Burton lets Everybody Down

Dear Readers, it has been a bitter, bitter day. I have cried many sad salt tears into the dust. I would repent in dust and ashes were it not that my tears have made the dust all damp. I have let everybody down. That this should happen on this holiest of holy days - Thomas Hardy's birthday - is at one and the same time further tragedy, and yet strangely appropriate.

Drayton was no source of sympathy when I met him. He merely referred me to James chapter 3 and told me I should watch what I say. I knew this already. I should be more careful.

Yet it was the most innocent of unpremeditated remarks. I merely told Eileen that her sermon, on the theme of the last chapter of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, had one of her highest theological point densities in ages. She asked me what a theological point density was, and I explained that it is the frequency of valid and useful theological points in a sermon.

In fact, I told her, her theological point wait ratio was perhaps the shortest since her "Are we all a figment of Richard Dawkin's Imagination" sermon, at about one theological point per four minutes. While her theological word density was a little on the low side - probably because she was speaking quite quickly, due to her fear at being up in that cherry picker at the time.

How, she asked me, did I know how today's sermon compared with others from the past? And I realised I had said too much. By the time I returned to my room it looked like it had been burgled. And my Book of Sermon Recording had been found.

My fellow Sermon Statistic Recorders of the nation, I have let the cat out of the bag. For so many centuries we have kept the existence of our Guild a secret. We have hidden from the preachers, that source of the food on which we eat - the raw statistics of sermons. They have been unaware that every congregation contains a man - for it is normally a man - who keeps at home a Book of Records of Sermons, in which we have kept the details of every talk given. We have passed the secrets of our guild, as strong as sealing wax and as deep as the sea, from all preachers. And now I have let a church leader know.

For the rest of you, I may as well explain. A Book of Sermon Recording does not contain the sermon itself - where is the interest in that? Instead it contains the facts around the length of the sermon, the number of theological points, the average time that you have to wait for a valid theological point and the strike rate, as described above. Eileen snatched my current book, but she missed my earlier version - and I am glad, now secrecy is pointless, to share the first few entries with you.

Fellow members of the Guild of Sermon Recorders, our life in the shadows is over. Our cover is blown. Our  time is at an end. We must pass to the Gray Havens, where we will spend our time evaluating Gross Domestic Product figures and comparing London Black Cab registration plates. I have let everybody down.

Or, of course, you could all just lay low - and pretend I've made all this up?