Saturday noon, Mr Crowys was sited attempting to enter a Gnostic Temple at a secret location which shall remain precisely that – in accordance with the ancient and sacred vows which govern such orders. Yet try as he might, invoking in vain the names of  John Crow and his Lady Protector, the imposter could not penetrate. It was as the Temple were encircled if an invisible force-field which effortlessly resisted his every devious wile.

Some say he managed to sidle in though a side door to the basement, only to find his mind engulfed and overwhelmed by torrents of whispering, shouting, squawking disincarnate spirits. If this be so, we may be sure Mr Crowys left with alacrity, his would be medium’s tail between his hungry ghost’s legs.

Be sure it didn’t stop there. Having invoked John Crow in name, Mr Crowys felt the shaman stirring from the sleep of ages and knew that he, ys, this wandering spectre in search of a sleeping giant with unquiet dreams to feed it, he, she, ys, stranded with ys’ own cold-wired samplings of his Master’s Voice,  its transit pass via this SpaceTime interchange already expired, no longer valid, nothing for it but once more take flight, frittering away at the dark star periphery.

In the shining emptiness.

The True Restoration is begun.

The programme unearthed a dismal history of child prostitution, syphilis and treatment with mercury – all long known to have afflicted many of those buried at Crossbones by we who honour and remember them. Such programmes never let pedantic truth hobble their fine flights of intuitive insight: it appeared to present a series of forensic tests making a terrible discovery about a mysterious skull.

Yet surely this is one and the same skull, dug up in 1992, the poster-girl exhibit in the London Bodies exhibition in the Museum of London* -
* whose opening in October 1998 coincided with the first Halloween of Crossbones conducted by John Crow to honour The Goose and her Outcasts -
that same skull with her entire skeleton displayed once again in a glass case, coquettishly reclining, in the Skeletons exhibition at the Welcome Gallery just a couple of years back.

Confirmation, nonetheless, and presented with forensic candour – not to say CSI flashy visual FX. I do recall that when the telephotographers wished to record the February 23rd vigil, Mr John Crow did deal with them somewhat barbarously, to my perhaps more diplomatic eye. Our Mr Crow has been known to permit the electronic recording of his magical acts, yet is understandably wary of those who may wish to recycle his words and er… passes? – for their own undisclosed purposes. So…

I happen to know that Mr Crow made the telephotographic company pay him a modest yet fair sum for the five or so seconds they used of him addressing the Friends of Crossbones at the gates. Laugh out loud.

Pleased to see the Friends of Crossbones were nonetheless sympathetically portrayed on the flicker-box. And as a result, a whole new bunch of people have signed the petition and left their messages of support for our Garden of Remembrance.

For all the aforementioned disingenuousness, its gothic camp and slightly faux shock horror response to the realities of life in Redcross Way, Southwark circa 1850…

And for all that many correspondents are stuck in shock and grief and anger on behalf of “those poor women”…

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, doctors and nurses of the Cold Case crew for helping to honk the honk.

The garden watered.

In the process we learned a bit more about the history of that historic place, the Estate going back to the late 19th century, last surviving remnant of the old Victorian Walworth – of workers houses and workshops crowded together on what had heretofore been common land. Many of those old Council and short-life flats are now let out at inflated rents.

Mistress Louisa enigmatically observed that Pullens was a microcosm of: “the life-cycle of a squat… how the squatters turn into the landlords.”

I have written that first entry in unabashed homage to my mentor and Master, Mr Samuel Pepys, whose diary entry for 26 May 1660, 350 years ago this very day! – reads:

‘Thanks to God I got to bed in my own poor cabin, and slept well till 9 o’clock this morning… and all the great company being gone, I found myself very uncouth all this day for want thereof. My Lord dined with the Vice-Admiral to-day (who is as officious, poor man! as any spaniel can be; but I believe all to no purpose, for I believe he will not hold his place), so I dined commander at the coach table to-day, and all the officers of the ship with me, and Mr. White of Dover. After a game or two at nine pins, to work all the afternoon, making above twenty orders. In the evening my Lord having been a-shore, the first time that he hath been a-shore since he came out of the Hope (having resolved not to go till he had brought his Majesty into England), returned on board with a great deal of pleasure. I supped with the Captain in his cabin with young Captain Cuttance, and afterwards a messenger from the King came with a letter, and to go into France, and by that means we supped again with him at 12 o’clock at night. This night the Captain told me that my Lord had appointed me 30l. out of the 1000 ducats which the King had given to the ship, at which my heart was very much joyed. To bed.’

