Andy Letcher

It was Tim Sebastion's funeral yesterday - I was there playing pipes. He got a good send off - never before has there been such a motley gathering of grizzled freaks, tweedy academics and pre-ironic mullets. Richard Dawkins might think the world would be a better place without religion, but what a colourless place the world would be without the Druids.

Sad news - the extraordinary library belonging to the late, great Terence McKenna has been destroyed by fire. Read the full story here.

OK, I'm biased but this show is beautiful, poetic, extraordinary. Go see if you can.

Several friends (some rather surprising) have invited me to sign the online petition against road-pricing. Here's why I won't be signing. Though I agree that there are human-rights issues here (I certainly don't want HM Government to be tracking my every car journey) most people seem lathered up about the potential cost. The brutal fact is that in order to reduce our carbon emissions, and to prevent all out total gridlock, we have to wean ourselves off car-use. The Jeremy Clarkson mentality means that people won't do this voluntarily. What we need, therefore, is a fair tax system that gets people out of their cars (without penalising rural communities). Wise up guys, driving a car is a luxury NOT a right. We need to prepare now for the post-car world.

Just wanna stress that in no way was my last blog entry a criticism of my students (who are fab). Rather, I was having a dig at the way the education system seems increasingly to be about ticking boxes, not teaching people to think. Vocation, vocation, vocation over education, education, education. We are all losing out by this IMHO.

I found out today that 95% of my students (undergrads at Oxford Brookes) had no knowledge of the Greek myths, whatsoever. At the risk of sounding increasingly like a reactionary retired Colonel, what do they actually teach people at school these days?

I found this amusing review of a Circulus gig online - power to the pixies.

Tim Sebastion, Blakean Romantic, Priest of Albion and Chosen Chief of the Secular Order of Druids, died last thursday. Whether organising inter-faith cricket matches at Stonehenge, performing lewd cucumber dances at Beltaine, or reestablishing competitions for Bardic Chairs he brought a delightful element of chaos to an otherwise stuffy British Druidry. He once told me that during his formative hippy years in London he saw a line from Blake graffitied on a wall: 'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom'. It seems a fitting epitaph.


Podcast

Shroom has started to get reviewed in America and while I generally think it that it's better not to comment on the critics I feel moved to post a reply. So far, one said that my writing style was bland and academic and that anyone hoping for a drug classic would be disappointed, while the other said that my writing was engaging and full of jokes, but that all the trip stories got boring. I'm inclined to think that I must have got the balance just right.