Dundee, Scotland. May 1986.
One of the wonders of living so far north (latitude 56.5) was the length of midsummer days: sunrise before 5 a.m.; sunset after 10 p.m. There was no ‘night’ as such, just a reluctant daylight abeyance.
I remember a particular Saturday at 6 a.m. It was broad daylight when I boarded one of the first ‘Ailsas’ (Figure 225.1) to emerge from the old Seagate station. The coastal town of St Andrews lies just ten miles (16 km) from Dundee, across the Rivers Tay and Eden, and the half-hour journey was cheap with a student travel pass. I was travelling alone, carrying only a Sony Walkman, and wearing just a white T-shirt, athletics shorts and a pair of soft trainers.
Figure 225.1: An ‘Ailsa’, by the way, was a blue double-decker bus, manufactured in Scotland from 1974-85. Here are two, making their way along the Seagate in Dundee in the mid-80s.
Copyright © 1984 Neale Elder
After disembarking at the City Road terminus in St Andrews, I was content to discover that the streets were largely deserted. From there, it was just a few minutes on foot down to the Bruce Embankment, where the entire splendour of West Sands Beach burst into view.
Both beaches, West Sands and East Sands, face east. It would seem more logical to name them North and South, with the old town nestled between them. West Sands, 1.7 miles (2.7 km) long, forms the entire eastern border of a peninsula which protrudes from the land in the shape of a shark’s dorsal fin. The rest of the peninsula is packed with world-famous links golf courses.
I set off walking north, along West Sands Road, which runs parallel and close to the shore. At the tip of the ‘fin’, I turned and gazed upon the long beach, with the town still just about visible in the morning haze. The tide was almost in, as I knew it would be, having checked the timetable the previous week. When I arrived at the water’s edge, I took off my shoes, put in my earplugs, pressed ‘Play’ on the Walkman, stepped into the very cold water and began to run back towards town, as the waves lapped against my startled feet.
This majestic beach had drawn me to it for two reasons. First, I was training for the Race Against Time (look it up) the following weekend, aiming to complete the 10 km course in 40 minutes. Second, West Sands had been made famous by the film Chariots of Fire, which had deservedly won the Best Film ‘Oscar’ four years previously. In its iconic opening scene, a group of young athletes from the 1920s are seen running barefoot through the waves to the sound of the stirring music of Vangelis (1943-2022) (Figure 225.2). As I was living just a few miles away from the exact location, it was too great an opportunity to neglect.
The town’s skyline was further away than it seemed initially. Running on wet sand is hard work. There was only the occasional dog-walker on the beach, either aware of the cinematic significance of my morning run or simply thinking that I was nuts by getting wet, cold and sand-splashed so early in the day. The nearer to the town I became, the more impressive it all appeared (Figure 225.3).
Figure 225.2: A still from the motion picture Chariots of Fire
Copyright © 1981 Allied Stars Ltd/Enigma Productions
Figure 225.3: St Andrews from West Sands: one of the most exquisite views that I have ever had the privilege to see. In the centre of the photo is the steeple of St Salvator’s Chapel. Far right is the distinctive Hamilton Grand building overlooking the 18th green of the Old Course. For me, this picture is close to visual perfection.
Copyright © 2016 Nicola Shepherd
St Andrews Photographic Society
With the sound of Vangelis in my ears, I thought about the film’s title and its origin, the poem Jerusalem by William Blake (1757-1827). Its first two stanzas consist of questions, as follows:
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
The ‘holy Lamb of God’ is, of course, Jesus Christ. The ‘Countenance Divine’ is the face of God.
Historical and theological scholars have long suggested that Christ did come to England — Glastonbury, to be precise — with Joseph of Arimathea, but it is speculative at best. The ‘why’ and ‘how’ would seem puzzling to say the least. Perhaps a more intriguing question is: to what was Blake referring when he wrote of ‘these dark Satanic Mills’? This phrase is widely believed to be a scathing reference to the early decades of the Industrial Revolution, which Blake believed enslaved men by the million. An alternative theory, however, is that Blake, who was hostile to organized religion, was actually describing churches. Mills and mines placed men in physical chains from Monday to Saturday, only for churches to bridle them with psychological constructs on their day of rest. Could it be that Blake’s metaphor was a reference to both — even equating one with the other? Was Jerusalem ever ‘builded here’? Blake seemed to think not (Figure 225.4). He considered Georgian England, at least, to be far from ideal, as well he might have.
