St Petroc, patron saint of Pet Rocks

We've expanded our pebble-related activities. People have been nagging us for ages. They've never really been happy with my ban on pet animals, although I've had to explain that the Earless Beaker Bunny would see off anything smaller than a rhino.

But the pressure has been too much. So today, being the Feast of St Petroc, we had a Service for the blessing of Pet Rocks. Petroc himself is unusual among saints in having been a pet rock, but was canonised for his services to Hobby Horses. Petroc is of course associated with town of Padstow in Cornwall - a place that makes Balamory look run-down and unromantic - and I feel deeply jealous that he got to watch the Atlantic breakers making their way up towards the Doom Bar, and was called to bring light to wild, storm-tossed and romantic Cornishmen. Whereas I get to live in the middle of England, trying to keep control of a number of people whose intellects are out-shone by their own pet rocks.

But in any case. We had a lovely blessing service. Each pet rock was dragged in on its piece of string, and brought up to the Worship Focus (a lovely piece of Markyate plum-pudding stone) for a blessing. The people of the Dunstable area used to think that all the stones in the ground were given birth to by plum-pudding stone. Although I'm talking the old days here - certainly no later than 1998.

Many people told us that they'd had trouble keeping the stones under control. Gwladys said that her "Gretchen" was trying to pick a fight with Hierome's "Tibbles", but I thought it was best to just stick to being slightly patronising. "Tibbles" is a piece of feldspar, so I told Gwladys that it just wasn't gneiss. And I had some lovely words in the liturgy about "cementing the friendships we have made today".

We sang "Rock of Ages", and off they all went, dragging their pet rocks behind them. Yes, they're a bit sad. Yes, it's a bit insane. Yes, they need to get lives. But a number of them have paid up for the Obedience Classes, so I'm not going to try to talk them out of it now