Nativity of Thomas Hardy (1840)

A field gate near Mellstock. Two Yokels lean over the gate, equipped with straws in mouths.

First Yokel: 'tis that Thomas Hardy's birthday again.

Second Yokel: Aye. 

1Y: Odd that. I thought he had one last year.

2Y: That he did.

1Y: He must be mortal sharp, to have a birthday every year.

2Y: That he be.

1Y: Shall us up-along to Peter's Finger in Mixen Lane, for a pretty little drap o' tipple afore nammit-tide?

2Y: Wi' all my heart. But 'Spoons is cheaper.

1Y: 'Tis truth. And 'tis Monday Club.

2Y: Then let us away and fill our empty hearts with cheap Greene King.

A folk tune, played by a mystical fiddler, drifts across the heath. Milkmaids swoon and crows fall from the sky. While, afar off, on Casterbridge gallows, can just be seen the body of a hanged man.

Unexpected Messages in Church Visitors' Books

1 June 1994 Norbert Dranesqueezer, Great Tremlett

Why do you have no Books of Common Prayer? The language is sublime. The theology truly Reformed. The whole of the Christian life can be found in one slim volume. And I like to steal one from every church I visit.

---

4 May 1995 Gilbert O'Gilbert, Dribbling-on-the-Green

Was here for an hour and no sign of the vicar. Where is he?

There are bat droppings on the green cloth covering the altar.

Disappointing.

---

11 June 1996 Jenny Streetweiser, Chipping Corners

After much research, I found out my great-grandparents were married here in 1937. They don't seem to be here now - any ideas where they may have gone?

---

30 September 1997 Rick Roll, Saint Myrtle's Over-the-Hill

Dear God, having seen the beauty of your house, I feel I'm never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down.

---

2 Feb 1998    Angelique Boggs, That London

Most disappointed in the medieval architecture. I feel they could have done better.

---

4 January 1999 Raynswold Grimley, Great Tremlett

If this is God's house why doesn't he do it up a bit? It's not like he doesn't have the staff.

---

1 January 2000    Grayson Drapely, Wyre Drivel

I was struck by the joyful message on your "Wayside Pulpit."

What do you mean, "Happy Millennium"? Do you imagine our Lord was born in 0 AD? Heathens.

---

14 October 2001 Norbert Dranesqueezer, Great Tremlett

Still no BCP? The Alternative Service Book has been consigned to where it belongs. I thought you would have improved. 

---

28  June 2002 Melissa Sparrow (Mrs), Grilsby-on-the-Hill

What a beautiful church! I have been inspired to poetry:

The village churchyard, all serene

Where sleeping mounds of grass so green

Lay over those who've no more breath

They rest there in the sleep of death

Death death death

Death death death

Death death death

---

11 November 2003 Selina Tryclops, Gibbering in-the-Meadow

Anglo-Saxon architecture is so brutal. Yet there is such beauty in its simplicity. Shame yours is all Norman, but you can't have everything.

---

29 February 2004 Lavinia de Strangler, Bleakly on-the-Moor

If you were wondering where the lectern is, I've got it.

Damn. I've given myself away again, haven't I?

---

 Billy Bumbreath

Bums!!!!!!! Hahahahahaha

---

11 June 2008 Rod Pole, Flapping on-the-Hill

Quiet round here, isn't it? You could avoid the police for weeks.

PS stay out of the crypt, if you know what's good for you.

---

8 April 2011    DCI Tom Barnaby. Causton, Midsomer

Called but you were out. Please could you drop in to the station when you get a minute? Nasty affair at "Black Gibbet".

---

25 December 2013 Magnus Grebe, Sagging Baddley

It's 4pm on Christmas Day. I see that there's a benefice service on Sunday at Blooms Green. Which means there's nobody gonna be around for 10 days. And I've found where you hide the Communion wine. Not a bad drop.

Happy Christmas!

---

31 December 2013 Magnus Grebe, Sagging Baddley

How was I to know you'd lock up on Christmas afternoon and not come back?

The door to the ringing tower is locked so I can't raise the alarm. 

I've tried shouting, but it's half a mile to the village.

