Wishing the Archdruid a Happy Birthday

Alongside all true, faithful Beaker Folk, I would like to wish our great Archdruid a Happy Birthday. I would like to say, with not a hint of syncophancy, that she looks not a day more over 29 than she did last year.

I am disappointed that my calls for a poetic paean to sing her praises didn't yield more fruit, and would ask people not to visit the local Gents unless they really need to: we will be removing the newly penned limericks from the back of the doors as soon as we can find the industrial solvent. I suspect that young Keith may have purloined it for experimentation.

In the meantime, here is my unworthy penning:

There once was lovely Archdruid,
Who fans, I assure, never boo 'mid
Her long, but most learned
Sermons which earned
Her the title "Preacher oft sued".

Though, I'd point out, all of the cases have, to this point, been settled out of court.

Happy Birthday, great leader!

The Archdruid's Birthday Sermon

Every year, one particular day comes round with its reminders of mortality.  One looks at Holbein's Ambassadors, (and surely it's only a matter of time before the National realises they've only got a copy?) and sees the skull beneath the pomp and vanity.  The girl looks into the mirror, and sees a crone looking out.  The face in the water looks back, shakes her head as if to say that it's the last time you'll look like today.  One gets a sense of Ripples that never come back.

One's birthday.

When what is before you starts to appear shorter than what lays behind, one's mind turns to other things.  It was Pink Floyd who sang:

“You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.  And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.  No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.”

And indeed I know how it is.  Ten years ago, more or less, I was earning my stripes as a trainee Archdruid with the Anglo-Saxon Folk of Aldwincle.  Bright-eyed and eager to achieve my ambitions, to live my visions and dreams, to make loads of money while simultaneously making gullible New-Age types feel fulfilled in a vaguely Christian, approximately traditional, largely made-up form of religion.  A religion in which feelings and emoting are more important than doctrine and theology. And yet one day you find yourself in a running battle with the jumped-up Assistant to the Assistant Executive Druid, while your gormless followers compete among themselves for who can come up with the stupidest form of alt.worship in an attempt to be "creative" in  their spirituality, and Young Keith is still taking out the out-buildings with his bizarre and dangerous new inventions.  And still you need to raise some money for the new Moot House.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun, as the prophet said.  But where does all this running leave you?  And again the prophet tells us - "shorter of breath, and one day closer to death".

So far so depressing.  One can muddle through, but in what way does one achieve anything?  To quote the prophet one last time - it leaves us hanging on in quiet desperation in the English Way.  At least I have the comfort of spirituality.  Which is, of course, much like having the comfort of knowing God but without the certainty.  Some, like spiritual extreme skateboarders, like to live with doubt and uncertainty - find their faith on the edge.  Yet sometimes it would be nice to have some more of that wide-eyed fundamentalist certainty.

Is it better to be a simple drone with certainty or a sensitive worrier with a tendency to doubt?  The answer does not seem clear.  I must away and light a vanilla tea light, and listen to some Kirsty MacColl* in an attempt to get in touch with the Divine.  Wherever - inside, outside or beyond - He, She, It or They are to be found.  In the Divine can be found all the ultimate ends of humanity, albeit maybe not all the answers.

And, no - don't ask me how many candles I'll be having on my cake.  Or I'll break your ankles.

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* "Soho Square" seems appropriate.

The Nationalisation of Salt

I note that Northamptonshire has been forced by the Government to cancel an order for 4,000 tonnes of road salt,  so the Government can send it somewhere that the need is greater.
Northants, a fine county in the East Midlands, has several major towns and a lot of rural roads.  The population is 650,000.  Being resolute folk, I am sure they will struggle around the place on ungritted roads, although the ditches around Northampton, Daventry and Kettering will no doubt gradually fill with cars as they skid off.
I wonder where could be more in need?  Counties that haven't bothered to order in grit, presumably.  Sadly the people of Northamptonshire will be unable to register a vote in those other counties to protest at the theft of their grit.
Meanwhile on the radio I heard a member of a local government association explaining that they hadn't ordered enough grit in because they hadn't been warned it was going to be cold.  Which begs two questions.  First of which is - didn't they know winter was coming?  And the second - which is like unto it - did the Met Office's Gaia-inspired prophecy of a mild winter, encouraged by the need to big up Global Warming at all times, con the local authorities of our land into thinking it would never freeze again?

In the mean time, good luck to the people of Corby, Wellingborough and Yelvertoft.  I am sure you will all be pleased, as you skid across your roads, to know that everyone's nicely gritted in Peckham and Tower Hamlets.

Revolt? What revolt?

