Giocon with Da Wind

"OK, Lisa - you can open your eyes now."

"Leo, I've been looking forward to this for weeks."

"So, Lisa - waddya think?"

"Erm... well it's not very like me, is it?"

"Listen, Lisa - I'm an artist - not a photographer."

"A photo-what?"

"Never mind - little project I'm working on. All I'm saying is, I can't just paint the scene in front of me. My job is to open a window into the soul."

"So, Leo - what you're sayin is, you've painted a representation of.... my soul?"

"That's right, Lisa."

"So if I've got this right - my soul has no eyebrows?"

"Look, that's how it looks to me."

"How can my soul look like me, but with no eye-brows? What sort of weird artist are you?"

"Lisa, forget the eyebrows. What about the smile?"

"I take it that's my soul's 'smile' is it?"

"That's it. I was aiming for 'enigmatic'."

"OK. Well, I think what you've hit, is 'trapped wind'. Still, that's closer to enigmatic than having no eyebrows is to having eyebrows."

"I can see why they call you 'Moaner'.

"'Mona. That's 'Mona'."

"I'm just glad all my clients aren't as fussy as you are."

"Leo, you're living in dream-land. John the Apostle's coming round in a while. He says you've made him look like a girl..."

Immortalised in Newspaper

Much interest round the Community over the Bishop of London's reported enthusiasm to put up some kind of a memorial to the Occupy occupation of St Paul's Churchyard.

A while back, enthused by the whole affair, Hnaef thought it would be a good idea to put up some kind of memorial of the event in  the Moot House. It turned out that one of the Occupiers was an old college-friend of Hnaef's. And Geoffrey, who could afford to be parked in a tent for a few weeks because his dad owns large parts of Dorset, was only too pleased to come down to Husborne Crawley to model.

Now Hnaef often likes to model in papier-mâché. And Geoffrey was happy. And the use of a product that is not just environmentally-friendly and natural but also recycled sounded good to me. And a beautiful model of Geoffrey soon appeared in the Moot House.

Of course, the problem came when Geoffrey asked how he was supposed to get out. I mean, he's not a balloon. We couldn't just stick a pin into the model to pop him. So sadly we had to demolish it again. Bits of soggy newspaper all over the place, and a fair amount was left stuck in Geoffrey's hair. We had to use a pair of electric shears in the end.

Still, he was awfully nice about it. Said he totally understood the mistake. But when Hnaef said maybe we could do him in bronze instead, Geoffrey panicked and went back to London.

Nativity of Edvard Munch

Archdruid: Born in the gathering bleakness of midwinter, as you might expect, we gather here tonight to celebrate the nativity of Edvard Munch. It's gonna be a Scream.

All: Edvard? You sure you mean Edvard?


Archdruid: Yes. I reckon so. It's Norwegian, innit? You mean you're gonna let me get away with that lousy "Scream" joke and pick me up on authentic Norwegian spelling?

All: Right you are, Eileen. Edvard it is.


Reading


Hnaef:  "I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy. Suddenly the sky became a bloody red. I stopped, leaned against the railing, dead tired. And I looked at the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the blue-black fjord and city. My friends walked on. I stood there, trembling with fright. And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature."

All: That's a bit bleak, innit?


Archdruid: It's Munch. The "Scream" bloke. What did you expect?

All: Some nice water lilies?


Archdruid: Nope. That was Monet.

All: Then show us the Monet. We're fed up with Munch. He's just too.... 


Archdruid: Too Munch?


The Beaker Folk may throw pebbles at the Archdruid.

Death of Grinling Gibbons (1721)

It's going to be a great Grinling Gibbons Day today. As we commemorate the only church carving expert anybody has ever heard of. A famous English artist who was born and raised in Holland. A man whose genius is so well known because all the churches in the City of London had burnt down when he was a young man. Conveniently.

In fact, doesn't this give us room for some suspicion? We're told that Gibbons moved to Deptford "round about' 1667. Is it straining credibility to assume he actually caused the Great Fire of the previous year, setting fire to Samuel Pepys's cheese while Christopher Wren fitted up a baker's servant as the cause of the fire? Cherchez la femme, as the French would put it - or look at who's gonna make a few quid. That's the way to look at it.

Ooh. I seem to have inadvertently accused our nation's second most famous architect, as well as our only famous wood carver, of arson.  Sorry, I get a bit carried away sometimes. I was reading my Big Book of Conspiracy Theories last night, and after you've read 50 or so daft ideas that are endlessly recycled, you end up starting every question with "why not" and every statement with "it's a little known fact."
Grinling Gibbons is a national treasure and one of our great artists. He raised up beauty to the glory of God, and at very reasonable rates. He did not burn down London. Or, at least, we can't prove it.

