Bad Science

An eventful evening yesterday, I thought.

Most of the controversy prevailed around Young Keith's new firework.  In these credit-crunched times, we decided it would be cheaper to make our own from scratch.  As Beaker People will be aware, this has involved collecting the crystallised residue around the edges of the cesspit as one of the source ingredients of the gunpowder.  So many people were deeply relieved that we had finally reached Bonfire night.
In the light of previous engineering endeavours, it probably wasn't surprising that Keith decided to build his rocket out of wood recycled from pallets.  However that did mean that the scale of the thing was quite surprising.  You rarely see a firework 27 cubic feet in capacity.

My chief scientific adviser, Albert Heisenberg, declared himself uncertain about whether this was a good idea. In his view, there was far too much explosive dedicated to going out - and not enough intended to send the firework up.  In any case, he said, the danger of burning pieces of pallet was good enough reason not to light the thing.

As we carried the firework - rather gingerly, I have to admit - out to the Orchard, Dr Heisenberg turned out to be far more certain - shouting "It's a death trap!  You're putting us all in danger!"  With this kind of scientific advice, what could I do?  Naturally I sacked Dr Heisenberg immediately.

When Young Keith lit the device, it was quite a revelation.  Lifting itself off the ground to a height of 2 feet, it then flew wildly round the Orchard.  In retrospect, lighting it in the Orchard was a bad move - as it bounced off the trees it resembled a pin-ball.  However in what I thought was quite an irony, it is fair to say that although we could tell where it was, and how fast it was going, it was quite tricky to judge both at the same time.  Eventually, leaving a pile of Beaker Folk cowering behind the Dairy wall, it flew straight into the Moot House and blew it to pieces.  At which all the people went "ooooh!"  It was very pretty, I must admit.  But we do need a new Moot House now.  And a new scientific adviser.

The Moon Gibbon Conspiracy

Dear Reader, I have taken the opportunity of the Archdruid's temporary absence to get hold of this wondrous connection to the outside world to share my deep concern. As an accountant I have always been more familiar with the detailed and reliable workings of the Adding Machine - you can count on an Adding Machine. And Eileen likes to keep me away from the Internetory Technology as much as possible, trying to keep me from over-excitement. She doesn't think that accountants should have too much excitement, and do you know, I think she's probably right.

I am keen to share my concerns regarding the Moon Gibbon. The poll we have been running has shown that a sizeable minority of Beaker Folk visitors believe that the Great Gibbon was in fact killed by NASA. I can now confirm that this is indeed true. Consider:

• Nobody has seen the Moon Gibbon since last month's moonshot.
  
• The moonshot totally failed to kick up any dust. Evidence that it hit something big and soft.
  
• NASA have published no results since the moonshot. Can we not conclude that this was because the substances they found should not have been there? For example - simian hair and hide? Are the NASA-paid scientists not, as we speak, trying to come up with some rationale - for example that the moonshot accidentally "winged" an earthly gibbon on the way up, due to an unfortunate gibbon climbing across the rocket just before take-off? Or indeed - are they simply falsifying the evidence?
  
• I have written to NASA six times to ask for information. They have repeatedly refused to address my concerns.
  
• My petition on the No 10 website - "That the Prime Minister should explain what has happened to the Moon Gibbon" was repeatedly taken down on the grounds that it was "frivolous".
• Young Keith's friend Briony reckons it was NASA and she's got a science A-level.

I think no further evidence is needed. I have a telescope trained on the moon constantly now, in order to see the inevitable rocket that will be sent up so the Moon Gibbon can be buried. However I am concerned. I have a sneaking suspicion that NASA will send it up in the daytime, so I can't see it.

I must away now. We will howl at the moon, knowing that it is now empty. Empty. Empty. And NASA are responsible. Who can bring these hylobatidaecides to justice? I will write to President Obama. He seems a pleasant enough young man, and I am sure he will help. But despite this hope, I am still concerned.

