The Blasted Heath

Fortress Olympics looms over London

Residents on in Tower Hamlets and Leytonstone were horrified when they learnt that surface to air missiles were to be positioned on their estates. The positioning of missiles is only part of the story. As many as 16,200 security forces will be deployed in London, in addition to 17,000 troops (more troops than the British Army have in Afghanistan). A sonic weapon designed to disperse crowds by administering “head splitting pain” is ready to be deployed. Unmanned drones will be patrolling the skies over London. An aircraft carrier will be anchored nearby on the Thames in addition to other warships.

A “safe zone” will be put in place with eleven miles of electrified fence, patrolled by 55 teams of attack dogs.

This is not North Korea or the Soviet Union but London today.  During the Olympics in Peking, not even the Chinese government put up such a fence or drone planes.

The 2006 Olympic Games Act means that not only the police and armed forces can use physical force to “protect the Olympics but also private security forces. This covers anything from peaceful demonstrations, strikes, and the sale of bootleg Olympic products on the street that are not officially approved. “Brand protection teams” will patrol inside the Games to make sure that only clothes or accessories with commercial messages officially approved can be worn.

In addition people congregating on the street, a normal occurrence particularly in summer months, will be harassed, in particular local working class youth. In fact this is already happening with increased surveillance and harassment in the boroughs bordering the Olympics. Rough sleepers will be removed. The police can remove anyone “deemed in any way to be causing a nuisance”.

There is no sign that this will disappear with the end of the Olympics. The police will end up more armed and arrogant than before, London and Britain will be saddled with enormous debt as a result of exorbitant Olympics spending, whole neighbourhoods will be socially cleansed and gentrified, taxes will be increased and all the security devices and cameras installed will stay in place.

The Games are not about sport. They are about phony patriotism, brand placing, profiteering for estate agents and landlords. They are there to boost the push towards neo-liberalism, to destroy our working class neighbourhoods, to boost the power of a state that is increasingly a police state. Who is the enemy in this new Britain? It is us, the majority of the population.

The Anarchist Federation (London) will be supporting the march and events organised by the Counter Olympics Network (CON) on July 28^th

See here: counterolympicsnetwork.wordpress.com/

We urge everyone concerned by the impact of the Olympics to  support the events and the CON.

The Dog’s Nose and Caudles

 “It is another of your damned possets. Am I in childbed, for all love, that I should be plagued, smothered, destroyed with caudle? C S Forester, HMS Surprise

 “any sloppy mess, especially that sweet mixture of gruel and wine or spirits once given by nurses to recently confined women and their ‘gossips’ who called to see the baby during the first month” Definition of caudle in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable”

 ”Mr Walker, a convert to the Brick Lane branch of the United Grand Junction Ebenezer Temperance Association, thought that tasting Dog’s Nose twice a week for 20 years had lost him the use of his right hand.” Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

Caudles were concoctions that appeared in the Middle Ages and soldiered on into the 19^th century, then dying out for probably for very good reasons. They appear to be potions intended to provide sustenance as well as cheer. They were a warm drink consisting of wine or ale mixed with sugar, eggs, bread, and various spices, sometimes given to invalids and the convalescent and to pregnant women. According to Wikipedia  “The earliest surviving recipe, from 1300–1325, is simply a list of ingredients: wine, wheat starch, raisins, and sugar to "abate the strength of the wine". Another recipe from the late 14th century has more ingredients and more details on the cooking procedure: mix breadcrumbs, wine, sugar or honey, and saffron, bring to a boil, then thicken with egg yolks, and sprinkle with salt, sugar, and ginger.  A 15th-century English cookbook includes three caudle recipes: ale or wine is heated and thickened with egg yolks and/or ground almonds, then optionally spiced with sugar, honey, saffron, and/or ginger (one recipe specifically says "no salt").” 

See here for some caudle recipes if you are foolhardy enough to try them http://jducoeur.org/carolingia/orlando_caudle.html

A rather more pugnacious drink that appears to have survived until recent times is the Dog’s Nose. Dickens mentions it (see above) and Jassy Davis gives a recipe for it on http://ginandcrumpets.com/dogs-nose-%E2%80%93-a-dickensian-mull/

The Ghost of a Raspberry and the Changing City

“In cold weather like this,” said the Innkeeper of a Gastwirtschaft further down, “I recommend Himbeergeist.” I obeyed and it was a lightning conversion. Spirit of raspberries, or their ghost – this crystalline distillation, twinkling and ice-cold in its misty goblet, looked as though it were homeopathically in league with the weather. Sipped or swallowed, it went shuddering through its new home and branched out in patterns – or so it seemed after a second glass – like the ice-ferns that covered the window panes, and carrying a ghostly message of comfort to the uttermost fimbria. Fierce winters gave birth to their antidotes: Kummel, Vodka, Aquavit, Danziger Goldwasser. Oh, for a thimbleful of the cold north! Fiery-frosty potions, sequin-flashers, rife with spangles to spark fuses in the bloodstream, revive fainting limbs, and send travellers rocketing on through ice and snow. White fire, red cheek, heat me and speed me.” Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts

I first tasted this delightful distillation of raspberries on one of the Austrian lakes over two decades ago. Later on I chanced upon it on the shelves of a pub run by John O’Hanlon on the corner of Tysoe Street and Rosebery Avenue in Clerkenwell. It helped me through a particularly anguishing period in my life and so my memories of it cannot entirely be disentangled from that bout of angst. That pub was originally called the Three Crowns becoming the eponymous O’Hanlon’s when that ex Irish rugby star first set up here with his microbrewery. Later on he moved his brewery down to Somerset and the pub deteriorated, becoming successively Mulligans, then Gringos, and now the Old China Hand.

la forme d'une ville
Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d'un mortel

The form of a city changes quicker, alas! Than the mortal heart!

Baudelaire, The Swan.