Marriage à-la-mode

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm as prepared to recognise changing social ethics, and embrace them as my own, as the next Archdruid. But today's handfasting was really hard work.

In the old days, there just used to be "Groom's Side" or "Bride's Side". But in this modern world, we had "Groom's side", "Bride's side", "Groom's ex-wife who still claims to be a friend's side", "Bride's ex-husband who kids himself he's over it all now's side" (right at the back - definitely safest). Then there was "friends of the Bride's ex-husband and the Groom's ex-wife, who are possibly thinking of getting together themselves", and "scarlet hussy who broke up the bride's last marriage by vamping round her now ex-husband's side".

The "Groom's 'friend' from a phase when he wasn't so sure of his nature as he is today" side was necessary, as well. Just the four of them, but they did a lovely "YMCA". And if you think that was inappropriate, at least it wasn't as bad as the suggestion that just the one of them could sing "Don't leave me this way". While the groom's long-term girlfriend from after his first wedding had to be talked out of her own solo - she was suggesting "It could've been me."

Finally, in a rejection of sexist tradition and patriarchal society, the Groom was given away by the bride's sister - we're not at all sure about the significance of that, and I wasn't going to ask. While the Bride had a "Best man", whom she selected from a parade of her former boyfriends. The Bride's Father, meanwhile, is an "item" with the Groom's Mother - and, since that incident with the discovery of the size-11 slingbacks, so is the Bride's Step-father with the Groom's Gran.

So all in all an open-minded, free-spirited, joyous celebration of the generosity of modern life. I'll give them six months.

Usain Bolt's Moment to Himself (2)

I should have said that Mr Bolt's display of devotion is a great example of the partnership between faith and endeavour in any field.

Usain Bolt thanks God for his gifts, for his amazing build and natural advantages in running very fast. But if he ate only pot noodles and trained by watching "Loose Women" (I presume there must be a Jamaican vesion?) he would not be the fastest runner on the planet. He gives thanks to his God, and he trains.

The dichotomy between trying and praying is more brought out by silly people at extremes than by sensible people, of faith or not, in the middle. So the vast majority oft Christians with a friend who is ill would pray they got better, and counsel seeing a doctor. A Christiam laying in bed feeling hungry would be better off gettitng up and making some breakfast, than laying in bed and praying for cornflakes to rain down from the ceiling. A sensible believer will pray for strength to get through the day and wisdom to make good decisions at work. They won't spend eight hours praying for God to stack the shelves, work the photocopier or give training sessions for them.

If that sounds like having your cake and eating it, then frankly that would be the ideal cake. In Him we live and move and have our being. If you can split the natural cleanly from the divine, you're a cleverer theologian than I am. You'll notice I only said a "cleverer" one.

Usain Bolt's "Moment to Himself"

Why does the BBC ignore Usain Bolt's God? The question asked by Cranmer. We all saw it Thursday as Mr Bolt celebrated his 200m victory by kneeeling, crossing himself and giving praise. Or, as the commentator put it, having a moment to himself.

There seems no point asking why "the BBC" does or does not do anything. This is, after all, an organisation that is based in the most exciting, fantastic capital city. The home to a massive financial centre - where fortunes can be made and lost. The home of the Government of the UK. The place where monarchs have had their heads removed - where Wat Tyler and William Wallace met their end. Where the great decisions of Church, State, Sport and Business are made.

So naturally they chose to report on all this from a space-ship orbiting another planet. Sorry, Salford. Nothing against Salford, it's an up-and-coming place. It's just 200 miles from London, that's all.

I guess the fact of the matter is that commentators routinely ignore athlete's devotions - not being able to distinguish between those that are genuinely, unaffectedly devout, those that are pure superstition and those that come through upbringing. They ignore them in the same way they ignore footballer spitting and clearing their noses during games - as something rather embarrassing and personal that you'd rather not bring to the country's attention. The last gesture that could be taken as religious that I remember being remarked upon was that of Frank Lampard gesturing to the sky after scoring shortly after losing his mother - a gesture that could safely be commended without offending anyone. 

But I look forward, in these diverse and tolerant days, to when this studied indifference to religious actions can be put to the test. The Genuinely Celtic Revival of Rushden are hoping, in the vacuum caused by the loss of the old Rushden + Diamonds, to storm the non-league.  They hope, within three years, to at least make an FA Cup 3rd round. Being Genuinely Celtic, their approach to making tactical changes is a little unconventional - they stab a chicken and examine its entrails to see whether they should go to five in midfield or maybe throw on another striker. Let's see if the commentator ignores that.

