Feel Their Cold Hands On Everything That I Love

This song by Keane came into my life in 2008 around the time we went on a trip to Berlin. It was meant to be in October that year, we'd booked the flights but it got cancelled and we ended up rebooking for November. Interestingly, that was also the month Susie, the Irish girl from the Icke forum who involved herself with Kate and I, got married to her French freemason husband.

At the time I would not have noticed the connection but the name of this Keane song contains part of the band name of her husband's band. There are many things like this, that in hindsight, I see were showing up in my life around the time Kate and I were involved with her. I bought two pairs of Adidas Originals trainers during that period - both with the model name 'Nizza'. I bought them - one white and one black - because the stripes were Rasta coloured (red, green and gold) and never thought much more of the model name. It was actually only when we passed through Italy into France on a train during the SoulJahm years and I saw a sign saying Nizza that I realised it was Nice.

Anyway, aside from the connection with the band name, the line that always stuck out to me from that Keane song was "Feel their cold hands on everything that I love". It spoke to me because as everything I thought I knew was unravelling, one of the patterns I saw throughout my life was that I'd get into something I enjoyed and take it up to the point where it got organised and then I would begin to fall out of love with it. Not the thing itself but the control and organisation would ruin my enjoyment of something that started out as spontaneous and carefree. In my early years probably this was most evident with football. I loved football from as early as I can remember. From as early as I was allowed to go out by myself and play with my friends, probably around age 6 years old, I played football in the nearby park almost everyday after school with my friends, all day at weekends and during school holidays. I loved the freedom of it. The next step was to join the Primary school team a couple of years later. Although I enjoyed it I noticed straight away it felt different, more restrictive to playing casually with my friends. Primary school football was still alright but it was as it got to High school that I began to enjoy it less. Scouts from local club teams would search out the best players from school teams and I got offered to join one in Edinburgh. I took it up but that's when the additional stuff came into it... going to functions and events aside from the football and it all just had a vibe to it that didn't sit right with me. I realise now that vibe was the masonic vibe. These kinds of clubs, like Scouts and Boys Brigade, connect up with the masonic structure permeating throughout society. They attract a lot of ex-army and teacher types. The guy who was manager of my club team was an ex-army guy. He reminded me of Robson Green from a UK tv show in the 90s called Soldier Soldier which my mum watched. This guy seemed to zone in on me and recognised me as a decent player. He also had a thing for my mum I think, and he started calling up after games and getting quite pushy. I got on alright with him but he had a vibe that kind of put me off.

Around this time there was another guy, the Dad of one of the players in my school team, who also sometimes managed. In this particular game he wasn't manager but was on the sidelines. He also rated me as a player but in this game he gave me a bollocking from the sidelines, cursing and swearing at me even though I scored two goals! Everyone was quite shocked at how ferocious his rant was, including my manager. It got back to the school and he had to apologise and was given a touchline ban for a period of time! His son later told me it was only cos he thought I was such a good player and was under-performing. I was a left-winger mainly so my heroes were skilful midfielders and strikers - usually the sensitive kind of players who don't respond well to getting shouted at. I've always been somebody who likes to do things in my own time and way and if I'm given the time and space, I feel sure in myself I can deliver, but I don't respond well to being pushed around or controlled. Organised football was losing it's appeal to me and I dropped out around the age of 14.

I still loved the game and loved to play but most of my other friends who weren't playing organised football were more interested in watching sports rather than playing them at this age. I can remember still feeling the itch to play when I was 16 and so I'd just go out alone to the park and kick the ball off a wall. I'd get mocked by other guys in the area for having no mates! By 17, I'd left school and stopped playing altogether. I continued watching football for another few years, into my early 20s, and then lost interest. Partly because Music had burst through into my life so strongly and also because I sensed the way football was going. It was becoming more of a business, more controlled, more organised and along with that I felt the kind of players I loved to watch from the 60s through to the 90s were a dying breed. I think I made a lucky escape. Had I gone onto become a professional footballer I'm sure I would've hated it. Not for me.

As I've mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I got my first computer, an Amstrad CPC 464, when I was 9 yrs old sometime in the 1980s. My computer gaming period lasted from then until leaving High school. I loved those early games of the 80s, although they were usually too difficult for me to ever finish them. I loved the range, the quirky ideas, the fact it was often just a couple of guys in their bedroom creating these things for fun. That was probably when the idea of doing something independently first appealed to me. As the computer game industry grew in the 90s and everything got more sophisticated I felt something was lost. For me there was something about those early, primitive games that was fun.