There you have it in one telling paragraph – the distance between us. The Master gossips about Vice-Admirals, carelessly letting slip his own small part in that great matter of state, The Restoration of the English monarchy – in its distinctly European incarnation as Carlitos le Deuxieme…

Whilst the humble disciple, Mr Crowys, having missed yesterday’s Revolution, at least officially, though rumours continue to circulate regarding himself and Mrs Crowys – *or at least a bearded couple bearing an uncanny resemblance to certain facebook profiles pertaining to unidentified third parties* – viz: being smuggled into St James Palace through the tradesman’s entrance on top secret government business that maybe, just maybe, had nothing to do with Fergie the Bit-Strapped-For-Cash…

Therein lies the message that must be writ in invisible ink, the heroism that dare not speak its name – *except in codes so complex and obscure that they risk remaining uncracked for the next forty millennia.*

Because if – note, sir, madam, I say only IF, IF I say, IF I did perform some humble act that might – I say MIGHT – have played its own small part in Restoring the Monarchy – well, at least in ensuring the Monarchy doesn’t drag itself down any further down in the celebrity cesspit…

Or perhaps, all merely speculative, you understand, met with certain well-connected representatives of certain parties currently in possession of baskets of basket-case currencies, for the sole purpose of letting them know that – of course we all know the money’s neither here nor there, it’s nowhere to be found, there isn’t any, but – any bankers’ cartel – and, yes, we know who you are – thinks they might take a flutter on whether they can flush the Euro down the tubes and with it our precious pound  - better think again. This gentleman here with me is not a Vice Admiral for nothing.

IF if if if IF I did somehow contrive to stop the FT 100 falling off the City screens, then let it be between myself, Mrs Crowys and the proverbial cat. It must be so. Mr Pepys had the luxury of confiding his secrets, secure in the knowledge that his journal might not be opened until many years after the event. In this age of instant confidences, I have no such protection – unless it be that I bury my secrets in my reports of the everyday and commonplace.

Well, then, suffice it to say that this evening, as I watered the plants and the ivy at the Crossbones Graveyard, Mr Frost of our South London Press came over and spoke to me through the gates. He had been partially responsible for getting The Southwark Mysteries reviewed* – a rave review at that! *though not by him personally.

He asked me about what would happen to the site. I replied that I hoped it should become a public park as outlined in Southwark’s Supplementary Planning Guidance and that £100,000 had, in principle, been pledged towards the creation of a future garden as part of the Community Projects Bank, but that we now needed to ensure that the newly elected Labour Council understands the importance of this site as a memorial to the ordinary working people of Southwark. Mr Frost assured me that although this was a news rather an arts story he was sure his colleagues on the news desk would like to keep updating their readers on the Crossbones story.

For now, we have the shrine and our ‘invisible garden’ on the site of the old graveyard, fenced off from the works site to the north.

This evening, preparing a traditional vegetarian bubble and squeak dinner for Mrs Crowys and myself, I listened into the world’s earphone and heard a Fashionista doing a mirror-me debate with a Feminist. Each played devil’s advocate to argue counter-intuitively, respectively that “Fashion is bad for Feminism”. Each put the other’s case very well, I felt. The Feminist Ms. Bindle swung the crowd with her “shopping is a female bonding activity” pitch. A load of twaddle, but good fun.

Mrs Crowys enjoyed the bubble and squeak, and did compliment the sweetheart cabbage.

