The Ace Historian

What’s history but a made up load of humbug and flim-flam from the past, and therefore completely useless knowledge. Now; I’ve been told many times by miffed people to ‘stop living in the past’, but whole shelves of books about imagined past wars, troubled women and mentally ill Kings are there to remind us of our troubled past ... and they say history keeps repeating itself; no wonder. Humans just love fighting, killing, plotting, backstabbing, POWER etc., so why stop it?
History is also about money i.e. keeping it and making it. Money is such a huge part of life humans will do anything to get it as long as they don’t get discovered. Matthew Hopkins found a way to get it easily, just lie and have a ball killing so called witches. People love that sort of thing and so it gets remembered, all some of them need is their memory coaxed and they remember bits they were told which cascade from mind to mind through the ages.
I remember helping a little with a book on happenings in the past at Chastleton House, Oxfordshire near Moreton in the Marsh. The lady was writing it from ‘dreams’ she had where she was a young girl in the house ... pardon? Bunkum? Well, maybe. We went across country on a research mission to another town where there was an abbey with Chastleton connections; it housed a group of modern monks she wanted to question. As it was, her and her pro researchers were scared to knock on the door so I marched up and hit the B&Q knocker while they stood at a safe distance and watched. They got a meeting with the monks; a meeting they took all credit for arranging. While there we went into a pub. Ace Historian here likes talking to people and asking questions while the ‘pros’ hide in a dark corner. I found a guy, call him old John. He had been sat in the same corner every day for the last ton of years and had so much history inside him about the place, from people, who got it from people who were long gone. Pardon? He made it up? Well, so does everyone else, especially those who write the history books, they have to. To me, history is about entertainment, why get so serious about it? Does it matter what happened 500 years ago? Most can’t remember last week. As long as we stand in crowds and cheer for those in their grey suits and their finery as they pass right by us plebs (plebeians, ‘stupid people’). All you gotta do is play the game. The only thing is, if you do that you won’t make it into the history books; would you really want to?
Matthew Hopkins though? Little information, but, maybe I talked to some old Johns who knew things. Did they lie to me? Maybe, but does it matter? As long as you enjoy it, it matters not a jot. Did you enjoy Braveheart? That was nowhere near the truth and ... it’s still acceptable, mainly because it’s about killing and debauchery ... bread and circuses. The only reason anybody shoud read contrived history is if it makes them feel good when they read it, that way it can improve their life by getting them into a positive energy mode. If you read it so it makes you feel furious because six million Jews died? You would be better off reading Moomintroll.

PS: Did you know Guy Fawkes was the ‘fall guy?’ Or don’t you care as long as you have a good bonfire night? Sometimes invented history is good fun isn’t it?
‘If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.’