In my teenage drinking years, going out to pubs and clubs with friends, I was often known as "retro guy" by my friends because they were all into modern culture while I was more fascinated by stuff from the 60s and 70s. As I went deeper into music and films, it was often that period that appealed to me. Everything seemed much more artistic to me, much more real and authentic to anything in the current culture. I saw the same pattern in whatever field I delved into. Something takes root somewhere with a few enthusiasts at the heart of it and a little scene emerges and often there is an abundance of creativity. Then the businessmen spot an opportunity and get involved and gradually it becomes all about whatever makes money. The art and creativity diminishes and it gets boring and uninspiring.

With films I see early Hollywood as the first Golden Age and then there was a second Golden Age throughout the 1970s with all the up-and-coming indie directors and lots of realistic, gritty great films. With computer games the Golden Age for me was the 1980s going into the early 1990s. With football it was the 1960s up to the 1990s. With music it was the same.

What prompted me to write this post was actually going through a little snooker phase in January 2025. Somehow I got watching Stephen Hendry's YouTube channel and interviews he'd done with players I knew from the 80s and 90s. Then I watched this snooker tv series called Gods Of Snooker (worth a watch for any snooker fans). Seeing players like Alex Higgins, Jimmy White, Tony Drago and others again from that time reminded me of what we've lost. Yes, like with all sports, I know there are many who think we've never had it better today and that the old players from bygone eras wouldn't be able to compete. We're in an age where everyone is obsessed with numbers... views, likes, followers, points, trophies, competitions. Many people use numbers to judge how good something or someone is. Yet something is being lost and that is artistry. We're not machines but we seem to be becoming more machine-like. When everything becomes super organised and controlled it pushes all the characters out. The people who play or do things with flair, such as Alex Higgins or Paul Gascoigne. Messi and Ronaldo are undoubtedly great players but give me Maradona or Paul Gascoigne over them any day.

I remember in the last few years when Damon Albarn of Blur made some comment about Taylor Swift and all the Swifties rushed to her defence, calling him an unknown and using her plays on Spotify and so on as proof she is the greater artist! It's the same with Ed Sheeran. It's all about numbers. I wouldn't call myself a Blur fan but I'm pretty sure his songs will be remembered long after Taylor Swift is forgotten. I'm not talking about her name, which of course will be remembered as a major celebrity of these times, and probably more so than Damon Albarn, but will anybody really remember her songs with the same fondness as his?

Whether it's art or sports, we seem to have forgotten what we do these things for in the first place. We get into them because we enjoy it and if you happen to be talented enough that others want to watch or listen, then you hope some of that joy rubs off on the audience. When you truly do that people absorb it in a deep and lasting way. It's not about how many you reach, although most of us want to reach as many people as we can, but some of us don't want to lose that special thing, the joy in creating or playing something, and we'd rather stay connected to that than compromise and "sell out".

This is where the masonic influence runs through society. It doesn't really matter what you call it - masonic or not - but it's some sort of controlling and manipulating force that seems to work through certain people connected to certain organisations and as you go deeper into this stuff you find it's everywhere in society. It hones in on creative, spiritual and empathic individuals particularly and tries to gain control of their energies and abilities and seeks to utilise those gifts for it's own agendas, often at the expense of the individual. Almost turning those energies and abilities against the specific individual. Hence why so many gifted people get messed up or end up despising the very thing they started out loving. A recent example would be Liam Payne and now, since his death, another casualty of the music industry, Brian Harvey (ex-singer of East 17), has been trying to get to the truth of that situation as well as revealing what he has experienced at the hands of this control system.

People need other people to do anything significant in life but as a species, we have yet to find a way to encourage and nurture gifted individuals without stifling them. We have to realise the very thing that attracted us to them is that sense of freedom. When you watch a gifted footballer or artist of any kind you may not realise it but what is attractive is not only the particular skill they have in that field but the spirit of freedom they radiate. That can't be faked. You can have all the technical ability in the world but that isn't it. So trying to control, manipulate, discipline or mould such an individual will only stifle or kill that special thing. Making humans more machine-like, focussing on technical ability, the way they do in all the organised arts and sports these days is the reason we see so few true greats in any field of human endeavour. It's why all the new buildings are boring and uninspiring, not like the masterpieces they created centuries ago. All the beauty goes out of life when it all becomes about numbers and we need beauty more than ever now.