This evening visited the IpOrtal to check out Neil McG, the facts on the Aztecs and their “Rubber Balls” and “the ball in flight between their buttocks” – sounds “gay” and in a good way!  – and the giant Mexican toad, bufo merinus, who excretes an hallucinogenic substance and was believed to represent the Goddess.

1660 Rubber Balls
in the forest, mother calls
the man to Neil McGregor said
twice today. To bed.

To bed.

Hang on! The troops have not engaged. No shots were fired. So far as we can determine, our heroic Reclaimers of Democracy are still encamped. We trust no blood will be spilled, though there is an injunction in place which could cost the defendant £50K if she loses. The new Lord Chancellor pooh-poohs the encampment as “some sort of a hippie village”.

I know, I know! I have signally avoided mine own rhetorical question! Where then were they, the Crowys pair, when their comrades man woman & childed the guy-ropes bravely, silently, though with songs in their hearts, awaiting the hour of destiny? When the Queen of England herself briefly faltered, in the reading of the speech, as if to acknowledge that “my Government” did not necessarily represent all of her people camped outside in Parliament Square – or, in Mr and Mrs Crowys case, not.

Could it be that they somehow “missed” the Revolution?

Were they skulking in their attic recounting the money-bags, fretting over a missing 25 pounds and 62 pence? Were they completing yet more application forms for yet more grants to do yet more good works? Or… Were they…

That mysterious couple reportedly caught on CCTV, skulking in the back alleys of Whitehall, wearing the unlikeliest anarchist trench-coats and beards since Joseph Conrad came in from the cold?

Is it just possible that, when everyone else was looking elsewhere, something was done? Something beneficent. Capable of conjuring up a storm, a shake-up, a way to rescue the England team on this their last great sticky wicket of history.

Meanwhile… Mr Jonathan Samuel Crowys and his unnamed wife, wandering spirits, have taken refuge in the house of a south London necromancer. In his own small way Mr Crowys is emboldened to conduct his own experiments in chaos magic. He seeks to “incorporate and channel” the spirit of his mentor Mr Samuel Pepys of the diary. His clumsy experiments soon go awry: a prophesy regarding party activists left with “not a pot to piss in” reappears days later in the mouth of a drunken Duchess.

now read on: or back, if you can’t wait for tomorrow. The State Opening of Parliament, Democracy Square, Westminster, from noon.

And so, the hour of six found yours truly watering the ivy and the flowers at the shrine, and helping Mrs Crowys affix the Chinese mirror with the hexagram of protection to the top of the gates bound with ribbons and magical totems.

Mr Constable welcomed to the crowd to this, our Whit Sunday Pentecost Beltane vigil. He explained that the vigils are held on the 23rd of each month, that we have been observing this act of remembrance for almost six years and that the shrine itself is twelve years old.

Our dear friend went on to testify as to his own involvement in the reawakening of Crossbones: how on the night of the 23rd November 1996 The Goose and John Crow had appeared to him in a vision, how she led John Crow on a journey through all the ages of her secret herstory, then, in the middle of the night, led the three of them up Redcross Way to these very gates of what was then a desolate, brutalised works depot and there revealed The Southwark Mysteries:

For tonight in hell they are tolling the bell
For the Whore that lay at The Tabard.
And well we know how the carrion crow
Doth feast in our Crossbones Graveyard.

How he (Constable) was subsequently doing some bibliomancy in his Local Studies Library, opened a book at random and read the affirmation that Crossbones was the Victorian name for a paupers’ graveyard linked to the ‘Single Women’s burial ground’ for prostitutes mentioned by the late 16th century historian John Stow. And soon thereafter discovered that this self-same site had but recently been unearthed, and skeletons removed, or worse, during work on London Underground’s Jubilee Line Extension.

And that The Goose had revealed her secret teachings in The Southwark Mysteries, in three parts: her Vision Books, Mystery Plays and Glossolalia. The Mystery Plays were performed in Shakespeare’s Globe and Southark Cathedral on 23rd April 2000.

