Nativity of Henry Ireton, b 3 November 1611

We end the day with a quiet contemplation of the career of Henry Ireton, who is most notable round here in that he gave his name to the road in Holloway which the Archdruidical Londoner-grandparents inhabited. Perhaps it is appropriate for a man who would not have wanted earthly honours, that the road was flattened in the 70s and replaced with a park.


I cannot help but be amused by this British Civil Wars page's comment that " Ireton's tireless efforts in supervising military operations in Ireland apparently exhausted him".  I would hate anyone to apply the same pedantry to my own scribblings, but if the efforts exhausted him, one would imagine they were not so much tireless as tiring. Perhaps "sustained" would be a better word?


Ireton was humourless, devout and a ratbag. He wanted no monument except the eternal one that awaits us in the heavenly realms. He wanted only a heavenly kingdom, and yet helped to destroy an earthly one. In the pursuit of a creed of love, he butchered many. Years after his death, he ended up with his head on a stick. He would have wanted it that way.

Mythical Creatures Service - the Aftermath

Cultural sensitivity - especially when dealing with others' sensibilities - is so important. And what a lesson it was to us today, to think hard when choosing our hymns.

The Mythical Creatures Service had a certain tension after we sang "To be a Pilgrim". The Foul fiends and hobgoblins were pretty shirty, and the giant said that Pilgrim could come and have a go if he thought he was hard enough.  While I'm sure it was just a mis-hearing, but "I've got a gnome in gloryland" didn't go down too well either.

On the menu today

Pumpkin soup.

Mythical Creatures Service

After the relative lack of carnage of our Pets Service, a Mythical Creatures service does seek like the next logical step. I like to do something that puts us in touch with the people outside the community - makes us seem more human, like normal people are without trying. But a few words of preparation before today's celebration.

Firstly if you bring a Squonk, can you tie it up outside. We don't want to drown. And make sure you leave bowls of water. They need to rehydrate frequently.
Likewise, we can't allow Ents in the Moot House. It's not that we don't respect their right to exist. We are very pro-ent. Some of our best friends are ents. They just have a habit of accidentally smashing everywhere up.
And I hate to make this a list of "don'ts". But please, whoever brought a crying angel last year, can you either leave it at home or bring a matched pair facing each other.
But on the positive side, if anyone's got a smallish red dragon can they let Hnaef know? The boiler's on the blink again.

This being the Nativity of Adam Ant and Charles Bronson, today's dress code will be New Romantic or Dirty Dozen. But try not to confuse the two. We don't want to end up looking the Village People again.

Let's Face the Music and Liturgical Dance - The Pogo

It's been a long time since the Earth Hour Worship, and some Beaker People had been missing a good Liturgical Dance. Not me, I've seen enough overweight matrons of a certain age hopping about while wearing A-line skirts over leotards to last me a long time. And ribbons, tambourines, impressions of Miriam are likewise things I can do with out. Unless it's rejoicing about the unexpected demise of bitter enemies, in which case I'm with Miriam that far at least.

But Marston had yet another idea. He wanted to do a liturgical pogo. Fair enough, we've had moonstomps which worked very well.  And pogo dancing, although dated, has a certain attraction.

But I never realised he actually meant on pogo sticks. Liturgical dancing by eight overweight blokes on pogo sticks is just stupid. The bruises caused to people sitting nearest the sacred space were quite severe. And those sustained by Marston and his mates as they fell off were worse. Although the thing that really worried us was when Marston went purple and started to have palpitations after 10 minutes of manic pogo-ing.

But I guess the thing that really put the tin lid on it for me, was that it just wasn't the greatest way to illuminate the finer points of Palestrina's Lamentations.

Today's supper

There really was a nice lot of pumpkin we lit on Sunday. So today, Bernie, ever creative, is serving us a delicious pumpkin pie.

The Beaker Covenant - a Rejection

Like all the other members of the Beaker Folk I've been asked by "Archdruid " Eileen to sign the Beaker Covenant. I have rejected and I'd like to explain why.

In the first place, I'd like to make it clear that it's not that I have any theological objections to the Covenant itself. This is unsurprising, as technically there is no theological content to it. And that is my first objection. I have proposed instead the following Reformed Beaker Covenant. And note that I have used numbers instead of the letters that Eileen proposed. That's the kind of straight-talking, evidence-based dogmatism you get in the Beaker Baptists.

We the People Called Beaker accept the following truths to be self-evident:

1. The verbal inerrancy of the Bible. Not the "original" scripts in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, as we suspect they may have been tampered with and there's too many variants. And once you get variants you get uncertainty as to which is the right reading. And then people start having their own opinions. And then where are you? Brighton, that's where. So we believe in the processes of divine inspiration that, via numerous imperfect versions of the scripture, produced the one perfect version in 1611 in Jacobean English.
2. We believe that the original prophets and apostles who composed the Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic texts wrote exactly what God told them. Any confusion between this statement and (1) is a shame. We believe the Textus Receptus to be the perfect mode of transmission between what the Apostles wrote and the New Testament produced in 1611.  
3. When we say "The Bible" we mean the 66 Protestant books of the Bible. We know that the Authorized Bible project also included the Apocrypha, but they were just showing off and didn't mean it.
4. If anyone adds to or removes the previous paragraphs, they might as well say they're a fan of Stephen Fry and be done with it.
5. Women should be seen and not heard. Except for Eileen who, like the Queen in the Church of England, enjoys special status that we have very cunning arguments for supporting. 
6. Point (5) is not unconnected with her carrying that cricket bat.

As you see, my proposed Covenant is not unlike Eileen's document, and indeed has one very similar point.