Today the Beaker People would have been celebrating Grinling's life by creating their own masterpieces in wood. But they've all failed their "chisel safety" inductions, so instead they'll be inspecting the grain in nice pieces of wood. Less chance of losing a finger, that way.

Chilean miners - the Movie

You've got to be so pleased for the miners as they are brought out into the outside world once again. It must be like a resurrection. "Out of the depths" has never sounded so meaningful.  Except for the lad who now has to explain his wife to his mistress (or possibly vice-versa). It's a wonder he came up at all, really.

Now, thanks to Young Keith's contacts in that world - now he's Minister for Unnecessary Spending - I've had a sneak preview of the Hollywood blockbuster that is being made about the event and can make a few revelations.  For instance:

• One of the miners will turn out to be gay. Although this will eventually be resolved, his sexuality will cause one of the other miners to hate him.  However, he will teach the other miners to put on a perfect performance of "YMCA". Albeit this will be spoilt by them all being "the miner".
• The evil mine-owners who sent the men down, knowing the roof could collapse, will be English. Alan Rickman will be the CEO.
• When one of the miners goes mad with claustrophobia, it will be necessary to slap him.
• Mel Gibson's character will be the one who digs the escape tunnel from the inside, while the incompetent Hispanics struggle with their drill on the surface.
• By pure co-incidence, and without anyone mentioning it, the people in the mine when it collapses will include a Catholic priest, a Jewish doctor, a handsome black man* and a young couple who have fallen out, but who will be re-united under the stress of the situation.
• The one who's a secret alcoholic will be fine after a week.
• The one who needs an emergency appendectomy will be given a piece of wood to bite on. Why they couldn't get any anaesthetics down via the paloma along with the scalpel and sutures will not be adequately explored.
• One of the wives and girlfriends on the surface will be giving birth just as her partner is coming up in the lift. After a dramatic car chase through - unexpectedly - Santiago, he will arrive just in time to hold the new-born in his arms.
• The hopeless English reporter - played with a stutter by Hugh Grant - will fall in  love with one of the miner's daughters. She will be far too young to be interested in him, but will succumb to his charms in the end.
• Robin Williams's character will be doling out home-spun wisdom and becoming increasingly annoying, while Tom Hanks will be intense.
• The guy operating the winch will get home after his 36 hour shift to find that his wife has left him for a miner, claiming that his job matters more than  she does.
• The cable holding the escape pod will become increasingly frayed as it runs over the pulley, finally breaking just as the last miner gets out. That this has left 3 engineers trapped at the bottom will be conveniently ignored.
• All the papers will speculate about how thin Kate Winslet looks. 

 * © Spitting Image, round about 1985.

Hobbit forming

"Producers auditioned short actors to appear in the [Hobbit] movies" says the BBC website.

We know that the BBC are dedicated to equal opportunities in all things, going so far as to ensure that even the utterly stupid and offensive are entitled to huge pay packets.

But I reckon at least two people in this queue are in for a big disappointment.

And surely "short" should be "vertically challenged"? Or possibly "differently horizoned"?

Ceremony for the 20th anniversary of the bringing-down of the Berlin Wall

Dress code: 1980s hair, or, out of respect the for the death of the dreams of a million schoolboy Marxists, anoraks and duffel coats.

Archdruid:  Tonight we're gonna party...
All:            Like it's 1989.

Archdruid:   We remember the fall of the Wall - a symbol of oppression
All:           ... a symbol of failure

Archdruid:  A godless society...
All:           ...never delivered the goods

At this point, Gilbert the Secularist may interpose with the words "you're lumping us all together!  I'm one of the nice atheists - not like those communist ones!  My kind's never been tried so it's bound to work!"

Archdruid:  A failure of humanity
All:            A failure of the imagination.

Archdruid:  We dance with those who danced on the wall
All:             We weep with those who wept.

Archdruid:  And now we rejoice in our freedom - the freedom to imagine, to believe and to consume what we want.
All:            Bring on the wall!

A large wall with amusing holes cut into it moves across the Orchard.  Beaker People throw themselves through it or, if failing to move quickly enough, are knocked into a comedy swimming pool.

Rights

The Glasgay!  Arts Festival seems to have stirred up the kind of fuss it was after.  And clearly the people putting on the production of "Jesus - Queen of Heaven" have a right to put it on.  But when they say that the banners of the inevitable protesters outside could be viewed as "inciting homophobia", are they themselves guilty of suppressing the legal right of religious groups to express their opinions?  Now that it is possible to take your employees to court on the basis of your environmental views, effectively claiming they are religious (and therefore protected).

