This tsunami of online porn is ruining sex for real people — and Mr Darcy hasn't helped either
By Jeremy Clarkson (Sunday Times, Feb. 7)
We like to imagine that the internet is for looking up bird calls and important historical dates and where George Washington was born. But actually at least 25 per cent of all online searches are for pornography. So we were given a research tool that allows us to access all human learning and all human understanding, and what we do with this vast electronic library is use it to watch people mating.
Right now, almost 4.7 billion people on the planet have access to the internet. And each year hundreds of billions of sex video clips are viewed online. You think your kid spent last week in his room doing home schooling? Dream on, Grandad.
And it's not just the number of people watching porn that boggles the mind, but the number of people who must be making it. If you had decided at the start of the first lockdown to sit and watch all the material on the Pornhub website alone, how long do you think it would have taken? A week? A month?
Nope. The actual answer — and I'm not making this up — is 173 years, according to one report.
So where's this waterfall of sex coming from? I guess the only answer, really, is absolutely everywhere. Keep going for long enough and eventually you'll find your old music teacher on there, doing the deed with your milkman.
And now it's time to put on a serious face, because the ease of access to this torrent of porn has a great many people very worried. Though when I say "people", what I mean is "women". They say online pornography gives impressionable boys an unrealistic view of what sex is, and what it means and what's acceptable. And I have to say that there may well be some truth to this.
If you were to use the internet as a research tool, you would deduce that all lesbians are in fact 6-foot blonde Ukrainians who sit around all day in stockings and suspenders. None of them ever wears Birkenstocks or dungarees.
Meanwhile, all straight women are up for anything that pops into their partner's head. If he gets all his sex education from Pornhub, a young man will think that there's something wrong with him if his girlfriend doesn't invite her best-looking friend to join them between the sheets. And that he's not doing it properly unless he pulls her hair and strangles her while she's hanging upside down from a wardrobe door.
But the truth is that many women don't like to feel as if they've been interrogated by the CIA in Guantanamo Bay. Or pushed down a flight of stairs by a burly marine.
Porn is an issue in marriages, too, because if a man spends all day watching perfectly toned couples at it for hours in a variety of positions, it sows the seed of disappointment when his other half comes home from work and spends all evening eating lard and breaking wind.
I hate to use the expression "in my day", but in my day pornography was a hint of nipple in a glossy magazine and sex was something that came along infrequently, and only after several dates. Furthermore, it was conducted in a manner learnt from looking at the pictures in biology books.
I'm not suggesting that a lights-out, missionary approach is the way forward, because, of course, everyone has different tastes. Nor am I suggesting that "love" must always be a feature, because that's difficult if you're in an alley round the back of a pub in Rotherham with someone you met 15 minutes ago.
But I do worry that modern-day internet pornography is giving teenage boys a sense that sex must always be an American Psycho performance of some sort. That if you're not having it in a pod on the London Eye, you're doing something wrong. And I therefore sympathise with women who find this both worrying in theory and wearisome in practice.
However, there's a flipside to this coin, because while porn is giving boys a warped idea of what's meant by sex and romance, period drama is doing the exact same thing to girls.
They all fell in love with Mr Darcy, and now us boys are expected to spend our days in frilly white shirts, walking out of lakes. And it's considered rude if we don't notice when a woman moves a chair back slightly from the dinner table so we can see a hint of ankle.
Period drama tells us that girls communicate by twiddling their hair and moving their eyebrows, but it's a language boys don't understand. You might as well reveal you fancy us by saying: "Ich mag dich."
I would say, therefore, that any television drama that begins with a horse and carriage crunching to a halt outside an agreeable stately home is just as damaging to boy-girl relationships as YouPorn.
There's a similar problem with chickflick romcoms as well. Thanks to Richard Gere and others of his ilk, a boy is now expected to win the girl of his dreams by arriving for a date sticking out of the top of a white limo with a bunch of red roses in his hand and Verdi's La Traviata on the stereo.
And I'm sorry, girls, but if you expect a boy to pick you up from your job on the factory floor in a crisp white naval uniform and then carry you off to bed on a wave of Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes, you can hardly complain when you get there if he asks you to slip into a PVC gimp suit.
In short, then, men and boys should agree to give up watching pornography if women and girls agree to give up watching chick flicks and romantic dramas with Colin Firth in them. Because then neither of us would have any unrealistic expectations.
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Do I feel lucky? Not in this unmighty mouse. The Clarkson Review: Jeep Renegade
By Jeremy Clarkson (Sunday Times, Feb. 7)
About a week into the most recent lockdown I decided to go on holiday. I'd had enough. I hadn't seen the sun for weeks, I hadn't been warm for months and I'd recently had Covid-19, so I wasn't in any danger of catching it again or passing it on.
Yes, I knew I shouldn't go away and that I'd be in serious trouble with every curtain-twitcher in the country if I were caught, but I decided I'd put on a big face mask and a T-shirt saying "I am Piers Morgan" and run the gauntlet.
I did some research, found a spot in the Caribbean that was open for business, and even some flights. So I'd tell the authorities I needed to do important research for work, pack a bottle of factor 8 and bugger off.
I was quite excited. I like messing with authority. Always have. Very early in my school career I decided that, before I left, I'd break every rule in the book. And then, having achieved this by the age of 16, I decided to break some rules they hadn't even thought of yet. This meant smoking in chapel, doing an entire chemistry lesson naked from the waist down and doing handbrake turns on the new all-weather sports pitches in my mum's Audi 80. One night I even put Polyfilla in every single lock in every single door in the entire school.
I've had that attitude my entire life, and so when I'm told to wear a mask and keep my distance and stay at home, I find it very easy to think: "Right. Good idea. I'm off to Antigua."
There's no way I'd have been caught. I'd even figured out that I had no television work until April, so no one would ever see the tan. But then, just two days before the planned departure, I realised that, actually, my holiday would be morally wrong. So, much as I don't like being the school swot, I didn't go.
There's more. I have not been to Barnard Castle and I have not hosted an orgy in a Manchester apartment with a colleague and some young Instagram enthusiasts. And, for the most part, I have not been out unless it was absolutely necessary.
This meant that, for many days, I was not able to drive the Jeep Renegade that I had on test. This is the manliest-sounding car yet made. It's a Jeep, which means it can trace its bloodline back to the Second World War machine that General George Marshall described as "America's greatest contribution to modern warfare". And it's called a Renegade, which means it's the sort of car that would smoke a cheroot and wear a poncho and ask its rivals if they think they're feeling lucky.
Even the trim levels are taken straight from Clint Eastwood's back catalogue. There's the Longitude and the Night Eagle and the Trailhawk, and all of this is very odd, because if you peel away the badges and the body, what you find underneath is a Fiat 500X.
I therefore didn't mind not driving it. Because why would anyone want to drive a mouse in a gunslinger outfit?
However, then it snowed and that changed everything. Yes, the government was still saying we all had to stay indoors, washing our hands and wearing a face condom whenever we spoke, but when you have a four-wheel-drive car and it snows, no government guideline is going to keep you inside.
You've put up with the fuel consumption and the guilt and the awful handling all year, so on the one day of the year when the weather actually makes such a car worthwhile, you're going to invent a reason why you simply must go for a spin in it.
I therefore decided it was essential I drive the Clint Mouse to a nearby village to pick up some lunch. And on the way I witnessed a strange phenomenon that snow brings out in 4x4 drivers.
On a normal day, if you are on a single-track road and a big off-roader is coming the other way, you are expected to move over. But when it's snowing, quite the reverse is true. People with 4x4s will gladly drive onto the verge and into hedges and up near-vertical banks to let you by. It's a way of showing you they'd been wise to buy a Chelsea tractor.
I encountered one man coming the other way in a BMW X5 and it was hilarious. So determined was he to demonstrate the off-road prowess of his 4x4, he bloody nearly rolled it over. Another, with a cheery wave, drove his Mercedes G-wagen into a swamp.
Now, at this point you're probably expecting me to say that I was managing perfectly well in my little Jeep and that I didn't need oncoming motorists to perform automotive suicide on my behalf. But that would be wide of the mark, because the Jeep was, in fact, hopeless.
There are many models to choose from and many different engines. Most have only two-wheel drive, which means they aren't really Jeeps at all. But mine was a four-wheel-drive plug-in hybrid called the Trailhawk 4xe.
Let's start with the bad points.
At £36,500 it is more expensive than it feels, and at almost 1.6 tons it's heavier too. Also the steering is vague, the engine is coarse, the gearbox is constantly confused, the wind noise is laughable and the interior looks like a Sanyo music centre from the late 1970s.
And now it's time to move on to the really bad points. There's nowhere comfortable to put your left foot when you are driving along, the seats have all the give of a bodger's wheelback chair, and while the performance appears to be there on paper, there's no evidence of it in real life.
It's the same story with fuel consumption. We're told it can return about 128mpg, but reports suggest that in the real world it'll struggle to do half that.
But what of the off-road ability?
Well, the Trailhawk badge means that it has successfully completed the 22-mile Rubicon trail that largely crosses the Sierra Nevada mountains in California, and that sounds impressive. But I've driven this route and can report that it's mostly granite, which has a grip level somewhere between glue and those gloves Tom Cruise had in Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol. If one wheel is touching the ground, even slightly, you will be able to keep going.
Oxfordshire in the snow is an entirely different proposition and, as a result, the Jeep kept darting around as though I'd inadvertently selected "bowel loosening" mode instead of Snow in the settings. And, of course, normal tyres meant it was useless in the rough stuff.
I worry too about the complexities of a hybrid system in which an electric motor and a lithium-ion battery are used to propel the rear wheels and the engine is used to drive those at the front. Will that last for a long time, and what happens if you try to ford a river? Will you end up electrocuting all the trout?
Actually, scratch that. I don't worry about this at all. It's irrelevant, because you're not going to buy this car. No one is, unless they are completely mad.
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And here's the Sun column: "Cladding removal should begin not tomorrow morning, not this afternoon, NOW"

This place is killing him.
Welcome to Rereading the Frame, a timely reread where bots remind you to not swear.
Narrative-wise, the last chapters of NOTW are the textbook example about how to close a good book. Actually,I suspect that NOTW 92 and WMF 151 are one of the reason why Rothfuss is struggling with book 3, because with Doors of Stone’s ending he won’t be able to use the tricks he’s used insofar. But since this is outside of the purposes of this reread, I’ll keep this thoughts aside (feel free to discuss it in the comments, tho).
 
Back on track. What about these chapters, rereading-wise? Well, there’s some good stuff as well: for example, you can see that Rothfuss really liked NOTW 92 because here he starts a tradition (the “oath system”, for lack of better words) that will be carried through all WMF.
At the same time, I’ve also noticed that these two chapters feature a series of curious mistakes. The interesting thing is that some of them come from the characters, while others from Rothfuss himself.
Have you noticed them?
If not, fasten your seatbelts: this post is here for you.
Ready?

Summary

Chapter 92 and NOTW epilogue

Kvothe gets whipped once again, buys a new cool lute, explores some tunnels and discovers that students have sex in the archives. The feud with Ambrose seems to have faded out a bit, but as Kote will say, ‘that is a story for another day.’

Kote stops his narration and calls it a day. Everyone goes to sleep, except not really: Kote seems tormented by the ghosts of his past, Chronicler is tormented by a psychopathic Faen, and Bast is busy tormenting poor scribes.
Bast and Chronicler sign the most one-sided partnership of all times, and then the princeling batmans out of the window.
Day One of KKC concludes with Kote, alone in his room, waiting to die.

Let’s start with the journey to Alveron’s court

More often than not, KKC likes to throw some spoilers to the readers. That’s why we know that Ambrose will bring more trouble in the future, that Kvothe knows the truth of a certain princess Ariel, that tragedy looms in the background, et similia.
In NOTW 92, however, there’s a mistake… and it’s either on Kvothe or Rothfuss. I tend to think the latter.
Notice that in this chapter Kvothe basically spoils most of WMF: thanks to NOTW 91 we already knew that Ambrose will manage to get Kvothe to leave the University, and here we get mentions of Felurian and learning to fight from the Adem.
On a meta consideration we could also say that NOTW 92 spoils Kvothe being at the Maer’s court (I mean, if he takes a journey towards that…), and on a deeper meta consideration, we could also add the whole Fake Ruh business, given that the Road to Levinshir chapter had been published already, although in different form (no Adem but some sword sage, for example).
Think about it: that’s the entirety of WMF minus the hunt in the Eld!
…except that the journey to Alveron’s court will just be briefly dismissed in WMF 52, never to be mentioned again. And without Chronicler probing for additional details, which seems a bit strange (and on regard, have a little spoiler from myself as well: there’s some anomaly in WMF around the subject!).
 
This either means that Kvothe was wrong… which doesn’t make sense, given that here he’s talking about his favorite stories.
Or it means that Chronicler and Bast will make a mistake in WMF by not asking him about his journey… which makes not much sense given Bast’s emphasis about making his Reshi recall his good times, and the same goes for Chronicler, given he cares about the full story.
…or it means, way more interestingly, that this is a mistake from Rothfuss.
If that’s the case, it opens up for some pretty cool meta speculation, because while we’re here mutually drying our tears because Book Three isn’t out yet, we risk forgetting that WMF took its time as well. And more importantly, that WMF took some heavy revisions from its initial outline.
So, while my initial feeling was that WMF 52 exists just to prove that not every story is worth retelling, or as a sort of little chapter to spice things up (I mean, that chapter is a nice literary device after all), now I’m inclined to think that the events concerning the journey to Alveron’s court were indeed written by Rothfuss.
Only, they were cut away for some reason.
Here’s why I think this:
 
1 WMF does actually portray all the things a Wise Man should Fear! And they make up the narrative arcs of WMF! Alveron’s court is all about the anger of a gentle man. Felurian warns about the dangers of a moonless night. And since we know that the Adem adventures were quite amplified only in later revisions of the book, we can speculate they didn’t take that much space in the book initially.
The only thing’s missing? A sea in storm. Which is part of exactly what the journey to Alveron’s court was about, by Kvothe’s admission.
Edit: u/BioLogIn also notes that Devi's alar during her confrontation with Kvothe is like the ocean in storm.
 
2 WMF 52 plays a trick: Kvothe will try to retroactively justify the lack of inclusion of these adventures with a nice…

”I must pass them over in favor of more important things”

…because “there events have little to do with the heart of the story”.
But if that’s the case, why keeping Count Trepe and the mysterious man that took a ship passage exactly like Kvothe, and the fact that during the voyage some treachery was involved?
Simple: because those events mattered. Only, either Rothfuss or She Who Must Not Be Named ^Betsy decided that their entirety weren’t worth telling.
But some elements remained, and for good reasons. After all, you don’t keep a character like Threpe around for two books, especially not in WMF 150, if you don’t need some Chekov device of sort. WMF 52 plays a bit of “goody-two-shoes” role and does it smoothly, but I suspect that the events Kvothe barely glanced did actually see Rothfuss’ pen indeed, even if just partially.
 
Remember: KKC can plays the awesome business of throwing minor (or major!) spoilers left and right exactly because Rothfuss has always had the general blueprint of the entire trilogy in his head.
Chances are, when writing NOTW 92, a draft of WMF with Kvothe’s shipwreck was on Rothfuss’ desk.
Important edit: u/BioLogIn offers a heavy counterpoint in Rothfuss' own admission here.

Details worth pointing out

• Bast’s footsteps
When Bast ‘goes to sleep’, his footsteps sound hard on the wooden steps of the stairs. Regardless of what happens in this very same chapter, we already know that Bast’s steps are actually silent. We’ve seen it at the beginning of the book, and the same will happen at the very beginning of WMF.
I’m pretty sure Bast is exaggerating his footsteps, be it to voice his displeasure towards Kvothe (like a child throwing a tantrum) or he’s always keeping up with his act for when he needs to be silent for real.
 
Btw, think about it: Bast has hooves instead of feet, and he can be silent on hard wood. Wow. Is this a testament to his skills, or does Glamourie involves also the sense of hearing?
• The nightly ritual and some possible mistakes
Kvothe ends the narration and starts with his usual errands. However, think about it:
1 Kvothe brings in new wood for the fireplace… but in the previous Frame chapter (NOTW 88) Bast had kept aside the wrecked furniture near the kitchen door to be used as firewood.
2 Kvothe once again starts sweeping the floor… but the floor had just been washed not once, not twice, but seven times straight.
3 Kvothe had forgot the light up the lamps outside the inn.
4 Rothfuss doesn’t mention that the lock of the inn is made of brass. Rather than a mistake, I wonder if the inclusion of brass came when writing WMF, given some brass barrels will appear as well.
 