This April past, indeed a month ago today, on 23rd April 2010, those same Mysteries were enacted in Southwark Cathedral. Today, at the Crossbones gates,  the author explained that at the heart of this magical work was the invocation of The Sisters of Redcross to open the heart to bring in the outcast, to recreate a spiritual connection between Crossbones and the Cathedral, the old church of St Mary Overie.

Our host reiterated that, although he is known to channel the spirit of John Crow at these 23rd vigils, and although many people believe that HE IS John Crow, that John Crow is to be regarded as an autonomous spiritual entity, like The Goose. He reminded us all that, in the recent performance of The Southwark Mysteries, the part of John Crow was played by Charlie Folorunsho.

To drive home his point he (Constable) led us back down to the junction with Union Street, to the window of the old Ragged School, where Zanna and Natalie are exhibiting John Crow’s coat, as worn by Charlie in Southwark Cathedral.

I confess I was beginning to lose him in these arcane pronouncements as to the importance of releasing entities, our own and others – of being the pathway for them to complete their own journeys.

Fortunately, at this point, and despite the Constable’s prior protestations, the proximity of the coat in the window seemed to trigger a spontaneous incorporation. John Crow, for twas he, then called on the Sisters of Redcross, that apocryphal order of whore-nurse-nuns to manifest and perform the blessing By The Grace of Our Lady Mary Overie, as but lately invoked in Southwark Cathedral.

By magic, Mistress Jennifer opened a box full of Sisters of Redcross habits, with the red cross of healing and mediumship emblazoned on virginal white, all freshly laundered by her good self. Much hilarity as the Sisters donned their habits in Union Street. John Crow helpfully explained that the Goose teaches the sacred is revealed in the profane.

Irene, Joanna, Kim were trained for their parts in The Southwark Mysteries. Jennifer and Aileen were in the play – though as Doctor and Devil respectively, not as Sisters. Then there was Raga, a long-standing friend of Crossbones, and Lucy, who weren’t in it, but know the forms. And there were two young French women, on their first vigil, who were up for it – so they all got kitted up.

As we processed back up Redcross Way the mood became charged. The Sisters began intoning By The Grace of Our Lady Mary Overie, breaking into the full invocation at the gates. There followed the rituals of Hear lay Your Hearts with the tying of ribbons and tokens to the gates, the Open Pathways and Goose May Your Spirit Fly Free.

To honour the outcast, dead and living, in communion. Reclaiming the public spaces in our beautiful south London.

And what a gathering. Old friends and new: Jennifer, Sarah Scarlet, Alison, Ion still very weak from his recent illness but very much part of it all, Jonathan, Julie and Nigel, Lisa newly married, Raga visiting from the Parliament Square Democracy Village, Dan who so recently played a magnificent Satan in The Southwark Mysteries and tonight is just our friend Dan relaxed and very present, two people down from Oxford where they’d heard Shona’s comparative religions talk on our work at Crossbones, Sarah the founder of Mental Fight Club and Michael who was only last night touched by the spirit of this place, Cliff who we haven’t seen for a while, Jody from Eulogy magazine who is writing a piece about all this and Steve who photographed us for it, some students from LCC recording us, Ivan with his camera and ancient dreads, and Ed and Pete and Eric and Leslie – all in the Mysteries, the Tunnellers who dug up the bones of The Goose, Jim who I knew back in the early 90s and Vicki who I knew as Bumi back in The Warp and their friend, and Irene, Joanna, Kim, Aileen, Jane, Lucy.

And our very own John and Katharine. There were some there who I saw but didn’t get to speak to. Forgive me if I’ve left someone out – blame it on my weariness. That last paragraph, I relaxed my defences and presto! I find myself channelling Mr Constable’s own informal style.

It isn’t supposed to work that way round. He’s supposed to be channelling me. You see what a pother that John Crow can awake, when he starts shape-shifting.

Enough, sir! I know my place and my station. I am Mr Crowys, thank you and good night.

