Earth Hour - the Ceremonial Llamas Arrive

We've had a few cock ups in our preparations for Earth Hour.

In the first place, the genius who thought up erecting a marquee for this evening's events, complete with solar powered lights. And no means of storage of the electricity generated by the solar panels. It's lovely and light out there now. It probably won't be so hot at 8.30. And I mean that quite literally. The heaters are solar powered as well.

The llamas are an interesting concept. Now we are a community dedicated to diversity, harmony, authenticity and integrity in our worship traditions. Right up to the point where we realise that, in terms of religious tradition, these four words together equal a blancmange of random spirituality. If the definition of entropy is tending towards the point where the whole universe is so randomly scattered that it looks uniform, we are the heat-death of liturgy.

So we so have a number of animals wandering the grounds of the community - a few guinea pigs, in case the Guinea Pig Worshippers of Stewartby ever want another inter-faith event (we're hoping to borrow an Anglican church in South London for that - we could do with some publicity). Alpacas, for authentic Chilean spirituality. Horses, to represent the wild horse-spirits of the Angles. Deer, to represent Herne the Hunter. And rabbits, to represent Eostre, the sylph-like Queen of the May.

Obviously, we're quite scared of the horses and roe deer. And, to be honest, the muntjacs. They can give you a nasty bite. So we just let them roam the place, being representations of the wild spirit of nature and terrifying passers-by.

But when I heard that Milton Earnest had decided to fly some llamas in for Earth Hour - as a representation of the threat of deforestation, apparently - I was livid. First up, are llamas victims or criminals in deforestation? Secondly, couldn't he just have done paint jobs on a few alpacas? And lastly - how could anyone who subscribes to the woolly and pointless ethics of Earth Hour ever justify the use of plane travel? How could they? Ever? I mean, air travel is the perfect representation of the damage we do to the earth, right there. Flying to places we really don't actually need to go, while exploding fossil fuels in the upper atmosphere - how could anyone who flies celebrate Earth Hour, actually mean it, and then ever look at themselves in the mirror again? I'm looking at you, Al Gore. And you, Mike Rutherford - flying from Manchester to London for Live 8, then being all vague and public school about your massive ecological hypocrisy and then flying back after playing a few bars of "Abacab".

But my dismay was as nothing compared to Milton's when the llamas turned up. Seems he'd have trouble with his Spanish translation on the web site. He didn't get "four lovely charming llamas from the frozen heights of Peru". No. He got four hundredweight of deep-frozen llama meat from Manuel's Authentic Peruvian Deli in Luton.

Still, it's cheered me up. What could be more suitable for an Earth Night celebration than a tasty Peruvian barbecue? Obviously we'll have to use the gas-fired barbecue sets. There's no way we could fit that much meat on the Beagle 2, which we unxpectedly inherited when we discovered the Open University had put our charcoal barbecue into space.

I just wish he'd put an order in for a couple of bears while he was at it. According to CS Lewis they're very tasty. And we'd only have had to go down to Paddington to collect them.