Do we really consider these mistakes? Yes and no: yes, because it’s interesting to point out some inconsistencies (I mean, given how many times that fucking floor is swept/washed, I suspect it to be concave rather than flat), but at the same time not really.
Personally, I think it’s more of an escamotage from Rothfuss to emphasize the cyclical nature of Clockwork Kote, creature of habit and monotony personified: Kote (and not Kvothe) is intentionally predictable, repetitive, cyclical.
 
Crackpot theory speculation: Kvothe forgets to light up the outside lamps because Clockwork Kote is a condition that works only inside of the Waystone Inn. That’s why outside the Inn he has no troubles doing physical work and fighting the scrael, while inside the inn he struggles.
More likely explanation: Kvothe simply forgot to light the lamps because who the fuck would come late at night. Plus he had better stuff to do, like watching Shep die and hosting half of the town right after.
• The bottles, once again
Always mentioned and always mysterious. The text says that “through the motions, his eyes were far away, remembering”. I wonder if the eventual trip to memory lane is due to the bottles themselves.
• The foul smelling thing
No, it’s not my nickname during intimacy, it’s the salve Bast put on Chronicler’s shoulder in NOTW 88!
It’s worth pointing out that Chronicler trashes away Bast’s medication. Is it because he doesn’t trust Bast, or because as an Arcanum student, his beliefs concerning medicine spurn countryside remedies?
That wouldn’t be a first: we know that sometimes University students are wrong, think of WMF and the supposed properties of arrowroot.
• No lights in Newarre
It’s very late at night. This doesn’t surprise us the slightest.
• Cheeky sneaky Rothfuss
Once more, an evidence of his sneaky business: remember NOTW 2, when Chronicler’s amulet was just called “a ring of metal”? Ninety chapters later and it’s explicitly called “wheel”!
Notice however that in NOTW 2 it was already hinted that the ring/wheel was a religious symbol as well, although by then we didn’t know anything about the Tehlin Church.
• The Wise Chronicler’s Fear
Chronicler struggling to sleep is one of the things I love the most: it’s clear that he does not trust those two other guys!
I don’t think his worries have anything to do with the possibility of “Skinchanger 2: the Revenge”. The trio’s behavior after the Waystone Crowd leaves seems good evidence enough for that.
 
Worth pointing out that the trigger for Chronicler barricading into his room is his surprise at the bed sheets having being changed. Why? Simple: because if the sheets have being changed, it means the innkeeper knows the room where Chronicler is actually sleeping!
• Chronicler’s curious mistake
Chronicler decides to barricade himself in and that’s cool… but had he really paid attention to Kvothe’s story, he would have known what happens when you forget to lock the windows as well! NOTW 38, 51, 62, 72 and 90 are all good evidences for that.
Especially NOTW 90, given Kvothe told him that story just few minutes before calling it a day!
• He has ears like a hawk
We will have more evidences in WMF, but we already know that Kvothe has good hearing whenever he notices that someone is about to enter the Inn. We also know that in NOTW 13 he noticed Bast eavesdropping.
Bast always tries to sneak by, but are we sure he manages to go unnoticed most of the times?
 
By the way, Chronicler not knowing that hawks have ears seems in line with a medieval setting… except not really. I suspect this is more a mistake on Rothfuss’ behalf than Chronicler’s.
I don’t think irl medieval nobles would have used an animal who cannot hear commands for hunting. One thing is the animal refusing to obey, another is deciding to train an animal that…cannot hear your orders because it doesn’t have ears? Come on.
Fwiw Bast is absolutely right, because hawks have an excellent sense of hearing.
• Bast’s way of putting down the sulfur match’s light
Bast licks his fingers and pinches the match. Nice little detail from Rothfuss, not only it makes it a bit peculiar, but also tells us a bit about Bast: he doesn’t mind getting close to the fire, metaphorically speaking.
It’s also part of the setup for Bast’s ominous “transformation”, although talking about transformation isn’t right, given that this is what Bast has always been.
Speaking of which…
• …I had forgot how well done is Bast’s transition
This is textbook mob behavior.
It starts friendly, joking. Then it slowly turns more vulgar, up until the classic “I came to talk to you. Because I know best”. And once the refusal comes, here we have Bast getting angry.
First we have his angry eyes, then his smile changes from child-like to wide (and then, nearby the end of the chapter, to terrible), then he initiates physical contact by tapping Chronicler’s shoulder. Classic intimidation tactic. And after Chronicler refuses once again, here it comes the direct threat, and then a practical display of power.
 
Another little literary trick worth pointing out: when Bast enters Chronicler’s room the scribe is almost naked. Look at his description, used to make him look even more vulnerable:

Bare-chested, he gathered the blankets self-consciously around his waist and glanced towards the door

• Don’t scratch the floor!
Bast says that Kvothe gets angry if the floor gets scratched. Given he’s looking at the chest of drawers, I wonder if something happened when Bast and Kvothe moved the thrice-locked chest upstairs… especially since we’ll know in WMF that it was quite difficult.
• Anhaut-fehn
Derogative term, quite heavy given the context. I suspect the “an” of “anhaut” to be a privative particle of sort. Something like “witless fool”, for example. But for the sake of completion, the “an” in “anpauen” is nothing like that, so I’m likely wrong.
  Speaking of “anpauen”, here you can find its pronunciation and meaning, straight from the mouth of The Bearded and Terrible Man. Don’t you love it when he goes “I don’t know if I ever told what anpauen means” and then doesn’t tell it at all? Fucking Rothfuss, every single time. FWIW he told that anpauen means Iron Shoe/ Shoe Iron here, except the video is not available anymore, so here’s another “fuck you aowshadow”, I guess.
I wonder if it has anything to do with Bast having hooves instead of feet. In that case an iron shoe may have a heavy meaning.
Or if it is a nod with something that happened during the Berentaltha, a sort of dance mentioned in WMF 99, given that iron shoes are heavy and not suited for dancing?
 
Btw this is the kind of shit that makes me lose a lot of time between one episode and another: searching for iron melting temperatures, hawk ears, rereading two entire books because I had this vague notion of a faen dance and listening Rothfuss on youtube for 21 minutes straight, which for me is pure torture. I swear, I can reread his books ten times without blinking, but listening to him for more than 20 seconds straight, I just can't. I guess Mother Nature didn't intend for me and Rothfuss to live together. But I knew it already: after all, I shit you not, I used to be a pizza guy (“the fucking pizza guy” – cit.) when I was younger.
Sigh.
• Memoir
As any biographer worth his name, Chronicler basically gets an erection when Bast mentions Kvothe’s memoir. Will he manage to gets his hand on it?
On a serious note, I wonder why the memoir pages keep staying not only in Kvothe’s room, but right on his desk, if he’s supposed to have been furious about them. Something’s going on, possibly. I mean, it has been two months…
Notice Rothfuss’ choice of words in the epilogue: the memoir is “pointedly ignored”… but also “unforgotten”.
FWIW Kvothe managed to write his memoir for a night. He changed his mind the next day. Wonder why, given that at the beginning he looked “three feet taller, with lightning on his shoulders”, according to Bast.
• Martin Maskmaker
As noted in Rereading 5, Bast isn’t used to human fairytales.
Here we find something similar with Chronicler: chances are the story of Martin Maskmaker is told only between Faen creatures, because I find extremely unlikely that a man who makes his living from stories isn’t able to recognize a (possibly) famous tale. Chances are, this tale isn’t human.
 
Speaking of manling stories: I don’t know if The Ghost and the Goosegirl has an irl equivalent, but The Ha’penny King’s one could be KKC’s equivalent of Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper.
• Possible huge detail

You see, there’s a fundamental connection between seeming and being. Every Fae child knows this (…)

That’s because Glamourie and Grammarie seem Faen prerogatives! I’m pretty sure Bast’s sentence is linked with them.
 
While we’re at it, know that I’m not neglecting to consider Glamourie and Grammarie… I’m just waiting for a certain WMF chapter to show up, because there’s some cool stuff to discuss (and it may even involve TSROST)!
• Basic psychology
According to Chronicler, if “you dress a beggar in fine clothes, people will treat him as a noble”. This is exactly what happens to Kvothe in both books. Think of Tarbean and Severen.
• Internal consistency
When Bast says to Chronicler…

There’s no reason we can’t be friends

…he is picking back the same words Kvothe said to both when they fought in NOTW 13.
This is classic Rothfuss: think of all the times the author throws back to some character specific words from the past! KKC internal consistency stays as sharp as steel.
Oh, and while we’re at it, notice that “what do I want? I just want my Reshi back” is exactly 10 words to break Bast's will.
^{But so is “Can I bring you anything before you go to sleep”, LOL}
• Another possible mistake
With his sulfur match, Bast lights up a lamplight. But at the end of the chapter, the room is lit by a candle.
• Flower smell
Bast’s breath smells like flowers. This is something that shows up from time to time. I thought it was a faen prerogative, but it doesn’t seem like that.
• Bast’s eyes
When Bast goes super sayan we can notice a cool progression concerning his eyes:

Color	Nature comparison
Solid blue	darkening sky
Paler	clear blue of a noontime sky
Pale blue-white	lightning
White as opal	full-bellied moon

That “moon” term is telling indeed. Especially given the nature of Fae.
• Bast’s choice of words
First consideration: in KKC initial drafts, probably oaths weren’t so formulaic. Notice that generally in NOTW people say “I swear” and that’s it.
But from this chapter onwards, many oaths in the series will follow Bast’s formula! I guess this chapter was a source of inspiration for Rothfuss…
Based chart incoming:

Who	When	First part	Second part	Third part
Bast	NOTW 92	I swear by all the salt in me	by stone and oak and elm	by the night sky and the ever-moving moon
Elodin	WMF 11	I swear it on my mother’s milk	on my name and my power	by the ever-moving moon
Kvothe	WMF 73	I swear it on my name and my power	by my good left hand	by the ever-moving moon
Felurian	WMF 99	I swear this by my flower and the ever-moving moon	by salt and stone and sky	I swear this singing and laughing, by the sound of my own name
Bast	WMF 105	I swear it by my tongue and teeth	on the doors of stone	I am telling you three thousand times (assuming it counts)
Dedan	WMF 107	I swear it by my good right hand	(ง︡'-'︠)ง?come at me	◟(•̀д•́◟ )ain't scared brah

 
Additional considerations:
-Dedan’s not particularly educated, so I guess his oath was simpler. I put it in only because unlike the NOTW oaths, he adds “by…”. I wouldn’t consider it particularly meaningful, although like all the others, it respect one criteria.
 
-Every oath involves the defining part of the person speaking. And before someone goes “LOL, Felurian swore on her cunt” let me add that in her case her flower IS a defining part of herself. Because Felurian IS a personification of lust and desire. Look how offended she gets when Kvothe sings “her skills in love / they do suffice”!
 
-Kvothe may or may not have unconsciously copied Elodin, as often happens when people adjust to their models.
 
-Faen like to talk in triplets. This isn’t restricted to oaths alone. Think of the classic “I am telling you three times…”
 
-Don’t underestimate swearing on salt: salt is precious and necessary to the body, as Kvothe notes when giving food to Auri, after all. Modern societies underestimate salt, but it has always been a precious substance.
 
-Bast swearing on the doors of stone is HUGE. I’m pretty sure this is a book 3 spoiler that will hit us hard when it comes. Insofar, it seems like it could be a geographical, definite place. Felurian talks about those as well.
 
-Of all the oaths, the only one who could still be broken is Kvothe’s oath to Denna. Which means that if oaths apply, the problem in Kvothe’s hands may be his left hand.
Speaking of Kvothe’s hands, read this if you haven’t already.
 
-Look how many times the moon shows up!
• What is sarcasm?

“I suppose you know best,” said Chronicler dubiously. Bast gave an emphatic nod. “Exactly. That’s why I came to talk to you. Because I know best. You need to (…)”

This is a good example, but it’s not the only one (both in this chapter and the whole Frame) where Bast simply ignores eventual zings from Chronicler. I don't think he even gets then, given how he’s incredibly dismissive of the scribe.
Funnily enough, this is something both Bast and Chronicler have in common.
There’s more to these exchanges, but for that we’ll need to wait the ending of WMF where we’ll have a chart for comparison.
• Dark sides
Bast says that Faen stories have their dark sides, without elaborating much on the subject. But we can speculate on something.
-First of all, Martin Maskmaker has a dark side for sure, because Bast was going to use it as a cautionary tale of sort.
-Then we have some of Felurian’s stories from WMF 99, and while we have just titles we can speculate something tragic concerning “The boy who ran between”.
At first I thought it could have been a retelling of Jax story, but then I changed idea given Felurian’s reticence about talking of some figures. I mean, she refuses to name Iax and threatens to beat Kvothe if he brings the Chandrian up again… why would she tell him this tale, if it was about Iax?
Therefore, I suspect “The boy who ran between” is about someone else.
 
Why do I think this story has a dark side? Simple: doesn’t the title remind you of the old tale of Rip Van Winkle?
• Don’t ask about music or magic
This suggests that Bast knows what happened to Kvothe, at least partially.
• Foundation
Many years ago, around the start of the Punic wars, Rereading the Frame 2 came out. In the comments of that fateful episode of this punctual reread, the mysterious Danceofthesugardicks said:

It bothers me that (…) you call the story Kvothe is telling a painting. (…) I would propose to title Kvothe's narrative as the foundation.

Back then I knew he was right, but only today I realized how much. Look at how NOTW 92 starts:

We all have the groundwork now. A foundation of story to build upon.

Wow. Since Kvothe himself proves the users right, we know we’re on the right path!
And now, a little moment of silence.
It is a silence of three parts, actually: the first silence is the hollowing, echoing quiet of the things that are lacking, like your pen on your paper drawing your version of the Waystone Inn map. But no, of course you aren’t drawing that, and so the silence remains. The second silence belongs to these heavy hands of mine, and pray they don’t catch you map-less. No, not you who have drawn you map already: you are a friend, and in your case these gentle, weak hands of mine would only caress your noble cheeks, and tuck you between soft blankets when you go to sleep. I mean, what else could you expect: you drew the map. But those who didn’t… rrrrrrrrrrgh… no, wait: luckily there’s still time to draw your version of the Waystone Inn map! Let’s be friends! A world of friendship and hugs! Draw your map. Now. End of the story.

B-but… you didn’t tell me what’s the third silence is…

Oh, right. The third silence is not an easy thing to notice: If you listen for an hour, you may begin to feel it in the thick walls of your room. And in the flat case that surrounds your internet device. And like the previous two silences it still fucking says: draw your Waystone Inn map. End of the story.

X

For the purposes of Rereading 7, X is Bast and whatever Bast wants to do to “help” his Reshi.
When Bast says to Chronicler…

He was my message in a bottle. One of many. You just happened to be the first person to find one and come looking.

…I can’t help but notice that the second person to come looking, as NOTW 88 title wants, was a skindancer. A more careful Bast would have considered that. Things aren’t necessarily linked, but dismissing everything would be naïve.
Bast’s careless way of thinking continues with this telling line:

Even old enemies come to settle scores would be better than him wasting away like this.

Like… really? What kind of psychopath would be fine with enemies explicitly coming to settle down scores in the Waystone Inn? Hasn’t Bast really been listening to Kvothe during the Frame?!?
I mean… did you see what kind of enemies Kvothe does have?!
To top it all, Bast has already noticed what happens when Kvothe fights. Look back at NOTW 5: Kvothe comes back to the Inn bleeding like a butchered pig. That’s what you want, Bast? Of course not, but you have to take into account that that’s what may happen. Because it has already happened once.
Bast is the textbook definition of the expression “eyes wide shut”.
 
But we shouldn’t be surprised that much: like Kvothe says, Faen and humans are as different as alcohol from water. Their similarities are always (and only) in appearance.
Insofar, it looks like the prime mover of Faen creatures is always their ego. And it’s not surprising that Faen creatures generally refer to Kvothe are a property rather than an individual. For Felurian, Kvothe was “my kvothe”. For the Cthaeh, Kvothe is either “boy” or “Felurian’s manling”.
One may imagine that Bast’s case is different given his feelings… but not so much. It’s just the other side of the spectrum. Because for Bast, Kvothe is his Reshi. His Reshi. And the get back his Reshi, Bast would do absolutely anything.
 
