Loremen Podcast - S4 Ep15: Loremen S4 Ep15 - Robin Allender - Bristol's Sky Ships

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

Robin Allender of the Moon Under Water podcast and Your Own Personal Beatles is a fine Bristol lad with a tale or two to tell. How many ships sail in the ocean above the stars? None, you might think - but sheriff Shakeshaft and deputy Allender have identified more than one historic UFO in the West Country region. (And one in Kent, but you can’t have everything.) ABK is there too, sitting in judgement like an ageless god, older than time itself. Prepare yourself for a lot of impressions that end up being Ringo. Loreboys nether say die! Check the sweet, sweet merch here... https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631 Support the Loremen here (and get stuff): patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen @loremenpod www.youtube.com/loremenpodcast

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm James Shakeshaft. And I'm Alistair Beckett-King. And Alistair, we have a deputy law person. Yes, we do. It's been a while since there's been a triptych. Indeed it has. Many a moon.

A couple of moons. Or months. And on the subject of moons... Oh, yes, it's Robin Allender from the Moon Underwater podcast. And your own personal Beatles, which is about the band, not the insect. Don't make the same mistake I did.

You brought a matchbox full of them. Yeah, I know. I made a fool of myself. But made a friend. Yeah, it's really fun. Quite spooky. And it's all about Bristol, mate. Alistair. Hello, James. Hello, how are you? I'm all right. I'm a little bit giddy because I haven't spoken to anyone yet today. Ooh. No deliveries? No, no deliveries, no deliveroos, no deliver... Ah, none of the vowels.

I think of it as deliver we, James. Oh, that's nice, in a way. But it kind of sounds like someone's sending me we, so forget that. Yeah, yeah, we'll cut that. We'll cut that. Take that house. But Alistair, I've done it again. I've brought us a special guest.

You haven't. To the Lawmen podcast. A little deliver wee just for me. Deliver wee for us. For all of us. A deliveroose. A deliveroose, yes, yeah. You have to leave that in now.

I was thinking about that. The riff has now become dovetailed perfectly into the introduction of the guest. That's a shame. It has. We've got a Deliver Allender, if you will. We've got Robin Allender here. Welcome, Robin. Yes.

Hello, Robin. Hello. It's lovely to be here. So nice to have you. Thank you very much for coming on. You're a podcast-easter? Is that a thing yeah podcast easter shall i go back to the deliveroo metaphor you're a podcast do a podcast do yeah podcast do you've

got a whole bunch of podcasts a raft of podcasts is to a raft it's a narrow raft it's more like the door from titanic just enough to keep you afloat, but only really one person can survive. Yeah, push that. I was going to say Keanu Reeves. It's not him, is it? It's the other guy. What is one of the other guys? I was sitting in the cafe the other day,

and there was a middle-aged family there. I say middle-aged. I'm middle-aged. They're the people who were middle-aged when I was 20, so old people, really. And they were having quite an intense conversation. And I sort of tuned into it. And the conversation that they'd been talking about

for about half an hour was about how they think that there was enough room on the door for both of them. And the film came out about 20 years ago. And I think every single person on the planet at some point has noted that there was enough space on the door for both of them at the end of Titanic. And I feel like I just caught the last, like the people, you know like when your gran sends you a meme or something,

the last people on Earth to go, actually, that door seemed quite large. I saw that happening. It was a wonderful moment. It's a very, very long film, isn't it? Maybe they only just finished it. They say you very, very long film, isn't it? Maybe they only just finished it. They say you have two deaths, though, don't they? There's one time when you die from freezing or drowning, and the second time is when people stop debating

about whether you could have got on that door. That you witnessed the second death of Jack from Titanic. But less about a fictional raft from a film, let's talk about an actual metaphor which is your podcasts robin what what is your what makes up your raft of podcasts well i have a podcast i do with my friend john robbins called the moon underwater which is where we have guests in to kind of create their dream pub um and it's quite a silly podcast because we it's not really about pubs it's more about the nature of desire itself i think what are those silly podcasts

i'm a i'm a massive fan i love that podcast cool yeah it's good fun i think it's found its audience now and i think we do genuinely love pubs and we do try to cover kind of pub news and stuff you know pubs that are closing new pubs and things we should be aware of but it is just kind of generally just very silly stuff about imagining pubs revealing themselves out of the mist and things like this but do tend to spend more time kind of saying silly things like that than actually focusing on pubs i'm kind of disappointed because i i always thought that this podcast was ostensibly about folklore but basically about the nature of desire and it's annoying to realize that you've already cornered that market yeah we thought we had a niche i'm not sure this podcast is about desire at all