Guy Fawkes

On this of all days I am concerned about the treatment, approximately 400 years ago, of the so-called "traitor", Guido "Guy" Fawkes.
It would appear that Guido was brainwashed by a cell of well-off religious fundamentalists into launching a terrorist attack on the English government.  Although there is a certain amount of circumstantial evidence (i.e. he was found in the cellars with a load of gunpowder), there is a distinct possibility (i.e. the government admitted it) that Fawkes may have been tortured to obtain his confession.
We are calling on the Government to investigate, and for Gordon Brown to issue an apology immediately.

In other news, we're really looking forward to Bonfire Night.  We're using Jedward as twin guys this year.

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.

Health and Safety

This is why Health and Safety Matters. If the driver had been wearing a hi-viz none of this need have happened.  More smashed bottles than Bedford on a Friday night.  But unlike Bedford, nobody was seriously hurt.

Secular Schism

It is with... I was going to say "regret" but that may be overdoing it.  It is with a sense of the duty to share information that I have to tell you that the Beaker Secularists are no more.  Apparently Gilbert and Rodwell disagreed over whether secularists should wear anoraks or duffel coats.   Meanwhile - much to everyone's amazement - Stanley has met a girl and therefore lost all interest in drinking cider-and-black in the Weatherspoon's in Milton Keynes while discussing Nietzsche. 

Post Strike

Beaker People cannot fail to have noticed that there is a "Post Strike" on.  Please be clear what this implies.  This does not mean a chance to strike the postman.  He's having a hard enough time as it is, what with the Royal Mail doing whatever it is that it's doing to upset him [Hnaef, you're more left wing so you probably care  - please fill in with whatever it's all about].  So the last thing he wants is Beaker Folk striking him as he walks up the path.

Someone putting the sign "Beware of the Gibbon" on the gate hasn't exactly calmed him down.  He's already a bit nervous since he ignored the "Beware of the Wolf" sign while delivering to our next-door neighbours.  Well, they are Woburn Safari Park....

All Soul's Commemoration

Well I'm pleased to say that the All Soul's Day Commemoration is finally over.

We thought it would be nice to co-incide with the Full Moon by starting at moonrise, assuming the Occasion would just take the normal half an hour or so, as the name of each Departed Beloved was read and a tea light lit in their honour.

But as I reached the end of the list I was expecting to read, I noticed that somebody - I suspect Young Keith - had stapled a fairly sizeable chunk of the 1891 Census for Islington onto the back.

What was I to do? There's no denying that all the people on that list were among the Departed. Some were probably ancestors of Beaker Folk present. So I just kept going.

Some time around midnight we started to run out of tea lights, but Burton kindly nipped over to Tesco's at Kingston and bought in a couple of pallets.

Just now, as we filed away from the Moot House tired and dizzy from lack of sleep, someone registered a complaint. "Don't you realise?" he asked, "It's not meant to be about Them. It's meant to be about Us."

I must reflect.

A meditation for All Souls' Day

And so what do we make of All Souls' Day, in our post-Christendom paradigm?  In an environment where the most popular funeral songs, as previously discussed, are such songs as Robbie Williams's "Angels" and Celine Dion's "My Love Must Go on"*

The Roman Catholics use the day to remember the souls that are still in Purgatory, fighting their way to the surface, as it were.  But for most of us, in these days we have lost a sense of Purgatory.

And souls.

Now the aim of the Beaker People is to meet people where they are, and allow them to give a name to that place.  To help them find their spiritual voice.  So if we meet them where they are - where are they?

Firstly, they seem to be rejecting the sharp certainties of atheism.  Just as well for us, being a religious community and all that - it would make us totally redundant and even more pointless than we often seem to be already.  But whatever else they believe, they don't think Auntie Vera has actually ceased to exist.  They seem to have an implicit belief that Auntie Vera is somewhere, even if she is not physically around.

Naturally we'd have to rule out any mention of a resurrection.  How are we going to explain that?  Especially to a generation that finds the best way to deal with the dead is to convert them to more manageable ashes.  And while many people seem to believe in reincarnation in theory, we find they don't really want to go into the details.  After all, that would mean considering the possibility that, Uncle Ernest having come back as a chicken, they ate him for tea. 

