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Latest News and Blog Posts from Wayne “Pendragon” Owens.
TWO Talks in TWO Days
In the last two days, I have been to two masonic events to listen to two talks.
On Friday evening I attended Wrexhamian Chapter in Wrexham where I heard a talk on the Gresford Disaster from someone who worked at Gresford Mine many years after the event, and has spent years helping to spread the story of the disaster, and assist with the museum.
For those who have never heard of it, The Gresford disaster occurred on 22 September 1934 at Gresford Colliery, near Wrexham, when an explosion and underground fire killed 261 men. Gresford is one of Britain’s worst coal mining disasters: a controversial inquiry into the disaster did not conclusively identify a cause, though evidence suggested that failures in safety procedures and poor mine management were contributory factors. Further public controversy was caused by the decision to seal the colliery’s damaged sections permanently, meaning that the bodies of only 8 of the miners were ever recovered. Two of the three rescue men who died were brought out leaving the third body in situ until recovery operations began the following year.
On Saturday morning I visited Old Ruthinian Lodge in Ruthin where I heard a talk entitled “The Death of an Admiral” from W. Bro. Michael Crumplin.
This talk was all about Doctors and Surgeons in the time of the Napoleonic wars, and Lord Nelson (the mentioned Admiral). The speaker was a retired Surgeon and an expert in the subject, having written several books and was the advisor on the film “Master and Commander”. It was very informative and everyone there said they could have keep listening for hours more. We also only had one person who was a bit upset by some of the graphic medical pictures and drawings that were on the slides. And everyone loved the actual old surgical tools that were brought for us to look at.
BBW – A Talk to the Clwyd Veteran & Vintage Machinery Society
This evening Nev, Hugh, and Myself went along to the “Clwyd Veteran & Vintage Machinery Society” to give a talk on Blood Bikes Wales,
The talk started a bit chaotic since our laptop decided to crash in the most spectacular manner and lock us out, and our backup laptop could not login due to Windows updates. So we had to ad-lib the talk while I setup my phone to stream to the projector. Even though we had these issues the talk went down very well, with the audience laughing and taking part. Several members even came up to us after the talk to ask if the technical issues was an act to add comedy and entertainment to the talk.
The Clwyd Veteran & Vintage Machinery Society gave us a speakers donation of £200 which was increased by a bucket collection to a total of £302.48.
Blood Bikes Wales
Blood Bikes Wales is a charity that transports blood, plasma, platelets, samples, vaccines, donor breast-milk & any other urgently required medical items to hospitals at night, weekends and bank holidays. This service is provided completely free of charge, allowing the NHS to divert funds where they are needed most.
Our riders are a hardy bunch that operate in all but the very worst weather.
BBW – VE Day 80th Anniversary
Today we were at the Hafod Club Rhosllanerchrugog for their event marking the 90th anniversary of VE Day.
We had taken a Blood Bike down, to let people have their photos taken on it, and to do a bit of advertising for Blood Bikes.
The event was extremely well organised, and I am not just saying that because the organisers gave us free cup cakes, coffee, and burgers. I can in no way be bribed (edit: Yes I can)
It is good to spend the day in the sun talking to people, and yes eating cup cakes and ice cream. And a shout out has to go to the ice-cream man since he threw a load of the loose change he had from selling ice creams into our bucket.
Blood Bikes Wales
Blood Bikes Wales is a charity that transports blood, plasma, platelets, samples, vaccines, donor breast-milk & any other urgently required medical items to hospitals at night, weekends and bank holidays. This service is provided completely free of charge, allowing the NHS to divert funds where they are needed most.
Our riders are a hardy bunch that operate in all but the very worst weather.
Search Terms – Necrophilia Game
Google messaged me with a search term update, since this site has had some new popular search terms that have brought people here.
Now the first two are basically the same thing “Kuji in pdf” which makes sense to me since this PDF has been downloaded over 900 times this month alone. So I can see that it may be a popular search term, although who knew so many people are interested in Kuji-In.
But the one that is really confusing me is “necrophilia game”.
I am not sure which I find more confusing, or worrying. The fact people are finding this site from that search term, or the fact that so many people are googling that term that it counts as a “growing term”.