please keep going robin don't let me derail you and i also do a podcast about the beatles called your own personal beatles with my friend jack pelling and that was kind of we started that in Keep going, Robin. Don't let me derail you. And I also do a podcast about the Beatles called Your Own Personal Beatles with my friend Jack Pelling. And that was kind of, we started that in lockdown in 2020. And we kind of started it thinking we knew more about the Beatles than we did. And as the podcast progressed,

we realised we knew really quite little about the Beatles. So did. And as the podcast progressed, we realised we knew really quite little about the Beatles. So it's sort of been, we interviewed a really lovely guy, Joe Wisby, who does an excellent podcast about Beatles books. And he said to us, it feels like you kind of started your Beatles journey with the podcast. I think that's the nicest way of saying you didn't have a clue what you were doing at the start. the nicest way of saying you didn't have a clue what you were doing at the start we can't and like it has been that because it's been it's meant you know i've listened to so much more read so much more and we've interviewed some really good guests like comedians and writers and and other musicians and things and it's kind of i think it's found a nice audience because we've

sort of tended to interview people who you wouldn't might not expect the kind of Beatles fans like we just interviewed the singer of a band called Architects who are kind of a metal metal core band so you wouldn't necessarily think that you know he was a big Beatles fan but he's a massive Beatles nerd I also am a massive fan of that podcast as well I'm looking forward to its return oh thanks James And I'm now thinking back to how many bad Beatles impressions we've done in the course of this podcast. They all sound a lot like Ringo. Every Beatle is Ringo. He's sort of the fifth Beatle for us, isn't he?

But we haven't got you here to talk about Beatles in a pub. A tiny little pub under a rock for Beatles. What are you talking about, James? Yes, a tiny little pub for Beatles. Tiny little insect pub serving tiny little acorns full of Beatle wine. Beatle wine. Did the Beatles ever bring out a beer? They brought out everything, didn't they, when they got merchandised?

I wonder if they ever had a Beatle booze. I don't know if they did, but they certainly were big boozers kind of at the start it sort of went beer pot as it was called acid cocaine heroin for the beetles that's a kind of that's you that's you what a night oh and tea as well lots of tea yes in the um the get back doco that massive documentary they drink lots of tea and eat sandwiches that was a good subplot i felt of that program yeah the tea that the toast the toast looked so kind of thin and anemic didn't it i thought you know i haven't watched it i can't wait to see the painstakingly remastered toast in glorious 4k definition i haven't watched it. I can't wait to see the painstakingly remastered Toast in glorious 4K definition. I haven't watched it yet.

They actually recreated some of that Toast for Paul McCartney's Glastonbury set, I believe. Someone get me some Toast. I'm Paul McCartney. I'm also Paul McCartney. Is that the Toast? It also sounds like Ringo. I'm very Paul McCartney. Is that the toast? It also sounds like Ringo? I'm very pale toast. I've probably got margarine on me. James, you've got to get this back on track. Yes.

I'm so sorry. Let's make a podcast. So, Robin, you grew up in the South West, right? Yeah, I grew up in Bristol. I went to school in Thornbury, which is just outside Bristol. Yes, and I lived in Bristol for pretty much all my adult life, really. Apologies, too, if I slip into a bit of a Bristol. Because of growing up sort of West Country adjacent,

it's quite a farmry area, so I can quite easily go into sort of farmery but bristol's got a little bit of more of an urban edge to it there definitely is yeah there definitely is and there is a slight difference between north and south bristol accents as well i'm told oh is that yeah yeah i have got a very slight bristol accent that comes out sometimes would you describe someone as a good old boy no I don't think I've ever done that maybe that's more kind of Somerset

kind of Gloucester kind of thing yeah I think I mean this is bordering on insulting James would you ever just sit in a barrel for an entire day drinking cider

would you ever do that Robin yeah you ever just just jumped into a haystack have you ever done that yeah would you ever ask someone how their

tractor was getting on? Come on. Bristol is a port town, James. Stop patronising them. We've actually got a couple of sort of semi-water-based tales, haven't we, Robert? Some semi-aquatic stories. Yeah, we've liaised a little bit,

and we found a couple of bits of Bristol lore. It's weirdly hard to find bristol law and i think that might be because it's weirdly county-less yeah and it's now it's kind of own county there is kind of a lot of ghosts kind of stuff i was looking at ghost pubs and things in bristol haunted pubs but yeah i've got the i've got the great book haunted britain oh yes by anthony d hippisley cox which is such a great name there's only one yes there's only one entry for bristol in it which is to do with healing a healing pond in saint anne's park is saint anne's well which is curative and has been patronized by royalty. Oh, well done.