We also find it best not to dwell in any detail on the concept of heaven.  It has a nasty habit of reminding people of hell.  And we don't want to go there, if you see what I mean.  Just allow that a few people - Hitler, Stalin and Mao, for example - are in hell and where would you draw the line?  You start drawing lines and suddenly you're talking about judgement and sin and salvation and all kinds of other things we really wouldn't want to get into.

No, the best place to assign the spirits of the dead, on the whole, would appear to be to a kind of insubstantial, almost-heavenly place, where the dearly beloved ones are held in a kind of - if you will forgive the misuse of the word - limbo.  A kind of commuter suburb of heaven, really.  Based on the vague recollections of other people attending seances or medium shows, most people see this as where the dead live.  Our former friends and much-missed family members are probably best imagined sitting in someone's ectoplasmic front room, on a rainy day in the 1970s, just after "The Big Match" has finished, for all eternity.   Without even a set of dominoes to relieve the boredom.  No wonder the Dead spend all their time, if the mediums are to be believed, worrying about how their budgies are doing, if their niece's bad back is bearing up and whether they switched the gas off before they died.

And so we nod sagely, and encourage people with the assurance that their loved ones are "in God's hands".  But we make sure we aren't too specific about what exactly God is doing with those hands.

So on All Souls' Day, the Beaker Folk will light a tea light for all the dead people we want to remember.  And we will desperately hope that when we light one for Uncle Ernest, Auntie Gladys won't be too upset, because we didn't light one for her - because if we did that then Cousin Wilf would want one as well.  And before you knew it we'd be lighting one for every dead person we'd ever met (before they died, obviously).  Because where would you draw the line?  Honestly, it would be like writing Christmas cards.

Have a contemplative All Souls' Day.  Wherever you are.

*with special thanks to Albatross for his remembrance of "Please Release me", and to David Keen for his (hopefully satirical) suggestion of "Living in a Box".  Oh - and to Anonymous and  Sally for "Smoke gets in your eyes".

Of Pumpkins and Plagiarism

Between the important matters of Stephen Fry's Twittering and the ancient commemoration of All Souls' it would seem foolish to share anything else.  But then you find this.   http://r-liggins0811-dc.blogspot.com/2009/10/rituals-involving-pumpkins.html  Someone has summarised the Beaker Folk Pumpkin Ritual.  In years to come new neo-pagan groups will no doubt claim it's a 2000 year old ritual.  They will of course be right....  As long as they leave it 2000 years.  And they've done it without crediting the site.  Young Keith's uncle the Police Constable is looking under "P" for "Plagiarism" even as we speak.  I tell you, it's enough to get someone drummed out of the Angular Rusting University Druidic Studies course.

 

The Feast of Tweediness

A Celebration for Stephen Fry's return to Twitter

All Beaker Folk may be equipped with novelty buzzers and, as it may be, unusual headwear, tweedy jackets, butler's outfits or comedy trousers.

Archdruid: Good evening, good evening, good evening, good ee--vening.  m'colleage goes...

[Sound of Hnaef striking holy bell]

Archdruid: .. and Burton goes... 

[Sound of badly-played bodhran]

Archdruid:  ... and Young Keith goes...

[Sound of badly-played accoustic guitar]

Archdruid:  ... and Young Keith's uncle the police constable goes...

[Sound of police siren]

Archdruid: Let us confess our sins.

All: @God: We have called Stephen's tweets boring.  We have had no interest in what flavour herbal tea he is drinking.  We have tweeted those things we ought not to have tweeted.  And we have not tweeted those things we ought to have tweeted.  And we have exceeded our character count already.  Have mercy on us, miserable trolls, and in future make us amusing, pithy, and above all charitable unto thy fluffy and sensitive creatures.

Archdruid: Let me hear you say "Baah"!

All: @Archdruid Baah!

Archdruid: Peace be with you.

All: @Archdruid and also with you.

Archdruid: Let us share the peace.

All: RT Archdruid: Peace be with you.

Archdruid: May your URLS be ever tiny.

All: @Archdruid and may you be retweeted for ever.

Archdruid: Go, and twitter forever.

All: @Archdruid we'll leave that to Stephen.