The Alternative View 2< The Saatchi Gallery And A Play | Blog | A Bang On The Window > The Days Leading Up To The Event My friend Frog invited me to an event called The Alternative View 2, which I went along to with him, at the end of May.
It was a weekend conference of talks held in a hotel near Heathrow Airport.
Frog sent me an internet link about the event some months ago. I then went round his cottage during one of my lunch breaks, and we booked it all online on his computer. The talks were an alternative view of those reported by the mainstream media. Various speakers covered all sorts of interesting things from emerging viruses, the New World Order, Codex Alimentarius, musical healing, humanity coming of age, an astrological road-map of global change, the Invisible College, and challenging orthodoxy. It all sounded New Age, fun, weird, wacky, and very alternative, so I was glad Frog asked me to go along to it with him. I’ve been to a couple of similar talks with Frog before, which he invited me to. AV2 is the biggest one I've been to so far. The first event that I went with Frog was a conference in London about five years ago, which was about the 9/11 attacks, with the various conspiracies linked with it. I found the conference interesting hearing different takes and theories regarding 9/11 attacks from a number of speakers from America and the UK.
The second alternative type event I went to with Frog was last November, which was a talk by Matthew Delooze called ‘Breaking the Serpents Spell’. This talk was very bizarre, as it was about Reptilian aliens, but it was entertaining to watch. I also had a good time around Brighton with Frog and his friends that day. I wrote about it here.
Back to the Alternative View 2 event. The speaker who I was most looking forward to seeing there was Professor David Bellamy.
David Bellamy used to be on TV a lot when I was a small boy. He made many programs on the BBC about nature. He is most famous for his interest in plants. I have a vivid childhood memory of David Bellamy being chased by a giant spider and getting stuck in some slug slime. At that young age, I thought it looked very real, and I was worried he was going to be eaten by the spider. I found a video clip of this fun episode online here.
David Bellamy sadly stopped appearing on TV some years ago, which was after he expressed his views on global warming. Its a great shame, as he made some great TV shows. The Alternative View 2 was a three-day event running from Friday 29th to Sunday 31st May. As it was in a hotel, there was two nights accommodation included. Luckily, I had Friday off work as a flex day, which was handy. Friday – The First Day Of The Event I packed my bag, took my camera with me and made my way to Frog’s cottage.
Round Frog’s cottage, we used his computer to print off a map of where the hotel was, as well as train, and coach times to get us to Heathrow. We then walked along the river towpath towards Guildford train station.
The train from Guildford took us to Woking train station where we got off and caught the coach to Heathrow Airport. At Heathrow Airport we waited for a bus to take us to the hotel where the event was being held. We found the seats rather amusing at the bus stop, as they were all strangely sloped at an angle, so when you sat on them, you slid off. So, we both had a bit of fun sliding on and off the seats until our bus arrived.
We sat on the bus and there were not that many passengers. On the seat next to us, Frog got chatting to a young guy who was sat on his own. The guy was originally from Australia and was friendly and chatty. He was going to the same hotel as us, to see the Alternative View 2 event too. The bus stopped in front of the Thistle Hotel, which is where we were staying. We said to the Australian guy that we’d see him at the event as we got off the bus to enter the hotel. Inside the hotel, we went to the reception desk, which is where Frog registered our details. Behind the reception desk an attractive dark haired lady booked in our details. We were both concerned to hear that that we were not getting a room with two single beds, and were instead getting a room with one double bed. There were no other rooms free. It was a very awkward moment for the both of us. When we queried this with her and said we thought we booked a room with two single beds, she found it funny that we were embarrassed to share a room with just one bed. She gave Frog a key card to our room, and we made our way there to drop our bags off. It was a long walk to our room numbered 721. It’s a big hotel inside with long carpeted corridors. Walking down the long hotel corridors reminded me of a scene from The Shining movie, which I’ve included a clip of below.
I joked to Frog we could do with our own little buggies to get around the long corridors through the hotel. Inside our room, the bed was a large king-size one, so there was plenty of space, so that was not so bad. We unpacked our bags and left the room. We looked around the hotel to see where the event was, and where we can get something to eat and drink before the first speaker came on stage. David Bellamy walked past us outside the entrance. I said ‘hello’ to him, but he didn’t answer. Maybe he did not hear me. David looked a bit older than he did from when I remembered him from TV. He now has snowy white hair and beard. Frog joked that we could pretend he was Father Christmas and tug on his beard.
