Lord Byron died exactly 200 years ago today, after falling ill in Greece while gathering an army to fight the Ottoman Empire.
Raise your game, Simon Armitage.
There is plenty to be said about his death, and you will not struggle to find that.
I, however, want to talk about..
Sitting next to a delegate from Malaysia yesterday who during speeches was occasionally doodling. I say doodling, but when she showed me her notepad my jaw crashed through the conference table.
Well this is odd. I've just had
@DarrenG_Henry
's office manager arrive, unannounced, maskless, on my doorstep and threaten me for writing about him. Desperate attempt at intimidation.
I work with 16-18 year olds on a daily basis and James Cleverly's description of them as 'listless bubble dwellers' is not just insulting and inaccurate, but blatant projection from a Government that has long detached from reality
Tomorrow is the 45th Anniversary of the death of Richard Beckinsale, a hero of British comedy, and, to those who knew him (and I've met many) a kind, gentle, loving man.
He was also a poet with a scary sense of his own sudden death...
You may have heard /seen the news. A few points to add
1. Carl Husted claimed the police 'accepted his reasonings for visiting me. This is a lie. The police gave him a harrassment warning that if he approached me again, he would be arrested.
Hope this brightens your wakening. I am the luckiest man alive, my wife the most wonderful woman and our daughter, born sometime late last night, is the most beautiful thing imaginable. Welcome to the world Tabitha. X
A while back I was contacted by the English Department at the University of Milan, who were studying Saturday Night, Sunday Morning and were planning a trip to Nottingham to see where it is set. Could I guide them? Yeah, Ok. I assumed I'd walk them to Canning Circus...
UPDATE: police have been and are taking it seriously. Advised us to lock our doors and not answer if he revisits. They'll be taking action of their own.
Thanks for all the support. I'm exhausted with the adrenalin.
Yesterday was hot, bright sunshine and utterly lovely.
A perfect day to go to a graveyard and then down into the Catacombs of Nottingham, where the air temp is pretty cold and totally dark.
It's also a VERY Nottingham place, of which I shall explain later.
Thread time!
I love the BBC and think it's an incredible force for good in its vast scope, diversity and existence for public before profit. But the News element is a mess right now, cowed and callow, and threatens to turn people against it wholesale unless it speaks truth to power.
My BBC app homepage is currently showing a story about Kim Kardashian’s wealth but not a story about the riots in Northern Ireland.
I generally try to be supportive of the BBC - but that is mind-boggling.
If the Conservatives get less than 100 seats I will - I promise you now - eat my hat.
And by 'my hat' I mean a massive fried breakfast to mop up the hangover.
If anyone wonders why
@DarrenG_Henry
doesn't reply to constituency emails, this is why: he sends his staff around to intimidate those who dare to have the temerity to write about them.
How did he get my address, Darren? Did you sanction this?
Most of my students, on the top of their studies, are carers, work PT or do voluntary work. They are a much more harder working generation than my own, and have rapidly diminishing hope to ever get to uni, own a house or get a pension. No wonder 96% will vote against the Tories.
@tinycharlotte72
East Midlands was - and I'm quoting a sample size of one -used Blackpool. When I eventually went to see them irl I was disappointed they bore no resemblance to our landing
The most Nottingham thing I've ever experienced was giving a talk on Nottingham literary history, stating "Nottingham has long been a place of rioters, rebels and contrarians" and a guy in the audience saying loudly "No it hasn't".
10. I won't be putting anything else up on Twitter about this today, as I want to have a day away from it playing with my young son. If you wish to contact me, I'm on lordmattbeestonia
@gmail
.com.
Don't let bullies take over. Feel free to RT, tag in anyone who might be interested
This makes Carry On films / Bond Girl names look nuanced. It makes Charles Dickens /Martin Amis character names seem restrained.
And it's all utterly happening in real life.
Can I now posit my theory that Byron has a weird magic, despite being dead exactly 200 years.
3. Carl Husted visited my house and in doing so breached Covid regulations. He was not wearing a mask. I have a clinically vulnerable person in my household As I have this on video, I will be asking
@nottspolice
to fine Carl Husted.
Of course, you're not allowed to reply to this.
I want to know if Carl was being paid when this happened: if so, the buck stops with Henry. Also, I have not received a response to how my address was accessed, though I do know Henry has full access to the electoral roll.
5.
@DarrenG_Henry
claims to have apologised to me. He hasn't. He has put up a statement but not contacted me, instead asking me to contact his constituency office. The manager of the office? Carl Husted. I won't be doing that, therefore.
9. If
@DarrenG_Henry
feels that this will now pass, he is incorrect. It is just beginning. I abhor bullies and thugs and will be dogged in this. Already receiving much more info about Husted and Henry, which I'll scrutinise and publish in due course.
Dominic Cummings has this notion that the only people who don't recognise his genius are 'SW1'.
Which is obvs wrong as I'm from NG9 and I think he's a twat.