And that’s why, despite having already put dozen of stitches all over his Reshi’s body, Bast’s shock therapy continues: luring Chronicler to the inn is a move (and we know that Kvothe will suffer quite a bit when recalling some memories, like his parents’ fate), the deserters in WMF is another one.
None of them help Kvothe get back, all of them earn him more scars, or simply open back some old ones.
Worth pointing out that in WMF Bast doesn’t mind paying the price by himself… but at the same time he’s perfectly fine when other people pay it as well.
Faen are not human, and are ultimately creepy as fuck. But I guess we should have considered myself warned: after all, as Bast himself says, “there’s no demons.
Only my kind.”
 
It’s both bittersweet and unnerving how much little Bast does actually take Kvothe’s feelings into the equation: it’s like he’s chasing an image that exists only in his mind: ‘of course sending some troubles to Kvothe won’t be much, after all he’s able to take it,’ seems to be his reason… but at the same time he doesn’t bother considering that maybe, just maybe, Kvothe doesn’t want to fight.
Bast wants his Reshi to remember who he is, and to many extent we can wonder whether he can… but the real question Bast should ask himself is whether Kvothe wants to.
To top it all, the longer the story will go on, the more it’ll be evident that there are so many things that Bast does NOT know about his Reshi! His parents? The Cthaeh? These are no trivial things!
 
I truly wonder what happened before Bast and Kvothe went to Newarre. For now, I can only speculate few things:
-1 Bast knows Kvothe has been to Fae at least another time beside Felurian (more about that in future episodes),
-2 Bast has seen Kvothe fight (same as before),
-3 Bast has seen Kvothe really angry, and
-4 Bast has seen Denna in the past.
-Technically we should add that 5 Bast knows that something is Kvothe’s fault, given that he doesn’t object to all of his Reshi’s mood swings.
 
Btw, this chapter puts a big nail in the coffin to the theory that Bast and Kvothe are in cahoots concerning some bigger plan. I never subscribed to that theory.
Or rather, let me elaborate: does Kvothe trust Bast? Yes. Do Bast and Kvothe have something going on? Of course. Otherwise Bast wouldn’t be in Newarre, and he wouldn’t be in the whole “hey I’m an innkeeper” heist.
But that’s it.
Why? First of all, because It’s already proven that Kvothe lies to Bast (keeping a piece of the scrael for himself and then going to hunt them, for example), that Bast suspects that Kvothe tells lies from time to time (WMF 105, which will be covered in future episodes) and so on.
Second, because it’s pretty clear that Bast doesn’t know Kvothe that well, despite what he thinks, as already mentioned.
Third, because there’s not a single character in the entire story whom Kvothe doesn’t hide something from. Not a single one. The one who comes closer is Auri, who still doesn’t know anything about Kvothe and the Chandrian, for example. Bast thinks he’s special to Kvothe, because Kvothe is special to him. Maybe things are mutual, but definitely not to the same extent.
But most importantly, fourth: because of the prologues and episodes of both books. Because they let us know that Kvothe is a man waiting to die. Reread NOTW 92 and tell me that Bast would allow it, or that he’d be fine with that.

This place is killing him

…says Bast, and he does NOT want any of that. This runs counter to Kvothe’s desires.
There’s no way Kvothe told him everything.
 
Which brings us to the million dollar question: how much of Bast’s secret attempts did actually Kvothe miss… if he missed any?
Bast, another version of young Kvothe
Ever entertained the idea of Bast covering the role of Foundation Kvothe?
Check the similarities: clearly talented, noble lineage (cough-cough Notallya Lotless cough-cough), success with girls, quite vain, thinks he knows best over everything, animated by good intentions but also unsupported by careful thinking, prone to anger, likes music (in Bast’s case it’s dance, rather than singing – tho in WMF he’ll sing as well), doesn’t like to stay long in the same place, usually doesn’t wear shoes (lol), has rings and so on.
I wonder how much intentionality there is on Rothfuss’ behalf, and if there are conclusions to be drawn. If you want to, do it in the comments.

Kote’s lies

“I need time to think about the story”

This could be a lie since it’s quite clear Kvothe has been thinking about retelling his story since months (two, at very least), as the memoir pages in his room prove. Most likely, this is just a white lie to spend some time alone.

Narrator shenanigans

NOTW 92 is divided in three parts, and the POV shifts for a little bit.
It starts with Chronicler (because the “knowing a polite dismissal” means the POV is in Chronicler’s head) and then immediately switches to Kvothe when the scribe goes upstairs. Not a single line concerning the innkeeper’s thoughts.
But Rothfuss/the narrator feels the need to tell us about Kvothe’s usual activities, meaning this is important.
From then on, it’s all on Chronicler.
 
Epilogues and prologues feature an omniscient narrator and there’s not much to say, besides:
1 the omniscient narrator says that the memoir has a mad pattern, for all that it’s worth, and
2 that the silence is in Kvothe’s hands. Thing is, I’m not sure Kvothe isn’t doing anything. The narrator focuses on still objects, but the shadows are dancing. It could mean that Kvothe is actively doing something that the narrator isn’t telling us (not 100% sure on this one, but whenever in doubt, I always note down possibilities).

The nature of Frame interruptions

This time KKC isn’t playing dirty. Unless Kvothe is doing something that the narrator isn’t telling, NOTW 92 and Epilogue are pretty much straightforward. There are three time skips dictated by the simple passing of time, and they seem pretty much normal.

Geography and time notions

Chronicler’s room isn’t on the side of the Waystone Inn’s kitchen, because on that side there’s a forest!
In NOTW 92, instead, Chronicler opens the window and looks at the little town of Newarre. Logic tells me that his room faces East, but I confess I could have paid more attention to cardinal references during the reread. But it’s not too late for that, by the end of the reread it’ll be done.
 
Worth pointing out that, as we saw in previous episodes, the Waystone Inn a wooden landing at the entrance. This implies the existence of some projecting roof for obvious reasons, and if the projecting roof is only on the entrance side, this alone would have been evidence of Chronicler’s room being on the opposite side of the kitchen. Because the projecting roof is what Bast uses to get inside Chronicler’s room, and likewise!
 
Fun fact: during my first read I was convinced that Bast had jumped up to Chronicler’s window. The easiest way to prove how wrong that is… is considering that during WMF Chronicler visits Bast room as well: without some projecting roof to act as passage, how would have Chronicler been able to reach Bast’s window?
 
Additional consideration: we know the Waystone Inn features a wooden landing before the entrance. Generally speaking, irl buildings who feature something like that have a roof as well. There’s no point in building a wooden landing if you let rain ruin it in some months, after all…

Maps from the readers: the evaluation

Not this time, RIP.
But still, I dare to dream.

The Waystone Inn catalogue

The inn features:
-The stairs are made of wood.
-The inn has a sign outside.
-There’s lamps beside it.
-There are chamber pots (one for each room?).
-To I really need to mention that chamber pots have a lid (thankfully)? Of course I do.
-The windows of the guest rooms have curtains.
-Chronicler’s room has a chair, bed, nightstand, chest of drawers, lamp (candle?) and sulfur matches to light it up.
-Barn, therefore there’s a stable.
-Kvothe’s room features desk, memoir and candle.
 
The inn lacks:
-Horses and crowds of people.
-Music, of course.

Personal comment

NOTW ends with a monster chapter. I didn’t expect it to have many details, but research proved otherwise and I’m glad for that. A bit of a shame because I expected to use the maps today, but there was not enough space unless I had broken the OP in two parts, and I’d rather avoid that.
 
While we’re at it, let me add a personal appreciation: this chapters feature my favorite threat in the entire series: “I’ll make a game of you.”
I love this expression to no end.
English natives may consider it obvious, but for non-English like me this one is tricky, because “game” is an ambivalent term: it’s both an activity for fun, but also a hunted animal. And both meanings apply, making it double the threat! I love it, it’s simply brutal.
Next episode, exactly like my girlfriend, will definitely come later than expected. Hey, no, wait a minut-
 
Thanks for reading and for your insights, past episodes can be found here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

Self-rule’s not going to work, chaps. I tried it at home and we couldn’t even agree on supper
By Jeremy Clarkson (Sunday Times, Jan. 31)
Seven years ago the Scottish decided they'd like to be part of the UK. So now it looks as if they are going to be asked again. And they will keep on being asked until they decide that they would like to go their own way, without a currency, a viable economy or anything much to sell, except grouse shooting, salmon fishing and a dribble of oil.
Although, sadly, none of those things would actually be allowed in the green and unpleasant socialist utopia envisaged by Nicola Sturgeon. Naturally she is glossing over the downsides of going it alone and focusing instead on the raw emotional appeal of selfdetermination, and this plainly strikes a chord with large numbers of people in the central industrial belt. They've seen Braveheart, they've heard the rhetoric and now they want Sexit — not that many are calling it that yet.
Nigel Farage and Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson pulled off a similar trick before the Brexit referendum. They sold the EU to us as a gravy train for people who couldn't get a proper job in the real world, and all over England's industrial belt, people bought into that too.
Self-rule is very much in vogue at the moment, from Catalonia through Corsica and Greenland and South Ossetia to the Nascar-watching and bassfishing towns of Butthole County, South Carolina. But, I wonder, where does this enthusiasm for independence end?
Let's just say, for a moment, that Scotland wanders off and that Wales and Northern Ireland follow suit shortly afterwards. That would leave England on its own for the first time since it annexed Wales in 1284.
Think about that. No regional politicians hoovering up every penny we make and then going on the radio to moan about it. No more Caledonian communists standing in our queues at Heathrow. And we can wave goodbye as well to that Welsh parliament chap whose suits don't fit. It sounds like bliss. England, governed for the English, by the English.
But hang on a moment. Because if you live in Toxteth, you really don't want to be governed by the Tories. These manicured toffs who say "lavatory" and "napkin" and go on holiday with their "chums" every year may be English, just as you are, but they are as alien as an actual alien.
And Sir Keir Starmer won't work either, with his Lego hair and his softly-softly socialism. What you want is a combination of Derek Hatton and Steven Gerrard, with a sprinkling of secondary picketing.
So do we give Liverpudlians a chance to become independent as well? Maybe it's not such a bad idea, because, unlike the Scottish, they already have their own language.
The problem is that if Liverpool is granted the chance to go it alone, then other cities and towns would insist on following suit. And soon the people of Harrogate would be governed by that nice Oswald Mosley and Southend by Ross Kemp. And then what?
Would we end up, one day, with the Cotswolds being recognised by the UN as an independent state? Why not? We all live in honey-coloured houses, in double-barrelled downs, surrounded by rolling hills and people called Annabel, so — obviously — we all want the same things.
Ha. That's like saying everyone in Cornwall has a potty mouth and is a chef just because Gordon Ramsay has a house there. Or that everyone in Somerset is Jacob Rees-Mogg.
We are definitely not all the same in this neck of the woods. I live in Chipping Norton and I reckon that people from Stow-on-the-Wold are all morris dancers, that people from Moreton-in-Marsh are rural halfwits and that people from Burford are so southern they're basically French. I would not want to be governed by anyone from any of these places.
I'm not certain self-rule would work very well, even if it were limited to my own village. I've lived in the area for 25 years and my children were all brought up here, but to this day, people still pop round with milk and bread to help me "settle in". Though when I say "pop round with milk and bread", what I mean is "sneer at me in the local paper shop". The only thing that unites us is a deep and abiding hatred of light aircraft. And badgers.
What about self-rule in my own house? Ha. That definitely wouldn't work, because although there are only three of us here, we cannot even agree on what to have for supper. Last night the two others formed themselves into a government, poured bird food into a frying pan and ate that, while deciding whether to watch a "hilarious" Hollywood blockbuster about some divorced middle-aged idiot who's trying to pick up young women, or something with a dead labrador in it. It's like living in a mad and gluten-free world of primary-coloured romcoms and yoga — and it's terrible. I'd rather Derek Hatton were in charge.
Recently, I started to think that, actually, I wanted to take self-rule to its ultimate conclusion and declare myself an independent state. But I'm not sure that even this would work, as my stomach wants a chocolate biscuit and my heart really doesn't, while my head wants another glass of wine but my liver is very prissy and woke on the matter. I'm therefore a one-man war zone.
Which brings me back to the next Scottish referendum. I'm speaking now as someone who doesn't mind if the Scots go. I would even find the catastrophic consequences for Scotland quite funny. But I have to say that, really, the only reason they'd put a tick in the "McYes" box is that they have an almost religious belief that the English are fundamentally terrible. And there's the problem. Belief, I'm afraid, is the shore on which the waves of reason break and die.
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Don't join a gym. Come to work on my farm
By Jeremy Clarkson (Sunday Times, Jan. 31)
Dry January went well. Sales of wine increased by a third and of beer by nearly a half. And that's just what people drank while they were making cocktails. Tequila sales rocketed by 56 per cent and rum was up by a whopping 64 per cent.
I understand this philosophy and employed it myself in the first lockdown. Every evening, as the sun sank over the beech trees into yet another soundless crimson goodbye, I'd open a chilled bottle of rosé and sit listening to the wood pigeons until I decided that what I needed most of all was a mojito. So I'd sway around the kitchen garden, collecting mint, and then, to soften the blow on my stomach lining and liver, I'd nibble on fresh watercress from the stream until it was time for a swift Baileys and bed. God, they were wonderful days. Quiet days. Happy days.
However, they did take their toll. When we were allowed back into the world, I was so fat I looked like Ayers Rock on a unicycle.
I couldn't bend over to do up my shoelaces, I walked as though I'd had a trouser accident and my knees ached constantly from the sheer effort of keeping my landmark-sized torso upright. Which is why, when this lockdown started, I adopted a different strategy.
This time I decided I'd emerge at the other end a new man.
A better man. People would stop me in the street assuming I was Iggy Pop or Willem Dafoe. I'd be like those fell-farmer chaps you see on Countryfile who are 95 years old but can still run up a Scottish mountain while carrying a sheep. In short, I would replace booze with exercise.
If you go to a gym, you pick things up and you put them down and you look at yourself in the mirror and then you go home. Whereas if you go and do proper old-fashioned farming, with proper old-fashioned tools, you come home at the end of the day having achieved something.
And don't say, "But I haven't got a farm," because, let's face it, you haven't got a gym either. You pay to use someone else's, and if you pay me I'll let you come to Diddly Squat and help me chop logs.
Actually, this may be a neat solution to the financial problems caused by dwindling agricultural subsidies. Farmers can rent axes to attractive young avocado enthusiasts and send them of finto the woods.
Now is the best time of year, because the seeds are in the ground and it's too wet and windy to do any spraying. Farmers, therefore, are forced to turn their attention to muscle-building maintenance, mending gates, replacing rotten fence posts and repairing walls that the badgers have knocked down. So if your name is Arabella or Camilla and you really want some taut abs, send me a cheque for a hundred quid and I'll set you to work.
To make sure the idea worked, I decided to do hedge trimming. Normally I use an enormous and ugly machine fitted to the back of my tractor, which goes through a hedge and everything in it like a power drill through a bag of muesli. That's why we have to trim hedges now, before the birds start nesting.
This time, however, I'd be doing it manually. I therefore needed a tool of some sort, and that was good news, because it meant a run to StowAg, which is the best shop in the universe. If you want something ugly and practical and farmerish, this is where you go. If this place wore a shirt, it'd be Viyella, and if it had shoes, they'd be as stout as they were brown.
I was distracted at first by the pig troughs and horse buckets and meaty-looking chainsaws, but eventually I found myself among the branch-cutters. There were many to choose from, but I'm a man who equates weight with quality, so I went for the heaviest.
Back at home I pulled on my gym kit: a tweed coat with 20 12-bore cartridges in each pocket, and a pair of wellies. And off I went into the big green, to trim a hedge that in the past year had enveloped a little-used gate.
Here's how it works. You find a branch that has grown over the gate, follow it back into the hedge, insert the cutting tool and squeeze the handles. Then you grab the severed branch and, after the thorns have torn chunks out of your hands, you walk back to the farm, get in the car and go back to StowAg to buy some sturdy work gloves.
Soon I was hard at it. Bending, stretching, squatting and squeezing with all my strength to go through the bigger branches. My arms ached from the effort of lifting my overly heavy tool, my glutes were throbbing and my heart was beating 19 to the dozen. It was minus 1C out there, but my face was red and in my tweed coat I had moob sweat. I also had a pile of branches and, most importantly, a fully functioning gate. Can Joe Wicks say that after one of his workouts? Can Mr Motivator?
That afternoon I decided to knock in some fence posts, and that's even better. Again, there's a machine that can do it very simply; you just sit in the warmth of the tractor and push a button. But, again, I elected to go old skool and used a fence-post knocker. It's like a section of steel drainpipe, sealed at one end, with handles attached on either side.
Operating it is easy. You position the pipe over the post and, summoning all your strength, use the sealed end as a giant hammer. I've seen some fairly brutal-looking workout equipment in gyms, but nothing gets close to this. Using a Force USA Monster G6 power tower is like angling on the Shropshire Union Canal. Building a fence is deep-sea fishing for marlin. It's why you will never see a fat fencing contractor.
I did two posts and my arms had had it. They hung by my sides as if they had been filled with zombie spice. And I still had the long trudge up what feels like the steepest hill in England back to my farm, with all that lead in my pockets and with mud-caked wellies that weighed 200lb each.
That night I was feeling so righteous and so full of fresh air and so healthy that I didn't want any wine or beer. I didn't even want a mojito. Instead I drank water from my spring and, using bread that had been made from my own wheat, made a tomato and ham sandwich.
I've always seen my farm as many things: a place of great beauty, a fun business and, if I'm honest, a good way of passing on wealth to my children without the taxman getting involved. I never really saw it as a wellness spa, though. But that's what it has become. And I recommend it because, like I said at the start, dry January went well. I enjoyed it.
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And here's the Sun column: "Big machines like Concorde and B-52 bombers are triumphs of engineering and they deserve to be saved"

