The Sun on the Snow

Oddest thing. Hnaef went into the communal loos on the ground floor this evening, after a couple of hours at the White Horse, to find a Sun journalist with his head down the loo.

I mean, obviously that's the normal place to find Sun journalists. Heads in the gutter and not looking up at the stars. But on this occasion the journo concerned was apparently testing out our porcelain for traces of coke and other funny stuff - as they have allegedly found in other places of worship around the country.

I just don't know what we're doing to modern day journos. I mean, you get Zoe Williams writing drivel in the Guardian on a regular basis. We accept that. But even Katie Hopkins doesn't have to spend her spare hours with her head down a toilet,investigating other people's use of unusual substances. As a young journalist, on your first new job, swabbing around communal loo bowls has got to be a bit of a low point.

So let's consider. In the first place, churches around the country are available to all. Anyone can use them. Churches, in line with Our Lord's injunction to drag people off the street, can be used by most any people. If there's signs of drug use in the loos - especially around St Bride's Fleet St - it's not necessarily the clergy responsible. Some of the regular visitors through the week are quite likely to be using drugs - and the church lets them in regardless. We accept people of all faiths and nuns, after all.

And then - the Sun as a source of moral probity? The paper that made up vicious untruths about dying football fans? The paper that hacked people's phones to get juicy stories?  Whoever is taking drugs - in whatever church around the country that may be - at least they didn't accuse innocent people of picking the pockets of dying kids at a football game. And I know which I think is worse. You could argue that, compared to the Sun's past, hanging around churches with drug testing kits is a massive step upwards.

Anyway, it was good we caught the Sun reporter. After flushing his head down the loo a dozen times, we are pretty sure his mind is considerably cleaner than when he started.

And then we used his kit to check the loo. As we suspected.

One of the Beaker Folk is clearly using patchouli.