I myself suffered when Drayton Parslow put on his dramatic performance at the Husborne Crawley Reading Room, "Beaker - the Musical".  Drayton claimed that the lead role, Archdruid Ethel, of the Beaker Folk of Leighton Buzzard -  a megalomaniac and illegitimate offspring of the Dukes of Norfolk who manipulates other people's spiritual needs for personal gain, was completely fictional.  But you had to wonder.

What is one to do?

I suppose growing a thick skin and respecting other people's rights to their own opinions, regardless of how barmy you think they are, would be a start.  And recognising that a country that clamps down on artists - no matter whether they are provocative, profound, offensive or fatuous - is not one worth living in - that would help.

But we still broke Drayton's ankles, just to be on the safe side.

Prize Giving

I can only say how humbled I am to have received an Oscar for best actress.  That the sole acting role of my life is in a home video of Hnaef's called "The Beaker Folk Take Walsingham" only adds to my surprise.  I shall endeavour to stay centred.  I would thank all the people that have contributed to my success in this role, but in fact it was all down to me.

Likewise, I am honoured and humbled to have received the Man Booker Prize for Fiction.  Not least because it was for my leaflet "Places to Eat in Husborne Crawley".  Even more so because it is a very small leaflet as there are only two places to eat in Husborne Crawley and one of them is the transport cafe at Junction 13.

And then there's the Turner Prize.  I am delighted, honoured and humbled.  Again, my installation "Tea Light on the Altar" was something I just threw together for a Healing Service.  I wasn't even aware that Young Keith had taken a photo of it, or indeed that it counted as art, until I won the Turner.

The ITV British Comedy award was less of a shock, as I told Ant and Dec that either I won it or we'd be reversing a tradition by feeding parts of them to a kangaroo. 

2012 - some necessary reassurance

Many Beaker People have been beside themselves with worry at the thought that the world may end in 2012.  Yordred has been reading the signs of the times, Gilbrethionel has been drinking solidly since he heard the news, and Burton Dasset has made himself an Anderson shelter in the orchard.  I did ask Burton how, if the world is going to end, sitting in a hole with a piece of corrugated iron over him is going to help and he said it worked for his granny, so it's good enough for him.  Hey ho.

Many have asked for my spiritual advice, and here it is:

• The Mayan civilisation was so bad at forseeing the future that they didn't twig that the right thing to do when meeting a Spaniard carrying a crucifix and a gun was to run as far and fast as they could.  What are the chances they could get the end of the world right?
  
• 2012 is the London Olympics.  After the fiasco of forty years of failing to land a major sporting event, it is probably a good year to expect Hell to freeze over, rather than the end of the world.
  
• Many New Age people predict that 2012 will be the year that everything becomes much better - an age of the Spirit when everyone will be in touch with their inner Tweenie.  Oh hang on, they did that in 1968 as well.
  
• The extreme evangelical Christians think 2012 will be the end.  But they also thought Jimmy Swaggart was plausible, that orange is the correct skin tone for church leaders, and that the number of the Beast can be found encoded onto groceries.

In order to settle everyone's nerves, we will be holding a series of  "2012 - Business as Usual" sessions in the Big Tent that we've brought in while we're clearing the new Moot House of clay. As a tribute to the indigenous peoples (or mostly former peoples) of middle America we will be playing Gabriel's Oboe on a loop while lighting tea lights representing every day from now to 1 January 2013.  And Hnaef will be selling the 2012 calendars that we managed to buy cheap from an evangelical stationer. We'll be knocking off 10% because for some reason they don't go past 21 December.

Inter-faith issues

Once again we seem to have inadvertently fouled up on the inter-faith front.  Last time was the unfortunate occasion when the living gods of the Guinea Pig Folk of Stewartby formed part of the barbecue.  At least this time no deities died.

This was all due to the New Moon All-Age Festival.  We chose quite a modern children's song, "A time for everything", on the grounds that it effectively has no identifiable theology and we therefore thought it was safe from offending other groups that were visiting our "Celebration of Faith" weekend.  But no.

The Aslan Worshippers of Ampthill took great exception to the chorus.  They seemed to think we were singing "Na Na Na Narnia" and therefore disrespecting their sacred land.  In the event, as seems inevitable in any event where we try to encourage mutual respect and understanding, an almighty fight broke out.  It would appear no real harm was done, but a number of marsh-wiggles ended up in the Casualty unit at MK General.  

Oh - and if anyone should meet a talking mouse, can you be careful?  He'll have someone's eye out with that sword.