Friday, 12 March 2010

The Reverence of the Stapler

On St Coleman the Stationer's Day each year, the Beaker Folk celebrate the Reverence of the Stapler.  This is a truly moveable feast, typically occurring whenever the Beaker Bazaar feels the need to sell some more authentic Neolithic Stationery.
Unusually for a religious service, the Orders of Service actually take a leading role in the liturgy.

All assemble in the Moot House, clutching orders of services.  These will be held together with paper clips or, as it may be, treasury tags.

Archdruid:   Lift up your Orders of Service.

Orders of Service are lifted.

Archdruid:   Behold the inefficiency of paper clips!

All:   Manifold and woeful are the inefficiencies of the paper clips.  They hold together paper, sure.  But is it permanent?  We moan and bewail the insecurity of our metal-based-paper-holding-together implements.  They are as the idols of Babylon, which spoke not.

Archdruid:   Cast off your paper clips!  Thrown them away!  Turn from your paper clips and let your paper flow free!

All:   We cast off our paper clips.  We allow our paper to flow free.

Beaker Folk cast their paper clips on the ground.  Those wearing sandals without socks or flipflops, as opposed to steel-toe-capped boots, may suffer slight flesh wounds.  Serves them right - but they are still required to fill in the Accident Book afterwards.  The floor fills with paper clips.  Well, OK.  Not fills.  There is a light scattering.

All:    But wait!  For the sheets of our Orders of Service are as manifold even as the grains of the sand of the beach at Hunstanton [or they may say "California Cliffs" or "Lowestoft"].  How do we stop the sheets getting into the wrong order and chaos covering the earth - even unto the walls of the Moot House?

Archdruid:   Behold the wonder of the stapler!

All:   All hail the bearer of the stapler!  We will line up and have our lives more organised.

The Orders of Service are stapled

A voice from the back [which may be German, or possibly South African]: Well I'm not totally convinced this is a good idea.  The use of Staplers is very badly attested in the ancient Annals of the Chancellors of the University of Ruskin.  Shouldn't we use plastic envelopes?

Archdruid:   Is it not written in the Book of Gazza, no matter how much the Chancellor of the University of Ruskin demandeth that thou shalt not use staples, - know that staples are pleasing unto the Lord, and plastic envelopes be flimsy and not so environmentally unfriendly?

Marston:   Archdruid, I'm afraid I mucked up the stapling.  Behold how my paper still is not fixed unto itself as is pleasing to heaven and earth.

The Archdruid shall staple Marston's Order of Service to his chest, to ensure he does not lose it.

Archdruid: And now we sing our closing hymn: From London Colney's Frosty Fountain to Fiji's Coral Strand.

4 comments :

  1. Wait: who's in bold? Is it "All", or "Archdriud"? Someone's not been paying obeisance to Ste Ferdinande de Formattage...

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  2. and why dare I ask St Coleman????

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  3. Mike, thanks. Hnaef should really have proof-read better for me.

    Sally - I've added a link for more clarity.

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  4. If it's in reverence to a stapler, why is it a moveable feast? That goes against the whole point of a stapler... It should be solidly fixed to a certain date. Unless it's in the tropics, in which case it should come free every ten years when the staple rusts through, and a new date has to be found.

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