Barber urged Bullock to take a photo, but the he refused on moral grounds, a rare case of a paparazzi being morally superior to a member of the clergy.
(Or so the story goes. I'd love to think a photo exists, like Byron's memoir, in an attic).
Bullock died shortly afterwards.
4. In Facebook messages to me I've yet to publish, Carl Husted states the exact composition of my family, with my young son's name and the fact my wife is heavily pregnant. This is clear 'I know where you live, I know what you have' behaviour. Also, this:
(Byron has himself said of this work "When you read my Memoirs you will learn the evils, moral and physical, of true dissipation. I can assure you my life is very entertaining and very instructive”.
This was also the original blurb for Liz Truss's new book).
...but to this day he is a nasty, lying bully who is receiving taxpayers money to ignore constituents, lie openly and harrass Broxtownians. While he remains in
@DarrenG_Henry
's employ, our MP and
@broxtowecons
, are complicit.
The year is 1938. We are in Hucknall, north of Nottingham, where Byron's corpse lies in a crypt beneath Mary Magdalen Church, with ancient family members (and his daughter, the computer genius Ada Lovelace)
He had to see more. He had to know Byron was there. So he asked the workmen not to reseal the tomb, took the gathered VIPs for tea and saw them off. Then, at midnight, with a photographer with a name like a bull castrated by a cat, a Mr Claude Bullock, he crept back down.
A Tory cancassser has just come to my door, despite Broxtowr Conservatives being well aware of what happened yesterday. This is a disgrace: he ran off when I challenged him.
Woah. Why was Byron so popular with the ladies / men? Well, the dark curls, the romantic swashbuckle, the beauty of his words.
And his massive nob.
Heavens. But the story is what over.
Remember I said I'd name the journalist who got this story?
7.
@DarrenG_Henry
's wife Caroline Henry is currently running for Notts Police and Crime Commissioner. She was deeply involved in
@DarrenG_Henry
's 2019 GE campaign, as any fellow journos who interviewed them will attest (he wouldn't speak, she would however)....
Just went to a what I thought would be a short and easy local journalism job, meeting a pub darts team made up of military veterans. Super easy article, surely, I've written a dozen such stories in the past.
But this was not that story, and nothing short of wonderful
...something that happened long after he died, which proves that you can't keep a good heroic poet down, even if they've been dead for ages.
Let us look at one of the most bizarre stories in Byron's death, when a vicar decided to see how Byron was doing under his church.
On opening the coffin, the poet was perfectly embalmed, and "in as perfect a condition as when it was placed in the coffin one hundred and fourteen years ago”
He would later add 'His manhood shewed extraordinary development".
Ok. Here's a story about what happened today on one of the weirdest days of my life
I had an appointment to have the snip, finally decommissioning my ability to make babies. I've had two kids, and it feels right. I'm too old to have another.
Booked it, got called in for today.
The Reverend, Thomas Barber, had, over his 24 years in post, become obsessed with Byron (it happens to many of us) and knowing that the poet was just a few feet away when he strolled through his church proved too much.
He had to see Byron for himself. So he hatched a plan.
A hot 15th of June, and about 40 people, all sworn to secrecy, met at the church, amongst them the MP, workmen, a local banker (!), a doctor (!!) a photographer, and others. A stonemason began the labour of opening the vault. This alone took nearly three hours.
8. Carl Husted disputes claims I called him a nasty person with a dubious past, and is threatening to sue me for doing so. I would therefore like to state on record that not only has Carl Husted a dodgy, nasty past...
An interesting aside and then I'll shut up for a bit: Darren Henry's wife is standing for Police and Crime Commissioner in Notts. Honest, you couldn't write this stuff with a straight face.
This was no easy task. He had to get a Home Office license, and permission from the Byron family. He successfully enlisted the local MP -who we shall return to- for the former, and also found Byron's descendants at Thrumpton Hall cool with the subterranean trip.
A date was set.
Now, considering the idea that Byron is a vampire (an idea that went well before Bram Stoker, and has been championed by
@matthaig1
et al) this could be worrying.
Coffin unsealed, but perfect presentation? Weird!
The less romantic truth would take years to emerge.
The prospective Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Notts,
@carolinenotts
(wife of Darren Henry) won't reveal her association to police-warned harrasser, bully and liar Carl Husted. Don't let her off the hook with this: we need to keep bullies from political office.
Today is the birthday of Einstein. Visited the
@UniofNottingham
once, with a lecture in German: watching physicists couldn't understand the German; watching Germans couldn't understand the physics. Still, all enjoyed, and the blackboard he used is still preserved on campus
On the spurious rumour that Byron's coffin was empty, he decided to arrange a visit to the long-sealed crypt to confirm.
If another rumour, that a manuscript of Byron's memoir was also there (the only other copy having been destroyed by fire, by a scandalised publisher)
This is wonderful.
Last week I put on here a story about how I thought I had Covid when I mistook a cat biscuit for a Fisherman's Friend and panicked I'd lost my sense of taste.
Today, this arrived from Fisherman's Friend to "stop you making that mistake again".