Easy on the eye, rather tougher on the wallet: The Clarkson Review: Peugeot e-208
By Jeremy Clarkson (Sunday Times, Nov. 01)
The problem with the Tesla, and all the other electric cars from Jaguar, Porsche and BMW, is that they're trying to be cars. When, of course, they are not cars. They are auxiliary transport solutions.
I'm sure it would be possible to make an electric dog that could be programmed to bark at burglars and lie by the fire on chilly evenings. But would it be an actual dog? Would you want to tickle it behind its ears and take it for walks? No.
According to a dictionary on Google, a car is "a road vehicle, typically with four wheels, powered by an internal combustion engine and able to carry a small number of people". And the key in that is "internal combustion engine". Replace it with an electric motor and what you're left with is a module for moving around. Not a "car".
A fridge freezer is not powered by internal combustion, which is why you have not given yours a name. There are no magazines called What Fridge Freezer? or Performance Fridge Freezer. There is no sadness when you have to throw your fridge freezer away and buy a new one. You do not talk with friends in the pub about the latest innovations in the world of fridge freezers, and no one meets on a Sunday morning to reminisce about classic fridge freezers of yesteryear.
The engine is a car's heart and soul. It's where the personality comes from. Take it away and what you're left with is a husk.
It's been argued that soon everyone will be using electric transportation husks, and that cars will suffer the same fate as horses when people stopped using them as tools. They'll become playthings for enthusiasts, stabled in heated garages, hacked out on sunny days for fun. And raced occasionally by tiny men.
But this isn't happening. People maybe growing increasingly concerned about the world's unusual weather, yet, despite all sorts of financial incentives, electric models account for a small proportion of the UK car market.
That's because the car-makers have got it into their heads that an electric car should be like a proper car. Only more expensive. And, as a result of their limited range and problematic "refuelling", a damn nuisance. A friend of mine drove her Tesla to the south of France this summer and spent so long sitting in cafés while it charged up that, when she arrived in Antibes, she weighed more than it did.
I've said for a while now that electrically powered transport husks should be modelled on the simple little yellow Jeep your kids had when they were small. One-wheel drive. And no need for brakes because it could do only 3mph. Happily, Citroën seems to have realised this and has launched a model called the Ami, which is now revolutionising the way people move around Paris.
It does not pretend to be a car.
It doesn't even try to look like one.
It's a box with four wheels, a small electric motor and a plastic moulded interior that will be familiar to anyone who has used the bathroom in a HotelF1 room.
As a result of all this the French government does not label the Ami a car. It deems it to be a quadricycle, which means it can be driven by 14-year-olds if they have a moped licence. Is it safe? Compared with a Volvo probably not, but as it has a top speed of just 28mph you'll never really be going fast enough to do yourself any serious damage.
It costs €6,900, or about £6,265, and has a range, apparently, of more than 40 miles. That seems low, but as this is meant to be a city-centre device — a sort of two-seat Boris bike — it's plenty. I think it's a very clever idea, and full marks to Citroën for thinking of it.
Interestingly, however, Citroën's other half, Peugeot, is sticking resolutely to the idea that electric cars should be actual cars but with a different sort of propulsion unit. Which is why it sent round some kind of battery-powered 208 hatchback for me to try.
It's a good-looking little thing, and for a moment I thought maybe Peugeot had tried to reinvent the 205 GTI, but I was in for two disappointments on that front. The first disappointment was on getting in. For reasons I can't understand Peugeot has decided drivers want to look at the instruments over the top of the steering wheel, not through it. This means the wheel is mounted so low I had a real struggle getting my leg under it. And when I finally managed, I couldn't see the instruments at all.
Then came the next disappointment. I pushed the start button and was rewarded with a health-and-safety notice that I couldn't read, partly because I wasn't wearing my spectacles, but mostly because I didn't know it was there. The steering wheel was in the way.
Also, I didn't know the motor hadn't started, because in an electric car there's no aural clue. Nor can you tell when you've turned it off. Although if you try to get out without first applying the handbrake, the Peugeot sounds the sort of alarm you'd expect to hear on a sinking submarine.
Eventually, though, I got everything working and pushed the gearlever backwards twice, which is what you must do to make the car go forwards, and off we went.
To be fair, it's quite a nice little car to drive. The steering is entirely lacking in feel, which is dreary, but it's smooth over even the biggest bumps, it's quiet and, at 8.1 seconds, it's quicker from 0 to 62mph than the original Golf GTI. What's more, it is spacious, has a big boot and is an appealing place to sit.
There are lots of alternatives out there from Renault and VW and Vauxhall (which is a Peugeot as well these days). Honda will also be joining the fray, although its car does at most 137 miles between charges, against the Peugeot's 217 miles, and that's not enough. Which is best? Well, if you have thin legs and are a sucker for good looks, it's probably the little Peugeot.
However, before you rush off to buy one, consider this. Peugeot has done its best to muddy the waters, but, after an hour or two on its website, I reckon that when the £3,000 government plug-in grant has been factored into the equation, the electric GT costs just over £30,000. And you can have the same thing, but with a petrol engine, for about £10,000 less than that.
Plus, of course, to make the batteries for your electrical husk, mining companies in Russia and Canada will be wreaking environmental havoc. Acid rain. Entire river systems ruined. And that's before we get to the problem of child labour in those cobalt mines in Africa.
Yes, it maybe less good for the climate to buy a car with a petrol engine, and you maybe sneered at by your annoyingly right-on children, but at least you end up with a car.
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The moon is awash with cold water. Let's tap it — and pour it on the lunatics dreaming of Mars
By Jeremy Clarkson (Sunday Times, Nov. 1)
Ever since Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan stepped back on board the lunar module Challenger, fired up the rocket and took off from the surface of the moon on December 14, 1972, we have been assured that, one day, man will be back.
John F Kennedy was the first to use lunar exploration as a political tool. "We choose to go to the moon ... and do the other things," the president bellowed, "not because they are easy, but because they are hard." Good speech. Even though we never did find out what he meant by "the other things".
Later, George HW Bush pledged that America would go back to the moon, as did his son George W. A few years after that, Barack Obama announced he wanted Americans to land on an asteroid, and then came Donald Trump, who wanted to build a wall and go to Mars. Which, though Donald probably doesn't realise this, means we have to go to the moon first.
The reason for that is simple. It took only eight days for Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin to get to the moon and back, but — even though they weren't going for long and they weren't taking much with them and their capsule was not much bigger than a Mini Metro — they needed a rocket that was taller than the Statue of Liberty to get them into space; a rocket that used 20 tons of fuel a second at launch and produced more horsepower than 160,000 new Ferraris.
Now. Getting people to Mars would take nine months. So they would have to take all they needed for an 18-month round trip, not counting the time they'd actually spend in the freezing hell of the red planet.
And think about that. When you go to the beach for two weeks, your suitcase is so heavy you can't even carry it. They would need enough lavatory paper, blankets, washing powder, spare clothes, food, shampoo, sanitary products, Jack Reacher books, phone chargers and bedding to last for more than a year.
And, because we are way beyond the idea of going to other planets to leave flags and footsteps, they would also have to take a ton of scientific equipment to make the journey worthwhile. They would, therefore, need a spaceship so big they'd require a rocket the size of Africa to get it off the ground. And, the fact is, we don't have one like that.
Rather than wait for such a thing to be developed, which would take about 50 million years, it would be much better to set off from the moon, which has only a sixth of the Earth's gravity. So, to break free and get on your way, even if you were in a ship the size of an articulated lorry, you would only need the sort of whizz-bang rocket that Standard sold you on Bonfire Night.
That's why the discovery last week of water on the bright side of the moon is so important. I have no idea how the men who went there 51 years ago missed it, or how it's never been spotted by the Hubble, but whatever — boffins flew a specially modified jumbo jet high above almost all the water vapour on Earth and a telescope mounted in the aircraft's open door spotted it. Tons of the stuff. A veritable moon river. More water than you'd find in the whole of the Kennet and Avon canal.
So now astronauts could take off from Earth and go to the moon, which we know is possible. And there they could collect all the water they'd need for the onward journey. And I've just thought of something else. They could even use solar energy to convert it into rocket fuel.
But what about using the water to grow stuff? Hmm. That's trickier. Last year the Chinese announced they had landed a capsule on the far side of the moon and that the potatoes, fruit-fly eggs and rapeseed inside it had all died. This was not surprising. Rapeseed is hard enough to grow on Earth.
But they did say that the cotton seeds had begun to sprout, giving hope that the astronauts would be able to grow their own bedsheets and trousers. Sadly, though, the next day, the Chinese scientists were forced to admit the cotton had died as well. Which isn't surprising, given the temperature on this part of the moon is as low as -173C.
Anyway, all this means we are a long way from growing cows up there, or hens. Or anything.
It seems to me there are other issues too. Because in order to launch a spaceship from the surface of the moon, you would need a tower with retractable gantries, and lots of hoses, and a factory to make the fuel and a hotel where visiting astronauts could stay while preparing for the second leg to Mars. In short, you'd need a moon base.
We already know we don't have the power to get a few gallons of water up there, so how do we transport what's basically the whole of Cape Canaveral and Houston?
And how do we pay for it? It costs as much as $100,000 to blast a kilogram of mass into space, according to Nasa, so each lamb the astronauts ate up there would cost about $2m. Even a laptop would be 80 grand.
We couldn't possibly afford it, and even if we could, we don't have the technology to make it feasible. Or the will, because if somebody died in training, you just know there would be deafening calls to scrap the whole thing.
It isn't going to happen, then. We are not going back to the moon and we are not going to Mars, and America's presidents should learn to accept that so they can concentrate instead on doing "the other things" that Kennedy talked about.
Such as inventing an iPhone cable that doesn't become all tangled up seconds after you've folded it neatly and put it in your office drawer.
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And here's the Sun column: "Death may be natural…but ruining lives by mistake isn’t"

*So, You’re getting rats? Congrats!**
this is a small guide to rats, if you have anything to add please feel freee to do so kindly in the comments, Im hoping this will help newbie owners or people considering rats
Rats are basically dogs x cats but small and live shorter (can’t have to much of a good thing) they’re extremely smart, Affectionate, sensitive, and a lot of effort .
First things first, where are you getting them from? You better Not say a petstore. The best places to get rats are breeders that aim for perfect health not just cuteness. Heavily research the breeder you’re looking into adopting from, do they use proper terminology? Can you see pictures of the parent rats? Are they Fancy Rat certified? Pet stores get all of their animals (not just rodents) from abusive, negligent and awful animal mills, and you aren’t “saving them” by buying them, I know it’s sad but by doing that you’re supporting an abusive industry. Here is an article: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjX35XFkoHqAhWvQxUIHcLVB2QQFjAMegQIAxAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjazzeduprattery.weebly.com%2Fpet-shops-vs-breeders.html&usg=AOvVaw1bmqXcEsIBKjH2YNuWw7qC
Here is a guide to finding a good breeder: https://azulinerattery.wordpress.com/identifying-reputable-rat-breeders/?fbclid=IwAR3z62y84_AcU8xcnkU3arm5hm4aBNKLtdUGQkPfFfmd-1NzohYNBN2q44Y
They need big cages, and tall ones too, Critter Nations are popular in the US so find something like that if you can, I like The Little Pet Warehouse but they’re UK based. Never use tanks, all rats are born with a condition called Mycoplasma (Myco for short) and so they have extremely sensitive respiratory systems and tanks have little to no ventilation. Also try to make sure the platforms in the cage (if it comes with any) are solid plastic, it’s alright if not but wood will hold pee and ammonia and stink really fast, and bar platforms could cause bumblefoot or sprains.
Because of Myco, never use candles, incense, smelly sprays or perfumes, and keep them in a well ventilated but not directly breezy area (breezes can dry out their respiratory systems and cause a Myco flare up), signs of a URI (upper respiratory infection) are:
Wheezing/shortness of breath
Significant amount of porphyrin (red eye bogies, normal in small amounts when they wake up or if they’re old, they usually groom it off)
Sneezes/coughing/hiccups that last longer than an hour
Most rats will experience a URI in their lifetime , so be prepared for the Exotic Vets bills because they easily reach £500+.
Rats are prey animals , so if you have any cats, dogs, or loud kids around make sure they cannot access the room the rats are in or the cage is out of reach, stress can be deadly to small animals. The same goes for vacuums, if you have to vacuum I suggest putting the rats in a carrier, and moving them out of the room for as short amount of time as possible whilst you vacuum to prevent stressing them out. Never let your cats/dogs “play” with your rats, especially unsupervised, you’ll have at the bare minimum a traumatised rat.
Rats can stink , especially boys, they like to scent mark and if they’re unneutered will produce an oil called “buck grease” on their fur, a musty oil that most rat owners love or hate. Never use scented things to cover this up, open a window, attempt to litter train (that’ll come up later) them to reduce soiling their hammocks, and possibly invest in a HEPA or a non-ionising air purifier. Don’t go manic cleaning the cage from top to bottom because it stinks, they will get stressed trying to scent mark way more and it’s a huge cycle. Also, wood holds ammonia and pee smells so try to avoid it where possible. To clean you can use a reptile safe spray, or a 50/50 distilled white vinegar and water solution.
Never use Cedar or dusty beddings . As previously mentioned rats are sensitive boi’s/gorls, Pine & cedar have toxic pheromones, and dust can also cause a lethal URI, cedar can never be used as even heat won’t removes the fumes, but If you are dead set on using a pine Bedding, make sure it is kiln dried and dust extracted- dust extracted goes for all beddings.The best bedding is Auboise (or at least it has the most praise) it’s a dust extracted hemp based loose substrate used for horses but very popular in the rat community. However you should note, rats are all different and where some may love fleece, others may love hemp, others may detest hemp and much prefer kiln dried and dust extracted pine, it’s up to you and your rats!
litter training , rats are really smart and can be taught to be litter trained. You can purchase a litter box on amazon, make sure you can get one that attached to the bars or they’ll flip it and that’s not a fun situation. I suggest getting 2-4, one for the bottom and one for the top, if your cage is huge then one for every back corner. Checkout the Litter on Vetuk.co.uk , they have some amazing ones, I know you aren’t in the UK though so find one you like and find it on amazon. To encourage them to pee in there too, add in a smooth flat rock about 1’3 the size of the rat, they scent mark rocks like crazy. But expect some accidents!
now, what should you feed them? , never use pet-store mixes/museli, it promotes selective eating and has dried corn in often, which is toxic to rats (so is alfalfa, which some mixes have, always avoid this). Science selective, Mazuri and Oxbow are the best, pellets should make up 80%-90% of your rats diet, the rest should be fruit/veg, eggs, pasta and mealworms as treats or extra nutrients (baby rats= 18%-20% protein, adults= 14%-18%, too much could cause stroke, seizures and Tumors so make sure to check the protein % of your pellets of choice) however, always avoid Kaytee food The food brand Kaytee has been linked to sudden death and cancer in rats, so avoid it at all costs. you can also make your own mix but that’s hard and can be expensive and I’ve never done it do I can’t talk on that. Depending on your rats size, they need 12g-20g of pellets each daily, and females should weigh 250g-450g, males should weigh 450g-600g, so try to weigh them weekly or so so that you can make sure they’re eating the proper amount and if they’re sick you know sooner because they may have drastically lost weight that you didn’t see. Feeding them in a bowl can also get boring and lead to them gaining weight a bit faster, try scatter feeding or using a foraging wheel instead! You cat just throw and hide the pellets instead of putting them in a bowl, rats are natural scavengers/foragers so it’s great stimulation for them, and/or get a foraging wheel to attach to the cage instead of a bowl so they have extra enrichment. Rats may get bored of just pellets, so make sure to add some fun treats or change the pellets you use as often as possible! Here is a guide to what they can and can’t eat: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjxsujZkYHqAhVOhlwKHXPhCB4QFjABegQIChAF&url=https%3A%2F%2Fkb.rspca.org.au%2Fknowledge-base%2Fwhat-should-i-feed-my-pet-rat%2F&usg=AOvVaw3_FtBUnl3neh4WBu_7jRZa
rats should have a free roam area, or at least 1 hour of playtime , if you can, set up a play pen on the floor with tubes, teepees and toys and play with them for at least 1 hour a day in there, they’d be elated, but if that isn’t possible for you, sofa snuggles are just as enriching! Rats also need lots of things to do in their cage, foraging toys, hammocks, tubes, bells, ropes etc, if you decide to invest in a wheel you’ll need a 14” diameter for a female and 16” for a Male, Tic Tac wheels are the best. Any smaller and itll curve your rats spine and could cause issues, however most males prefer them to sleep on rather than use and free-roaming is much more effective exercise.
fun things to do with your rats :
Pea fishing - get a shallow dish filled with water and put a handful of cooked peas in it (or if it’s hot weather, frozen peas) and they’ll have so much fun fishing them out
Training - you can train your rats to spin, come when called, jump into your hands and even play soccer! Check out Shadow The Rats Training videos.
Snuggles - literally who doesn’t like snuggles.
D.I.Y Toys. (credit to: u/_apfelsaft_ )
This is a really good guide, this ought to be stickied! I am going to look into some of your suggestions
Some more ideas for fun things to do:
Things to gnaw on - little gnaw toys, apple tree branches, dog toys
Putting treats inside folded up toilet paper tubes
Put treats inside scrunched up paper
Putting things on string (apples, cheerios etc) and watch them try to grab them
Drilling holes in bottle caps, putting them together in a chain and putting peas inside
Cardboard boxes for them to climb around inside
extra tidbits of information :
You don’t need to bathe your rats. And if you do never use soaps or shampoos etc, even if it is made for rats or babies don’t use it. The fumes could cause a URI or irritate their skin and they’re extremely clean animals. Just some warm water is fine if they’re absolutely stinkin.
Make sure to cover any wire/metal barred platforms in the cage with fleece or a bath mat, otherwise this can cause bumblefoot or they can break/sprain a toe/foot. Don’t use woolly or loose-thread fabrics as this could rip off a nail, always use fleece or tightly woven blankets.
If there is no blood in a fight, it isn’t an aggressive fight. Often rats will fight loudly and dramatically, but if there is no blood there is no foul.
If their head fits through the bars/something you’re putting them in, so will their whole body, don’t let your rats escape!
Always support them when holding, dont let them dangle, support the butt don’t hold them with one hand around the upper chest and let them wiggle, and never hold them by the tail.
They will likely get mites at some point, “Spot-On” for animals works well and saves an expensive (and useless) trip to the vets! ((If it doesn’t work or its a severe case please go to your exotic vet))
**Always get them in 2+ groups, 3 rats+ is the best but 2 is absolutely the minimum, they are social creatures and you can’t be a rat for them, they will get very depressed and possibly sick if just kept alone**
Check out: Emiology, Isamu Rat Care, The Rat Guru and Shadow The Rat on YouTube. RatRations.co.uk , Cozypets
I hope this helped you!
If anyone can add or change anything please comment and I’ll edit it!