As we walked around the hotel we got a bit lost, and asked at the reception desk where we could get some food, and she told us the way to the restaurant. The restaurant was upstairs. It looked nice with a good view of the aeroplanes landing on the runway through the windows and from the outside balcony. We asked one of the waiters for a menu and how we can order our food. She told us to collect vouchers from the desk by the stairs. There were three young women hotel staff members, who were standing by the stairs behind a desk with a collection of vouchers. We thought at first the vouchers were free, or for discounts on the food. When we asked though, she said they cost £21 each for a three-course meal. We were both surprised at the cost of the vouchers, due to the amount we paid to go to the event and for the accommodation there. Frog didn’t want to pay that much for a meal, so we went to the bar downstairs to get some bar food, but it was closed. We were worried for a brief moment of how we were going to feed ourselves. There were other event guests wondering around, so we asked if there was anywhere else local to eat. Someone suggested a café on the other side of the road to the hotel, so we made our way there. We walked through the hotel car park to cross the road to where they told us the café was located. The café was in a gym, and it was closed. The girl working in the gym suggested a nearby pub. We were running out of time, as the event was due to start soon. Luckily, we came across a McDonalds, so we ate in there. I ordered some kind of chicken burger with fries and battered cheesy things, with a huge cola. Frog bought two burgers.
There was a lady serving who seemed unhappy and was rushed off her feet working behind the counter. As we sat down, she was clearing the tables and cleaning the floor near us. Frog got chatting to the lady working there, and she was unhappy about her job, being rushed off her feet and working late. Frog felt sorry for her, and said that he would praise her for her hard work to her manager. We ate our food rather quickly, which gave me indigestion. I could not drink all of the cola, so I gave it to Frog to finish off. As we left McDonalds, Frog got chatting to the manager behind the till, and said that the lady who served us and cleared our table provided a great service to us, and that she should get a promotion. The manager said that he would give her a promotion.
He got chatting to us and we told him we were from the hotel from across the street. The manager asked if we were from a Stargate convention, which is a popular sci-fi TV show and a film. Frog told him we were seeing Alternative View 2, and maybe the event will show us a real Stargate, which I think confused him.
We walked back to the hotel. I badly needed the toilet, which was due to eating the McDonalds, so we headed back our room for me to do so.
After that, we went to the large meeting room, where the event was being held. We gave our names to the organisers at the registration desk. I bought a programme for the event, which was handy to know what and when was on.
Then we were given our bronze passes, which were plastic cards on blue ribbons, which we both wore around our necks. There were better passes for the event with silver and gold, but they were more expensive. With the gold passes, you could sit at the front row of the audience and get to have dinner with the guests and have cocktails at the after party. As we were bronze, we were third class citizens and did not get any perks like that. We entered the meeting room and sat in the middle row of seats.
The stage was impressive, painted in black, with three projection screens and some giant 3D AV2 letters lit up in a neon pink glow. There were cameras filming the event from Edge TV.
The first speaker to come on stage was an American called Dr Leonard Horowitz, who was introduced by a lady called Franky Ma from Edge TV.
Franky Ma introduced all of the speakers through the weekend event.
Dr Leonard Horowitz presentation was about emerging viruses. He was talking about his views on vaccines and viruses like swine flu. He was saying that vaccines were not good because of the viruses and bad stuff contained within them. He was also saying that some viruses were manufactured to possibly control or reduce the population, or for the vaccine companies to make money from it. He was a good speaker, although I don’t know if I agreed with all of his views, but it was interesting to hear.
I’ve included a video clip from his talk from AV2 below.
There was a short break and we went to the bar for a few drinks and went outside the hotel so Frog could have a smoke. We returned to the event after the break. Dr Leonard Horowitz then talked a lot about something called OxySilver, which is in a blue bottle that is supposed to help your health. Apparently its ‘a scientifically tested electro-dynamic silver, oxygen, and hydrogen solution developed to strengthen natural immunity against infectious diseases and common chronic ailments largely attributable to weakened immune system’. He was selling bottles of it after the show for around £20 each. You can read more about OxySilver here.
Although maybe its not a good idea to take too much silver into your system, as it could turn you blue, like the man in the below video!