There was lots of twittering around the house after Drayton Parslow and Stacey Bushey stuck up a letter "To all Beaker Folk" on the notice board, inviting them to take part in a secret ballot on the proposition that "Eileen is a rubbish Archdruid and should step down before she does any more damage".  Obviously, I knew some challenge was coming to my authority.  After all, on average it does every week or so.

The bad news for these two concerned Beaker Folk diligent colleagues devout idiots traitors was that they chose to hold the vote in the Room of Viewing, out the other side of the courtyard.  All right they were a little limited in their choice of location - since the doily shed and Moot House have both been burnt down while the  Chapel was swallowed by a black hole - but nobody could get across to vote because the courtyard was so incredibly icy.  Who would have believed I could have forgotten to order in any rock salt when the winter was coming?  And the good news is that Young Keith was still over there, watching a special 6-hour clips edition of Stephen Baldwin being embarrassing on Celebrity Big Brother.  So Keith just stuffed 50 "No" votes in the box and I am pleased to say I am as firmly in control of the Big Sister House as ever.  Although I know who the two next evictions may be.

So Gordon Bennet, it's a brown day all round for Drayton and Stacey.

Duckhenge

It's been several months since it was chopped up and burnt during a "Watching for the Moon" service so the Watchers of the Skies could keep warm.  And I miss it.

And the Great Trilithon is lovely, standing there in all its pre-stressed glory.  But it's a little lonely, I reckon.

And the Pond, out there so frozen, is so obviously in need of that little something extra to set it off.

And it has been suggested that if we built it right we could predict supernovae.

So I'm not sure of the general principle, or the construction material, or whether around, in or by the pond, but I reckon a new Duck Henge is probably called for.

Vote Baldwin Out

I don't understand much about Celebrity Big Brother.  My trips to the Room of Viewing have been few and far between for this one, partly due to the snow and partly to apathy.  But I caught about a dozen words from someone whom the Daily Star informs us is called Stephen Baldwin today, before I threw a pebble through the screen.  Stephen is of the Christian faith, and strong in it, and respec' to him for that, as my niece Alisha would say - and indeed frequently does.  But the dozen or so words I heard today were these - one of the other nonentities in the House asked Stephen Baldwin if he believed in evolution, and Stephen Baldwin responded that he didn't because "If we're descended from apes, how come apes are still here?"

Just let the fatuousness of those words sink into you.  Roll their gormlessness around the tastebuds of logic and irony like a fine brandy.
Consider the various ways in which this argument is wild-eyed, single-brain-celled half-wittedness of the highest order.
Consider that zoologists generally regard the ancestors of apes and human beings as being a common ancestor, not an ape.
Consider that even if human beings did descend from apes, this did not mean all the apes turned into human beings one day.  Only that fortunate (or otherwise) population that had the mutations that make us humans, not apes, descended from the common descendant as human beings.
Consider that gorillas, orang-utans, bonobos and chimps all descended from "apes".  Yet all those and their many other related species exist.
Consider that it is possible that rational human beings, creationists and bonobos all descend from a common ancestor.  Consider which of the three probably has the least highly evolved brain function.
Consider that, Stephen Baldwin being an actor, he probably isn't responsible for the thoughts that he expressed.  Consider that somebody else is probably the real source of this straw-man, gormless, half-baked answer and that actors aren't really responsible for many of the things they say.  And consider that whoever gave the unfortunate Mr Baldwin these thoughts is probably spreading the poison of lazy thinking and dopeyness to many others.  And think how awful that is.

Now, I couldn't encourage anyone to vote on Big Brother.  I really couldn't, in all conscience, do that.  But I beg you.  And apparently some churches are organising to keep him in.  For the sake of removing this hapless stereotype- for the sake of the sanity of those people who are able both to believe and reason - if you were going to vote on this useless programme, please vote him out.  It's the least you can do.

I also appeal to atheists of good-will and lots of money.  I know that it's tempting to let him stay in there, making those of us of many faiths or one look like idiots.  I know he's as much an asset to atheists as Gordon Brown is to the Conservative Party.  But please don't keep him in.  If you're daft even to vote on Celebrity Big Brother, at least be clever enough to vote him out.

Thank you for listening.

France 1 - England 0 - Calais Challenge Cup final score

In some ways the history of the Anglo-French (or Franco-English, if you prefer) wars of the last millennium is treated in the same way as the history of the Ashes.  At least in England, we tend to remember the glorious victories and quietly forget about the rest.  Unlike the Ashes series, at least overall we've tended to break even with the French over the years.  But contrary to popular belief, the French are not really cheese-eating surrender monkeys.  Oh no.  Sometimes they don't surrender.  In fact half the time they actually won.  Bear in mind that English territories in France used to include Acquitaine, Normandy and parts of Flanders.  These days we just own the Dordogne.  Which just shows how often the French must have won.