Brilliant.
The
@MatesJacob
account reported that Husted was suspended by his party for his bigoted tweets (then quietly readmitted). I will not be intimidated by him doorstepping me like this. He is a bigot.
Well this is odd. I've just had
@DarrenG_Henry
's office manager arrive, unannounced, maskless, on my doorstep and threaten me for writing about him. Desperate attempt at intimidation.
They were in! It was dark, dusty and cluttered, and there was an issue. The permission to open the crypt only stretched as far to investigating what was in the room, not what was in the caskets. They surveyed, then went back to the surface.
But Rev. Barber wasn't happy.
They approached the coffin, and to their horror saw it had signs of being disturbed. Grave robbers! Thought Barber. "Byron will be dust!".
Thankfully, it was not to be.
Hey
@NFFC
fans. This is Anam, my guide in Indonesia. As well as being a MASSIVE help, he also, a few years ago, visited Nottingham just to see the City Ground (Forest were away on the day.
Send him a hello from Nottm (or beyond) and I'll pass them on!
Hearing
@maitlis
swear on
@TheNewsAgents
podcast is quite thrilling, like when my junior school teacher stubbed her toe and shouted "shit bollocks" to 30 9 year old jaw-drops
No point to this, just a general reminisce, though it did make me realise what we take for granted, and, if you were one of the many people who drove by us that day, as a group of sophisticated Milanese students posed for selfies outside collapsing factories, this is why.
And just as I'd hit my stride and was pacing along, the taxi from earlier drive by, having turned around at the end of the road.
As it passed, the driver gave me a enthusiastic thumbs up, pulled down his mask and shouted out his wound down window "YES MATE! YOU GO! YOU RUN!"
@JNRaeside
TV comedian and writer who audibly farted during interview and then raised their eyebrows to suggest it was me, despite us being the only two in the room. I really wish I'd known what the phrase 'gaslighting' meant back then.
We're saddened to hear that Nottingham City Council is closing 12 of its 15 libraries as part of sweeping cuts proposed across the city.
"In a world of paid-subscriptions and endless costs, a library card is a free ticket to anywhere."
Full post here ⬇️
Also, the guy who bought them over was a Scottish guy who'd lived in Italy for 25 years and had a brilliant mixed accent, like an inverse
@Aiannucci
, who in his spare time did voice overs for Italian documentaries and had just finished one about Amanda Knox.
A journalist from the
@SheffieldStar
who, like the MP, we shall return to and name later in this thread, decided to visit a surviving member of the exhumation, the workman Arnold Holdsworth, who told an amazingly candid story.
"Let's take a look at him" says Betteridge.
"We can't do that" says Holdsworth
" Just you watch me" says Betteridge, and set to work breaking into Byron's coffin.
"And there he was. Old Byron"
Your regular reminder that
@DarrenG_Henry
made a donation to Attenborough Nature Reserve....then charged it to expenses.
They're just past shame, aren't they?
I have brilliant, stare-school student journalists who will struggle to get work speaking truth to power, but will try and try against the odds.
Privately educated Harwood meanwhile is handsomely paid for this level of insight.
Why aren't more people amazed by buzzards? They are huge, they are majestic, they make a noise like kittens mewing. They fly over all but the most urban of environments and are utterly gorgeous, yet most people just go 'meh'. Love buzzards, you ornithological Philistines.
Welcome to all new followers: thank you all for support in what's been a crap time. I'm a bit worried you'll be disappointed by the usual, non-Tory stalker content: generally crap puns and other whimsy. But welcome nonetheless.
When the dignitaries went to tea and didn't invite Holdsworth or another workman, Jim Betteridge. They took umbrage to this, left in the heat to clear up.
When
@mrmarksteel
said he was going to visit Nottingham to research his R4 show, lots of people volunteered me to give him a tour. So today I gave him a tour, culminating in the Trip (of course). As a fan of his for decades it was a real treat: utter gent.
Our MP
@DarrenG_Henry
tonight voted to stop you even thinking about demonstrating against their policies. He does not represent Broxtowe, he represents himself alone. Shameful.
Ten years ago, at the behest of David Cameron demanding 'tough action', a 24 year old mother of two, was sent down for 4 months for accepting a pair of shorts that had been looted in the riots- she'd been asleep during the actual trouble.
In my life I've lived in squalid flats, slept rough, lived in a tent, been homeless, precariously housed, sofa surfed and squatted.
Today I'm having a housewarming party for my own actual house that I own. I feel tremendous relief above all.
#HousingCrisis
Loads of young people, the majority without past conviction, were bounced through court and into jail so Cameron could play the hard man
Now Cameron is found to be part of a multibillion scam that has stole millions from the public. He'll probably get mildly socially ostracised
Our cat Iggy -that mog with the crown in my profile pic - was hit by a car earlier today and died instantly.
We're pretty devastated. 'Just a cat' of course, but he was so deeply part of our family: even the baby loved him, and had one last snuggle with him yesterday.