What Is and What Will Never Be

Another futile evening spent at an inter-faith barbecue with the Guinea Pig Worshippers of Stewartby. I say "futile", inasmuch as you know how cave-man many blokes get over barbecues. They want to be in there with the skewers, tongs and novelty aprons, roasting slices of dripping auroch over the hot coals.

But the Guinea Pig Worshippers won't let any Beaker Folk near the barbecue. Just because Dominga, our Peruvian visitor, inadvertently cooked a previous generation of their gods a few years ago under the impression that they were the starters. You'd have thought time, the great healer, would have done its work by now.

You know, we keep pretending that we have things in common, that there are many routes up the mountain, that we're all looking at a different part of the elephant. But do you know my theory?

I reckon the Guinea Pig Worshippers are wrong. Their squeaky little gods aren't gods at all. They're rodents. The Great Guinea Pig himself, if you thumped him in the ribs, would probably stop making stupid squeaky noises and instead curse freely in Cockney. It's all a giant con, just so the Great Guinea Pig can keep himself in free corn.

And I reckon, as long as the Moon goes round the Earth, we will never achieve organic union with the Guinea Pig People. We're just pretending we respect them because we're nice. Or patronising them because we're hypocrites. But as long as they think edible rodents are divine, we're always going to think they're idiots.

That's what I reckon. Ecumenism? You can keep it.