played by Wyrd Britain legend Louise Jameson) and her daughter.  Into this is thrown a young librarian, William Garrett (Sacha Dhawan), whose encounter with a terrifying, cobwebby spectre leads him to committing himself to the ladies' cause.

The Tractate Middoth is certainly one of James' more slight tales and as such Gatiss, sitting for the first time in the director' chair, has wisely kept the runtime short.  This does still leave both script and cast a fair amount to fit into 36 minutes but they do so whilst keeping things suitably sedate. The cast are well chosen and produce solid if maybe slightly uninspired performances with Castle's twitchy, restless, haunted Eldred being the standout.  The initial reveal of the spectre is somewhat botched by simply showing too much too soon but later appearances are handled with a far more deft touch.

As a piece it certainly doesn't rival the early adaptations such as 'Lost Hearts' or 'Whistle and I'll Come To You' but as something to while away bit of a quiet and wintery evening it serves it's purpose.



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When Churchyards Yawn

Cynthia Asquith (ed)
Arrow Books

Elizabeth Bowen – The Apple Tree
Hugh Walpole – A Little Ghost
L. P. Hartley – The Cotillion
Ann Bridge – The Buick Saloon
Algernon Blackwood – A Threefold Cord …
Arthur Machen – Opening The Door
Shane Leslie – As In A Glass Dimly
W. S. Morrison – The Horns Of The Bull
William Gerhari – The Man Who Came Back
Mrs. Belloc Lowndes – The Unbolted Door
Oliver Onions – “John Gladwin Says”
Philip MacDonald – Our Feathered Friends
Cynthia Asquith – “God Grante That She Lye Stille”

Originally published in 1931 I stumbled across this 1963 reprint in a small, scruffy animal charity shop recently. I obviously recognised the name gracing the cover from her other books that I have here and a glance inside showed a line-up as tantalising as it is obscure.

Elizabeth Bowen

As I've mentioned before these anthologies often overlap.  There are authors that appear regularly and this one has several in the shapes of Algernon Blackwood, Hugh Walpole, Elizabeth Bowen & L.P. Hartley and certain stories which seem to constitute a 'greatest hits' of the supernatural.  Well, refreshingly none of those are present here and indeed there was only two stories that I'd read before and neither of them to excess.

The book begins with Elizabeth Bowen's 'The Apple Tree', a story of grief and remorse made manifest in the form of the titular tree.  It's a moving piece but one that suffers at it's conclusion for an attempt at an enigmatic ending.  Such is not the case with Hugh Walpole's ' A Little Ghost' which is the story here I'm most familiar with and one I like very much indeed as two lonely souls find solace in each others company.

L.P. Hartley

There are a group of stories within the book that feel like they most express the books original publication date and L.P. Hartley's 'The Cotillon' is one of them.  It tells of the belle of the ball and of the man she has, potentially, wronged.  It's witty and charming in an Agatha Christie sort of way and just as macabrely bloodthirsty.

It's followed by the other story that I've previously read, Ann Bridge's 'The Buick Saloon'. With it's story of colonial heat and repressed emotions freed amongst the expats of Peking it's an odd little tale of curiosity and the thrill of the unknown that nevertheless stays much too much in the mundane for my tastes.

Never one for the mundane, globetrotter, author par excellence and bearer of the perfect ghost story author name, Algernon Blackwood provides us with 'A Threefold Cord...' where a bachelor, bewitched by a woman glimpsed at a party in his childhood home becomes drawn into events far beyond his control and fortunately discovers that friendship is more powerful than family.

Arthur Machen

And so we arrive at the reason this book kept sitting so restlessly on the shelf and demanding it's turn in the sun, the chance to read an Arthur Machen story that I hadn't already (there are many I'm pleased to say).  'Opening the Door' is a story with it's feet in his journalistic career that relates the disappearance and reappearance of an elderly, bookish clergyman.  It's a glorious read.  Restrained and mysterious and, as often seems the case with Machen, alive with the promise or perhaps menace of unseen worlds parallel to ours into which one can step as easily as opening a door but which perhaps aren't so easy to leave again.

Shane Leslie's 'As In A Glass Dimly' is a bit of a non entity sharing with Machen's piece a journalistic conceit it is a poor mimic that can only emulate the merest hint of the unease and imagination of its predecessor. W.S. Morrison's 'The Horns of the Bull' with it's folktale trappings feels particularly out of place and William Gerhardi's 'The Man Who Came Back' is a short, witty but essentially see-through read.

