On the Notice Board

Weekly Programme

Yesterday's Coffee Morning raised, after expenses, 37p. Congratulations to Hierome on the vast improvement.

The Men's Group will be meeting at 7pm on Wednesday. The theme will be "manliness and Christianity - not necessarily incompatible". We'll be adding bromide to the post-meeting tea to be on the safe side.

Thursday at 8 will be the Eeling meeting. Please bring your own eel.

Barking at the Moon will be Friday at 11.15 pm.

The Julian Meeting will be Saturday morning at 10am. Since there's only person called Julian, it shouldn't last long.

Squonk Racing will be in the Lower Meadow on 3pm Saturday. Young Keith will be running a Tote. All funds raised will go to the refurbishment of Hilda. Goodness knows she needs it.

Session 1 of the Assertiveness Training Course will be Sunday at 4pm. It should have been last Sunday, but I'd shut my study door and apparently nobody liked to knock.

Health & Safety

Please note that the following "worship aids" have been banned:

• Air horns
• Copies of "The Wee Worship Book"
• Copies of "The Great Hulkin' Worship Book"
• Didier Drogba
• Water wings
• Laser key-rings (especially when directed towards the Readers)
• Pogo sticks
• Hockey sticks
• Rhubarb sticks
• Metal Detectors

The Fountain of Salmacis has been capped off. We felt it was safer. Especially with the Men's Meeting.

Please do not feed the stewards. They have a carefully-controlled diet, and get all the food they need.

Notices

I've noticed - ho-ho - that we're spending an awful lot of time these days at Pouring Out of Beakers each morning, reading out the Notices at the start of services. Yes, I know that the things we do the rest of the day are also part of our communal worship - the life of the communal body - but it just takes too long. Sometimes it can take 10 or 15 minutes to get through every activity that's going on. And when there's a big event coming up we announce it every day for weeks. By the end of the Notices we've forgotten why we're there. If we ever knew in the first place.

Some have tried to emphasise the vital nature of the Notices. I remember when Hnaef that time decided to put in a prayer of blessing for each activity mentioned. By the time he got to the end, I just pronounced the Final Blessing and we all left. And dinner was cold.

So I'm putting them all here so we don't waste all that time.

Although I will read them out at Pouring out of Beakers as well. For those people who don't read Notices.

The "Proper place for Prepositions" group has merged with the "Society against Split Infinitives", after they noticed they had exactly the same membership. I hope you're going to support them. It's just the kind of initiative we need to really get behind.

The INFP group's meeting is to be held in their own rooms. They had been planning a Woodland Ramble to celebrate their quiet, creative, unplanned natures. Unfortunately they hadn't actually mentioned it to anyone, and so no-one's organised it.

The People Wearing Red Shirts are hiding in the Moot House, refusing to go out in case they're caught by aliens.

The Beaker Secularists' Group will be having their annual Nowhere Near Any Religious Festival Party. They like to hold this in a liturgically fallow time of the year, to prove they're free from any religious influence. Once again, their female membership count is zero, so it's Mostyn's turn to wear the frock.

Finally, the Smash Big Business Class Warriors are holding a meeting later. Clearly the exact details are a secret, so could all members keep their iPhones 2 with them at all times so they don't miss the instructions.

A message from the Executive Arch-deputy Archdruid

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome everyone to this New Year. As your Executive Arch-deputy Archdruid, I feel it important to take a visible role in all aspects of our life and worship, and I was recently informed that there has been a Beaker Folk blog running for a number of years. Discussion with younger members of the community led to an understanding of what a "blog" is, and some research in the library led to an understanding of the wide-reaching scope of this new "Internet", which I now believe reaches beyond Husborne Crawley and as far north at least as Norwich!

I have resolved to "post" "entries" to this "blog" on a frequent basis, and Mrs Hnaef has kindly allowed me to borrow her "lap""top" in order to compose this missive. She has informed me that I must not shout, as this will upset people (presumably her, in the next room), and I have decided, therefore, that when I need to emphasise important points, I will do so by typing IN CAPITALS, AND MAKING EXTENSIVE USE OF PUNCTUATION!!!!!!!!!?

It would be wrong to leave you without a message, and that message is that all readers of this "blog" should be aware that they can pick up the latest notices in the usual place, where I have made extra photocopies to accommodate any possible new members of the community.