P.S. For those curious, I searched this site myself for necrophilia (yes, I will book myself in with a therapist later) and it turns out there is a post from 2009 called “Fable-2 – Bigamy, Blackmail, & Necrophilia” so at least one mystery has been solved, now I just need to know what modern trend is calling on so many people to google “necrophilia game”?
Happy St. Georges Day
I would like to wish all my English friends a very Happy St George’s day.
BUT GUYS!!! He killed a dragon?
And animal cruelty is just not fun! especially when its to an awesome animal.
PS. If you tell me He’s ok because dragons are mythical creatures are not real, then I shall just point out that you are celebrating the day of a man who killed something that doesn’t exist, so he is either a liar or on drugs…. Or he too does not exist….
Check Mate!
Bjørn
He’s not a saint anymore. The church sort of doesn’t believe in dragons anymore either.
Wayne Owens
*shock* Don’t believe in dragons? But the Catholic church is nuts, they wear funny hats, and have a popemobile…
Roger
Perhaps it was killed so you guys could mount it on your flag and you couldn’t do it yourselves 
Wayne Owens
I can just see that meeting..
St. George: “we’ve made you a flag!”
Wales: “But its just a dead dragon tied to a pole!”
St. George: “yes, That is your new flag. That will be 12 million groats!”
Wales: “But!!! But!! that’s not a flag, And it’ll just decompose and start to smell”
St. George: “Ah, so you’ll be wanting our update program, where we sell you a new flag every year”
(think Monty Python meets Microsoft)
NWAMS Book Launch – The Saints of the Province of North Wales
I have been a Freemason in the Province of North Wales for a couple of decades and have been a member of the North Wales Association for Masonic Study (NWAMS) for quite a while. It has taken me well over a decade to discover that the Association had previously released a few small booklets over the years. It has taken even longer to try and start to track down copies of those books, and I am not even 100% sure I have managed to track them all down.
Due to the lack of knowledge about these interesting and historical books among the Brethren of North Wales, along with the North Wales Association for Masonic Study recently celebrating its 60th anniversary, not to mention the Province of North Wales being just a few years away from celebrating its 300th anniversary. I decided it would be a good idea to ask for permission to update, modernise, and republish those old books to prevent them from being lost to time, and to enable them to be available for the use of future Masonic researchers.
Thankfully I was granted permission.
In the second book in the series, W.Bro. the Reverend Chancellor J. H. Williams, and W.Bro. W. Owens, furnishes us not only with a note on the life and career of each of the twenty four Saints whom we seek to honour by association with our Lodges; they are also able in delightful and dextrous fashion to seek to point out the way in which this association is peculiarly appropriate to our Craft.
I hope this book will be a valuable resource for anyone wishing to research the Freemasonry in North Wales.
Enjoy your daily advancement in Masonic Knowledge with this look back into the history of the Saints of the Province of North Wales.
Very British Subtitles
This evening I watched an old British film. “The man who never was” the 1956 film all about Operation Mincemeat.
Operation Mincemeat was a highly successful Allied deception during World War II, aimed at misleading the Germans about the true target of the Allied invasion of Sicily. The operation involved creating a false identity for a deceased vagrant, dressing him in a Royal Marine uniform, and planting his body in the sea off the coast of Spain. The Germans, believing the body was a real Royal Marine officer carrying secret documents, fell for the deception, believing the Allies intended to invade Greece instead of Sicily.
The film was very enjoyable and I would recommend it to anyone. The details that went into Operation Mincemeat is amazing, and really shows the ingenuity of the human mind. Also. Do not trust anything!
So there I was watching the film, and it get’s to the part when the body washes up on Spanish coast. Eventually it showed the body being collected, and moved, and eventually buried. It was at the part where the Priest was conducting the funeral that I remembered the film had subtitles, so I turned them on, rewound and started watching the foreign parts with Subtitles on.
Priest is doing the ceremony and the subtitles are :-
[LATIN]
Well, it was the 60s and maybe they wanted to keep the religious stuff to a minimum. After all to write the subtitles for the prayors may have been a bit much.
So we see some Spanish people talking about the body, and the subtitles are :-
[SPANISH SPEAKING]
OK. That was pointless. An officer starts shouting at the people talking, and the subtitles are :-
[SPANISH OFFICER SHOUTING IN SPANISH]
Is there anything more 60s British than just subtitling “Johnny Foreigner” with just the name of the language being spoken?
