Once in a New Moon

Oh boy, what a day.

A bad combination of Hnaef's early-morning habit of reading the Daily Office, Drayton's fundamentalist tendencies and that bunch of delusional, impressionable losers - the Moon Gibbon Folk.
Hnaef, being possessed of a love of the well-turned phrase, was much taken with Hosea 5:7 - "Now the new moon shall devour them along with their fields." He took to musing on the verse at breakfast, and then set it to the tune "Lydia".
Drayton caught on to this most interesting of verses, and expounded upon it at great length to a small group of Moon Gibbon people he met in the Upper Meadow. He explained how the attack of the New Moon was a punishment for the whoredom and adulteries of the People Called Beaker.

Of course, this was disastrous for the confidence of the Moon Gibbon folk. They were already convinced that, once a month, the Moon disappeared after being eaten by a giant Moon Gibbon. And now Drayton has persuaded them that, at God's specific command, the New Moon roams the earth looking for sinners to consume in its turn. And what chance do we have, they ask? After all - a cosmic Gibbon you can see coming, you've got a chance. But a ravenous New Moon - it's invisible, by definition. Or, at the least, it's so slender it can catch you by sneaking up sideways.

I've tried to reason with them. I've said it's a poetic way of explaining that whatever bunch of people God was angry with at that stage in the Bible had a month before disaster befell them. But you know how it is with some people. My arguments were nuanced, subtle, respectful of context and poetic licence. Whereas they had the plain words to consider. I wasn't going to win that one. And it didn't help when Drayton announced that actually he'd got it wrong all along. Having checked the King James Version, it turns out that what God originally said was "now shall a month devour them with their portions" - and that's really bothered them. Now they're terrified of a whole month, but they don't know which month it is they're supposed to be scared of, and how exactly it's going to eat them. Or their portions. I tell you, the combination of fundamentalist certainty and millennial confusion is making it a nightmare to live round here. And March is certainly looking quite hungry.