Secondly I have trouble with the proposed Appendix 1 - Issue Resolution Procedure. Eileen's idea is that in the case of disagreement, as point 1 of the dispute resolution, the opposed parties should "have a nice cup of tea". Her directives for the manner in which the disagreements should then be resolved include the injunction to "play nicely" and asks "why not just pretend you agree, like we normally do?" Clearly this is no way to run the Beaker Community.
I met with Eileen and told her my issues. In issue resolution I agreed with her that every man has his own interpretation of the Bible (and most women have their husbands or fathers to ask). So I suggested that, for the purposes of theological neutrality, all disputes be referred to an independent adviser from a Fundamentalist Baptist Church, but Eileen just laughed at me. Then she offered me a cup of tea and suggested I "play nicely". And said that she was sure we were just violently agreeing with one another.

The Beaker Covenant

It's always a hard job keeping the Beaker community together. Consider that we have people who think a giant divine gibbon consumes the moon every month, others who think that there is a giant gibbon but s/he lives in a marsh, others that worship St Kirsty as a moon goddess and others who just like lighting tea lights.
And although we have Articles of Beaker Faith, most people consider them to be vague guidelines rather than anything binding. Indeed, when becoming a member of the Beaker Folk, one has simply to confirm that one believes that the Articles exist.

And generally I like it that way. It goes with my general view that people should be pretty much allowed to do what they want, within the bounds of not actually setting fire to each other or stealing each other's car tyres, and you can't force them to be good although you can talk about what it means. It also has the advantage that,  when you don't know what you're talking about, you know you can keep quiet. Stephen Fry could have avoided commenting on subject matter he doesn't understand in much the same way, I suspect. If he's not been misquoted...

And we generally find a modus operandi. For instance - the Moon Gibbon folk don't agree with female druids. And I don't think that there's a gibbon in the moon. So we agree to differ. And when I say "agree to differ" I mean "pretend the others don't exist".

But someone always wants more. Some, to misquote the Master, don't want rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty. They want the doubts knocked out and cast-iron certainty, thinking it reduces stress - even through it also eliminates interest. And so they want a Beaker Covenant.

But I've heard of this type of thing elsewhere, and I'm being a bit cagey. So I've proposed the following as a common set of beliefs we can all agree on:

a) Whether the Moon Gibbon exists or not is a matter of debate. In the same way as whether or not the world is flat and whether King Arthur sleeps under Glastonbury Tor is also a matter of debate.

b) Hi viz and tea lights cheer you up on a dull winter evening.

c) The Archdruid is lethal with a cricket bat.

d) In case of disagreement with the Archdruid or this Covenant, refer to (c) above.

e) Stones are for contemplating, not throwing

f) Likewise hazelnuts.

I've high hopes of success with the Beaker Covenant. In fact I'm just off to discuss it with the Marsh Gibbon Folk now. But I'm in a conciliatory mood. So I'll just be taking the 5 iron.  And hoping they don't throw stones at me.

Samhain - Raging against the dying of the Light

As the last embers of the Wicker Man burn out, and the hi-viz of the last Beaker Person is doused with water before he sustains any more fire damage, we can look back on another exciting Samhain.

I use the word Samhain, of course, not because it is the authentic Beaker word for the festival, but because we have no idea what the Beaker People would have called it. However I should point out that, being an Irish word, Samhain is not pronounced as it is written. It is actually pronounced "Halloween". I hope I've cleared up some confusion there.

But today, in a manner that won't send me screaming into the woods again, we fought back against the dying of the light. Like the folk of Egdon on Bonfire Night, we shake our fists at the night and say, "over our dead bodies". So we lit our wicca man, we bowled blazing tar barrels across the orchard (only losing three apple trees this year, and the extra light is always welcome), we pushed a blazing rowing boat out across the duck pond (unfortunately thereby singeing Duckhenge) and, a day early since it happens that this year Halloween is the day before 1 November, we lit the first wave of Xmas Bling. Nothing too religious - no Santas or reindeer or penguins, just some tasteful strings of white lights and the 45 foot illuminated trilithon.  And then we took the patched-up dragon from the St George re-creation this morning, soaked it in petrol and set it alight.  It's fair to say we've not generated so much light in Husborne Crawley since last time the Moot House caught fire.

The autumn fogs are another hazard of this time of year, of course. But I can't help thinking that, on this occasion, we may have caused it ourselves. After all, there's only so many particulates you can kick into the atmosphere without causing a general smogginess.

And we had a nice little dance in a circle around the sundial - anti-clockwise, as the clocks went back last night. While playing Enya's "Caribbean Blue", which to be honest didn't seem to have much to do with anything, but at least it's atmospheric.
I'm not sure why, but it's always good to dance around the sundial occasionally. Maybe it's the sight of all the traditional Hi Viz that takes you back to prehistoric times, when the original Beaker Folk would dance a lot quicker in case they were caught by a polar bear or something.
But all in all, I had a great time. And we've only got 5 days till we can do it all again on Bonfire Night.

Which is just as well, as I can't help but notice, as the lights of the Thousand Punkies die out across the estate, that the dark is creeping back in again...

A sharp fall in religious attendance

A sharp fall this morning, at any rate.

This was a Sunrise Service. The sunrise doesn't go back an hour.

Now I'm going to have to patch that dragon back up so we can slay it all over again later.

Harriet Harman's Racist Rant

Harriet Harman has used words about Danny Alexander that I shudder to repeat.
Surely people of the red-headed persuasion are entitled to protection as great as that offered to other ethnic minorities? Or, remembering who created the Harmanisation of Equality Bill, did she carefully exclude ginger people?  I'm not sure whether being red-headed relates to race or it's a kind of religion. But either way, I'm offended on Danny Alexander's behalf. Where do I complain?