I tort I tor a witch's hat

Awooga booga!

Boogaboogabooga!

Awooo!


Feeling better? Well you should, because I've just been using my new integrated holistic detoxifying chant transcript on you which, through the medium of this very display unit what you are currently perusing, will rebalance upset chakras, dilute your humours and nutritionalize your bile, resulting in you being in harmony with your cerebrospinal fluid.

And before any of you detractors and naysayers get all argumentative on my arse, spouting vitriolic mumbo-jumbo like "evidence" and "efficacy" and "potentially harmful side-effects", this is all scientifically backed up by objective research I did on Wikipedia not twenty minutes ago.

That'll be eighty quid please.

I'm thinking about setting up a clinic, where I can practice as The Jules, PHD (Paid Holistic Diagnostician) and embezzle help people by seeing how they react to blue crystals in comparison to red ones. If they pay me enough, I'll look at their poo and tell them it shouldn't be that shade of brown (or black, or green, or red), and that they should take my thrice-whacked water, which was once carried through a field of nettles at sunrise to absorb the memory of stings so you get the nerve-tingling goodness without the pain and rash. Stat. It's only £8.99 a bottle, but you do get a certificate saying you bought it. It comes out of the till at the top here.

Nettles are natural, so they're good for you actually, because Mother Earth is a benificent spirit. And curare doesn't count.

Of course, if I'm going to set up a clinic, it's all about location location location location, and the analysis of ley lines on my OS map suggest that there is one place where the barely detectable energies of Gaia intersect with the radon-infused goodness of underground magma.

Runcorn.

Of course, this is a bit far away, so I'm considering the second best location in England; Glastonbury.

Initially famous because King Arthur allegedly did some fictional stuff there, it's more usually associated with the Glastonbury festival, where you go to get stoned and incidentally listen to some bands for £150, although the audience are often so wasted they wouldn't know any difference if they were in their parents' basement listening to the tumble dryer.

Glastonbury is also well-known for its alternative scene, from alternative music to alternative healing to alternative policing using a uniformed ferret called Wonder-Nigel.

Actually, no-one else saw Wonder-Nigel, so I may be mistaken.

I did inhale.

Anyhoo - Glastonbury is rather lovely, in a historic sort of way, and it's worth going to climb up the Tor to St Michael's Tower and look at the plains dissapearing into the distance yonder.

If you're there to set up a thriving business of esoteric therapy though, you're in for a surprise, because the kaftan-wearing flower-tonguers that profess to live for the beauty of the soul and the ethereal benefits of altruistic love and peace have got the competition sewn up tighter than a gnat's chuff.

I took a few snaps as we walked down the main shopping street, and it wasn't long before I came across this:

The oldest healing centre in Glastonbury apparently. Does the local GP surgery know about this? It was a very professional sign, and I took note. They do astrology as well, so it's good they've branched out into astrophysics. Some of the signs are obviously playing on the stereotypical ideas that alternative folk generate, like this 'un:


A proper witch shop, that was. I popped in and the 'witch' had cunningly diguised herself as a hippy, selling things like flowery dresses, plastic pens shaped like twigs (although with the advantage over real twigs in that they will last forever because they won't biodegrade) and ceramic mushrooms. By a locked display cabinet trying to make glass fairies seem more valuable than they actually were there was an earnest discussion going on between the proprieter and a big-hatted customer about the "vibrating properties" of a crystal.

Hmm.

Also a lot of self-help books, although if you're using a book to help you, it's not exactly "self" help is it? It's "ill-informed author" help. I was particualrly impressed with this chap's sign:

Why use a stereotypical drawing of a typical moustachioed, long haired, leather-hat-wearing-indoors pasty bohemian if you actually are a typical moustachioed, long haired, leather-hat-wearing-indoors pasty bohemian. Kudos to Brian then.

It looks like a sign is important. If someone asks, "Give me a sign", as they hobble down the street, hindered by a deformed yang, they want a board with words on it, not a burning bush or a voice in their head. Let's face it, they've probably got a voice in their head already.

It's not all tat and flappery, though. Some of it is rather tasteful. Glastonbury might be a handle short of a broomstick, but they do a good line in talented buskers, ones you actually want to listen to. They also have a decent flair for decoration, like this ivy and butterfly motif on the outside of a shop which has yet to be despoiled by a paint-can scrawler who thinks he's Banksy:

Unfortunately, it looks like opportunities for setting up succesful alternative healing franchises in Glastonbury are available in homeopathic amounts only, meaning I might have to think of an alternative fleecing empowering organisation. How hard can it be to start a religion do you think? If a second rate science fiction wrter can do it, then surely a second rate blogger can.

Right, I'm going to start interviewing for High Priestesses. Not sure how high yet.

Five eleven maybe?

And off their tits on disco cigarettes.