All Prince Andrew's woes can be blamed on the bottle: he never has one in his manicured hands
By Jeremy Clarkson (Sunday Times, Dec. 20)
Like everyone else in Britain, I've been completely ungripped all week by the stories about whether or not Prince Andrew had sex with Virginia Roberts. We have been treated to all sorts of lurid tales about what he allegedly got up to, and the suggestion is that he is a serial offender who roams the planet, in private jets that we paid for, in search of inappropriately young women.
Well, I'm sorry, but I don't believe that. I've seen Andrew at various parties over the years and it's very easy to spot what his problem is: he doesn't drink.
The people who arrive at these parties sober make small talk about house prices and schools, and then, after a few sherbets, they move on to gossip and noisily expressed opinions, and then, after a few more sherbets, they're fighting in the flowerbeds, dancing on the tables and suddenly finding the hostess irresistibly attractive.
Non-drinkers have to pretend to go with the flow, but, unguided by alcohol, they almost always get the timing wrong. So they arrive, leap onto the table and then, after some noisily expressed opinions, goose the hostess before sitting down for a quiet chat with the person next to them about how house prices have skyrocketed in their bit of Somerset.
This is Andrew's problem. We've read about his antics and we imagine he's a boorish, goggle-eyed halfwit. He probably is. But his main problem is that he's second-guessing what he should be doing. It's not instinctive for him, because he's guided through life by water. Same as the Torrey Canyon, and the Titanic, and the Exxon Valdez.
There's another issue too. As we all know, he is accused of sweating over a young lady in the nightclub Tramp, but he says this is impossible because he was at a pizzeria in Woking that day.
Somehow, though, the Daily Mail's Woodward and Bernstein have discovered that, actually, he was at home having a manicure.
I'm sorry — a what? I've looked it up and it turns out that a manicure is a process where someone softens the skin on your hands before shaping your nails and removing your "cuticles". You then pay them for this.
It's strange, but I'm now 60 years old and never once in my entire life have I thought, "Right. I've got a bit of spare time today, so I shall ask a young lady to come round and reorganise my hands."
I think there's something deeply sinister about male grooming. I watch all those aftershave advertisements that pollute the television at this time of year, and they're all the same. There's a Vespa and a horse and a girl in a cloak and, for no reason at all, a voiceover in French. And afterwards you're left thinking, "What was that all about?"
I'll give you a simple rule. If you trust everyone in life, you will be let down from time to time. If you trust only people who wear aftershave, you will be let down always. Because people who wear aftershave are mad. They must be, because who in their right mind thinks, after shaving, "Right. That's good. But it would be better if I made my face hurt briefly"?
It's the same story with people who colour-coordinate their clothing. It has often been said that if you want something done, you should give the job to a busy man. I'd go with that. Which is why you should never give a job to a man whose shoes match his tie. Because he's had time in his day to think about that, which means he will forget to post the important letter you gave him.
And then there's hair. I get mine cut at a barber in St James's because I can be in and out in less than 10 minutes. And because no one asks if I would like some "product" in it.
What is product? And why doesn't it have a name? We don't wash our dishes in product, or go to the fish and chip shop for product, and no one ever said, "Pint of your finest product, please, barman." But that's what weird men call the stuff they put in their hair.
I've been online to see what's in product, and it seems mostly to be butter. Unless you buy it from the Body Shop, in which case it's somehow "cruelty-free" butter. But, either way, I can't imagine how shallow a man's life has to be before he decides to rub a packet of Lurpak into his barnet.
It's possible that male grooming may be a consequence of not drinking. Because if you can't fill your spare time by going to the pub or opening a bottle of wine, you're going to come up with all sorts of damn fool ideas.
I know quite a few recovering alcoholics, and all of them are incredibly well groomed. Even when they pop out for the papers on a Sunday morning, they look like Roger Moore. One always smells of lavender. Another looks like a GQ cover star.
And let's not forget the much-missed and famously sober A.A. Gill, who could, and often did, while away a whole day doing nothing but touching cloth. And I don't mean touching it in the way he used to when he drank. I mean touching it. Feeling it. Moaning. Imagining what it would be like if it were turned into a pair of trousers.
Those who do drink will, I'm sure, be worried that if the lockdown continues much longer, we will be facing the very real possibility that we will damage our livers and catch diabetes.
But what is the alternative? If we give in to our fears, our lives will become empty and we will lose the ability to socialise properly.
And then, with all the free time we've been gifted, we'll end up having manicures and going to a Woking pizzeria before dancing the night away and then stopping off at a mate's home in Belgravia for a bath.
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I've just the bird for your tiny festive lunch: Red tape has taken turkey off the menu in my shop but I'm hatching alternative plans
By Jeremy Clarkson (Sunday Times, Dec. 20)
The muddle-headed progressives in the left-wing media exploded with joy recently as they explained that farmers will soon be getting government subsidies only if they build down-filled igloos for the newts and knit snazzy jumpers for the trees.
They went on to say that farmers affected by this include Sir Dyson, Mrs. Queen, the Duke of Westminster and Prince Khalid bin Abdullah Al Saud. And they're right. These people will be affected. But so will thousands of others who have just endured the worst farming year in living memory, thanks to the weather. And who now, thanks to Brexit and this subsidy business, face ruin.
This is what neither of the people who read lefty newspapers understands: that some farmers have Range Rovers and spend half the year spraying their subsidy cheques into Val d'Isère's cheese fondues, but the vast majority have to hold their trousers up with baler twine and burn their children at night to keep warm.
And what the lefties also can't understand, because they're too busy deciding whether to go to the women's lavatory or the men's, is that when England's farmers can no longer grow barley because in a climate-obsessed culture it just isn't financially viable, brewers will simply get what they need from Argentina, where there are fewer rules. Which means we haven't solved the environmental issues. We've just exported them.
Simple truths like that seem not to bother the bleeding hearts, though. They explained that farmers who didn't like the cuts in subsidies could sell their land to the poor, who of course are much better at everything than the rich.
Well, I've got bad news for you down there in Hackney and Islington. I shall not be selling my farm to a Palestinian refugee or anyone else for that matter. And, to make you even more angry, I shall remain in business by deploying the only thing I learnt at my very expensive public school: how to take a perfectly straight and simple rule and bend it so that it looks as if someone's spilt a bag of hairgrips into a bowl of Alphabetti spaghetti. "That's not a nicotine stain on my fingers, sir. It's potassium permanganate."
To limber up for this assault on the civil service and the left and George Useless at the bloody environment department, I'm going to try a new thing in my farm shop at Christmas, which is: not selling turkeys.
I do not keep turkeys, because they are even harder to feed than your wheat, gluten and dairy-intolerant teenage daughter who's just become a vegan. All they'll really eat are cherry trees and sunflower seeds and oats, but only if it's all dry and no other birds have stood on it.
After you've kept your turkey warm and entertained and out of the wind for 26 weeks, you will have to kill it, and this is where the government steps in. Because you can't just hit it with a brick or shoot it in the face. You have to stun it first, by breaking its neck, unless it weighs more than 5kg, in which case you must electrocute it. And you are allowed to kill only 70 birds a day. No, I don't know why either.
It makes little difference to me, because although I have a licence to drive a car and another that allows me to operate a shotgun, I don't have one that lets me sell you one of my own turkeys in my own shop.
Not that you're going to want a turkey anyway this Christmas, because you'll be eating your lunch in a tiny group of three or four. And one's bound to be a vegan. And the other's going to be bird-intolerant. So it'd be silly to cook something the size of a blue whale.
What, then, is an alternative? What am I legally allowed to sell you that you might actually want to buy? A crow? A badger? A dragonfly? This is where you have to get creative. This is where you have to look at the rulebook and spot what's not there. And who better for inspiration than the French?
For centuries people all around the world have cooked bread and cows and fish, but the French decided that a small bunting called the ortolan would be more to their taste. So they tried it and then thought, "Mmm, yes, but would it be better still if we caught it in a net and then put it in a box for two weeks, where the darkness will cause it to gorge on millet until it's dripping in fatty goodness?"
And, having decided to do this, they reckoned that they should kill it by drowning it in armagnac, and then, after plucking it, they'd pop it under the grill for eight minutes and serve inside a buttered potato. Oh, and people would eat it while wearing a large napkin on their head.
In any normal country the people would rise up and say, "That's stupid," but in France everyone said, "That's brilliant," and I'm afraid they have a point. Ortolan is, by far, the nicest thing I've ever put in my mouth. When you bite into it the bones are soft like a sardine's. And the taste is like foie gras on a bed of — how best to describe it?
Songbird, I guess.
Sadly, however, even though President Mitterrand loved the bird so much he insisted he had one for his last meal, by the late 1990s it had become so rare in France that serving it in restaurants was banned.
The end of the story? Nope.
Because now, if you know where to look, restaurants will sell you a nicely buttered potato for €90. And you get, free, a bunting in it. "But, monsieur l'inspecteur, we are not selling ze bird.We are giving it away. It clearly says so on ze menu."
This, then, is what I'll be selling in my farm shop this Christmas: potatoes full of golfinches and blue tits. It's bending the law, I know, but it'll be good practice for when the lefties and their new hero in No. 10 try to turn the whole country into one big picnic site full of litter louts and wasps.
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And here's the Sun column: "Flat owners are being left to pay a high price for the Grenfell Tower horror"