Oliver Onions

We're on sentimental ground for the next story, 'The Unbolted Door' by Mrs Belloc Lowndes which shares with it's successor - Oliver Onions' 'John Gladwin Say...', a theme  of loss and grief that has permeated a family in the first instance and a place in the case of the second, although any sense of melancholy is immediately shattered by the cacophony made by 'Out Feathered Friends' in Philip MacDonald's tale.

The book ends with it's longest story by Asquith herself - editors privilege.  'God Grant That She Lye Stille' is the story of a country doctor, his beautiful patient and her malevolent ancestor.  It's an engrossing read that made me desperately need to shout instructions at the ineffective (understandably but frustratingly so) Doctor as his patient slowly slips through his fingers.

I am so very pleased to have found this book.  I very much like these ghostly anthologies but every know and again one appears which just stands out as having been assembled with real care and insight and this is definitely the case here and any effort to track a copy down would be greatly rewarded in the reading.

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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

Books, books and more books

With Xmas rapidly approaching I thought I'd take this quick opportunity to point some of you lovely folks in the direction of the various Wyrd Britain shops in the hope of parting you from your hard earned money helping you find that perfect gift.

Those of you who follow the Wyrd Britain Facebook page will no doubt have noticed the regular additions to the Books for Sale image folder.  These are for sale in our Etsy Shop where you can find an array of vintage and antiquarian books that cover many of the facets of Wyrd Britain and more.

I currently have over 500 books listed from genres such as horror, science fiction, the paranormal, poetry, biographies, classic kids books, literary fiction, novelisations and more.  Clicking the widget below will take you there.


As well as the Etsy page I also have slightly more modern books (and occasionally music, toys and memorabilia) for sale on the wyrdbritain eBay page.

When you buy from either shop your book will be sent gift wrapped and I always try and get it in the post within 24 hours of receiving the order.

I hope you find something fun and tempting.

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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

The Omen

Although a predominantly American made film the Wyrd Britain credentials of The Omen are impeccable with it boasting a mostly UK setting, a cast consisting of some of Britain's finest character actors and a story with the legacy of the Hammer and Amicus studios right at it's core.

Originally released in the UK, on the 6th day of the 6th month in nineteen seventy 6 which almost manages to be spooky whilst simultaneously failing spectacularly, 'The Omen' went on to be one of the biggest grossing films of the year spawning several sequels of decreasing merit and a remake.

The story tells of the birth and childhood of the Antichrist, Damien Thorn, the 'son' of the US ambassador to the UK (Gregory Peck) and his wife (Lee Remick) and the various incidents and accidents that plague them.

Directed by Richard Donner (who would go on to make Superman two years later) and with a timeless, Academy Award winning score by Jerry Goldsmith (I'm sure most everyone reading this can sing at least a 'do-be, do-be-do' version of  his 'Ave Satani' piece) the movie also features a stunning ensemble of actors including David Warner as doomed photographer Keith Jennings, Patrick Troughton as doomed priest Father Brennan, Leo McKern as the not quite doomed yet but soon archaeologist Carl Bugenhagen, Holly (daughter of Jack) Palance as Damian's doomed nanny and Billie Whitelaw as her evil - and doomed - replacement.

I suspect in many ways 'The Omen' was intended to ride the coat-tails of 'The Exorcist' which, following it's release at the very end of 1973, had gone on to global success and notoriety but the end result is very much a film which has deservedly become a horror classic in it's own right.

Buy it here - The Omen [DVD] [1976] - or watch it below.



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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

The Small Hand

Susan Hill
Profile Books

Returning home from a client visit late one evening, Adam Snow takes a wrong turn and stumbles across the derelict old White House. Compelled by curiosity he decides to enter, only to be repelled when he feels the unmistakable sensation of a small hand creeping onto his own. This is just the beginning of a series of odd experiences.

This is the third of these lovely little pocket books of Hills that I've read and again it's a solid, if uninspiring, read.

Hill has a very easy style, she constructs her stories with a measured and stealthy pace filled with incidentals and asides that coach you along and draw you into the mundane as the extraordinary builds around you. Her menace, here is the impression of a young child's hand holding that of our protagonist, is subtle and both moving and disquieting and the intensity of the experience builds in a claustrophobic swirl until...well...until it all peters out and you're left wondering if that's all there is.