The loss of Calais, whose anniversary we celebrate, if that's the right word, today, is such an example.  The only thing some people know is that Sellar & Yeatman got  it about right when they referred to Queen "Bloody" Mary having the word "Callous" engraved on her heart.  And if you don't know what I'm talking about, then go read some books.  They're really interesting, spelt correctly more often than the Internet, and generally more reliable.  Especially if you use this site for your facts.

But back to the case at hand.  The point is, at Calais in 1558 the French won.  We lost.  Again.  And the French carried on with their mission to tidy up all the edges of their end of Western Europe by making all the little countries they were surrounded by (such as Brittany, Burgundy and Flanders) surrender and start speaking French.  They later had a bash at including other little countries around them, such as Russia, England and Spain, but thankfully met their Waterloo.

Consider:

• If the English still owned Calais, we wouldn't be able to go there on a booze cruise.  We'd have to nip along the autoroute to St Omer and booze cruise there instead.
• You would go into Eurotunnel driving on the left, and come out driving on the left - thus meaning it was just the rest of the Continent that was anomalous, and resulting in incredible pile-ups on the Boulogne road. 
• Except we wouldn't have Eurotunnel, because Maggie Thatcher would have won the argument and we'd have a six-lane motorway under the Channel anyway.  And wouldn't have to worry about trains breaking down.
• The people of Calais would be able to launch a credible campaign to be able to speak their native Flemish tongue, instead of a nasty imposed language.  Or even, if the last Flemish speaker had died, do like the Cornish and re-invent the mother tongue they never knew.  Because you can pull the wool over the eyes of the English like you can't with the French.

So at tonight's Freezing-Over of Beakers we will be having a Comminition of the French.  At supper, we will eat a selection of Italian cured ham for starters, then English beef and mustard with Brussells Sprouts and Spanish onions, followed by Black Forest Gateau.  Wine will be from Luxembourg, Pilsner from the Czech republic and mineral water from Derbyshire.  That'll show them.

π in the Sky

Maybe it's because the climatologists daren't stick their heads above the parapet until things warm up a bit, but the world seems to have exploded with a series of macho scientific posturing.  First we have the French Scientist who has calculated Pi (π) to 7.2 trillion places.  Which begs the question - why?  What has he achieved?  What can he do with it now he's got it?  And who's checked his workings?  And who is he hoping to impress?  If it's girls, then unless he bumps into Kate Bush he's not going to get too far, I reckon.  Or maybe he's wanting to impress other Pi-calculating scientists?  You can imagine them, in the pub, after a long day's π-calculating, comparing 2.8billionth digits over a cider and black.
Then we have the American scientists who tell us that a star 3,600 Light Years away could explode as a supernova, killing us all. Being in a scientific mood I'd like to carry out a little test on these scientists.  It's a simple test.  Are they still paying into their pensions?  Oh, they are?  That's OK then.  But again it's a headline-grabbing story.  I quote from Robin Scagell, vice-president of the UK's Society for Popular Astronomy: 

"The star may certainly became a supernova soon – but soon could still be a long way off so don't have nightmares."

 The words "certainly" and "may" have never lived in such inappropriate propinquity.  And Mr Scagell's pronouncement - indeed his very existence - gives me other things to worry about.  If he represents the "Society for Popular Astronomy", why have I never heard of it?  And if he is the vice-president, who is the president?  And was he so busy popularising astronomy that he wasn't available to give a quote himself?  Or is the "Society for Popular Astronomy" an association like the National Secular Society, only having two members who therefore get to elect themselves to all the important jobs?  Why don't they merge?  Form a "National Society for Popular Secular Astronomy"?  After all, we wouldn't want nasty Religious Astronomy - people explaining the start of the Universe with technical diagrams of God throwing stars about... And then at least there would be four people in the organisation - albeit the sharing out of the jobs would become more sensitive.  I guess you'd need a President, Vice-President, Chairman and Chief Exec.  But you could bet there'd be no danger of a sudden shortage of anoraks.
I have other concerns over the death-by-supernova theory.  So I got Burton to do the maths for me.  Now, a missed factor of 10 could be the difference between life and total devastation for the solar system here, I realise.  So I hope someone can check my working...


The Supernova is forecast to go off with a force equivalent to 20 billion, billion, billion megatons of TNT.  That makes 2x10³⁷ kilograms of TNT.
The star is 3260 Light years away.  Or  3x10¹⁹m.
A sphere with that radius has a surface area of  about 1x10⁴⁰m.  Based on the surface area being 4πr³. Ooh look - that's π again.  See how all things come together?
Which I make an impact, all things being equal, of about the equivalent of 0.17g of TNT per square metre.
1g of TNT releases 4,180J of energy.  So we're looking at 700 J/m².  Which sounds quite a lot.  Indeed, it's roughly three times the amount of energy that the earth receives per square metre every second from the sun.