There's no phone signal - and my phone ran out 4 days ago. 

And I've eaten all the hassocks.

If you read this too late, I'd just like to say - you swines.

---

2 March 2015 DCI John Barnaby, Causton, Midsomer

Called but you weren't here inexplicably moving the hymn books around.

Please can you call in at the station? 

Terrible business at "Hanging Nook".

---

11 June 2017 Jeb Gray-Vdigger, Little  Tremlett

So grateful that you leave this beautiful building open.

It's so good to be able to sit and meditate in a wonderful church in silence.

So I've shot all the crows in the churchyard. Noisy beggars.

---

1 February 2020 Marie Innhaste, Little Stickleback

Just finished having a lovely meeting with Revd Rachel, planning for the wedding in April. It's going to be so lovely.

I'm so excited. What could possibly go wrong?

---

1 May 2024 Eric Derek,Polling Boothby

The Spiders.

The Spiders.

The SPIDERS.

THE SPIDERS.

Left 5p in the wall safe. You deserve it for keeping this lovely building open.

The Primate of All England of the Rings

It has been suggested that the selection process for the Archbishop of Canterbury is what would happen if Peter Jackson remade "Conclave". And, given the length of time it takes, that may be the reason.  Here we preview the exciting three-part movie series that leads to the eventual selection of the Primate of All England and the First Among Equals of the Anglican Communion.

An Unexpected Departure 

In the ancient and legendary kingdom of Albion, something magical has happened. Someone has accepted responsibility for something. The Primate of All England declares that he will step down forthwith, so that his replacement may be selected.

Ages pass, and he is still serving his notice. People start looking meaningfully at their calendars. Eventually he departs, leaving the Table of Foreboding with one chair empty. It is decided that the election of a new Primate will take place without delay. Once they have selected the Selection Panel.

The Panel for Selecting the Selection Panel receive the call via the palantirs they have been using for Zoom calls. Pausing only to canvas the opinions of everyone in their shires, in a year-long round of Moots, they set off for Lambeth. They arrive in Winter, and are told to come back when the weather is nicer.

Eventually the Panel for Selecting the Selection Panel assemble. Over months of painstakingly detailed discussion, they determine the members of the Selection Panel. As is traditional, the messages summoning the Selection Panel are sent on the backs of eagles. Four of which are shot by farmers, two die after catching bird flu, and one unfortunately eats a poisoned rat. Not daunted, the Panel for Selecting the Selection Panel keep sending out plucky eagles. Eventually, the movie closes. In the final scene, we see each member of the Selection Panel as they kiss their loved ones goodbye, and mourn that their children will be grown up before they return.

The Desolation of Smug

Banding together, a bishop, two members of the Diocese of Canterbury, and the representative for the churches of the Middle East fight a horde of angry cockroaches for four days - the decapitation of each beetle shown in great detail, in slow motion. While being chased by an angry PCC, they stumble through a secret door, into the mountain lair of the Church Commissioners. They find the Commissioners, laying on their vast hordes of treasure, and tossing golden coins to see if the stock market will go up or down.

Everyone goes down to the Prancing Pony for a few pints while the CGI is worked on. A few pints turns into four months. After a hobbit won't stop singing comic songs, they throw bread rolls at him.

Eventually the Selection Panel convenes. They decide their name isn't very sexy, and hire a PR company to come up with a better one.  After customer experience testing, consumer panels, and creative freethinking, they ask ChatGPT. Which comes up with "the Council of Elrond". Ignoring the danger of copyright issues, they go with it.

Someone suggests they should ask the Lady Galadriel what she thinks. To get to her new abode, in Chatham, they put a chorister, a half-orc, and a precentor into barrels and float them downstream from Waterloo.

Days later, after adventures with mermaids, sailors, and the new sewage outfall, they arrive in Chatham. Galadriel looks into the Well of Seeing with those eyes that have seen millennia, looks sadly towards them, and says it doesn't really matter. 

The Council of Elrond is not disappointed with this result, but neither do they resolve to get a move on. They schedule two-monthly reviews for the next four years.