It isn't, quite, there is a coda to the story that attempts to give the whole thing a tragic 'Woman in Black' style ending but by then it's too late as any feelings of trepidation and discomfort have fallen away and you're merely reading to the end.

Buy it here - The Small Hand (The Susan Hill Collection)

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Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly

Every now and again a film or a TV show turns up and you wonder how on Earth you've managed to have never even heard of it, let alone watched it, even though it's got the most eye catching of titles.  Last week, when I was writing the blog for 'The Blood Beast Terror', I spotted this curious looking little gem listed on Vanessa Howard's wiki page.  Now, when I see a title like that, I've just got to know more, which is a habit that's led me down some curious rabbit holes, and this is definitely a curiouser rabbit hole.

Mumsy (Ursula Howells - Dr Terror's House of Horror, Torture Garden), Nanny (Pat Heywood - 10 Rillington Place), Sonny (Howard Trevor) and Girly (Vanessa Howard) are a happy - if slightly bonkers and a little bit murdery - family living in a large old house where they play 'the game' which involves Sonny and Girly going out into the wider world and luring men back to the house so they too can play or be "sent to the angels".  When they choose a male prostitute (Michael Bryant - The Stone Tape) to be their 'New Friend' they've possibly bitten off more than they realise as he soon starts to play the game to his own advantage.

Directed by Freddie Francis, who had made his name as a cinematographer on films such as 'The Innocents' (and later on 'The Elephant Man' and 'Dune') and as a director for Hammer and Amicus studios on films such as 'Dracula Has Risen From the Grave', 'Dr Terror's House of Horror' and Tales From the Crypt', what we have here is a beautiful looking piece of cinema.  A wonderfully odd and unsympathetically bleak comedy made with complete artistic control by a director with an eye for the unusual, the visually striking, and the beautiful, all of which would explain his later working relationship with David Lynch.

With a script based on a play - 'Happy Family' by Maisie Mosco - it is, at times, a faintly static and talky affair - at one point while watching it my partner who was sat across the room asked me if I was watching a play - and the strong cast have all dialled their performances up to the max but this is Howard's movie and she skips, pouts, gurns, giggles, sings, shrieks, flutters and flounces about the screen, dominating it by playing Girly as a lost child, a coquettish nymphet and as the deranged psychopath she obviously is.




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The Drought

J.G. Ballard
Triad Granada

The world is threatened by dramatic climate change in this highly acclaimed and influential novel, one of the most important early works by the bestselling author of 'Cocaine Nights' and 'Super-Cannes'. Water. Man's most precious commodity is a luxury of the past. Radioactive waste from years of industrial dumping has caused the sea to form a protective skin strong enough to devastate the Earth it once sustained. And while the remorseless sun beats down on the dying land, civilisation itself begins to crack. Violence erupts and insanity reigns as the remnants of mankind struggle for survival in a worldwide desert of despair.

I've read one and a bit Ballards before this, a novella called 'Running Wild' and an aborted attempt at an audiobook version of 'The Drowned World' which I didn't take to or rather I didn't take to the reader.  Recently though two events coincided, I finally got round to watching 'High Rise' and then two days later I stumbled across a huge stack of his books in a charity shop.  Of them all this is the one that spoke loudest to me and so I dove straight in.

In contrast to that previous novel here it's lack of water that's the problem as the worlds oceans have, as a result of pollution, acquired a 'skin' which retards rainfall and causes an apocalyptic worldwide drought.  Through this increasingly parched world we follow Dr Charles Ransom as he drifts from his home to the coast and back again.  Along the way we meet various eccentrics all of whom adapt to the increasingly brutal world in their own idiosyncratic ways.  In many ways I was reminded of the oddball Spike Milligan movie 'The Bed Sitting Room' as a cast of larger than life characters pantomime the creations of their new, flawed and doomed societies amidst the salty bones of the old one.

It made for a fascinating read.  I found myself losing track of the characters occasionally and the plot is thin to say the least but this is very much a character piece and watching the cold and detached Ransom retain his self in the face of the violent, the venal and the insane in a brutal new world was compelling.

Buy it here -  The Drought

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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