Really good world. Oh, nice world, guys. But that's the only entry for Bristol in the whole Haunted Britain. There's hardly anything in Friend of the Show, Reader's Digest, Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain, there's hardly anything on Bristol in there. It mostly talks about the Bristol Channel,

but we'll get to that later. Is this the curse of the industrial town is it did bristol blow a post-industrial revolution there must be some great haunted pubs in bristol because there's some very old ones and that's where you find ghosts the the landogger trowels probably one of the most famous pubs in Bristol, which is allegedly where Daniel Defoe met the inspiration for the characters in, wait, in what's his famous book called? Robinson Crusoe. And it's also where Treasure Island starts in the Landogger Trail. And that is meant to be haunted.

My favourite pub story is the hatchet where the door is allegedly covered in human skin. What? You heard that story before yeah it's a very old building and it was like the the the door was allegedly covered with human skin from a condemned man so that's a rather grisly bit of local wow wow a leather door wow and and why i suppose those are my two reactions to that. Yeah, I know. What does the knocker look like? Yeah, they didn't use any parts for the knocker, if that's what you're insinuating.

No, it's more of one of those Paul doorbells, James. In Other Friend of the Show, The Law of the Land by Westford and simpson there is actually a little pair of entries for bristol which is where we're going to be taking our stories from today yes they're from a book from around 12 11 called otia imperiala which is by a chap called gervais of tilbury he was something called a canon lawyer, which I got very excited about. And then I looked up what it was,

and it's just like a church lawyer. Did you think he was a canon lawyer, canon with two Ns? Yeah. Was that where the excitement came from? Yeah. Right, I see, yeah. Be like, yeah, you can use a canon for that. No, that is just a rifle method.

You were out of line using a cannon for that job my friend um recently went to a wedding where the photographer was trying to get everyone set up oh it was a church wedding so they said something we need to wait for the cannon to get here the photographer goes oh great i love that nicknames the best man was called the canon which is great so gervais of tilbury he knocked around europe with the royalty in the 12th and 13th centuries he was quite pally with king henry ii and he wrote a book of entertainment for his kid uh the young king henry and then he ended up with Emperor Otto II of Germany, for whom he wrote the Ottia Imperiala,

which it sort of roughly translates as recreation for an emperor. And as far as I could tell, it seems to have just been like a big book of facts, like you'd get for Christmas. Big book of fun facts for a clever, hardworking emperor. Yes, exactly. Oh, I'd love that if i were an emperor and i received that your own personalized guinness book of records basically yeah it was

broadly divided up into three parts one part was history section which dealt with the creation to the flood oh yeah history yeah yeah yeah classic history. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, classic history stuff, yeah. And then geography, which talked about the known world and how it was divided between Noah's three sons. You know geography. It appears to be covering a particular span of time, again, in geography there. It sounds like he's just retelling Genesis. And then the third section was the Compendium of Marvels,

which is where things got really kooky. Skip straight to section three. Forget all that stuff in the first two. And he told all sorts of myths and legends, including this first story. In Law of the Land, it says that he recounts two strange events, which he thought were good evidence in support of the Bible statement that there are waters which are above the firmament, which is from Genesis 1-7.

So he really just read Genesis and then retold it the firmament is that's the stars right i guess so there's water above that yes okay and there's evidence for that it's very compelling evidence i think oh god yeah uh this is supposed to have happened in gloucestershire um although there's no place name given but some people say that it happened in Bristol what happened is people were leaving church on a foggy day and then they saw coming from the sky a ship's anchor which hooked around a tombstone

and the rope was stretching up into the clouds and then a man climbed down the rope and he was trying to free the anchor but the spectators grabbed hold of him and then the air seemed to choke him and he died like a man drowning in the sea what that's brilliant i mean not for him yeah but that's really good as a story and then after a little bit the rope got cut from above and the sort of tail end of the rope went off back up into the clouds and the anchor was left on the ground and they turned it into an ornament for the church door that's one of the tales that there were these sort of i don't know sort of boats in the sky wow i wonder if uh