The Battle of the Three Armies 

Members of GAFCON and The Society hit each other with cricket bats. For two hours. Then a member of Affirming Catholicism wanders into sight. So they all hit him instead.

The Council of Elrond convenes for the thirty-third time. This time they finally agree on a candidate. They try to light a fire to send white smoke up the Lambeth Palace chimney, while throngs of supporter stand outside. But it requires wizard fuel to produce white smoke, and Filemus the Pyromaniac has passed to the East(ern Orthodox). Bilbo is sent on a three-month journey, encountering pixies, elves, the Black Knight from Monty Python, the congregation of Holy Trinity Brompton, and other magical creatures. 

Stephen Fry, as the Bishop of Bath and Wells, wanders up to Bilbo, says a few self-deprecating comments, makes an allusion to Wilde, and wanders off again.

Eventually Bilbo finds a letter tucked into a secret tome in a desolate chapel formerly belonging to the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion. The letter is written in Old High Wood Elfish, a language today spoken only by Farage the Dodgy, who lives high on a cliff and spends his time pointing at boats. Bilbo returns to Lambeth, and in despair throws the letter onto the fire. White smoke rises, and everyone groans with apprehension.

The new Archbishop receives the call from the clerical outfitters where he (of course, he) has been trying on new mitres.  He looks suitably humble. We realize that his adventures may well provide another trilogy.

Acts of Oppression

It's 10.45 on a quiet 4th Sunday of Easter.

In a basement under Lambeth Palace, an alarm rings.

Panicked, the Executive Assistant to the Director of Liturgical Compliance unlocks his computer screen. He screams. 

The Assistant Director of Liturgical Compliance runs into the Liturgical Monitoring Room.

ADLC: What’s happening?

AEDLC: There's a church in Leominster that hasn't used the Acts Reading.

ADLC: But haven't they read what it says?  

"The Fourth Sunday of Easter

https://almanac.oremus.org/2025-05-11

Principal Service
The reading from Acts must be used as either the first or second reading.
Acts 9.36-43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7.9-end
John 10.22-30"

AEDLC: I know. And how did you manage to get a hyperlink into what you said there?

ADLC: Just a little trick I picked up at Mirfield. But we must take action. Where is the Director of Liturgical Compliance?

AEDLC: She's on her post-Easter holiday.

ADLC: Still?

AEDLC: She claimed back all those hours she spent monitoring Easter Vigils to make sure they started after sunset.

ADLC: Lot of clergy caught out this year, with Easter being so late.

AEDLC: Yes. But they're all being... re-educated now.

ADLC: So - I'm in charge. And this gross abuse of liturgical precedent has occurred.

AEDLC: Can't you let it go? Could just be an oversight.

ADLC: And have clergy thinking they can just skip the Acts reading?

AEDLC: Well, it is a bit weird. Why do we have all those post-Pentecost passages being read before Pentecost?

ADLC: That is not the point. You've got to have rules! If we didn't have liturgical rules, where would we be?

AEDLC: St Helen's Bishopsgate?

ADLC: There's nothing for it. How far is the nearest Archdeacon from the church?

AEDLC: Just checking on the Archdeaconscope... covering for the Rector at St Brumington-in-the-Hole.

ADLC: Right. Call out the Archdeancopter. Get him down to Leominster and let him kick some acolytes.

AEDLC: Don't you mean... 

ADLC: I know what I mean. When a church misses the Acts reading after Easter, we've gotta be tough. And, Bernard..

AEDLC: Yes?

ADLC: Tell him to confiscate the Hob Nobs. Custard Creams will be good enough for refreshments for that bunch of rebels.

Malclergia the Detroyer of Rest Days

I've made a discovery.  Or, to be exact, my son Keith has. But due to the horrors of what he has found, he's having a lay down. So I've promised to tell you.

Reading in a tome he should never have opened, in a crypt we didn't know was there, underneath St Bogwulf's Chapel - the little estate chapel in the grounds of the community, which Drayton Parslow's Funambulist Baptists rent at a reasonable rate - he discovered the dread secrets of Malclergia the Destroyer of Rest Days.