Neither were on our immediate agenga as we sat at a table outside Louisa’s enjoying the heat and its consequent pleasures, the shade and the breeze, leafing through The Guardian. The weekend is an opportunity for us to catch up with the news.*

* Mr Crowys speaks of course with a twinkle in the eye and a grain of coarse sea-salt melting on his forked tongue.

We were amused to see how once again the political commentators with all their sources and honey-traps are essentially reconfiguring the leitmotifs sketched out in Mr Crowys’ own divinatory commentaries of these last days. How could it be otherwise? If John the Revelator is to be believed, then the script is writ and bound with Seven Seals. What else then may these poor players do? Why, PLAY!

The sketch-writers have opted for the same homo-erotic imagery as pioneered in these humble pages, though I confess I have as yet read no strap-line to equal mine own purple post of but yesterday which had Messrs. Clegg and Cam “dogging in the empty car-park of British politics”.

None of the other commentators has thus far followed up on my previous scoop: viz. – that the supposed computer-generation creation of Synthia the bacteriological cell-snatcher was merely a diversionary tactic. Dr Evil Venter’s true purpose was to provide a means of splicing the DNA of Britain’s ‘Body-Double’ Prime Minister to create a single Super-CLAM.

The truth can run but it can’t hide.

After coffee, cakes, gossip and Guardian, we decided to shop, not riot – and not at the Elephant – and, Fair Shares being shut, thirty pounds of our housekeeping well spent on larder provision at the Morrisons Family Store on Walworth Road.

Mistress Louisa was but recently a Devil in the community cast for Mr Constable’s epic The Southwark Mysteries. When the BBC wanted to interview someone “from the community” for their London News feature on the performances in Southwark Cathedral, they were promptly directed down to Louisa’s cafe. She didn’t disappoint.

Another star in that community cast galaxy, Jennifer, the doctor who operated on Jesus, calls to say the Sisters of Redcross habits are washed and ready to wear. She’ll put the word out for any sisters wishing to invoke the healing blessing By the Grace of Our Lady Mary Overie…

Of such subtle strands, other worlds are woven, to sustain and support us even when what’s left of this world of illusion comes crashing down around us faster than the FT on a jittery day in May.

Yes, upon this Day of days, when the future of humanity itself hangs by a thread, Mr Crowys is turning his peculiar gift to the native south London art of pedagogic haiku.

Frankly sir, I see no profit in adding my contrarian voice to the din, the pipsqueak commentators, the pandemonium of doom-sayers, the Great Sargasso Seas of flotsam verbiage swashing around the interzone…

As if the pundits hadn’t enough to lather over – the collapse of the Euro and the concomitant dereliction of the British economy, the spectre of mass unemployment, civil unrest, revolution, the State of the Clegg-Cameron civil partnership, for starters…

Now Synthia, infernal spawn of Dr Craig Venter aka Ventnor aka GOD2 – the mad professor who once tried to patent the human genome, claims to have opened his very own Pandora’s Box of computer-generated hybrid lifeforms, bred and harvested for food and transplant organs, or by pollution-guzzling friendly bacteria…

… until the Triffid Day of Truth when they turn on us, their Frankenstein makers, and by the simplest, most insidious mode of invasion: they attack at a cellular level, ingest our deoxyribonucleic acids and repattern to their own alternative evolutionary models!

Easy now, gentlemen, let’s not believe everything we see in the holographic universe. Dr V has not invented new life. He has merely devised a more efficient way for alien lifeforms to colonise their hosts at a cellular level. From there ’tis but a hop, skip and a jump to fancy new ways to splice, to fuse and bond the DNAs of two, apparently distinct and sovereign individuals – so as to create a composite entity that is somehow yet more all-mighty than the sum of its constituent parts.

Ghostly Reader, I did warn you: here will you read the true stories behind the fake news. Only yesterday, I mentioned the name of this unspeakable mutant, this twin-headed spick’n'span, Nick’n'Dave, Clegg’n'Cam…

This rough Beast slouching towards Westminster to be born. This…

CLAM.

