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Monday, November 25th, 2019 at 3:44 pm - - Weekends 1 Comment »

The Toxteth Day of the Dead just happened on November 23. Here’s a picture from the final scene down in St James Park below where I live, where eight people were being mumufied. [larger image]

This was the culmination of a mysterious procession around the streets of Toxteth with various events, like singing choirs and speeches about famous dead people from the area, such as Tony Bradshaw:

There are a lot of little things that can be weaved together, such as a poetic rendition of something from Arthurian legend at the junction of Merlin Street:

It is a truism that, if there is no god, then all sacred rituals must be made up by humans. We are human. Therefore we should make up sacred rituals that work for us. The purpose of these rituals is to raise our consciousness of reality, and of life and death. Otherwise we will be so completely distracted by petty things that we will waste the time that we are alive, which will make us oh so sad when we suddenly realize what we have done.

At one stage in the afternoon we were all given little strips of white cloth and a marker pen on which to write the name of our ghost for the day, someone who is dead whom we dearly miss. Everyone has one. Then we’d pin their name close to our heart and they would be present with us during the remains of the procession, sharing the company and the fun we are having. You can spot them in the two pictures above. Then the last few hundred metres of the procession as we went down Canning Street and into the boneyard below were taken in silence to be with our ghosts, before we had to say goodbye to them, take them off and leave them behind in a basket.

I only live here. I didn’t know any of this was going to happen. My sister spotted this and got us tickets for the Here-after Party, where there was some crazy music:

In return I took her out canvassing for the Labour Party in Crewe and Nantwich.

This is where politics gets real. Knocking on doors of random strangers up and down the streets you have been assigned to ask why is it so goddamned hard to vote against a lying cheating tool of the billionaire class and the most right-wing and immoral government of our time with no plan for the future, but is however fully aligned with foreign forces that intend to end life as we know it in this land, and in favour of a guy who is honest, gives a shit, knows real history, and can’t be bought to sell you out.

The second photo is a selfie from outside the Costa Coffee in Crewe market square where me and Aidan were market-testing my PublicWhip app for advising people how to vote based on parliamentary policies during the 2008 Crewe and Nantwich by-election. My contemporaneous blogposts are The Public Whip Crewe and the The Public Whip Crewe Two.

After lunch in a polish restaurant to recover our senses, we played on some musical see-saws in a square behind the covered market.

What a long mysterious unexpected scary adventure this is all turning out to be.

Everyone I meet seems to be good, so why are we ruled by such bad people?