A confession

Dear Readers, I have a confession.

I know that you have always considered me to be a typical accountant - rugged, independent, devil-may-care, with a side interest in real ale and train spotting. And you would be right. A pillar of the worshipping community - in the sense that pillars block things up and hold the church's vision. Or have I got that wrong?

But there is a dark side. One I have kept from you all. One of which I am ashamed. The fact is, this sin is such that I can barely squeak its name. But here it is.

I like folksy 1960s religious music.

It all started when I was in a mood with the Archdruid. She had thrown my anorak in the lake - yet again - and I wanted to show that I wasn't going to take it any more. I was going to strike out on my own - I was going to rebel. "Cyclists of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your bells", I wanted to shout. And I was skulking behind the Doily Shed when someone - I dare not reveal his real name, but I shall refer to him as "Nef" - asked if I'd be interested in "something a little hippier". Well, Eileen had really upset me this time. So I thought I'd see what was being offered.

"Nef" took me down to a cellar below the Great House. And there - O the dark things I saw. People in loon pants, people with tambourines. And a girl with a guitar playing "He's got the Whole World in His Hands". I thought I could just take a look out of curiosity - and yet I was hooked. Before I knew it, I had joined in with the clapping in the "clapping Gloria". Friends, I did not know where I was. In a daze, for week after week, I spent every spare moment that I could, slipping away down there.

There were some really shady characters down in the "Carter Club", as I found it was called. Knowing no shame, they were even known to play "The ink is black, the paper's white".  And every evening, before we hid away the acrylic sweaters and nylon trousers, we closed with the Carter Club's theme song - "Lord of the Dance". Oh, the frisson of syncretism and bad lyrics!

But these things come to an end, of course. A particularly excitable outburst of clapping caused a chain reaction with all that synthetic clothing. The resulting fireball blew us out of the cellar and left us all gasping at the top of the stairs, looking like unfortunate refugees from a Cliff Richard movie.We explained it all away to the Archdruid - told her that there had been an explosion of Doily chads - a problem that is known to happy from time to time in the Doily Mines due to the build-up of lint. But the sitar and bodhrans had been destroyed in the conflagration. We knew that the Carter club was at an end. Perhaps just as well. Nobody could wear that much synthetic clothing for so long without changing their whole metabolism. I think we got out just in time.