Figure 225.4: William Blake with pen in hand
Copyright expired
The final two stanzas contain neither questions nor any sense of wonder. Instead, they constitute a rousing call to arms, to confront the blight which he identified in his poem.
Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.
The anaphoric third stanza begins this emphatic statement of intent. Blake implies that no worthwhile human achievement or attainment could ever happen by itself, or by gentle passivity, or by lazy dependence on ‘authority’. It inevitably requires deliberate thought and action, whereby each individual looks, first and foremost, to himself.
‘Jerusalem’ is a metaphor for ‘heaven’, ‘paradise’ or perhaps simply any life truly worth living.
* * * * *
London, England. March 2023.
Blake’s 1808 masterpiece retains its relevance in the here and now. If this rebellious Romantic poet were alive today, I dread to imagine what he would have made of the past few years. As I have documented in these articles ad nauseam, government officials, in league with 21st-century robber barons and corporate media, orchestrated the most profound lies, systematically removed the most basic human liberties, convinced billions of people to submit to slow-acting lethal injections, while at the same time made untold fortunes for themselves. No other crimes against humanity have ever come close.
Even though the ‘COVID’ scam has finally fallen apart, the evil globalists have not given up. Nor will they give up, for they have everything to lose. It is now proven beyond the slightest doubt that whatever ‘COVID’ was, it was never any worse than seasonal flu. Meanwhile, country after country documents record excess mortality which correlates extraordinarily strongly with the uptake of ‘vaccines’. There is no other plausible explanation. Millions, if not billions, of human sheep, too docile and trusting for their own good, must now be living in unalleviable fear, albeit too weak, too proud or too arrogant to acknowledge their erstwhile gullibility.
The globalists have no alternative strategy now but to scorch the earth. The world food supply is being systematically severed; the banking system dominoes are beginning to tumble into one another; and war looms on the eastern horizon. The UK’s puppet prime minister, the diminutive Rishi Sunak, does not hesitate to goad nuclear-armed-to-the-teeth Russia, as he believes that it marks him out as a potent statesman, rather than the insincere wimp that he so clearly is. He even prides himself on prioritizing a corrupt (non-NATO) entity, Ukraine, above the desperate needs of the British people whom he pretends to serve. It is both fortunate that his premiership is doomed to fail before the end of next year and equally unfortunate that his probable successor, ‘Sir’ Keir Starmer, will betray the nation’s interests and independence still further.
What is the remedy? Well, as Blake told us, given that ‘authority’ is forever corrupt, justice and reform must spread from the bottom up, as it were, from the grassroots. Top-down solutions are designed to suit only their perpetrators. Our most powerful ‘bow of burning gold’ is the act of non-compliance. If we are to avoid being imprisoned forever inside a worldwide digital gulag, then we can begin by: using cash and bitcoin instead of cards and CBDCs; rejecting corporate food suppliers in favour of locally-based alternatives; voting out anti-British warmongers from public office; depriving businesses that support digital IDs, ‘vaccine’ passports and the like; and refusing point blank to do anything so insane as to be injected with toxic genetic drugs whose contents are kept strictly secret by a cabal of criminals.
We the People have the power to build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land and beyond (Figure 225.5). We cannot, and must not, beseech ‘authority’ to build it for us, for their ilk care only for power.
Figure 225.5: The poem, as it appeared in Blake’s own illuminated version of the preface to his epic Milton: A Poem in Two Books.
Copyright expired
One day, at whatever age, I would love to take another bus ride to the West Sands at St Andrews, take off my shoes and run through the waves again, knowing that the infernal globalists were foiled and destroyed.
Non-compliance is the answer. Thus, Jerusalem can be builded here.
Copyright © 2023 Paul Spradbery
