Quite a fraught and unnecessary experience at this morning's funeral service for Brandriff.
The Anti-Vax coalition turned up to say his sudden death was down to his recently having had a fifth Covid jab.
While the Aspley Guise branch of the Westboro Baptists came along to say his death was God's punishment for his openly gay lifestyle.
Anyway, the two demonstrations got into a massive punch-up outside the Crem, as they each tried to impose their explanations on the other bunch of weirdos. Apparently there's bit of a crossover between the two groups. At least that's the only explanation I can find for why one of them was punching himself in the face.
Still, not what we needed when we were just wanting to say goodbye to Brandriff. Who died, aged 104, after crashing his Tesla into the chicken coop, while trying to do donuts around the Moot House. He leaves his widow Cassandra, eight children, and twenty-seven grandchildren. Our thoughts are with them all.
Cassandra invites us all to a commemorative dinner in the Hall tonight. The main course will be Chicken Brandriff. Which is like Coronation Chicken, only flatter.
Hymn
Archdruid: 'Ow do, lads.
All: And lasses.
Clegg: And those that identify neither as lads nor lasses.
Archdruid: Fair do's. T'world's changed.
Blamire: Aye, t'days are gone when you could call a.....
Clegg: Not now, Cyril. We've got past all that.
Compo: Yer'll 'ave ter excuse Cyril. His Mum brought him up as an uptight little...
Clegg: Yer can't say that, either.
Nora Batty: Eey, he's lewd and obscene.
Compo: Aye. But I can't grab you any more, Mrs Batty.
Archdruid: Not since the restraining order.
All: Aye, times 'ave changed.
Compo: What am I doing in church? I don't want to go to church.
Hymn: All Things Bright and Beautiful
The chasing of Ferrets
Reading: "Consider the Lilies of the Field" (and the Josephines, the Penelopes, etc)
Howard: I think we've really cracked it this time, Marina.
Marina: In a spoof church service in a closed-down Wesleyan Reformed Chapel? Surrounded by the spirits of former barmpots?
Howard: Who's gonna suspect us here?
Pearl: Howard!
Howard and Marina may climb under the pew, while Mr Wainwright and Mrs Partridge, Librarians, take their places.
Mrs Partridge: Ooh, I don't think we should be doing this here, Mr Wainwright.
Mr Wainwright: Karl Marx said religion is the opiate of the people, Mrs Partridge. But we're here to remember a time when we couldn't organise our love lives through our phones. And lovers called each other by their surnames.
Mrs Partridge: Oooh Mr Wainwright! Have you deleted that Librarian's Dating App?
Mr Wainwright: "Bindr"? Yes, all it ever did was match me with Miss Davenport.
Miss Davenport: I thought he would sweep me away to paradise. And all we ever got to was a disused quarry in Finkle Street.
Hymn: Jerusalem
Foggy: Ah, makes you proud to be English. We'd sing "Jerusalem" in our little slit tents, making tea out of the shoelaces of dead Japanese corporals.
Seymour: We used to sing it at the Utterthwaite Academy. The sound of those little shivering voices, carrying on the frosty air...
Clegg: But those dark, satanic mills have gone now. Turned into car parks, executive apartments, and retail shopping opportunities.
Truly: So many pubs gone as well. Instead of a well-earned pint after a walk, you have to bring your own sports nutrition drink.
Billy Hardcastle: And you lot all gone with them, leaving the hills Robin Hood roamed to the sheep and property speculators.
Glenda: Barry, how come you're in your 70s now and still never made it as an exective?
Barry: I need a sharper suit.
Wesley: What's wrong with overalls?
Edie: Wesleeeey....
Wesley: Why are so talkin' so posh?
Edie: So the vicah can understend meh.
Crusher: Why've I got to wear this frock, Aunt Ivy?
Ivy: It's not a frock. It's a surplice. Now sing the last hymn.
Hymn: Abide With Me
Compo Simmonite will play the Last Post while Wally Batty releases a ceremonal pigeon.
Which will deposit its droppings onto Nora's washing.
After the service you are invited to Syd's tea at the caff.
It will be terrible.
Last of the Summer Wine: 4/1/1973 - 29/8/2010. Killed by the BBC.
* Yes, I know, sorry
When I was but a sapling in the morn of my life's day
An enterprising architect came down St Pancras way
He'd dreamed he'd draw fine churches, all with neo-Gothic flair
But wound up moving bodies in the smoggy London air.
The folk who hampered progress had to be raised from their sleep
And, reinterred - quite rev'rently - in Finchley's graveyard steep.
And Thomas Hardy, full of Wessex peasant-yeoman whim
And having also quite a share of neo-Gothic grim
He took away the stones which once remembered Cockney dead
And stacked them in a fan shape round my growing form instead.
As time went by I waxed in size and grew around the stones
remembering those poor commuted Midland Railway bones
and Hardy, back in Wessex, grew to his immortal fame
Though poets, being mortal, they all go to death the same
And so one day he came back up to London, loud and brash
But he was quiet - for just like me, he was now wholly ash.