Now, I've never liked the terminology of "Rest Days". Always sounds a bit pious to me. "Rest Day" is all very "I'm just like God, who rested on the 7th day", whereas "day off" has a bit of working-class honesty, in my opinion. But all the same, I'm not going to annoy Malclergia, for reasons that I hope will become clear, so I'll give her her full title.

Malclergia, it transpires, is one of those spirits that don't quite belong to heaven or hell. A bit like the Woodwose, Herne the Hunter, or the Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Except unlike those others, she doesn't rock up on May Morning an hour late because primordial beings can't cope with British Summer Time.  Rather, she wanders the earth, finding annoying things to do to clergy when they're expecting a break. She's basically just a 12-year-old kid trapped in an eternally ethereal form.

When the heating goes ten minutes before the Old Age Warm Space for the Even More Vulnerable, and the central heating steward is in Bulgaria? That's Malclergia, shoving some dirt in the kerosene.

When at 5am on your day off, someone phones you up screaming that he needs to talk to a clergy in person, now, because he's discovered the vortex that leads to Hades - and you must get to see him immediately - and then you find out he's in another county, and the church just happens to have the same patron saint - that's Malclergia, guiding his eyes to the wrong line on the Google results.

When you're on the beach in Tenerife, and your son who's manse-sitting phones your personal number  to tell you that they're all locked out the church and the only person who still knew the combination to the key-safe has just banged his head and can't remember numbers anymore - that was Malclergia swinging a piece of lead piping.

When there's a knock at the door, and you hide under the couch, but you can see through your Ring doorbell that it's Mavis, and you leave her there for three hours, but she just knocks every five minutes, and then you're desperate for the loo - but the downstairs loo is the other side of the glass front door - so you give up and answer it and make some excuse of being in the back garden - then she says she knows it's your day off, but it'll only take a minute - then spends two hours asking what flowers will be appropriate for her niece's wedding - in a different church, in a different time zone - Mavis may well be personally possessed by Malclergia.

When it's discovered that the treasurer has withdrawn all the money from the fabric fund and put it on  the second favourite in the 4.30 at York, as a way of kick-starting the roof replacement project - Malclergia was the one encouraging the mole that dug the hill that tripped "Bernard's Delight" in the home straight.

Malclergia, the Destroyer of Rest Days. Watch out for her. She knows just when you're starting your second drink in the White Horse. She knows the exact moment just before you set off on holiday. She draws her energy from clergy tears. And she never sleeps.

The Bible: You've Gotta have Standards

American Standard Version

Revised Standard Version

New Revised Standard Version

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

Revised New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

Revised New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition Revisited

Revised New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition Revisited: a New Hope

Amended Revised New Revised Standard Version Improved Updated Edition Revisited: a New Hope

Amended Revised New Revised Standard Version Improved Updated Edition Revisited: a New Hope with Hyaluronic Acid

Wickless Wicker Person

Not the greatest Beltane, I'll be honest.

We were all set to go live with the biggest Wicker Person we'd ever built. The excitement was building. 

Suitable amounts of gunpowder and unspecified home-made explosives packed into its willowy frame.

And then the words you don't want to hear.

"Fire Hazard".

Apparently with no rain in the last fortnight, setting fire to large amounts of dried pallet wood with attached improvised devices was not considered appropriate. "Could have wiped out Marston Gate Business Park" I was told. Like that was in some way an issue.

But hey ho. We baked our potatoes in the air fryers, lit battery-powered tea lights.

And, in homage (or omarge) to Sir Christopher Lee, we played darts with a picture of Edward Woodward.

Just not the same

I bet the Celts did it better.

Faculty for the Creation of a Storage Room for all the Things we Can't Face Raising Faculties For the Removal Of

The vicar and church wardens of St Kelvin the Less petition for the building of a new room, to hold all the things we can't face raising faculties to get rid of.

The church is full of altar frontals, freestanding bench pews, assorted panels that used to be on the wall somewhere, paintings of the Last Supper, random replicas of Flemish altarpieces, and similar detritus either "gifted" by parishioners or procured by obsessive former incumbents.

We don't need them. They're in the way. They're getting on our nerves.