I thought at first he came across as a bit of a salesman trying to flog his bottles of OxySilver. This was the first part of two talks that Dr Leonard Horowitz gave over the weekend. When he finished his first talk, he told the audience that his second talk the next evening would be about the power of water, and the Love Code, which is apparently 528Hz. Dr Leonard Horowitz was a great speaker, as he explained his views very well and was entertaining to watch. He was probably one of the best speakers at the whole event.
There was only the one talk that evening; after it ended, we headed to the bar. Frog got chatting to some of the guests whilst we were drinking, and we then went outside whilst Frog smoked his roll ups. We bumped into Ben, who was one of Frog’s friends. I met Ben last year at the ‘Breaking the Serpents Spell’ event last November. Ben had a gold pass for the weekend.
I found a YouTube video that Ben made about his time at AV2, which you can watch below.
We met two other guys outside, who were Neil and Nigel. Neil had travelled down from Preston to be at the event. He was in his mid-thirties and worked both as a Medical Herbalist, and as a call centre operative. Neil was not allowed time off from his call centre job, but came to the event anyway, as he had enough of his call centre work, and he wanted to start a new more spiritual and independent way of life. This event was to be his starting point of his journey, which was interesting to hear.
Nigel was a great character too. He works as a self-employed gardener and was in his forties. Nigel wore a great t-shirt, which had the McDonalds logo on it and it read 'McShit'. Nigel used to be a bit of an anarchist in his younger days, as he told stories about protest marches and demonstrations that he had been to. He told a story about burning some Yuppie’s Porsche at one demonstration, and smashing a McDonalds window at another. Nigel didn’t seem the type, as he looked fairly laid back and safe dressed in his flip flops and causal hippy clothes. We told him that we had earlier eaten in McDonalds, which he found funny.
We saw the Australian guy which we had previously seen on the bus to the hotel walk past us. We said hello to him. There was another guy walking closely behind him who had a big bottle of opened champagne in his hand, they were heading back to the hotel rooms together. We realised that the Australian guy was gay, and he must have pulled, which we found funny. Frog was standing outside the hotel for ages smoking and chatting to other people until very late.
The alcohol was starting to go to our heads. Eventually we headed back to our hotel room. As I was cold, I had a warm bath to thaw me out and I put on my pyjamas for bed. Frog had the side of the bed nearest the window, and I had the side of the bed nearest the door.
Frog kept winding me up at first laughing like a girl and moving nearer to my side of the bed. I kept elbowing him, and eventually he fell asleep. I had trouble sleeping that night, as Frog snored loudly. At one point, he must have dreamed that his girlfriend Susan was next to him, or he was winding me up, as he edged closer to my side again and when I moved away, he mumbled ‘Your so bloody frigid!’ and then started snoring again on his side of the bed. The first night was a bit of a nightmare to be honest. Saturday – The Second Day Of The Event I was first to get up out of bed in the morning to get washed and changed. I used my camera to take a photo of us holding our AV2 passes, with Frog pulling a funny face.
I needed the toilet again badly, the McDonalds meal I ate yesterday didn’t agree with my bowels. Frog used the toilet not long after me, and together we stunk out our room, so we quickly left. I thought of Nigel’s McShit t-shirt.
We headed towards the breakfast area. There was a breakfast buffet available. We purchased some vouchers so we could get coffee, tea and biscuits during the breaks. We selected our food from the buffet and sat outside on the balcony. I had hash browns, scrambled egg, mushrooms, baked beans, tomato, and bacon, washed down with coffee and orange juice, finished off by a Danish pastry. Frog had a similar breakfast. We took some jokey pictures of each other eating our breakfast.
There was a great view of Heathrow Airport runway, which was very close. Every few minutes an aeroplane would land. It felt a bit surreal eating breakfast with huge aeroplanes coming down from the sky to land all the time.
After we had our breakfast, we went to see the first talk of the day, which was by Andy Thomas. His talk was called ‘The Era of Turmoil and the Energy of Hope’.
It was a good talk. Andy Thomas was briefly on the BBC some months ago, but all pretty much all of his interview was cut, and only a brief clip of him was shown. I have included the clip below.
There was a short break after the talk and we went to use our vouchers to get coffee and biscuits. Then we sat outside in the sunshine, some of the nice looking women were sunbathing. We took a few funny pictures of each other whilst we were having our coffee break.