So my only real worry is that these numbers were actually all a bit large for Burton's pocket calculator.  It took him ages to key in all 7.2 trillion and 1 digits of π.  If anyone can show the figures are wrong, I'll start panicking again.

Bullying Clergy

I note from many sources (including Clayboy and Mad Priest) the thread of discussion regarding bullying of/by the clergy.  And I wonder whether any of this comes down to the recruitment / discernment policies of the Church of England.

Clearly there are bullies in every walk of life.  But the main recruitment thread of the C of E, at least of late, seems to have been for people who are sensitive, feeling, empathetic.  All good attributes.  But liable to leave you open to emotional blackmail, at the very least.  If you feel people's pain, want them to feel good and to feel good about you - you are so open to people who get shirty, cause trouble, say you don't work hard enough, and tell you it's all your fault they're unhappy with church before threatening to go to another, more feeling/scriptural/lively/amenable church.

Not that I would encourage the Church of England to go recruiting loads of macho, muscular-Christianity, pushy evangelical types.  Or lots of left-brained, thinky intellectuals who don't understand human emotions and don't care what people think. But maybe a few would help?

Personally, I have a strict anti-bullying policy at the Beaker Folk.  If anyone seems to be trying to bully me or one of the members of the Druidic Council, I have Hnaef break their ankles with his walking boots (under the pretence of a friendly game of "football").  And if we see anyone from Unite heading across the fields, we introduce them to the local rednecks.  They don't normally come back.

Epiphany

In a flurry of activity and Twitter in-jokes, the Beaker People celebrated Twelfth Night in the traditional manner tonight.

First of all, we dined on our traditional Epiphany meal, Kippers a la Buckingham. We ate these around the Christmas tree, or Yule Besorry in the original Norse tongue. Then we cut it down with loppers, and trimmed it down with clippers before turning into a mulch with the chippers.

Then out to the Orchard for our Wassail.

Wassailing has a long and noble history in the annals of these islands. For full 30 centuries long people have assembled in orchards to sing to the spirits of the apple trees and drink lots of hot cider. In the belief that through this sympathetic magic, the trees will be encouraged to a good crop the following autumn. And to express the truth of the circles of nature, the cycle of the crop, the windmills of your mind, and the need to drink some hot cider when it's cold. And who are we to argue with a tradition like that? In good Beaker fashion we headed out among the trees, armed with mulled cider, toast and Ugg boots, to sing the Beaker Wassail song:

Wassail wassail we are so cold
Our toes are turning black
Hats full, caps full, cups full, buckets full
Why don't traditional songs rhyme?

Then we shot our shotguns into the trees. Or we would have done. But for Health and Safety reasons, we weren't allowed to use shotguns in such a confined space. So we would have used replica guns, or starter guns, but Edith Weston objected to us using any kind of gun-shaped object on the grounds that it was glorifying violence.

So we threw toast at the trees, drank their health, and piled into the Room of Viewing to see the BBC Special "Ooh it's cold". Tradition. Don't you love it?

Local Cancelled Events in Full

Sadly the Husborne Crawley Radio Snowline Programme is off the air due to the snow, so I've a list of events that have been cancelled tonight due to the weather and other reasons.  If you've got any questions don't bother to phone us as we'll be out in the Orchard wassailing.  We've a couple of gallons of mulled cider, a big bonfire and plenty of toast.  We know how to rough it when we have to.

• Traditional Epiphany Swim in the Pond - cancelled as we can't break through the ice.
• Snowball fight in Big Meadow - cancelled on Health and Safety advice, because of the danger of snow.
• Ladies' Bright Hour - Cancelled due to a power cut.
• The lecture on "Global Warming - Here and Now" has had to be cancelled due to the lecturer being snowed in.
• The "Night of Ten Thousand Watt torches, scheduled for the Lower Field, has been called off due to the risk of snow blindness.
• Clairvoyants' evening at the Reading Room - cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances*
• We've decided to postpone the "Winter Wonderland Experience" until April, in the hope that the weather might be a bit better.
• Luton Town vs Oxford United - match abandoned due to lack of interest.  Again.

What's really annoying me is, after years of taking the mickey out of the 4x4 drivers in the community because they drive these super over-sized cars they never get any real use out of, they're suddenly driving around looking really smug because they can get out of the car park without smashing into the Great Trilithon.  Still, we will have the last laugh.  After midnight, Hnaef and I are going to hose all their cars down.  Let's see them try and get into them in the morning...

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*Sorry.  I know.