03 Jun 2026
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Nottingham Forest Player Sightings page entitled,

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1.) 03 Jun 2026
03 Jun 2026 10:52:32
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll's superb, though trippy, novel. In a world of his own imagination, perhaps opium inspired.
I saw an incredible production of it one summers evenings at Newstead Abbey many years ago. We, the audience, were taken to a beautiful spot by the Lake with our picnics and wine, then after a while everyone started to "wonder" when the action was going to start and where the stage was.
Right on cue, a large boat was sighted being rowed across the Lake towards us full of the characters in full costume ( like in the poster).

Rowed by mice.
Then every scene was done in a different spot by a mobile professional cast ( with the Cheshire Cat grinning from the branches of various trees, chatting to us, the audience. I remember the King, a Brian Blessed type actor, remarking to me conversationally that the Queen of Hearts " wasn't the woman he married you know" as she pointed out people with the words "Off with his head".
Very funny and amazing special effects.
A magnificent evenings entertainment

{Ed001's Note - seriously Stokey, he was a paedophile having paedophile fantasies, they are vile books. They make my flesh crawl.}

2.) 03 Jun 2026
03 Jun 2026 11:18:23
Well that took a dark turn didn't it. ?

3.) 03 Jun 2026
03 Jun 2026 11:25:43
Now look what I've started? ?

4.) 03 Jun 2026
03 Jun 2026 11:34:06
DTP, mate, that's one badge of honour that I wouldn't be proud of. ?

5.) 03 Jun 2026
03 Jun 2026 13:36:48
Ed 1 mate. There was never a shred of evidence to support this. Sure, Carroll was an oddity, very shy, odd looking with a stutter and deaf in one ear. A loner who never married. The photos he took were always with the Alice Liddells parent (s ) present and Alice herself ( nor her highly respectable family) never made any allegations. She lived to a ripe old age and had children of her own.
The photos are uncomfortable to us but were common in Victorian times with those new fangled things called cameras. John Ruskin and the dozens of Pre Raphaelite painters were well into it and it was widely regarded as harmless at the time.
Unlike say, Eric Gill the sculptor ( who famously created the iconic Ariel and Prospero statues outside the BBCs main door in at Broadcasting House).

He committed dreadful sexual crimes against his daughters as kids, incest, bestiality and paedophilia, were confirmed in his personal diaries found after his death and confirmed by his daughters ( who, sadly, were brought up at home and rarely let out, and assumed it was natural behaviour).
The BBC recently restored his statues after they were attacked by a man with a hammer shouting " Pedo" and who was arrested and is pending trial. It cost £500, 000 quid including a protective screen to prevent further attacks

{Ed001's Note - you haven't read the letters then? There is plentiful evidence to support it in them.}

6.) 03 Jun 2026
03 Jun 2026 15:04:18
I stopped believing you, Stokey, when it got to the mice rowing the boat. ??

7.) 03 Jun 2026
03 Jun 2026 15:09:06
Well, I had drunk most of a bottle of red by then to be fair. ? ?

8.) 03 Jun 2026
03 Jun 2026 14:09:44
I've read a large selection of them Ed. Just seemed, from what I remember as background reading in my University days, that they were odd but harmless. Juvenile word play, as if he was a man with an immature and juvenile sensibility. Playing games with words and a bit boring to read after a while ( a bit like my posts I guess) ??

{Ed001's Note - maybe I am just suspicious, as one of my friends' daughters was the victim of a paedophile, but to me they were seriously creepy. Nothing like your posts at all. Asking to take pictures of a child on its own is a massive red flag to me. It is not normal. You only have to look at the stuff in the Epstein files etc to see that it is very much the kind of thing they used to do, wanting young children to be models etc. It is very much grooming.}

9.) 03 Jun 2026
03 Jun 2026 14:40:00
No doubt your spot on your spot on Ed1, Stokey as always been a bit sus ??

{Ed001's Note - he has obviously just got a less cynical mindset than me.}

10.) 03 Jun 2026
03 Jun 2026 15:42:49
Fair enough Ed. As I said, the photos nowadays make for uncomfortable viewing.
My own experience of paedophilia and child abuse is pretty horrific
I've spent a significant portion of my career putting the perpetrators inside. I was on the Broxtowe Child Abuse enquiry, if anyone remembers it? From beginning to end. It was basically an extended family ( dozens of adults and over 150 kids, almost a clan) committing sexual abuse going back generations, right back to long dead great grandparents. Basically, the abused became abusers in their turn. Organized abuse " parties " by extremely low intelligence swamp dwellers who had somehow escaped mixing with the rest of society ( their kids rarely attended school and confused the authorities by changing addresses and hiding from social and educational visits.
Some of the more extreme excesses ( such as Satanism) were, on our prosecution barristers advice, not brought up in the trial in case the jury wouldn't believe it and it tainted the rest of the evidence.

It broke my heart and occasionally the horror of it haunts me and breaks through the veneer of civilisation we try to inhabit.
I remember one Mother saying in interview " Well, they're all our kids, we can do what we like with them can't we? "
All the offenders were potted after a massive operation and the kids went into care and many were fostered. We had specially trained foster parents because often disclosed fresh horrors off the cuff at say, breakfast or whilst watching TV.
I remember one pair of foster parents having the run of a huge house with around 25 kids in it. Meals were in sittings. The thing that haunts me is that not one single person arrested believed they were doing anything wrong. And these beliefs were inculcated into their kids over several generations.
When society or a section of it goes wrong, it goes very very wrong .

{Ed001's Note - that is such a sad story Stokey. Horrific too, but sad that people could treat their own children that way.}

11.) 03 Jun 2026
03 Jun 2026 23:26:16
The human animal has an infinite capacity to be inhuman. I don't have much faith in the majority of people, and have more faith in animals, especially dogs and horses.

12.) 04 Jun 2026
04 Jun 2026 10:48:03
Anyway, to lighten the mood, thank goodness it's the start of the First Test against the Kiwis at Lord's in ten minutes, weather permitting.
Back to civilisation.

13.) 04 Jun 2026
04 Jun 2026 10:45:20
I have a great deal of sympathy for your thoughts BSE.
I must stress that this clan was exceptional its isolation from society and longevity of abuse. They were of very very low intelligence and basically feral. The biggest problem we had in evidence gathering and interview was in complying with the "Mcnaugten Rules" where we had to prove that they knew that what they were doing was wrong. They were right on the boundary according to the social psychologists who assessed them.
As you say Ed, very sad indeed.
They were definitely at the the other end of the spectrum of intelligence of abusers we were discussing, the Eric Gills of this world.
I mentioned in an earlier post the wonderful, light and joyous book by Gerald Durrell " My Family and Other Animals ".

Thus time last year I read " The Alexandria Quartet" by his brother Lawrence. Altogether darker.
One of his daughters ( he was married 4 times) committed suicide at a very young age and in her diaries revealed that Lawrence had committed incest and abused her as a child over many years.
Nothing was ever proven but in his book the main character has an intimate knowledge of the child prostitution brothels of Egypt where he was stationed during and after the War when he worked for the Foreign Office.
It's a tough old read though a magnificent novel ( or 4 novels).