The next speaker was Tony Gosling. A former BBC radio presenter, his talk was about the Bible, New World Order and the Bilderberg group.
Then there was another break. We met Marcus Allen outside, who has been on TV before, and he runs the UK version of the Nexus magazine. He is famous for saying the moon landings were fake.
The next speaker due on was Dr Arpad Pusztai, with a talk about independent science. He unfortunately fell ill before the show and taken to hospital, so he was not able to go on stage. His wife Prof Susan Bardocz went on stage to talk in his place. She received a standing ovation from the audience.
Prof Susan Bardocz talk was mainly about the dangers of eating GM food and the tests results of the food on laboratory rats. I didn’t realise GM food could be harmful. It was difficult to hear her voice through this talk, as the microphone levels did not seem to be set right for her, which was a shame.
There was another break for lunch. We decided to try the hotel restaurant again to see if we could get a cheaper voucher for lunch. Luckily, a single lunch voucher was cheaper at £7.50. There was a buffet available, although it was just baked potatoes and salad, which was not worth the voucher price. I found some sandwiches on another table, so I took them as well as a baked potato and salad. We went outside on the restaurant balcony to eat our lunch, and joined a young guy who was sitting on his own at a table. As we ate our lunch Frog got chatting to him. He turned out to be deeply religious and obsessed about the Bible and Jesus. It was a strange conversation, but interesting to listen to him.
After lunch, we went back to the talks. Our new Bible bashing friend came along to join us and sat next to us in the audience. Prof Susan Bardocz returned to the stage, and Frog fell asleep, I started to fall asleep as well. Our Bible bashing friend also fell asleep, but left after awhile.
Scott Tips, was on next after an introduction by Franky Ma. He came from the USA, and his talk was about the Codex Alimentarius group.
This group develop food standards and create guidelines. Scott Tips was against their food policies. After the talk, we had our dinner at McDonalds. We got chatting to two guys who had travelled from Finland to be at the event. We also got chatting to some of the Edge TV film crew.
Dr Leonard Horowitz was back on stage with the following talk. He spoke about the power of water, then accidentally spilt his glass of water over his laptop, which ruined it and stopped his slide presentation, which was kind of ironic. He also talked about ‘The Love Code’, which was something to do with 528Hz, water, mathematical music, and the Bible. He has his own online TV station here.
At the end of Dr Horowitz’s talk, he got out a tuning fork, which was tuned to 528Hz and he hit out a 528Hz note on it. He got the audience to hum along to it. I didn’t feel love or healed at hearing the note, but I guess it was a nice sounding humming noise. After that, we left the event to go to the bar, as it was the last talk for the day. We also had a look round at the stalls which were selling all sorts of unusual stuff, from radiation detectors for mobile phones, water purifiers, OxySilver, DVDs, books, magazines, and various other things. We went outside and the Jesus follower found Frog and me, as well as Neil and Nigel. The Jesus guy got all worked up about the Bible again. Neil and Nigel seemed to wind him up even more about his deeply religious beliefs. The conversation went on for hours through the night. More people from outside came to join us, including a very attractive blond Californian woman, who was the girlfriend of a Swedish guy, who is a conspiracy radio host. We returned to our hotel room in the early hours of the morning. I didn’t sleep very well that night, as Frog was snoring really loudly like a hibernating bear. Sunday – The Last Day of The Event The next day we had breakfast at the restaurant outside on the balcony with Nigel. It was interesting chatting to him. After we had our breakfast, we went to the first talk of the day, which was by Brian Gerrish. He was ex-Navy and his talk was about a group called Common Purpose.
There was another break for tea and coffee. Frog got chatting to Franky Ma, who was presenting for Edge TV and filming the event. They knew each other, as Frog video edited a documentary featuring David Shayler for her. I took Frog's picture with her.
Franky told us a funny story about getting her picture taken with David Bellamy in the bushes outside the hotel.
The next talk was by Dr David Halpin who is an orthopaedic and trauma surgeon.
His speech and slide presentation was called ‘The Vortex sucks ever Louder’. At first his microphone headset kept coming off his ear. One of the Edge TV film crew helped him with it.