4 Hands
All I could think to myself was “Fuck, No parking.” A hundred or more cars lay in front of me with the kind of organization you come to expect from used car lots and repair centers. Still, given the number of businesses listed in one business park, you’d think there would be one damn real parking lot. But no, I was forced to parallel park my 2010 Mercedes between two large work trucks. As I stepped out of the right side of my car I was careful to check to see that more cars weren’t coming down the narrow pathway. I was still getting used to cars coming down the left side of the road since moving to the UK for work. Driving really wasn’t that hard, it just takes your brain time to readjust to how weird things look after leading a whole life the other way everyday.
I couldn’t even see where I was supposed to be going. Online the Map search lead to a street view of an auto-garage. I would have assumed it was all a scam if the website for the massage parlor hadn’t looked so professionally done. I mean, seriously, internet scams can be pretty complex these days, but a fully functioning website that is updated daily, has working phone numbers and doesn’t ask for any money up front? It had to be legitimate.
To assuage my own anxieties about undercover police officers and being sent to holding cells naked, I did my own research about how legal this all was. As it turns out, at least according to the hundred or more website that I reviewed, nude massage in the UK is legal. Sure, all of the websites use thinly veiled terms like “100% Full body”, “Deluxe Package”, and “Tantric Massage.” It was that last one that really got my attention. I had routinely been getting traditional deep tissue massages for most of my adult life just for muscle soreness and relaxation; but I had never come across this term before. So when I did a browser search for local massage places to get a normal end of the week massage, I was surprised to come across so many establishments offering this service I had never before heard of.
I am ashamed to admit how enticing I found the whole idea. I’ve never in my life considered going to anything like a prostitute. Honestly the very idea of doing something like that actually made me kind of sick and unaroused. But the idea of a beautiful naked woman rubbing up and down by body while giving me my normal deep tissue massage, well, I admit… I found that beyond intriguing. I have never had trouble meeting women at any time in my life and I didn’t feel lonely or any of those other excuses that men give for doing this type of thing. If you get down to brass tax, I was just very excited by the idea and could not see a downside. As usual, my adventurous side won the internal debate. Afterall, I was single, it’s legal, and I had no intention of having sex with or exchanging fluids with anyone. What harm could a hand job do?
I had to send another text to the number from the website. “Where is your place? I just see a parking lot of old cars and a few guys in coveralls.”
“Look for the sign.” They replied after almost 5 minutes.
“What sign? I don’t see anything.” I wrote back hoping that my frustration was appropriately conveyed.
“Down The Alley”, they wrote back. I am willing to admit that the poor grammar and punctuation irked me in my already annoyed state. I was almost starting to feel that this was even more of a mistake and just leaving. But then they wrote again.
“Go straight Ahead. Your Appointment is now.”, again with the weird capitalization. How did they know I should be going straight ahead? I peered around for cameras hoping that my dark sunglasses made me look more casual; but I didn’t see any anywhere. I kept wondering to myself where they could be seeing me from while I started to walk ahead.
As I passed by the men in greasy coveralls, I expected to have that high school type feeling of being judged by people who didn’t even know my name. However, as I did my best to again use my sunglasses to obscure me watching them to see if they were watching me, I was surprised to find that they had hardly taken notice. They went about their business attending to the cars replacing price stickers and buffing hoods. Not a second glance was given.
Sure enough, I proceeded to find an alley ahead of me. There it was lodged between a half burned out autoshop that I was surprised to see was still in business and a dingy used Auto-sales office. No other people could be seen in or around the alley. As I approached the opening to the enclave, the aforementioned sign began to come into view. Who were they kidding? The sign was huge. But despite its size, it was on the ground at eye level with the fence at the far end of the alley. The letters were so large that you could only actually make out the A-S-S of “massage.” The wordplay in this was not lost on me. I don’t see how it could have been lost on anyone with eyes and a basic grasp of the English language. I had no doubts that whoever had set the sign up probably thought it was funny as all hell.
The alley was largely empty other than some leaves and a few pieces of carpet remains that looked like they had been stripped from the floor of one of the old shaggin-wagon vans out in the used car parking lot. At the end of the sidewalk, you had no choice but to make a left out of the alley thanks to the fence the sign was posted on. The sign could now be seen in full view: “Worther’s Naturist Spa and Massage.” It was obvious whoever commissioned the sign had at least thought that it would be the real centerpiece of this business park or possibly of a roadside billboard. It’s sheer size for a small independent business of any kind was almost comical. It actually made me chuckle a little bit when the irony of this huge sign being for a business that likely prided itself on at least a modicum of discretion.
Now I could see the real entrance to the massage parlor. A clean looking beige door which looked unassuming enough. It almost looked more like the entry way to a nice family home, complete with mail slot and sunflower garland hanging from the knocker. The door was however held ajar with the foot of the stair case visible. Walking in I could see a series of documents on the wall including copies of various business licensees and massage certificates. There was even a stack of business cards and some flyers. More and more this was seeming less like something adventurous and sleezy and more like just another afternoon relaxation activity.
I climbed the single flight of stairs and immediately came upon another plain unmarked door. The door was visibly locked from the other side with a deadbolt in place; but there was a call bell to the right of the frame with a small hand written sticky note saying “Ring For Entry. Masks Must be Worn.” Nothing about this seemed unusual. Any business these days that cared even an iota for their customers or their reputation required masks during the pandemic and that was even before the government mandate. This felt like just another thing that I could allow to ease me into a feeling of normalcy.
I rang the bell and allowed thirty seconds that felt like 5 minutes to pass. Ultimately, I had to ring three or four times before I finally heard rustling behind the door. The man behind the door swung it open hard enough to almost hit himself in the face with the edge of the door.
“Are you Mr. Calvin? The polite gentlemen from our text messages with an appointment this afternoon at 1:00pm?”, he asked with an almost insulting amount of formality.
“Uh… Yes, I am. And you can just call me Calvin.”, I replied sheepishly.
“My apologies. I assumed someone with such a business-like manner via text message would prefer to be called by their surname.”, he replied. I honestly thought he at this point he might be faking his British accent. Not that I doubted he was British given his tall thin frame, balding white hair, long face, and hooked nose that seemed to be the stamp of any man born in the UK before 1965. No, it just seemed like he was being intentionally theatrical, probably as some ongoing joke at my expense. Of course, he was just referring to my nervous texts setting up this appointment. I admit that I was probably the wrong side of terse asking flat one-to-two-word questions like “Time available?”, “price?”, and “Options?”. So, sue me, I was nervous.
“Yeah… sorry. You probably hear this all the time. But this is my first time doing anything like this. I wasn’t sure how to ask the questions that I wanted to or even if I was allowed to say certain things.”, I blurted out probably more anxiously than I intended.
“No problem, mate. A lot of you Americans get skittish your first time taking advantage of British hospitality. Nothing to be ashamed of.”, he retorted now sounding suddenly relaxed and jovial.
“Well… thank you. When do we uh… get started.?”, I said feigning relaxation.
“Whenever you would like. All of our masseuses are ready all the time… as long as they aren’t with another client that is. Remind me, you wanted a 60-minute Tantric massage?”, he asked.
“Yes, that was what the website said. It caught my eye and seemed like the right price. £120 I believe is what it said.”
“Oh yes, one of our most popular offerings. Will literally blow your top over that one.”, he said with what had to be the driest sense of humor in the entirety of the United Kingdom. “But have you seen any of our other offerings?”
“Just what was on the website.”, I replied.
“Well, let me test your resolve then. What if I told you that for a mere 50 quid more you can double your experience?”
“What your offering BOGO half off deals today?”, I snorted.
“No, mate. One massage. Two masseuses. Four hands. 20 fingers. Double, well… everything. How does that sound?”, he said with the first degree of salesmanship he had displayed thus far. And, I’ll be honest, what a sale. I had already come this far in the name of feeling adventurous and of course more than a bit horny. It wasn’t like I couldn’t afford a few extra dollars. Money that I would probably waste on fast food and impulse internet shopping. What was the difference at this point?
“I have to say, a good deal is where you find it. Fuck it, let's do it!”, I said with the kind of cheesy bravado that I would have cringed at if I heard someone else talk that way.
“Good choice, my son. You won’t regret it.” He said looking down his hooked nose at me. “Now, go to the other room where you see those lockers. Grab a towel, strip, and go take a quick shower. I promise by the time you are done rinsing your ladies will have the room all ready for you and will come get you.” He gestured to the locker room with the adjacent showers. I nodded, briefly said thank you, and nearly vibrated away in excitement. I was jittery just at the thought of one nude body rub down. Now with this whole unanticipated experience suddenly arising, I could hardly contain myself.
My clothes came off so quickly I probably looked like a teenager in a late-night cartoon about to lose his virginity. I haphazardly shoved them into a locker and grabbed a towel. It was only now that I was totally naked in a new and oddly open location that it dawned on me how empty this place seemed to be despite the man’s references to other clients and multiple masseuses. It was almost believable that he was here entirely alone.
I immediately jumped in the nearest shower and started to rinse. The shower was surprisingly clean given this establishments somewhat seedy location. I take quick showers at the laziest of times, but this probably set the land speed record. As I was getting out of the shower, I caught a glimpse of the first other person I had seen here yet. An older, somewhat rotund man was now back at the lockers. He was stark pale and had the look of someone who probably was on a first name basis with his cardiologist and vascular surgeon. He kept his eyes down the entire time and didn’t even seem to be looking at his own locker much less me. Then I felt a tap on my shoulder.
I turned to see a completely naked woman staring me directly in the eyes. She had big brown eyes that had just a hint of pink in the whites as though she hadn’t slept enough. Her frame was small and pixielike with long black hair up in a centered pony tail coming from top of her head. She was quite pretty in any traditional sense, but you could tell that her makeup was hiding the signs of a life that had been both longer and harder than she wanted anyone to know about. Her large breasts had the slope and angle that only comes from nature. Her waist was narrow compared to her hips. A cursory glance did not reveal a single hair on her porcelain skin anywhere below the eyebrows.
“Are you my 1 o’clock?”, She asked flatly and with unwavering eye contact. Her accent was that sort of eastern European that all Americans just assume is Transylvanian. I got the feeling she was both experienced enough with this to not be even remotely bashful but was also testing me to see if I would take the time to look at her body instead of just maintain eye contact.
“Yes, that’s me. All Showered and ready for my appointment.”
“Good. Follow me, please.”, she said and immediately about faced. Not a trace of jiggle on her frame as she strode away. I wish I could say the same for myself.
I followed her into a hall with three doors on each side. The middle door on my right was wide open. The room appeared totally dark on the inside if not for a series of candles haphazardly lit around the room. There was a clean looking massage table with a series of towels strategically folded upon it in the center of the room. The whole place had that somewhat oppressive aroma of lavender and Teatree oil that accompanies a lot of wellness spas and headshops. I stepped into the room, my towel hung loosely around me.
“Welcome, sir.”, came a voice from the corner suddenly. I whirled to see another young women I hadn’t been able to see in the dark upon walking in. This girl was much younger than the first. She was probably 19 or 20. Her accent was much thicker. Unlike her colleague she was not completely nude. She was wearing a dark black bikini which would have been small even on someone without her clearly augmented bust and hips. I immediately replied hello but she seemed unmoved. It was possible this one didn’t actually speak a word of English. I could see the candle light reflected in her eyes, but it was clear that she was actually attempting to avoid sharing my gaze.
“That is Scarlett. My name is Sophia. We will be your massage today.”, The voice of the first girl came from the door. Her poor grammar highlighting her foreignness despite her minimal accent. “Please remove your towel and lay in bed.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I laid down on my back without delay. As I positioned myself, I saw Scarlett reaching behind her back for her bikini strap. Now she made eye contact with me and had a look of some shame. Sophia chimed in with a smile.
“Please, on stomach for now.”, She instructed. I averted my eyes from Scarlett and flipped over, now feeling my own hint of shame. What a dumb mistake, of course they meant on my stomach. We all knew was coming; but I still paid for a 60-minute massage, damnit. How over eager could I be?
I placed my face down into the divot for it at the end of the table. I felt the table surface indent slightly on both sides with the touch of multiple pressure points. There was whispering in Eastern-European sounding language that I honestly couldn’t hear well enough to understand even if I did speak any languages from that part of the world. Then suddenly a whisper in my right ear, “ We start now.”
Fingernails lightly grazed down my back on both sides. The first pass was a light caress with the unmistakable alternating stroke of 2 coordinated hands. Then suddenly, a biting pain in my back. Ten individual needle points all along my right side followed by a downward rake. I winced hard and all sensation suddenly left my back.
“Too much pressure?”, cooed Sophia into my right ear.
“Uh… Yes. Sorry. Less please.”, I snorted back trying to contain my shock at the now diminishing pain. Of all the stupid things, I instinctually tried to maintain some façade of machismo in front of these two beautiful women. An instinct I think most men have when there is even a hint of sexual activity on the horizon.
“We start again now.”, whispered the squeaking accented voice of Scarlett in my left ear for the first time since her initial greeting. I guess I was wrong about her not speaking another word of English. Maybe she was just shy. With this thought, I felt many fingertips lay into my thoracic spine on both sides. I wondered to myself how a girl who touches naked people for a living, and sometimes lets them touch her, could be shy. For the first time it occurred to me that maybe this wasn’t her choice. Maybe I was contributing to some kind of horrific human trafficking event that was forcing this beautiful young girl to do something she hated for some scumbag gangster’s profit. At that thought, I should have gotten right up off the bed and stormed out. But what I really did was push that thought deep into the recesses of my mind with self-righteous justifications like I could never be so dumb as to even accidentally support something like that.
The pace of their caresses quickened. I heard a squishing sound followed by warm liquid on my back. The stroking of hands became more glossy and smooth. I smelled an unusual but not unpleasant combination of teatree, acidity, and something metallic. I felt a slight burn on my skin that disappeared as quickly as it began.
I felt skin and mounds of flesh press into my back from all sides. The unmistakable sensation of breasts against my back. An electric buzz of excitement filled my whole body. More of that metallic liquid was squirted. Despite my excitement, something about the sensation was not to my expectation. Then it hit me. The skin against mine was cold. Where as it should have been warm in that hot room, this was downright cool. Worse yet, it felt dry despite the puddled oil on my back. This was nothing like what I anticipated from the smooth skin on saw on these two women. I tried to push the thought from my mind and concentrate on what mattered here. I was the center of attention in a room with 2 beautiful naked women, I should be more excited.
I took a deep breath and focused. With my face down in the bed I tried to picture the seductive curves of Scarlett. I couldn’t wait to see her when the time came to flip over. Now the feel of oiled flesh against flesh began to feel stickier and rougher. More finger tips pressed into my skin. For a few moments it felt like another round of deep tissue massage; then a sudden stab of pain like nails into my back. I winced and momentarily cried out, “Excuse me, please watch your nails.”
“Sorry, baby. We will be more gentle.”, came the whispering voice of Sophia suddenly much closer to my ear than I thought. With this, I felt the smooth rub or freshly oiled hands and skin on both sides of my back and thighs. Feeling much oilier now and pleasantly warm, sounds of heavy breathing begin to fill the room around me. This sounded like the kind of heavy breathing I would expect from a lover instinctively trying to tell me what we were doing was working. I smiled to myself, suddenly feeling very relaxed and heavy eyed. I felt hard as a rock; my erection digging into the table somewhat pleasantly. Despite this I felt increasingly sleepy, like the sensation of letting yourself go limp in a warm bath.
The grip of sleep began to take over. My heavy eyelids began to fall in synchrony with my long deep breaths. When open, the floor I looked at through the hole in the table began to fuzz in and out. In addition to the long slow strokes against my skin with intermingling hands, fingers, and breasts… a new sensation started. With increasing frequency a new wet, soft, rough rag ran across my back. It ran in long zigzags up and down my spine. My sleepy mind was unable to fully put into words how it felt. Deep in my blissful haze I assumed they must be slowly cleaning the oil from my back for the part of my massage.
As the moist rag got to the top of my back it neared the spot of that second terrible pinch. I felt a deep burning sensation as the rag circled this area. It felt like sunburn in a warm shower. Despite how unpleasant this was, I was too sleepy and comfortable to speak up. The burning stopped as the rag swept back down by back.
Four hands now laid simultaneously to my whole upper back. The hands remained stationary with deep even pressure. The rough rag continued to run up and down the left side of my back. A lower, more appropriately paranoid part of my brain sent up a thousand warning flags that my conscious brain just could not be bothered to examine too closely. Soft words in that other language came from above me on the right. Sophia’s voice was in a higher whisper now and almost sounded forceful or angry. As soon as her voice stopped on my right, an exacerbated sigh came from my left and the moist rag was removed from my skin. The darkness of the room and the haze in my vision weighed heavy. Through the black and mist, I was acutely aware that I was still hard as a diamond. In the heavy silence since Sophia stopped her hushed demands of Scarlett, I was acutely aware of the aching in my balls and shaft. I was awake enough to still be excited about what I knew was about to happen.
“Baby… turn over now.”, came Scarlett’s voice with an excited, almost demanding tone. The time for whispering had gone. I sluggishly pulled myself into full reality. My relaxed muscles felt heavy and hard to get moving, like the first moments getting out of bed in the early morning. The combination of excitement and forcing myself to move gave me a head rush with some spots in my vision. As I flopped onto my back I strained to see the two gorgeous, nude beauties I had only gotten that first glimpse of when I came in. I had a sense of cool relief as my erection was finally freed from the pressure of the flat table. My eyes still had that flashing blackness overlying the already dark aura of the room as my head rush continued. The shape of the girls started to come into focus.
The two women started to come into grayish focus. Just as the edges of their silhouettes started to become crisp in my vision, Scarlett placed a firm grip around the base of my shaft. A short, deep gasp escaped my lips. The sensation was more shock than sensual. It felt more commanding than anything, like she were grabbing the reigns on a horse. More spots came into my vision. Despite the dimples in my sight, I could now make out a black, haphazard gloss across the both Sophia and Scarlett’s skin. It cut through and divided their black outlines. The smears went clear up over their breasts, across their necks, and splashed across their faces and distorted them oddly.
Trying to focus on these striking visages started to help clear my vision. I could see now that it wasn’t just the dark streaks distorting their forms. Even in the dark room I could see that their unsmeared skin was gray and sallow looking. Beneath the inky blots on their faces, their lips looked too plump with deep cracks and crevices. Their eyes looked somehow both dull and unfocused; but their furrowed brows still conveyed a predatory gaze that made my entire body freeze even my shallow breathing. Their hair still shown smooth and black but now seemed to move in long sleek tendrils. It looked more like independent tentacles than strands of hair. Each breast looked horrifically scarred. If either ever had normal tissue where their nipples should lie, then they had long ago been scratched and torn away. Neither Scarlett or Sophia shifted their eyes from my face as I took them all in. Both of their previously porcelain skinned forms were now riddled with course, jagged black body hairs. The bases of each hair erupted from reddish boils that gave them the appearance of wasp stingers at the ready. As I eyes traced down their individual forms I could see that each of their stomachs was protruding with puffing stretch marks and oddly flat navels.
It was now that they started to move closer to the head if the bed. From my vantage they did not appear to walk but slide forward, never breaking their hungry gaze from me. Everything below their hips was obscured by the edge of the bed. But, as they moved closer a foul, putrid aroma of rot and infection approached my nostrils. This smell was mixed with another smell I recognized. I couldn’t say I have lead a violent life, but I knew the metallic coin smell of blood as well as anyone else. Visible up close now I could see that the dark streaks that covered them were beginning to dry in all too familiar flaking streaks I recognized from years of shaving and paper cuts.
It was Scarlett who hissed out her words now, filled with venom and malice; “This what you came for?”. As she said this she gave a cruel wrenching at the base of my somehow still erect penis. Pain shot through the deep portions of my body, but I couldn’t fight back. I could feel her nails dig into the pubic area above my genitals, piercing the skin lightly. I began to scream, but Sophia covered my mouth and gripped my throat.
“Please, save for the end. You may not have the strength to finish if you waste breath like that. Did you know that when human men are erect, their cock receives almost as much blood as their brain every minute?”, she said with a smirk.
I was now beginning to feel faint again despite my the adrenaline dumping into my blood probably as fast as I was losing it. The world was going dark as I felt another hard, sharp tug on my member. Sophia leaned in close to my face and seemed to make a face between a smile and snarl. Then she just licked her lips and tightened the grip on my throat. Then the entire universe became a far away thing. There was nothing except the blackness and the pain it was slowly replacing.
The first thing I remember after that is the feeling like someone had filled my throat with kitty litter. The next was the realization that I was something resembling alive. I wiggled my fingers and then my toes. I opened and closed my jaw and then my eyes. Everything seemed to be working. Above me was the same plain white ceiling I had seen upon first lying down. I tried to sit up and felt shaky. I had the passing thought that it must have all been a terrible dream. I laughed to myself at the thought of being some deranged Dorothy. Then I saw… and felt... all of the wounds. I was covered in blood. I was covered in deep scratches and cuts from below my ribs down to my mid thighs. There was barely 2 inches if clear skin left anywhere, and I mean ANYWHERE. Everything ached and stung. Some wounds appeared still fresh and oozed small amounts of blood.
The only thing that kept me from screaming was sheer confusion. Right around the time I was starting to panic I heard a voice from the corner of the room.
“You shouldn’t struggle around like that. Likely to pass out.”, Sophia’s voice came quietly but clearly. She sat there on a stool in a satin red bathrobe with her legs held together. She had her held tilted all the way back and seemed to just be staring at the ceiling in a bored sort of way.
“What the fuck is going on!”, I yelled. “What did you do to me?!” Tears began to come into my eyes and down my cheeks. I wanted to lunge at her and shake answers from her. But the image of the last memory she’d given me kept me restrained with fear.
“What? You didn’t care for your massage?”, she replied sarcastically. “That’s a shame. We were so happy to serve a regular client.” With that there was a small knock on the door and it opened a crack.
“Is he awake? Oh good! Mr. Calvin, you’re up!”, the British front desk clerk replied. I just stared at him in reply. I couldn’t find a single word to speak from the swirl going on inside my head.
“Please, you should rest. The first time can be quite jarring for a lot of our customers. And I believe that you have a long ride home.”, he added. Finally, I found some more words.
“What…. THE FUCK… did you do to me!?”, I screamed again. Believing that maybe I would get a better response than I did from that bitch in the corner.
“We got you your massage as requested. Wasn’t it good? Two pretty girls baring their skin for you and enjoying your body. Oh, what fun?”
“What are these bitches? What happened to me? WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?!”, I huffed with barely the strength to stay angry.
“I am just a simple middleman. These fine ladies need clients for their work and young people like yourself want that personal touch.”, he said with a wink. “You see, there was a time when this kind thing had to be done in back alleys and dirty houses where the police may not appreciate our presence. But, as modern tastes and laws have changed, our work has become less dangerous… but we have far more competition. Yes, it seems anyone with an internet connection and a need for some spare cash can make themselves a proper whore these days. And don’t get me started on all of the massage parlors who make use of trafficked people from the east. That just makes me sick to my stomach.”
His manner of speaking of this was so nonchalant that my brain couldn’t make a sensible connection between his words and his tone. His only response to my stuttering and cursing was to stare at me incredulously as though I was the one not making any sense.
“What…What did you do to me?:, I stammered.
“My boy, we made you a loyal customer.”
“FUCK YOU!”, I screamed hoarsely. “You all are going to fucking jail, you sick freak. I am never com..”, I stopped as he spoke up.
“I think you misunderstand. After this little taste I think you will find it is quite hard not to come back every so often… when… The Itch… sets in. These fine ladies are quite good at what they do and our customers almost always find their way back sooner or later. I think the record at this point is about… Oh, 17 days the last time I checked.”, he explained, continuing his matter-of-fact tone.
“15.”,Sophia interjected. She absentmindedly licked the back of her pinky.
“Ah yes. Thank you, darling.”, he replied, smiling.
My heart was starting to race even harder. I felt faint. Somehow I found the strength to slowly stand from the table and start to back away. The two continued to seem downright disinterested. “What makes your think I would ever let any of these sick bitches touch me ever again.”
“Well, you may notice some issues if you don’t.”, he replied
“Issues?”
“Well… first you’ll notice some cravings that most people will find rather detestable. Oh, especially the police if you should act on them. I’d say even the greatest gentleman with the self-control of a saint would find it hard to keep their hands to themselves if they don’t make it here on their own when the mood struck them. And even if you are comfortable acting on those particular sorts of feelings, there will be the other negative effects.”
I just stood there trembling. I couldn’t look him in the eye. I started to shake my head in denial about what was happening.
“To cut this enlightening conversation short,”, Sophia interjected; “You die slowly and painfully if you don’t come back and see me real soon. Just not on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am not here on those days. You can maybe see Scarlett if you want; but I guarantee you won’t feel quite like you got your money’s worth.”
“And why is that, you evil skank?”, I stammered. The force of my heaving breaths was starting to make the pain in my back itch and burn with every movement.
“Because, baby, I got two licks at you. Scarlett only got one. She’s newer here and can be a bit overzealous if she takes too many turns. That’s why we only let her do the group thing… for now. You should be proud though. Neither of us thought you had it in you to give us such a mouthful. Most probably couldn’t have… finished.” With that, Sophia got up to leave. As she stood, she made a pretty obvious point of letting me see under her robe before tying it tight. Her breasts and stomach were still covered in dried blood that I couldn’t see before. “Come back really soon, baby. I’ll love to get my hands back on you anytime.”
Then she was out the door and gone.
“Please, please just tell me what the hell is going on? What is this place? What is she?”, I started to cry. Tears streamed down my cheeks both because I was so deeply, darkly afraid; but also because as soon as Sophia left I started to feel a craving for her to touch me again. It was just a spark, but I already knew it was there.
“I wish I could tell you, sir. I wasn’t lying before. I really am just hired help. I answered an advertisement from the internet, just like you.”
“Is she some kind of a vampire? A Demon? What? Please, if you aren’t one of them; then you can help me. Please help me.” As I said this, I started falling to my knees in front of him. I felt like I was pleading with every cell in my body.
“Be serious, mate. Vampires and demons? This isn’t some kind of fantasy.”