the the fact that there's this anchor on a church door surely would help us locate where it is you'd think yeah yeah yeah yeah if that story is true i know that's not not the most exciting thing about the story or the body of a man yeah yeah that also would have been evidence the thing i like about this the story is the idea that it could be it starts and you think okay maybe one person saw something in the sky and the clouds took a strange formation but then it's the fact that lots of people saw it and then that's the fact that there seemed to be some kind of physical artifact which was this person makes it so strange he goes on to sort of elaborate the voices were heard in the clouds and they were having a big debate before they cut the ropes they're obviously like are we gonna we going to go get him? Oh no. He went, you know,

just leave him. Are they also from Bristol, the people in the space boat? Also Bristolian? Oh no. Probably, yes. Oh no. Oh no.

We appear to have caught, we've caught an anchor on a bloomin' gravestone. Oh my God. I've never seen that before. That is weird. That is really weird. Where's he to? He's got to get the anchor.

I think we're just really lucky the people in the boat didn't all sound like Ringo, frankly. But it also happened in a place in Ireland called, not sure how you pronounce this, called Chloria or Chloria, C-L-O-R-E-A. First one sounds less like a disease yes that had exactly the same thing happened basically in an anchor was found caught on the church with irish guys in the boat oh what's going on we're going to have to get the anchor off the church oh wow it's like being in the room with an actual bad impressionist. And in that case, the sort of, for want of a better word, diver managed to swim back up.

Swim? Really? Through the air? Wow. Into the clouds and evidently be reunited with his vessel. It also happened in Gravesend in Kent, and there the people stoned the diver to death. Yeah, I've had gigs in Kent that have been like that. Oh, Jesus.

We've been to Kent. I must say now that I got some excellent information from a podcast called The Quantum Mechanics, who listeners of the show will know. They accompanied me on a stakeout to see if a standing stone would actually walk down to a stream at night time to go and drink uh on midsummer's eve this year and we did do that stone walk to the river at midnight it did not no it didn't okay okay it didn't it turned out it didn't twist it didn't

move spoiler was was it a full moon on midummer Night? Because sometimes you have to have both of those, you know, for something magic to happen. You know what? That's a very good point. It was not a full moon. That'll be what went wrong. Thanks for sorting that one out, Robin. Got to the bottom of it. I'm going out with them again in a couple of weeks to Cannock Chase to see if there is a werewolf, really, in Cannock Chase.

Okay. Is it possible for us to put money on whether we think there will or won't be a werewolf at this point yeah go for it okay um but from them i gleaned a lot of information about historical ufos because this is basically a ufo right yeah yeah if this had happened in another decade we'd be calling it a u encounter. There are examples of things which sound like UFOs. In 214 BCE, Livy wrote that phantom ships were seen gleaming in the sky. Wow. And in 216, he said that there were round shields seen in the sky. And in 212, he reported that a huge stone was seen flying about in the sky.

All the same guy that these reports. Okay. All the same guy. Obviously very fixated on things being in the sky. But I think they didn't even have a word for blue at that time. So I'm not sure I believe them. Yeah, that's true. I mean, maybe he was just in a big, big building.

He just didn't realise he was inside. Inside, yeah. But I was reading, I've got this great book that was my dad's called Folklore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders by William Henderson. Billy Hen? Billy Hen, yeah. Oh, yeah.

I think it was first published 1860s, I want to say. But I found this bit, which is quite interesting. And so this was in durham oh oh yeah the death of louis the 16th was foreshadowed by the aurora borealis and myriads of fighting men were seen in the sky night after night all through the county of durham before the french revolution and the reverend henry humble good name informs me that he has heard people declare that they had distinctly heard the cries of the combatants and groans of the wounded. Again, I'm told that a little before the rising of either 1715 or 1745, there were seen appearances in the sky as of encountering armies, which were, however, subsequently explained by a refraction in the atmosphere.