But every time we try to get rid of them, the diocesan bric-a-brac advisor asks for their "provenance".

How should we know? Our predecessors in these jobs were far too busy shooting partridges and chasing foxes to bother themselves with documentation.

And we don't know whether our predecessors put what records they did keep into the diocesan archives, hid them under their beds, or ate them, frankly.

And a fair amount of it seems to have been pretty much fly-tipped over the years. There's rumours that a vicar out in the Fens once hired a removals lorry and dropped off six pews and a lectern he'd removed from his own place to clear some room for a children's corner.

And experts are rare and expensive. And the diocesan archives only hold records written by drunks, so you can't read a word. And then everything takes so many backwards and forwards to get done.

So, since life is too short to do any disposals properly, we propose to build a new room, to the west of the existing north aisle. From local ashlar. With lime mortar, of course. All the right components. From the outside you'd never know it were new.

We will put all the stuff we can't get rid of without too much trouble in there. And close the door - a replica of the south door, in oak, with brass fittings.

And never think about any of it again.

Calling Bunny 17, your time is up

Little thing to remember for next year. 

Don't use an area the size of a football pitch for your Easter Egg Hunt.

All the Little Pebbles went out on the Big Meadow at 3 pm yesterday, eager to fill the Holy Saturday void with sugar highs and chocolatey excitement.

Purswill is still out there.

It's been twenty-five hours now. He knows there are more eggs out there.

And with all that sugar and caffeine in him, nobody can catch him. We can see him scuttling around, but he's like the Duracell Bunny.

I mean, it's not really a safeguarding issue. He's forty-seven, and can look after himself. I've got no idea how he obtained. a set of the official bunny ears to enter the competition.

He's just getting really annoying.

Seemed like Nonsense

 “But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.” (Luke 24:11)

Well, it is nonsense, isn’t it?

The idea that a man who has been killed by the Romans – experts at killing people – whose death has been checked by a Centurion – who before crucifixion suffered a flogging that was often severe enough to kill people….

The idea that this dead man would rise was nonsense.
And of course – the message came from women.  And who would listen to women?

Apart from Luke, of course. Who paid attention to the women in Jesus’s story throughout. Surprising to be honest that there’s not some group somewhere trying to remove Luke’s Gospel and Acts from the Bible on the grounds that he’s the Woke Physician, not the Blessed Physician.  And now it’s the whole group of women who’d been to the tomb – led, of course, by Mary Magdalene - who come back with the news. Luke has shown us women as prophets: the Blessed Virgin Mary, Elizabeth, Anna – now he shows us women as apostles – sent out from the tomb to give the apostles the good news.

And I believe that nonsense that the women brought to the apostles, today. Yes, of course it’s impossible.  But then it wouldn’t be worth telling if it weren’t impossible. It wouldn’t make any difference if it weren’t impossible. It wouldn’t be a miracle if it weren’t impossible. If Jesus weren’t raised from the dead, as Paul says – what would the point be?

But on the basis of those women, then of those apostles, of the weird inconsistencies within the Gospel resurrection accounts even while they are so consistent in what really matters – on basis of the message of the church, of the mere existence of a church that should have ceased to exist when Jesus died, and on the work of the Holy Spirit within my heart – this is what I believe. That Mary Magdalene and all the rest went to a tomb, found it empty, told the apostles – and the apostles then had it proved to them that it was true.

And so everything has changed. There is a purpose to this world beyond the world we see. There is a purpose to our lives deeper than the lives we live. Death is not all there is, and we are called by our loving Saviour to follow him – through the death he died like we all do – into the life that he offers. That new life starts now – and goes through death and on in God’s love into eternity.

It's nonsense isn’t it? But it’s beautiful, powerful nonsense. It’s nonsense that makes sense of this life – and makes promises for the next.

And I believe it’s true.

The Long Ash Wednesday

Sometimes you try to be creative in liturgy and it just goes wrong. I'm not afraid to admit it. The important thing is to learn, then move on.

Take last week's Ash Wednesday service.

Just because I ran out of ashes and had to use ink.

How was I to know it was registrar's ink?

It'll all come out in the wash.

Eventually.