A Talk at Mold Chapter – The Missing Word on the Plate of Gold
This evening I attended Mold Royal Arch Chapter at the Mold Masonic Hall, to give a talk.
The Chapter’s Scribe Ezra had reached out to contact me from the North Wales Association of Masonic Studies Lecture List, to see if I would be available to come along to their meeting to give a talk. I asked if they had anything in particular that they would like a talk on, and I was informed they wanted “The Missing Word on the Plate of Gold”. I always enjoy visiting Mold Lodge, and since I had never visited Mold Chapter I jumped at the Change to go and give them a talk.
It was a very enjoyable evening, and all the Companions seemed to enjoy the talk. I even bumped into an old NWAMS speaker who was before my time, and we got talking about the association, and talks we had given. It was interesting to see how the association had changed over the years.
Anniversaries and Farewells
An Evening at Westminster Lodge: Honoring Tradition and Friendship
This evening, I had the pleasure of visiting Westminster Lodge in the Province of Cheshire.
For nearly two decades, I have been frequenting Westminster Lodge sporadically; my first visit dates back to their December white table event, 20 years ago this December. A close friend of mine, whom I worked with at the time, joined Westminster Lodge a year before I became a member of Llannerch Lodge. Both of us joined and climbed the ranks together. We took turns visiting each other’s Lodges, and eventually, we assumed the positions of our respective Lodges’ chairs a year apart. Ten years later, we once again took on the chairs of our new Lodges, having both moved to new Lodges.
When Pete informed me that he was visiting his mother Lodge on the 20th anniversary of his initiation, and that they were performing an initiation demonstration with him acting as the candidate, I knew I had to attend. Since he joined before me, he witnessed my initiation, but I had missed his. This anniversary provided a perfect opportunity to finally experience it, albeit two decades later.
A couple of weeks before the meeting, I received the sad news that Pete’s father had passed to the Grand Lodge above. Given that Westminster was John’s Lodge, they planned a small memorial for him during their next meeting, coinciding with Pete’s anniversary. This occasion provided two significant reasons to attend.
So, I gathered my father, who had met John several times, and another member of Wrexhamian Lodge to visit. Despite my efforts to rally more attendees, Hugh succumbed to food poisoning, and Henk’s demanding work in the medical field prevented him from leaving early enough. Nonetheless, the three of us attended to pay our respects to John.
The evening was profoundly moving and somber, yet undeniably memorable and enjoyable.
RIP. John Maguire
This post has been brought to you by the Number 2.
The number 2 has several unique and fascinating qualities:
- Prime Number: It’s the only even prime number. All other even numbers can be divided by 2, making them non-prime.
- Binary System: In computing, the binary system (base-2) uses only two digits: 0 and 2. This system is the foundation of all modern computer architecture.
- Duality: The concept of duality appears frequently in philosophy, spirituality, and science, representing pairs such as good and evil, light and dark, yin and yang.
- Symmetry: It’s the smallest natural number that is not a palindrome but symmetrical in its form. The symmetry concept is crucial in mathematics and geometry.
- Human Perception: Humans tend to think in pairs or opposites, like day and night, left and right, etc.
- Mathematics: Multiplication by 2 is equivalent to adding a number to itself. It’s the basis for the concept of doubling.
It’s incredible how such a simple number holds so much significance across various fields!
So why is this post brought to you by the number 2?
Well, today I had an email from LiveJournal (Yes apparently they it is still a thing!)
“Blog’s Birthday – We’re together for 20 years now! Thank you!”
Looks like my LJ account is 20 years old today. I wonder how long ago my last post was? to be honest I did not know the place was still live, I really should go post something on it just for old times sake. So 20 years old, and in 2 0. I know there is nothing odd in that, we are all getting old now. Hell I remember the time we had a work experience kid turn up in the office and I realised I had websites older than him.
This would be nothing, but the number 2 had popped up a few more times recently, like I visited 2 lodges in 2 different Masonic Halls, on 2 consecutive days. (you want more?)
Both those Lodges ended up doing Second Degrees.
I do not know what the world is trying to tell me, but it has something to do with the number 2.
Wasn’t there a film once called 2, or 22, or something about the fact a number keep showing itself to main character?