So that's quite, yeah, that's a shame. He should have stuck to his guns there i mean he needs to get himself a cannon lawyer i am yeah as big a fan of refraction as the next person but i'm not sure how you can refract an army into the sky a whole army that all the way from france i do like the way whoever it was that was responsible for what was on the sky that night was like, oh, the people of Durham will need to know about the French Revolution. Or the commissioning

editor of the sky. Yeah. Run with the French Revolution this time. Today's top stories are French Revolution. Has the sky gone to press? Hold the sky presses. I'm from Durham. I hadn't even heard of France until recently. It's very similar also to the legend of Ticonderoga,

which we did a few episodes ago, a couple of months ago, I think. Ticonderoga. The people of Appen got to see a battle in North America. They did, yes. In the sky. In the sky. There is, I mean, in these circumstances, evidence is a very strong word,

but there's a lot of old paintings that feature things which appear to be kind of spacecraft-y. There is, if you Google the miracle of the snow, go image search, it's Jesus and Mary. So this is a painting of a legend when it was supposed to have snowed on the 5th of August in Rome. Evidently, the artist thought it was Jesus and Mary and a bunch of UFOs that did it. When you sent me that story, James, the first thing it reminded me of was the kind of, I really like, I love time slip stories. Oh, yeah. And I'm sort of fascinated by them because the time slip is always something really interesting. So the most famous one is the two women who are walking in Palace of Versailles and they felt like they'd gone back in time.

They could see Marie Antoinette. Yes. And there's another quite famous one in Liverpool, in Bond Street in Liverpool. Quite a few people have reported that they've kind of come out of a shop and they found themselves in the 50s or early 60s. And they can see the old shops and they remembered shop names that they Googled afterwards and found were actually there. Did they also see the Beatles?

Well, exactly. That would be the most, obviously, because Liverpool would be so closely linked with that time and because marion twinnett was one of the most famous people who'd ever lived at that time some people considered her to be the fifth beetle yeah marion twinnett yeah she sounded a lot like ringo actually let them eat toast so the um but i suppose what i'm saying is that is that kind of confirmation bias thing where if if you were to read something in the clouds it would be something that was quite famous such as well jesus jesus was quite famous uh yeah really he was some people said he was

bigger than the beatles yeah i don't really remember the quote to be honest or the french french revolution or you know or uh yeah stories about chipwrecks i suppose like if that would if that was a story that was kind of going viral in the equivalent sense then you might be more likely to interpret it in the in the clouds i don't know do you see what i'm trying to say yes exactly it's basically it's cloud clickbait they know what people want to see and the other story that gervais wrote about which is a similar take on this kind of boat in the sky. But there's quite the twist, isn't there, Robin? Yeah, I love this one. Is it going to be like Ricky Gervais,

where the first one is a big hit and the subsequent stories get more and more sentimental and less and less joke-based? Oh, this is incredibly sanguine and you are not going to like the voice I'm going to do. Yeah, this is the afterlife, sure. This is Derek. Yes, this is from Friend of the Show, Law of the Land.

Which, to be clear for you, Robin, the name of that book is Law of the Land, not Friend of the Show, Law of the Land, even though we always call it Friend of the Show, Law of the Land. Laura the Land, is that her name? Yes, the french would call her laura the land okay so laura the land logically this tale implies that those who sail their mysterious ships above the sky are not human for if they were earthly air could not harm them but the hero of gervais's second story is a perfectly normal Bristol man. He was sailing to Ireland, having left his wife and children at home,

when the ship was driven far off course into unknown waters. While there, he happened to drop his knife overboard when washing it in the sea after a meal. At that very moment, his wife too was sitting at her meal at home in Bristol, in a room with an open skylight. A knife fell through the skylight and stuck in the table in front of her, and she recognised it as her husband's. When he came home long afterwards, she showed it to him, and they realised that the timing was exact.

Who, after hearing this testimony, says Gervais, will doubt that above our habitations is placed a sea, either in the air or resting on the air. It's kind of an odd. I don't know, I think he needs to make that kind of specific kind of contrast at the end there. I really love that story. That's brilliant. It is. I mean, I question how they know that it happened at exactly that moment they were both having dinner alistair at dinner time weren't you listening it was dinner time it was at dinner time i'm sorry tea time the thing that's great about that story is uh that it's

like normally you'd be familiar with the story which was like the sailor drowned and then she saw the ghost of him at that point yes but this is so mundane and he doesn't even die. He's just lost a piece of cutlery. There's another bit of weird sea-ness near Bristol in the Bristol Channel. Is that like the sky?