The talk was about the suffering of the Palestinians. It was quite hard hitting with some of the images shown, and upset quite a few people in the audience, due to its emotional content. Dr David Halpin was a very brave man, who has made trips funded by himself to Palestine to help give aid. He has risked his life and has nearly had his boat sunk by going there.
Frog was a little chocked up after the talk due to the war images shown. There was another break for coffee and biscuits. The next speaker was Terry Boardman, and his speech was called 'The 21st Century: Humanity Comes of Age'. I was a little sleepy during this talk, so I don’t remember what it was about.
We then had a break for lunch and walked to a nearby village called Longford and entered a pub called The White Horse. It was a very old pub dating from 1534. I bought some scampi and chips there. I had to queue for ages at the bar, so by the time I got my meal, we were late for the next talk. Frog took a photo of the pub on my camera whilst he was waiting for me.
Then the next talk was Helen Sewell with 'The Astrological Road-map of Global Change'. We missed most of the first half of her talk. It was all to do with Astrology, history events, and 2012.
Frog saw a lady he liked in the audience and spent most of his time looking lovingly at her sighing to himself.
Unfortunately for Frog, her husband came along and sat next to her, and he turned out to be one of the speakers from the event. There was another break for coffee. Frog got chatting to the pretty Californian lady, and she invited us to join her for dinner later on with some of the big names from the conspiracy world. We agreed to meet up with her later. Adrian Gilbert was on next with his talk about the Invisible College. I didn’t quite get what he was on about with an invisible college, it might be because I was quite worn out from all the talks by then.
After the talk there was a break for dinner. We had a drink at the nearby pub, then we headed up to the hotel restaurant to meet the Californian lady and some of the big names in the conspiracy world. We went out on the balcony, and we saw the Californian lady sat at a table with around ten or twelve other people eating their dinners. The table included Michael Tsarion, and Freeman who are big named conspiracy speakers from America. I’ve included videos of both Michael Tsarion and Freeman below.
Frog and myself sat at the edge of the table near Freeman and he chatted to both of us. He had a Texas accent. There was also an English mother with her daughter and we chatted to them. It was an interesting conversation. I asked the mother if she could take me and Frog's photo along with Freeman, and she took the below picture.
We were with them until it was time for the next speaker, who was David Bellamy.
David Bellamy was a great speaker and was just like how he appeared on TV being loud and very excited about things, although now a little older. His talk was called 'Challeging Orthodoxy...A Career Limiting Move!' He spoke about his career, travelling, challenging orthodoxy, and his views on global warming. It was a good talk, and the one I was most looking forward to see. He's like a giant friendly garden gnome.
Ian R Crane who was the founder of The Alternative view event was on last of all. He did a talk called 'Rising Above Manufactured Trauma' about various conspiracy related stuff and then the show was over. There was an after-party at the hotel, but as we didn’t book our room for that night and both had to go to work the next day, we had to pack our things and leave the hotel. It was quite late at night, and we were worried we had missed our coach back to Woking. We had just missed the bus back to Heathrow Airport, so we decided to walk back to the airport. I thought Heathrow looked quite beautiful lit up at night.
As we arrived at Terminal 5 at the airport, Frog called his housemate Mark to give us a lift back to Guildford, and luckily, he kindly agreed. We got a bit lost inside Heathrow, mainly inside a multi-storey car park, whilst trying to find the pick up point to meet Mark. We asked several people who worked in Heathrow where the pick up point was, and we were told about three different floors of the car park, which we walked round in confusion for quite awhile.
After some time we found the pick up point outside of the car park, and Mark arrived in his car about five minutes later. Mark dropped me off in Guildford near Frog’s cottage, and then I called my Dad to pick me up to take me back home to Cranleigh. Although I found the event a bit off the wall to say the least, I really enjoyed it. I found it interesting hearing the various speakers alternative views on how they perceive the world around us, and meeting unusual, but very friendly people from around the world. It couldn't all be nonsense, as a lot of the speakers were professional people, who work as Professors and Doctors. I’d definitely go to a similar event again in the future. Related ContentComments on The Alternative View 2 |
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Awesome and epic Post Barry. Sorry about the snoring, and no...I dont wake up in the night accusing my gf of being frigid. I have no idea where that came from, other than a theory that my twisted sense of humour transcends even my waking state.
Thanks for the hard work and being there for the experience, wouldnt have been the same ( or remembered in such detail ) with out u.
Peace ;)