I work a lot. I do my full time job and I work a lot of extra shifts at a different hospital close to where I live. I also enjoy time off and enjoy taking exotic holidays to various parts of the World so it’s all cool by the pool, but I do work a hell of a lot and every now and then, I need to get out of London and reset so I took a trip to Bath in Somerset for 4 days

Bath is only a couple of hours from London and it only took me a couple of hours to drive there. The drive there was nice and I had that easy holiday vibe going on, even though it was the middle of winter and it was absolutely freezing but the wind, rain and cold has never bothered me, even on holiday.

One of my earliest memories is of a teacher in primary school called Mrs Escort. There are 2 things Iremember about her. One was that she had a limp and one of her feet was pointing inward (like Virgil in the Usual Suspects) and two, she loved the Romans. She used to teach us about them, in avery clever way because we didn’t know we were being taught. If you asked to go to the bathroom, she would say ‘yes , and did you know that the Romans invented indoor plumbing and built the aqueducts in Britain?’ I remember finding it interesting and I’ve liked the Romans ever since. Bath is an ancient city and although there were indigenous people living in the area when the Romans arrived 2000 years ago, the Romans quickly rubbed them out and made it into a busy, vibrant city and a place Roman citizens would travel to from all over the empire, from as far away as Syria. The Romans called Bath Aquae Sulis because of the natural hot springs they found. The made reservoirs, and turned the area in Baths that eventually turned into a huge leisure complex, covering the size of a football pitch once the gyms, changing rooms and leisure centres were finished.

Something I found really interesting was how the Roman citizens used to write their wishes on pieces of lead and throw them into the resivour, like a wishing well (that fed the swimming pool) with requests, hoping that the God’s would grant them. Some of them were standard ‘ I would like a red bike kinda thing’ but most were people going batshit about someone screwing them over and asking the Gods for vengeance. One guy had a woman, who he was obviously really into and probable a slave girl, taken from him by another guy. Problem is, he wasn’t sure which guy had taken her so he literally wrote a list of suspects, asking for them all to get it!! Ha, that was funny. 2000 years ago eh? not much has changed.

I loved the Roman Baths, the rest of the trip was pleasant enough and it was a nice break. The thing that left a lasting impression on me was that Bath was old. Stating the obvious perhaps but everything about it is geared towards looking backwards, to the past. The Romans, then 2000 years later the Victorians who were massively inspired by the Romans and built the greatest buildings and had the best engineers in English history (begging Christopher When and the lads of St Paul’s Cathedrals pardon) and then it just stopped. Now we are living in the ruins of all that. The echo of a once great civilisation that has come and gone. That’s the cycle and if you’re reading this and live in the west, you came in at the end. Just like Tony Soprano said. For Britain the beginning of the end was 1914. That will be my next post.

Now the sun is rising in the East and while the leadership of Britain continue to stand on the shoulders of the great people who came before them and print money to keep the entire ponzi afloat, perhaps consider that when the house of cards does come down, where are you going to be, what are you going to do and perhaps, more importantly, what are you going to own? Perhaps something that other people can’t take from you? something like Bitcoin? If not you can always ask the Gods for vengenge after they fuck you.