Can you watch the news on it? Yeah. On the Bristol Channel. A bit of work by there. In the Bristol Channel, somewhere between Somerset and Pembrokeshire,

there are fairy islands called the Green Meadows of Enchantment. And they're not usually visible to humans. And they're usually seen by accident. And on these islands, fairy folk live. And apparently they used to visit a market in Wales, in Carmarthenshire, called Llan. It's Llan and then A-R-N-E at the end. Oh, Llan. Llan is where Dylan Thomas lived. Yes, that's the place.

Oh, well done, Robin. They used to visit Llan Market. Right. I've looked it up. It's on Wednesdays in Carmarthenshire. And during the last century century and this is from other friend of the show folklore myths and legends of britain so that would be the 1800s so in the 1800s some sailors claimed to have landed on the island and joined the fairy revels however when the sailors re-embarked on their vessel and looked back they found the islands

had vanished whoa and all their revels had turned into Maltesers. Also, they did well on that deal then. That's an improvement, yes. So I think, if anything, it's proof that sailors from Bristol, very elaborate liars. I found in Haunted Britain another thing about ghost ships, which was in Cornwall. It's at St. Levan. French for St. The Van. Yeah, St. The Van. ships which was in cornwall it's at saint levain french for saint the van yeah saint the van at par chapel well it begins any child christened and the thing i love about haunted britain is he has

to he sort of really rushes through some stories he just get because he's trying to cat cram so much in he'll just put one thing in like a sentence you go can you just dwell on that a bit he goes at par chapel well any child christened joanna will be a fool an ill omen because a lady of that name once reprimanded the saint for fishing on sunday more mystifying is the ghost ship which has been sailing straight towards the shore and almost half a mile inland before disappearing so ghost ships but yeah i like the idea that you should he just combines those two facts about this place there's a ghost ship and don't call anyone joanna yeah i mean arguably those are separate issues they don't deserve to be on the same paragraph i'd say poor joanna getting

lumped in with the ghost ship for color we would never do that on this podcast just bring in slightly related things in order to bulk something out we would never stand for that there's never just a deviation into funny pictures of jesus almost never i can only think of three episodes where you where that might have happened so that's those are the tales alistair really really good really good i really liked the anchor from Space. Space anchors. Space anchor. Space anchor,

Space knife. The first two in the trilogy and then a very disappointing third film. They split Space fork into parts one and two

which I think was a mistake. So, are you ready to dispense with us some, dispense your scores to us? I'm ready to dispense with you.

Dispense with us. I'm here, i'm ready to deliver some scores to you so rowan i'm going to be your canon lawyer for this one and and i'm bringing out the big guns okay so i would suggest you go with your first category put forward naming i'd I'd say. Go with naming first. First of all, I'll ask, what's the first category then? Naming is the first category. Good choice. What have we got? We've got the Reverend Henry Humble, double H. And have we had any other names, James?

We've got Gervais of Tilbury. Gervais of Tilbury. I often think that Stephen Merais of Tilbury. Gervais of Tilbury. I often think that Stephen Merchant of Tilbury might have been the driving force behind some of his stuff. And also that other of Tilbury

with a perfectly spherical head. What's his name? Carl Pilkington of Tilbury. I also enjoyed some of his stuff. But it did start to feel overplayed after. Anyway, the point is, yes, good name. We had Livy. Livy? Livy.

How's that spelled? L-I-V-Y. It was a nickname for... Titus Livius Pertavenus. Known to us as Livy. Great. And also, on the subject of nicknames, we've also got The Cannon. Oh, yeah, The Cannon.

It's a great nickname. I think it's a... I think it's a... Haunted Britain's author. Oh, yeah, The Cannon. It's a great nickname. I think it's a... I think it's a... Haunted Britain's author. Oh, yeah. Bank it, Robin. Bank it. Because my cannon gavel is about to come down,

so if you don't get it quickly... Just wait a sec. Anthony D. Hippisley Cox. Oh, okay. All right. That is good. It's a four. I was going to give you a three,

but for Anthony D. H.C., it's four. It's a four. I was going to give you a three, but for Anthony D, H, C, it's four. Lovely. Lovely stuff. That's good. Four's good. Four's solid.

So category the second, let's go with supernatural. So what are we saying? The most, what are we kind of grouping together? What are the best supernatural things we've covered here? The thing is though, we haven't really got any ghosts, apart from that one ghost ship.

Yeah, we had a ghost ship. I really like the drowning men drowning in the air. I thought they were pretty good supernatural beings. Very terrifying. Really horror movie stuff, I think. I like the man that swims back up, though. Swims up into the air to catch his ship again. He does make the guy who drowns look like a bit of an idiot for doing that. I think he was grabbed by the people down there.