The following essay is x-posted from /Christianity here I figured that its a good idea to spread it far and wide as it gives what I hope is a comprehensive critique of the evils of Marxism.
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Hello all. In light of recent discussions that I have had here along with the political state of the world, I think that it is of the utmost importance for me to demonstrate that at its core, Marxism is inherently antagonistic to the core values and beliefs of Christianity. The goal of this post is not to attack anyone personally but to educate and warn faithful Christians of all persuasions and denominations of the pervasive anti-Christian tenets, goals, practices, and ideologies of Marxism and prominent Marxist leaders, theorists, and thinkers.

First of All, What is Marxism?

At its core, beyond being an economic or political system, Marxism is a materialist ideology and interpretation of world history, conceptualizing all of history as class struggle. It is descriptive as well as prescriptive. It proposes that material conditions of the day, not the ideas of the great men and women of history. Marxism is an atheist ideology in its conception and practice. In a Marxist context, Jesus, his life, his ministry, and his sacrifice upon the cross would not be seen in the context of God sending his only begotten Son, who so loved us, He suffered the worse tortures and humiliations to save and redeem us. Instead, a Marxist sees Jesus as a failed revolutionary, a victim of a class struggle against the ruling powers, See Herzog, William R. Parables as subversive speech: Jesus as pedagogue of the oppressed. Westminster John Knox Press, 1994, pg. 104 or Moreland, Milton. "The Jesus Movement in the Villages of Roman Galilee." Oral Performance, Popular Tradition, and Hidden Transcript in Q 60 (2006): 159.. This understanding, so rooted in the world, so narrow in its concept, divorces all of the divinity from Christ, and steals the massive weight of His burden and undermines the enormity of His sacrifice.
Furthermore, Marx was a Hegelian, but he took Hegel's dialectic and rewrote it in, atheist, materialist terms, and rejected the idealism of Hegel.
"At the time of Hegel's death, he was the most prominent philosopher in Germany. His views were widely taught, and his students were highly regarded. His followers soon divided into right-wing and left-wing Hegelians. Theologically and politically the right-wing Hegelians offered a conservative interpretation of his work. They emphasized the compatibility between Hegel's philosophy and Christianity. Politically, they were orthodox. The left-wing Hegelians eventually moved to an atheistic position. In politics, many of them became revolutionaries. This historically important left-wing group included Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, Friedrich Engels, and Karl Marx. Engels and Marx were particularly influenced by Hegel's idea that history moves dialectically, but they replaced Hegel's philosophical idealism with materialism"
The Marxists of the Socialist Worker further flesh out Marx's view on Christianity

The most important point for Marx and Engels was that human beings created religion--so religious beliefs must have social causes.
In early societies, humans didn't yet have the means to understand the forces of nature. So they imagined that these forces had a conscious power--inventing human-like gods that governed the wind and the weather, the rivers, the stars and the earth. Modern religions like Christianity likewise contain stories designed to reconcile people to conditions that seem beyond their control.
With the rise of hierarchy and classes in human society, religion became the means for rulers to justify the system that they presided over--often, by declaring themselves gods, or at least in close communication with them. Thus, while Christianity first emerged as the religion of a persecuted minority, it was later transformed into the official ideology of the Roman Empire and numerous other societies since.
This is why the effect of religion is generally conservative, providing a justification for the status quo. But the appeal of religion for the have-nots in society isn't its conservatism, but the fact that it seems to be a solution to the suffering and oppression of this world--in a distant afterlife, but a solution nonetheless.
The only way that masses of people will reject the future imaginary solution offered by religion is if they see a real solution in the here and now--in the form of a struggle that challenges oppression and injustice.

At its best, Christianity to Marx and his disciples is a coping mechanism of the oppressed underclasses, something that may become obsolete after the introduction of Communism. At worst, however, it was something that was false, superstitious, reactionary, and must be destroyed, root and stem.

What do prominent Marxists have to say about Christianity?

To understand the anti-Christian sentiment inherent to Marxism, one need only let the worlds of prominent Marxists speak for themselves.

[Religion] is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

-Karl Marx

when society, by taking possession of all means of production, and using them on a planned basis, has freed itself, and all its members, from the bondage in which they are now held, by these means of production, which they, themselves, have produced, but which confront them as an irresistible alien force, when, therefore, man no longer merely proposes, but also disposes — only then will the last alien force, which is still reflected in religion, vanish; and with it will also vanish the religious reflection itself, for the simple reason that then there will be nothing left to reflect

-Friedrich Engels
Lenin was especially anti-Christian in his views, and as will sadly be shown later, his deeds.

Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism.
Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class.

-Vladimir Lenin
Lenin was particularly hateful of religion. The man didn't mince words:

“Religion is a sort of spiritual booze.”
“there is nothing more abominable than religion,”
“all worship of a divinity is a necrophilia.”

In their influential book The ABC of Communism, Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhensky spoke out strongly against religion. They wrote:

"Communism is incompatible with religious faith"

This book was quite influential, described as "an elementary textbook of communist knowledge." It was among the most read books in the Soviet Union. (Cohen, Stephen F. (1980). Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938. Oxford University Press US. pp. 64–65.) And it is still viewed favorably by Marxists today, as shown in The Socialist Worker.
Bukharin and Preobrazhensky went on to criticize religion and Christianity by extension. They weren't as hateful of Christianity as Lenin, but still viewed it as a false dogma and ultimately sought to extinguish it:

But the campaign against the backwardness of the masses in this matter of religion, must be conducted with patience and considerateness, as well as with energy and perseverance. The credulous crowd is extremely sensitive to anything which hurts its feelings. To thrust atheism upon the masses, and in conjunction therewith to interfere forcibly with religious practices and to make mock of the objects of popular reverence, would not assist but would hinder the campaign against religion. If the church were to be persecuted, it would win sympathy among the masses, for persecution would remind them of the almost forgotten days when there was an association between religion and the defence of national freedom; it would strengthen the antisemitic movement; and in general it would mobilize all the vestiges of an ideology which is already beginning to die out.

The Fruits of Communism

Matthew 7:15-20 is one of the most important passages in the bible, a dire warning from Christ himself. We are warned of false prophets, wolves in sheep's clothing. And how we know a true prophet from false is by their fruits, for a bad tree bears bad fruit.
Marx certainly bears striking resemblance to a prophet. He warns of the imminent collapse of society, the rising, apocalyptic tide of the proletariat destroying the bourgeois for their many sins in a epic battle of the coming world-wide class war as relevatory as Armageddon or Ragnarok. He promises a paradise on Earth that will last forever, a classless, stateless society, an era of justice and peace for all, the end of history. But the poison fruits of communism show that this promise is not to be. Marx is a false prophet, while his ideology promises to deliver heaven, Marxism, time and again brings hell on earth.

Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union

Russia was the first country to fall under the yoke of Marxism and to have its people enslaved by its ideology. Seizing upon the weakness of a country devastated by years of war, with starving people and unpopular monarchy, Marxist revolutionaries launched a civil war. They launched the Red Terror, a brutal campaign of atrocities and reprisals against their perceived enemies to cement their power. Not even supposed allies of Marxism were safe; peasants who were forcibly conscripted into the Red Army who deserted and factory workers who went on strike were brutally executed by the infant Marxist regime. Werth, Bartosek et al. Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression.(1999), Chapter 4: The Red Terror. But particularly egregious were their actions towards Christians, simply for their profession of faith.
In the Soviet Union, tens of thousands of churches were destroyed or converted to other uses, and many members of the clergy were murdered, publicly executed and imprisoned for what the government termed "anti-government activities." An extensive educational and propaganda campaign was launched in order to convince people, especially children and youths, to abandon their religious beliefs. This persecution resulted in the intentional murder of 500,000 Orthodox followers by the government of the Soviet Union during the 20th century. See World Christian trends, AD 30-AD 2200, pp. 230–246 Tables 4–5 & 4–10 By David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, Christopher R. Guidry, Peter F. Crossing (NOTE: They define 'martyr' on p235 as only including Christians killed for faith and excluding other Christians killed)
State atheism was instituted, church property was seized. It became illegal to even question the doctrine of atheism under threat of imprisonment. Froese, Paul (6 August 2008). The Plot to Kill God: Findings from the Soviet Experiment in Secularization. University of California Press. p. 122. Children were made to inform on their parents if they practiced religion at home. See Ramet, Sabrina P. (1990). Catholicism and Politics in Communist Societies. Duke University Press. pp. 232–33.
Along with execution, some other actions against Orthodox priests and believers included torture, being sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals. In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed. In the period between 1927 and 1940, the number of Orthodox Churches in the Russian Republic fell from 29,584 to less than 500. Between 1917 and 1940, 130,000 Orthodox priests were arrested.