Of Growth and Paperclips

Far be it from me to stand up for the Coalition. I will be honest, at the last election I preferred the Tories but that was on the grounds that I hoped they would be less a bunch of incompetent control freaks than their predecessors. Incompetence I can tolerate - when have governments ever been anything other than incompetent? But to have people whose only successful real-world ventures were running booze-ups in their Student Union Bars trying to micro-manage the country is a terrifying thing, and an all-too-common sight.

So I won't stand up for them. Especially little Osborne who is now, Burton tells me, taking a third of the price of beer in duty and VAT. Driving pubs into the dust through punitive taxation is no way for the party of - allegedly - low tax to behave. Any responsible chancellor would surely slash the duty on alcohol and restore our balance of payments by encouraging the French to run booze cruises to Folkestone. But I digress, big-style.

The point I was really after was this. The complaint from the Left is that we do not have growth in the economy. But the aim of the Coalition is not growth - it's paying off the deficit. I suspect these two things are incompatible, at least in tne short term.

Let's take the much-vaunted savings in public sector procurement. Let's imagine that a far-reaching investigation into the paper-clip procurement process in the NHS unveils vast inefficiencies. Let's say that either the NHS is being massively over-charged as part of a foolish single source of supply contract, or else each NHS trust has negotiated its own deal, suffering from individually weak bargaining power as a result.

So let's suppose one, super, negotiator takes over the NHS paper clip procurement. In a bonfire of contracts and specifications across the land, thousands of paper-clips are already freed for use in the NHS. By negotiating a better price overall, money is saved. By introducing an on-line paperclip replenishment system, drawing paperclips from a paperclip distribution centre on a just-in-time process, the capital tied up in paper clips can be freed and the Deficit Reduced.

Let's look at that from the paper-clip industry's perspective. So now the Government has one preferred supplier - all the other paper-clip sales executives, paper-clip accounts directors and paper-clip order processing clerks have lost their jobs.

The number of paper-clips in the supply chain has been reduced. So maintenance cycles on paper-clip counting machines, paper-clip boxing machines and paper-clip manufacturing machines are reduced. Some stand idle. The people who service paper-clip machines, and those who train the service engineers, undergo contraction. The British representatives of the (no doubt Chinese) companies that make paper-clip machines, and from whom the paper-clip companies order their raw materials, are laid off. In an ideal world they'd go off into the Doily sector, but it's hard times for doilies - the Civil Service's Doily Rationalisation Initiative has laid waste to great swathes of our doily-making heritage.

So the deficit has been cut, the environment is better for it (less fuel used making paper-clips). But growth is impacted. The Paper-clip industry is in the worst recession since all the paper-clips were called in to make armaments in WW2.

If you want growth generated by Central Goverment, it seems to me that logic says we should invent truly wasteful ways to procure paper clips. We should introduce new legislation demanding the use of paperclips on all bundles of paper, even if they're as small as just one sheet. We should create reserve stores of doilies, for use in emergencies - which of course will never come. We should deliberately over-pay public sector paper-clip suppliers, so their sales executives can buy new Beamers with their bonuses. Blimey, they might even be able to put in new layers of management.

Of course, this wouldn't help the deficit. I can see this one is gonna be tricky.

St Lawrence's Day - Liturgy of Falling Stars

To be cancelled in the event of it being overcast.

Hymn: Catch a Falling Star

All: Ooh! Shooting star! Or is it the Space Station?

Archdruid: It's wrong to wish on space hardware.

All: I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care.

Burnhard: I wish I'd brought me glasses. Can't see a thing.

Archdruid: Behold! The tears of St Lawrence.

All: Not so sure about "tears". That was just the one.

Burnhard: Nope, still nothing.

Hnaef: Shouldn't we switch all the lights off? Surely it would help if we weren't being dazzled?

Archdruid: For Health + Safety reasons, we can't switch off the lights. Watching meteor showers in the dark is dangerous. You could trip over a badger or something.

All: Badger? You never mentioned badgers.

Archdruid: Look, we're out watching the Perseid meteor shower in the middle of the night in the Bedfordshire. You've got to factor in badgers.

All: Badgers? Falling from space?

Rodrick: Beware the wrath of the Mutant Space Badgers!

Erewig: A moth! A moth!

All: Moths? Nobody mentioned moths!

Radwulf: Kill the lights! We're attracting them!

The lights go out, while Beaker Folk rush for safety. Some light bruising may occur before they stop, realising it's safer to stand still.

The lights are switched on, revealing a lone figure, approaching along the drive.

All: A space badger! A giant moth! A.... Burton Dasset?

Burton (slightly slurred): You all waited up for me to get back from the Beer Festival! You must be my best friends. Let me tell you about my day... Now, the first one I tried was a light, summer golden ale. 4.2pc alcohol -  but rather fruity even at that strength...

Panic breaks out. Beaker Folk trample over each other as they rush back to the Great House and safety.