Oh, yes. And sort of held against his will. And the poor one who got stoned. I mean, that's, you know, gosh. That's Kent. That's Kent. Holds a mirror up to our own natures, doesn't it? These sailor airmen. That's Kent. That's Kent. Holds a mirror up to our own natures, doesn't it? Yes.

These sailor airmen. There's all sorts of flying Jesuses in his Jesus spacecraft. A veritable fleet of Jesuses. G-Zi. Fleet of Jesuses. G-Zi. And we've had a few time slips going on as well, potentially. Yes.

Marianto and I. Yeah. 50s, 60s Liverpoolpool fairy islands and the fairy islands of boring name yes not to be confused with the pharaoh islands no they are standard name they are real well all right so my question to you is are these supernatural encounters or are they ufos because if they're ufos it's a very, very low score, because that's just facts. That's just science.

Right. That's something we don't understand. Whoa. Nowadays, a UFO, sure, that could just be someone not knowing flight paths. But back then, a boat, a flying boat with an anchor? Yeah. Come on.

This is in 1211. But maybe it was like an alien spaceship and they interpreted it as a craft that they would recognise. Maybe the rope was like a highly advanced space rope and the anchor might have been a... Space anchor. Yes. I was going to say data crystal, but I'll go with space anchor. Or spanker. A spanker.

A lot is resting on this anchor that's on the church door i mean if if we saw it and it looked like a kind of i don't know a usb stick or something you might find on ufo i think we could give credence to the ufo but i think the fact that there was testimony there was an anchor that that takes it to the realm of the supernatural for me i'm also really, really impressed, Robin, that you're leaning on the fact that we don't have that evidence as evidence. That is a classic Shake Shaft move in this courtroom.

The fact, since we don't have the anchor, we can't know it was science. Ergo. Proof. Magic. Dust. Dust. Five out of five. Some people just get it. Magic. Dust. Dust. You see, Alistair, some people

just get it. I'm sorry. I wish I could see the world the way you do, James. You're like the John Lennon of this podcast. You're like, imagine this, imagine all of that. Whereas I'm like, Ringo going, no. I'll just have a piece of toast.

I'm going to talk about trains. Thomas Tank Engine. Yeah. Yeah, we know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was still part of the Ringo impression. Because I drew the voice for Thomas Tank Engine. But not even this voice at all.

Not anything like that voice. All right. Five out of five. That was a really good score, which I feel like you really cheated those points out of me, but you did it. Our third category. What's that? The Beatles. The Beatles. Yes. Okay. They really

did turn up a lot. Let me ask you, James, was that particular pop group known as the Fab Five? Just a little question for you there. Okay, I see where you're going. I don't think they were. Are you dangling a score of four in front of us? I'm dangling a four, yes.

I'm leaning heavily on a four, ready to click it into place. But you're forgetting about Marie Antoinette, the fifth Beatle. Marie Antoinette, the fifth Beatle. Any of the fifth Beatles that we've had. Our impression of the Beatles is the fifth Beatle. Any of the fifth Beatles that we've had. Our impression of the Beatles is the fifth Beatle. Yeah, we have covered a lot of Beatles content, time slips in Liverpool. But do you know the Eleanor Rigby story,

which is good and is almost like a modern bit of folklore? No. Which is that Paul McCartney always said he was looking for a name for the song and he was in Bristol going to see Jane Asher in a a play so it brings it back to bristol as well perfect and um i think he i think it was either it might have been a butcher's i'm not sure called rigby and he always said that's where he got the name and then fairly recently i want to say in the 90s someone found in wootton near liverpool i.e a place very close to where john and paul, and a cemetery that they would have gone through

and seen was a grave for Eleanor Rigby. Really? So, yeah. So it's like, it's either, obviously it kind of must have subconsciously gone into his head somehow, or there is another interpretation, which is that he kind of,

that's where he got the name, but he didn't want to say it in case it became a kind of weird fan pilgrimage thing in the mid-60s when it would have been, when Beatlemania was kind of at its height. But it's kind of, it's a nice story, and it does have something slightly eerie about it as well. Hello, it's Robin from the future here, correcting Robin from the past. Eleanor Rigby's gravestone is in the cemetery next to St Peter's Church in Woulton in Liverpool, not Wooton, you idiot. And this is