War on the Clergy

The exceptional cruelty of the Bolsheviks' actions, methods, and goals were especially sickening and best demonstrates how much they hated Christianity. To see the extents the nascent Marxist state would go to during the civil war and its early administration to see the complete eradication of the Orthodox church as an institution, and the crimes committed against the clergy and laity, we must turn to Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. "A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory, and Practice, and the Believer", vol 2: A History of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1988).
Metropolitan Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky) of Kiev was the first bishop martyred by the Bolsheviks on January 25, 1918. Unfortunately, he will be far from the last. He had consistently opposed the revolution, and he was severely beaten as well as tortured before being shot outside the Monastery of the Caves. Before being shot by his murderers, in a exceptionally Christian manner, he prayed to God for them to be forgiven (pg. 9-10). In the Don region in February 1918 the Reds were killing every priest they could find. (pg. 10) An 80-year-old monk-priest named Amvrosi was beaten with rifle butts before being killed. A priest named Dimitri was brought to a cemetery and undressed, but when he tried to make the sign of the cross before being killed, a soldier chopped off his right arm. An old priest who tried to stop the execution of a peasant was beaten and cut to pieces with swords. In the Holy Saviour Monastery, Red soldiers arrested and killed the 75-year-old abbot by scalping him and beheading him. In the Kherson province a priest was crucified. (pg. 10-11).
Bishop Hermogenes (Dolganyov) of Tobolsk, was killed along with other detainees on 16 June 1918 by drowning. He had organized a religious procession the day after the Tsar had come through Tobolsk on their way to Ekaterinburg (April 28), in which he blessed the Royal family. He was arrested the following week and the Soviets promised to release him for 10,000 roubles, and later 100,000 roubles. When the ransom was collected and submitted, the delegation of notables and clergy that had delivered it were arrested as well and later executed. (pg. 2-3). In Voronezh, seven nuns who had prayed for a White victory in the civil war were reportedly boiled in a cauldron of tar (pg. 11). In Crimea, one priest named Ugliansky was killed by Red forces on grounds that he used green ribbons instead of red ribbons on the church icon lamps. Churches in Simferopol, Feodosia and other parts of the region were desecrated and their clergy were brutally murdered (pg. 3).
Filosof Ornatsky, a priest in Petrograd, was arrested in the spring of 1918 after giving a public requiem for victims of the Bolsheviks. He and thirty-two others were driven to a cliff overlooking the Gulf of Finland, where the priest was allowed to perform a brief funeral service and bless the victims, before they were all shot and dropped into the sea. Archpriest John Vostorgov in Moscow, a famous Orthodox missionary and church activist, preached against the Bolsheviks and as a result he was blackmailed by the Bolsheviks, arrested and executed. He was executed along with Roman Catholic priest Lutoslawski and his brother, two tsarist ministers (N. Maklakov and Alexei Khvostov), an Orthodox bishop Efren, former State Council Chairman Ivan Shcheglovitov and Senator S. Beletsky. Fr Vostorgov conducted a short funeral service and preached to his victims to face death as a sacrifice of atonement, after which each victim came forward to be blessed by Fr Vostorgov and the Bishop; then they were shot. (pg. 3-4)
During the Red occupation of Stavropol diocese in 1918, the Bolsheviks killed at least 52 Orthodox priests, four deacons and four lectors. Priest Alexander Podolsky was tortured and killed for giving a Te Deum service for a Cossack regiment before it attacked the Bolsheviks. When a peasant came to collect his body, the peasant was shot dead on the spot. Fr Alexei Miliutinsky was tortured, scalped and killed for preaching to Red army soldiers that they were leading Russia to disaster and for offering prayers for the Cossacks. Not even left-wing priests were safe, such as Ivan Prigorsky who was taken out of church on Holy Saturday into the street, where Red soldiers cursed him, mutilated his face and then killed him (pg. 5).
Bishop Leontius (von Wimpffen) was murdered along with most of the diocesan clergy in 1919 after he made a sermon that quoted Jesus' words "I was naked and you have clothed me, I was ill and you looked after me" and this quotation was interpreted as an attack against the Bolsheviks (pg. 8).
Bishop Macarius (Gnevushev) of Vyazma, who was beloved by the local population, was arrested as a result of his popularity in the summer of 1918. He was executed along with fourteen others in a field near Smolensk, whom he ministered and attempted to comfort with blessings before their execution. One of the soldiers who executed him afterward confessed on his deathbed that he had killed a saint (pg. 7).
Lenin's decree on the separation of church and state on January 23, 1918 deprived the formerly official church of its status of legal person, the right to own property or to teach religion in both state and private schools or to any group of minors. This order to seize property was carried out with ruthless violence by Red soldiers. They often opened fire on crowds that surrounded churches in an attempt to defend them and on religious processions in protest against Church persecution. Thousands were killed in this way, especially in the spring of 1918. Shooting down of religious processions are well documented in Voronezh, Shatsk (Tambov province), and Tula (where thirteen were killed and many wounded, including Bishop Kornilii) (pg. 12).
In Moscow over 400 churches and monasteries were dynamited, including the famous Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. (Haskins, Ekaterina V. "Russia's post-communist past: the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the re-imagining of national identity." History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past 21.1 (2009)).

Suppression of Miracles

For a supposedly atheist state, the Soviet Union was terrified of miracles and did everything in their power to disprove them. Believers could also be arrested in association with claiming or honoring miracles. Miracles needed to be suppressed in the eyes of the state due to their contradiction of the atheism of the official state ideology. However, it was not yet legal to prosecute people simply for making such claims (it would become so in 1929), so the miracle claims were prosecuted instead under the pretext that they were acts of resistance meant to strengthen believers in their resistance to hold on to church valuables. The government issued a decree on March 1, 1919, regarding "the complete liquidation of the cult of corpses and mummies", which ordered the public exposure of saints' relics in order to show them to be frauds (to counter the belief that the saints' bodies were miraculously preserved). In 1918 there were even calls to outlaw the sacrament of the Eucharist on account of its miraculous transformation as believed by Orthodox and Catholic Christians Letters from Moscow, Gleb Yakunin and Lev Regelson
However, the bungling Soviet state often undermined its own goals and at times the persecutions drove people into the arms of the church as Bukharin feared. The body of St Sergius of Radonezh was exhumed and declared as fraudulent. The Soviet media eagerly spread this news that there was nothing but rotten bones and dust in his shrine. Revolution and the Church wrote: "Believers no longer weep, don't fall into fits of hysteria, and don't hold a grudge against the Soviet government anymore. They see there has been no blasphemy… Only an age-old fraud has been made naked in the eyes of the nation." (Pospielovsky pg. 19). From the St Sergius-Trinity Monastery where these relics came from, an entirely different story was circulated that when the relics were exposed it was found that the saint's body was in excellent condition (he had lived in the 14th century), and when the crowd of believers that had come there saw this they fell on their knees in prayer, while the Bolshevik commander was pulled off his horse and beaten by the crowd. A similar event occurred in the city of Vladimir when the relics of two saints were exposed and the doctor who had acted as medical state witness reconfirmed his faith according to his own testimony. (pg. 20).
The Sretenskaia church at the Sennoi marketplace in Kiev had two gold-plated domes that had for been completely tarnished after many years. These domes experienced a similar renovations one day when light shone so brightly from the domes that it was at first thought to be on fire, and a huge crowd gathered to see it with an atmosphere of religious euphoria. The light reportedly moved in patches around the dome for three days as they were progressively "renovated". The local communist newspaper then printed two articles, one of them signed by members of the Academy of Sciences, which stated that the phenomenon was caused by a rare air wave containing a peculiar electric discharge. A witness claimed it later became known that the GPU had forced the Academy to say this, and that there were other gold-plated things in the area that were not similarly renovated. Several months later the church was dynamited by government authorities. (pg. 21-22)
One of the most famous of these supposed miracles occurred in the village of Kalinovka near Vinnitsa in the Ukraine. A detachment of mounted police had come to the village in order to close the local church, but they were met by hostile crowds. The crowds were too big for the police to force their way through and so they retreated. Not far from the church, however, there was a traditional Crucifix standing at a crossroads, and the policemen in frustration fired at the crucifix. One of the bullets hit the crucifix in Christ's side and suddenly blood gushed out of the hole reportedly. One of the policemen lost control of himself and fell off his horse, while the others took off. The crowd went on its knees and prayed in front of the bleeding crucifix. The news spread and thousands of people came to see it. The blood reportedly kept running out for several days. Soon after more police came with orders to hack down the crucifix but each time they returned in failure under the claim that some force was preventing them from approaching it. The local communist press tried to explain the phenomena by claiming that there had been an accumulation of water in the wooden cross behind the metallic figure, and that once the bullet hit the metal, the water, which had turned red from the metal's rust, must have seeped through. The crowds brought crosses with them that they set up beside it, prayed before it and dipped cloths in the miraculous blood. For days and nights they sang hymns as well as burned candles. Priests were absent in fear. Many atheists reportedly converted after seeing this. (pg. 22-23) At the very first opportunity the Soviets destroyed the bleeding Crucifix and all adjacent crosses. It was later claimed that a commission of experts had reported that the fluid coming out of the bullet hole was not blood. The people who had gathered there that day were later depicted as drunkards, fools and scum, and it was claimed that the kissing of the Crucifix had resulted in an outbreak of syphilis as well as mass robberies (pg. 23).
As you can see, Marx's first daughter, the Soviet Union brutally suppressed Christianity and the rights, property, liberty, and lives of all of the faithful, as at its core, Christianity challenges Marxism's need for sole authoritarian supremacy in every facet of life where it holds sway. However, as brutal as the atrocities were in the Soviet Union, they did little to stem the flow of this toxic anti-Christian ideology across the globe.

Terror in Spain

By no means do I want anyone to believe that Marxism is monolithic. In fact, Marxists brutally quarrel with themselves almost as badly as they do their enemies. In the modern era, the Soviet Union has lost a great deal of popularity since its collapse. Many Marxists are wont to claim that the regime that arose in the USSR "wasn't true communism". I am not here to argue what true communism is. But what I am going to demonstrate is that whatever the flavor of Marxism, it is brutally anti-Christian and will suppress Christianity whenever it is able.
Noam Chomsky is a prominent left-wing academic, one of the most cited people in all of academia in fact He is also a leading supporter of the "anarchist" faction in the Spanish civil war and their short lived "stateless society." And while these "anarchists" were opposed to the particular flavor of Marxism in practice in the Soviet Union, they committed the same brutal atrocities against Christians because of their faith.
Atrocities were committed by "by sections of nearly all the leftist groups" Payne, Stanley G. A History of Spain and Portugal, Vol. 2, Ch. 26, p. 650 (Print Edition: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973) and Beevor, Antony (2006), The Battle For Spain; The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, p. 81 Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
The violence consisted of the killing of tens of thousands of people (including 6,832 Roman Catholic priests) as well as the desecration and burning of monasteries and churches. (Cueva, Julio de la (1998), "Religious Persecution, Anticlerical Tradition and Revolution: On Atrocities against the Clergy during the Spanish Civil War", Journal of Contemporary History, XXXIII (3): 355–369, JSTOR 261121)
The failed coup of July 1936 set loose a violent onslaught on those that revolutionaries in the Republican zone identified as enemies; "where the rebellion failed, for several months afterwards merely to be identified as a priest, a religious or simply a militant Christian or member of some apostolic or pious organization, was enough for a person to be executed without trial". (Hilari Raguer, Gunpowder and Incense, p. 115)
According to Julio de la Cueva, the toll of the Spanish Red Terror was 72,344 lives.

Mexico

Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles was another flavor of Marxist that oppressed the rights of Christians. While he did not consider himself a Marxist, he had close relations with the Soviet Union, where Mexico hosted its first foreign embassy. When the Soviet Union opened its first embassy in Mexico, the Soviet ambassador remarked that "no other two countries show more similarities than the Soviet Union and Mexico". The Mexican government's campaign against the Catholic Church after the Mexican Revolution culminated in the 1917 constitution which contained numerous articles which Catholics perceived as violating their civil rights: outlawing monastic religious orders, forbidding public worship outside of church buildings, restricted religious organizations' rights to own property, and taking away basic civil rights of members of the clergy (priests and religious leaders were prevented from wearing their habits, were denied the right to vote, and were not permitted to comment on public affairs in the press and were denied the right to trial for violation of anticlerical laws). This all culminated in the Cristero War where Christians took up arms against the government.

Red China

During the Cultural Revolution, a crime against humanity in and of itself, Christian churches, monasteries, and cemeteries were closed down and sometimes converted to other uses, looted, and destroyed..
The persecution continues in modern times. The Chinese Communist Party and government try to maintain tight control over all religions, so the only legal Christian Churches (Three-Self Patriotic Movement and Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association) are those under the Communist Party of China control. Churches which are not controlled by the government are shut down, and their members are imprisoned. Gong Shengliang, head of the South China Church, was sentenced to death in 2001. Although his sentence was commuted to a jail sentence, Amnesty International reports that he has been tortured. A Christian lobby group says that about 300 Christians caught attending unregistered house churches were in jail in 2004.
In January 2016, a prominent Christian church leader Rev Gu Yuese who criticised the mass removal of church crucifixes by the government was arrested for "embezzling funds". Chinese authorities have taken down hundreds of crosses in Zhejiang Province known as "China's bible belt". Gu led China's largest authorised church with capacity of 5,000 in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang.
The Associated Press reported in 2018 that China's leader and Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping "is waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982.", which has involved "destroying crosses, burning bibles, shutting churches and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith". A Catholic church was forced to replace a painting of the Virgin Mary and religious couplets with portraits of Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong replaced them

North Korea

North Korea's Juche state is yet another permutation of Marxist ideology, and North Korea is yet another Atheist state. By its very authoritarian nature, it is difficult to even get information out of North Korea. However, it is listed as the country with the most Christian persecution in the entire world by Open Doors, a non-denominational mission supporting persecuted Christians in over 70 countries. It is currently estimated that more than 50,000 Christians are locked inside concentration camps because of their faith, where they are systematically subjected to mistreatment such as unrestrained torture, mass-starvation and even imprisonment and death by asphyxiation in gas chambers.. This means that 20% of North Korea's Christian community lives in concentration camps.. According to one report at least 200,000 Christians have gone missing since 1953

Poisonous Fruit

As you can see, the fruits of Marxism are poison. The promises of a better world are replaced with the reality of constant persecution for your faith. I could go on and on with more examples but will hit the character limit. All you need to know is that their crimes are so common that Wikipedia needed to have a disambiguation page for Red Terror).
You might think that the only threat of Marxism poses to Christianity is when it gains state power. To an extent that is true in that the greatest atrocities are only possible when complete authoritarian control is assumed. However, Marxists seek to destroy the Christian way of life however possible, whether by force of arms or death by a thousand cuts. Even in a liberal democracy like America, with freedom of speech and religion enshrined in the constitution, Christianity is always under threat. Marxists in America today are tearing down Christian statues all across the country. Statues of Junipero Serra, a canonized Saint are being torn down. Protesters tried to tear down a statue of King Louis IX, commonly known to the rest of us as St. Louis, in the city that bears his name Shaun King, affiliated with the BLM movement, itself founded by self admitted "trained Marxists" wants to destroy all Christian art with the "white" Jesus and Mary. Statues of the blessed virgin have been desecrated. Recently churches have been burned to the ground and desecrated by these rioters, including the 249-year-old San Gabriel Mission in California. Historical St. John's church, an Episcopalian church in Washington DC was burnt down.
Marxists, academics, politicians, and activists say and push for plenty of anti-Christian things, and often try to use the state to do it. From abolishing the nuclear family, banning homeschooling used by many Christian parents, banning private schools entirely, from hate speech laws that make it a crime to criticize Mohammed where such protections would never apply to Jesus, taxing property returned to churches after it was stolen by communists, from taxing churches if they oppose gay marriage while other left wing non profits and NGOs would be immune, from having courts take children away from parents who 'misgender' them or refuse to consent to hormone therapy. Whatever your views are on these political topics, there is a concerted authoritarian effort to prevent Christians from practicing their faith how they see fit.

What Christianity Says about Marxism

Now that you know what prominent Marxists say and think about Christianity, and the horrible atrocities they commit on Christians, it is also important to know what Christianity says about Marxism.
The Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination in the world, specifically declared in the Decree Against Communism that Catholics who professed Communist doctrine to be excommunicated as apostates from the Christian faith. Similar proclamations against Communism were made in Divini Redemptoris (1937) Nostis et nobiscum (1849), Quanta cura (1864), and Rerum novarum (1891).
The Orthodox Church anathematized communists after suffering such brutal calamities in the Red Terror. The Patriarch of Russia stated:

Christ’s precept to love our neighbor is forgotten and trampled tinder foot. Every day we learn that innocent people, not excluding those lying sick in bed, are being frightfully and brutally murdered for the sole offense that they have honestly discharged their duty to the country and have devoted all their energies to serve the welfare of the people. These crimes are committed … in broad daylight with unprecedented effrontery and outrageous brutality … in almost every city of our native land …
These crimes fill our heart with deep sorrow and compel us to denounce sharply these monsters of the human race … in accordance with the precept of the Holy Apostle: “Them that sin reprove in the sight of all, that the rest also may be in fear.” (I Tim. 5: 20.)
Think what you are doing, you madmen! Stop your bloody reprisals. Your acts are not merely cruel, they are the works of Satan for which you will burn in Hell fire in the life hereafter and be cursed by future generations in this life.
By the authority given me by God I forbid you to partake of the Christian Mysteries. I anathematize you if you still bear a Christian name and belong by birth to the Orthodox Church.
And you, faithful children of the Orthodox Christian Church, I beseech you to have nothing to do with this scourge of the human race: “Put away the wicked man from among yourselves.” (I Corinthians 5: 13.).