On a more seasonal note, Mrs Crowys and I to the Boot and Flogger, the free vintner opposite the gates to our Crossbones Graveyard. Upstairs as ever, the men who rule the world sit in the shadows, shaking hands on deals that will decide whether entire nations live or die. As guests of mine host, we do not disclose their guilty secrets. Indeed we do not for a moment intrude upon their covert pleasures. No, sir, with a few pleasantries to the very pleasant bar staff we are through to a table in the back yard with a happy few…

No, Madam, I cannot name even these intimates, as all are members of Secret Societies, the penalties for revealing the secrets of whom is…

No! Even the penalties shall remain secret. Trust me, you don’t want to know.

Homewards, we looked in at the Red Cross Gardens May festival, with children dancing around an imprressive maypole in the reconstructed Victorian garden to the old alms-houses. Said hello to our fellow active citizens, ‘the usual suspects’ as out local MP affectionately calls us. Simon was there, and greeted us warmly, looking very relaxed. He appeared every bit as unconcerned as I for his prospects of preferment under the current LibCon version of Synthia. He said more kind things about the recent performance of our Mr Constable’s epic drama, and joked that the people of Oberammergau will be flocking here in 2020 to see The Southwark Mysteries

We carried water from Red Cross to Crossbones and there did water the ivy and the primroses. Then paid our respects to John Crow’s coat, currently displayed on a branch hanging in the window of the Ragged School. On the corner of Union and Redcross we encountered Mr Williams, a man with a reputation as an honest broker ‘twixt commerce and the um community. As ever we pressed the case for our Garden of Remembrance.

Having voted Lib Dem – partly to keep out the Cons – I might be expected to be in sackcloth and ashes, weeping and wailing and gnashing my remaining teeth – at the sight of them now dogging, as ’twere, in the empty car-park of British politics.

I am happy to confound such expectations. In truth, no elected MP, or party, truly represents me – not even the noble Simon, for whom I cast my vote with few reservations* * Well, apart from the fact that Val Shawcross was standing against him and Val has already proved herself a true friend of our Crossbones Graveyard. In the event, old loyalties won out – we shall find another way to make it up to her.

Some old comrades from the pre-millennial party scene boast of not having voted. That is their prerogative (unless they live in Australia), though I still question whether inaction can accurately be called a radical act**.
** Exceptions, as ever, test the rule: John and Yoko’s Amsterdam Hilton hot-bed was, by all accounts, a veritable hive of non-violent political activity.

Call us old fashioned… Mrs Crowys and I briefly roused ourselves from our own bed-in to vote in the knowledge that our forefathers and mothers fought and died for that right to vote, and the conviction that a no-vote is a vote for the vacuum that fascism adores.

Preoccupied as I am with my own “rough magic” at the Crossbones, I have not yet had the time to study the fine print of the LibConjugal Arrangements. The word in the coffee houses of Bankside is that it represents a more comprehensive and formal coalition than even individuals parties have heretofore been able to muster between their own left and right wings.

More evidence of the increasingly narrow strip of “centre ground” in the battle for which which all three parties have effectively sacrificed their most loyal foot-soldiers. Just as Blair’s New Labour left the old leftie activitists without a pot to piss in, so know we see the diehard disgruntled old farts of the 1922 Committee put to the long knives in a surgical Cameron coup, leaving Dave free to explore his open-relationship with Nick, a man more his own age and facebook profile.

It could be argued that the much-vaunted New Politics were ushered in by Blair in 1997 and that, notwithstanding the quasi-mythical resonances with which the term has recently been tinted, it means nothing so much as a pragmatic managerial approach to government. We’re got tired  of the last management team. Rightly or wrongly we blamed them for the company going technically bankrupt. So we sacked them – put in a new team to take “the tough choices” to slash public spending and the gross national deficit.

Back in the late millennium, with some perspicacity, William S. Burroughs spoke of: ‘… small groups elevated to positions of power by random pressures and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decision… The iron-willed dictator is a thing of the past. There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers. The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident – inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push.’