significant because, of course, it was at St Peter's Church, Fate, where Paul met John in 1957. Paul would claim that the name came from Eleanor Bronn, who had starred in Help, and from a sign he saw in Bristol for Rigby and Evans wine and spirit shippers. But it was in the early 80s that someone spotted Eleanor Rigby's grave in Woolton. That's Woolton, not Wooton. Ian Leslie has recently written about this on his sub stack in an article called Paul McCartney's Freakish Memory. So check that out and on with the show. memory so check that out and on with the show yes and it links us to bristol it links bristol and the beatles simply has to be a five and also you did have jesus in the sky not necessarily with diamonds but definitely in the sky all right all right it's five yes perfect i'm not happy but i know these scores are good but

that this is this is the best type of win when you make me suffer for it yes all right what's the final category then put me out of my misery the final category is the sky the sky the sky ah clever reworking of our beloved catchphrase, the sea, the sea. Exactly. We could have gone with the sea, the sea, but it was too obvious. It is, of course, a sea, a sea, a sea in the sky, the sky, isn't it? It goes the sea, the sea, the sky, the sky, the sea, the sea again. Yeah.

Loops back round. If you keep going, is there another the sky, the sky above the sea, the sea? Well, it must be, otherwise you'd drown. They're lucky that the knife didn't just keep dropping through all of them until it reached terminal velocity smashing the table into pieces or just landed back with the man who lost it kind of coming out of the sea sky above him dabbing into the back of his hand that'd be weird maybe that's why it's only happened once for everyone else they've kind of dropped their knife and then peered overboard and then thunk right in the back of the head.

Creating the perfect locked room murder. A locked boat. The perfect impossible crime. A locked boat. That's incredible. Yeah. Nobody would ever guess it. It's the perfect crime. Once you've eliminated everything that is

not possible, the only remaining thing, however implausible, even if it's as implausible as a sea above a sky above a sea, is what's left. Is that what Arthur Conan Doyle wrote? I'm pretty certain that's what he said, yeah.

He said, when you eliminate the impossible, there's definitely a sea in the sky, obviously. Watch out for falling knives. Now show me them fairies. That's what he said. Well, I mean, there's two skies in the phrase, the sky, the sky. Why shouldn't I just give you a two for that?

I don't want to put words into Robin's mouth here, but I think we have clearly proven that there's an infinite number of the skies, the skies. And within our scoring system, the number that's closest to infinity is five. Yeah. All right, well, compromise and give you a four. Okay, okay.

Because we know that there's minimum to the sky, the skies. Min to max infinity. That's me to the middle at four. Yeah, I like it. Exactly right. Delightful. Very, very spooky stories, actually.

I think we did very well there. Enjoyed it. I think you robbed me blind. Robin, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure. I've loved it.

Thank you for having me. Robin, please remind us of your podcasts. I'm asking you like I don't listen to them as soon as they come out. I do the Moon Underwater podcast with John Robbins. And we're hoping to do some live shows hopefully by the end of the year uh we did a we did a few in edinburgh which was fun um and i also do the beatles podcast your own personal beatles with jack pelling the third series should start very soon depending on when this goes out it starts around it should start in october sometime it'll either be soon

or in the past sooner yeah we need a new tense it could be right now depending on when you're listening to it it could be happening right now it could be like a knife falling through your skylight yeah somehow into into your pod device What a lovely episode. What a lovely guy. A cracker. He's a cracker. The episode was a cracker, in my view.

As you heard, we had a lovely conversation with Robin there, and the conversation continued on into a Patreon bonus episode weird how these things happen sometimes isn't it i know which you can get access to by going to patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod i think it's a good extra it's a it's an interesting mix of quite serious and then very silly yes and actually quite a lot of off cuts from the episode but in a good way off cuts oh yeah top quality offcuts. On cuts, even. Well, thank you so much for coming on.

And I think we've all learned that if you see an anchor drop down from the heavens and a man climb down that anchor, get stoning. Get in. Stone that man to death kill that man i think you just get him some armbands with helium in them which would float in the air and also in water so kind of hopefully both elements would he get some sort of version of the bend, though? Yeah. The straights? The straights.

Yes. Yeah. I don't really understand the physics of this. It's really confusing. See above the sky. I think we're just going to have to try it and find out.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I'll meet you in the graveyard. Just waiting for space, man.