But, mortals, know that death will bring down even mighty trees
Especially when prone to catching ash die-back disease*
No longer will I quiver in this Camden churchyard bare
Nor hiss when west winds whisper hints of Wessex heights so fair.
And so my shady life is o'er - but hearer, know this true
At least I wasn't cut down to make way for HS2.
* I don't think it did, but it's a a nice rhyme.
Woe is us!!
For we have used duplicated exclamation marks!!
OUR SINS HAVE FOUND US OUT.
And our emojis have let us down.... 😕
And we have, constantly, and - sometimes - deliberately - used too much punctuation, in our sentences: which is wrong.
We have broken the rules of informal communication set down by Uffizi gallery director, Eike Schmidt.
Who seems to be another of those people that, if unable to achieve anything of real worth, instead interfere with people's writing style. Like Jacob Rees Mogg, (remember him?) who wanted people to use very impractical and very outdated measuring systems, and Thérèse Coffey.
Who covered up her manifold unachievements in areas that matter by saying people in her department should be positive, be precise, and avoid Oxford commas.
Though, to be honest, WE DON'T CARE?!
These people are dinosaurs. If Eike Schmidt had been around during the Renaissance he'd have tried to ban them reproducing Danté's work using the printing press and demanded everything be written out with quills. If Rees Mogg had been there with King Cnut he'd have sneered at the sea, and threatened to send the waves to Rwanda if they didn't go back out. If Thérèse Coffey had ascended to the throne in the 16th Century it would have been even worse than it was.
Let these little jackasses preen as they want. In 100 years' time, everyone'llAllBeUsingCamelCaseToCommunicate. andNobodyWillCareWhatEikeSchmidtWanted. 😉
Hymn: Ring out Solstice Bells
Archdruid: As the sun sets over the woods of Woburn Abbey, let us proclaim our Solstice Lament.
All: Raise your banners high / Don't die, Sun, don't die.
Archdruid: Ah no, it's gone.
All: Raise your banners high / Goodbye, Sun, goodbye.
Archdruid: At this death of the year, the sun returns to its long rest. / The earth shudders, the flustercock* heads to its nest.
All: It is the end of times. It is the start of times.
Archdruid: Raise your seasonal mistletoe
All: And snog the next person in the row?
Archdruid: No.
All: Thank goodness for that.
Archdruid: Let us take a moment to mark the passing of this solar year. We have travelled round the sun 4.6 billion times.
Burton: That's quite a round number. Shouldn't we have had a bit more of a party?
Archdruid: It's an approximation.
Young Keith: Any chance of a pint?
Archdruid: The ancient Beaker People gathered at their stone circles today. Feasted on their slaughtered pigs and called on the sun to return.
Young Keith: But they probably had a jar of mead?
Archdruid: A beaker, you mean?
Young Keith: Good point.
Archdruid: But not till they'd lit the Wicker Person.
Hymn: It's the End of the World as we Know it
The Beaker Folk may bump into each other in the dark, as they return to the Great House.
* ancient Bedfordshire word for a male pheasant, which I just made up
I see that the church of All Saints with Holy Trinity, Loughborough, have caused "fury" by using changed the words to "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen". This is the MSN account of the Mail article - I hope the Mail may get slightly less in the way of pay-per-click if you read it there.
I must say, when you dig in, the fury appears to be confined to the ubiquitously shocked Sam Margrave, and serial tweet-deleter Matthew Firth. So the thought of them fuming away in their front rooms, though amusing, is not unusual.
First up, well done to the Rector, the Awesome Wendy Dalrymple, who made sure the comma was in the right place. The number of times it's implied that the Gentlemen were just sitting around merry, by someone putting the comma after "Ye". I don't normally notice the rest of the lyrics anyway if I'm still in a state of fury over that.
In one way, it's just a shame that the lovely folk of Loughborough chose to use that hymn for these sentiments. Because the actual hymn, regardless of comma, is a pretty-near paraphrase of the narrative of Luke 2 - which is how, by avoiding the wokeist censoring of the Mail's predecessors, the Puritans, it was allowed to be sung in church at all.
But the Mail is not being as conservative as it might be.
Querying Wikipedia, I notice that this is the oldest version known of the carol:
Where is the outrage that this hymn was changed in the 18th century? Was Mercurius Rusticus up in arms? And also, worst of all...
That "ye" is wrong. It's a deliberate, and incorrect, use of an archaic nominative pronoun. In Wyclif's translation of Luke 2, we have "do not ye dread" - but that is using "ye" as the subject. Here in the hymn, "ye" is the object - God is the subject, ie the one originating the verb (isn't God, in a very real sense, always?) and so that "ye" should be "you". Or maybe even "yow", if you're from Walsall or the 16th Century or both.
Honestly. These people strain at gnats and swallow camels.
And wouldn't "God Rest You Merry, Gentlefolk" have been more inclusive?