Saint Lawrence - Patron Saint of Comedians

The Beaker Folk recognise many saints. CS Lewis, William Stukeley (although we try to ignore his freemasonry), Teilhard de Chardin, Mother Julian and of course our local St Bogwulf alias Bogwald - they're all good as far as we're concerned.

But Lawrence or, as we prefer due to it sounding more exotic, San Lorenzo, is one of our favourites. A deacon at Rome, he was killed by being roasted on a gridiron - provoking his famous request that he be turned over as he was done on one side.

Lorenzo thus turned the tables on his torturers, proving that Christians, even under severe pain and persecution, know there is a better way, and are funnier, wittier and cleverer than their opponents. This is a belief in which I have persevered, even when considering George W Bush, Anne Widdecombe and that Bono from U2. Although, to be fair to Bono, jetting around the world to tell the rest of us to cut our carbon footprint is pretty funny, isn't it?

Naga Louts

I'm up early because I've got to prepare for Burton Dasset's annual journey to the Great British Beer Festival.

Really I can't stand the way he behaves after he's been out at these things. He goes down there, hangs out with his IT and accounting mates, then when he gets back he's going around telling everybody the body, mouthfeel and aftertaste of every beer he's drunk.

On the bright side, because of the security situation with the Olympics he's leaving the Chemistry equipment at home this year. I could do without those bar charts comparing Standard Bitterness Units.

And this year's the worst of all. He reckons his mate Boring (not his real name) has found a place in London where they sell Naga Madras curry. Because after a few beers, they always decide that's the truest test of manhood. Thankfully, due to the security etc, we'll be spared the Scoville Units graphs as well.

But this year I've come up with a cunning plan. I'm starting painting things pink now, and when he's off to Town I'm going to switch on the SEP field. Hopefully that will leave him to wander round the village for the night, tilll some of the boringness has worn off.

The Random Watchmaker

"'It was almost as if nature was developing different human prototypes with different attributes, only one of which, an ancestor of our species, was ultimately successful in evolutionary terms,' he said."

So that would be a not-so-blind watchmaker, who makes a number of watches, because the watchmaker knows that a watch is what is required. Then, after several watches have become available, throws away the ones that tell the wrong time.

Mission to Mars

I keep hearing about a mission to Mars in the news. It seems to me that, given the way that the world is going down here, resources would be utterly wasted on a Mars mission.

After all, if there are any Martians, we have no idea whether they have souls or not. We do not know if they would be fallen, and therefore in need of redemption. And no doubt if we did make contact, in the interests of "respect" the mission to the planet would be led by liberals like Eileen talking about "inculturation". We all know what that would mean. We would only be able to preach the Gospel if we painted ourselves green, ate freeze-dried instant potato mash and went around saying "Meep Meep".

No, if I want to make contact with hostile life in an unpleasant environment, I will carry on preaching in the Bletchley Brunel Centre on Friday mornings.

Inspiring a New Generation

For years now there have been complaints about playing fields being sold off and a whole generation of couch potatos being raised. And watching the Olympics has really inspired me to do something about it.

So I'm opening a sportswear shop. Liverpool and M*n U*d shirts, jogging bottoms, designer drinks bottles, vuvuzelas, hi-viz lager can holders - the full range of products you'll need to watch the start of the new Premiership season.

The buildings at the centre of the Community are already a bit on the crowded side, so I'm planning to put the shop on Park Meadow. It's only used for 5-a-side kickabouts and a bit of cricket or rounders in the summer, so nobody's going to miss it. And I've made it quite clear in the Planning Permission application that I'm going to put a Super Mario Olympics game in the Quiet and Meditation Room - big screen, and everything - to encourage sporting endeavour.

Climate Change Agnostic

I'm not a Climate Change sceptic, denier or enthusiast. I'm just an ordinary person with a science degree wondering what's meant to pass for "evidence" these days.

I'd like to quote to you the link I just had recommended to me, telling me that the last six years of miserable British summers are due to Climate Change. Guardian 2012.

And now, an article, which is from early 2007, which predicts that 2007 would be the latest in a run of hot summers due to Climate Change. Observer (on the Guardian Website) 2007. That is the summer of 2007 which, in the words of Guardian 2012, had " the devastating floods....when some areas received double their normal rainfall for June" 

It strikes me that pumping enormous amounts of Carbon Dioxide into the air is probably a very silly thing to do. As is burning all the oil, when we could usefully be making plastic out of it if we had cheaper and more sustainable sources of energy.

But it also strikes me that the way Science doesn't work is to start with a hypothesis, make a prediction based on it, then when the evidence is completely opposite claim that's consistent with the hypothesis. Exactly what weather in Britain over the last five years would the Guardian have claimed was not consistent with Anthropogenic Global Warming? It's hard to imagine.