Virtually Worship

Note for all Beaker Folk: tomorrow we're going back to real-life, face-to-face Pouring out of Beakers.

Thought yesterday's "virtual" worship, where one poor schmuck poured out Beakers while everyone else stayed in the comfort of their rooms and listened in on "Radio Husborne Crawley", was very successful. But I was aware that the flow of - for want of a better word - liturgy was all one way.

So today we tried video conferencing via Beaker People's laptops. I even turned the electricity on to help.

The concept of "video conferencing" was clearly lost on Barwig, who joined in via his smartphone. From the bath. And forgot which side of his HTC the camera is.

So as I say we're all back to normal tomorrow. But we will be offering counselling today, at least till lunchtime and possibly longer.

Bookie Event Horizon

The late, great, sainted Douglas Adams hypothesised a "shoe event horizon". This was the point at which the only shops on the high street would be shoe-shops.

But now I see that this was hopelessly optimistic. Because, when all is said and done, shoes are some kind of product - something you make. Something where human ingenuity is involved.

But no. It's not shoes that are taking over the horizon. It's bookies.

I don't want to agree with Harriet Harman, but it does seem a bit much.

To restate the "shoe event horizon" theorem. In a depression, increasingly the only shops left on the horizon are bookies. And so the only people with any money are bookmakers and those who work in bookies shops.

But when a bookie's employee comes out of the bookie, the only shops available are bookmakers. So they order a pizza and while away their time in the bookies. Who returns the compliment the following day waiting for a pizza himself.

In the end all that is left of the economy are the bookies, and the dole. The taxman takes a percentage of the profits off the bookies, and gives it to the unemployed. Who, desperate at the low rates of dole being paid, gamble it in the hope of enough to live on. It's a game of diminishing returns, where the only person who gets rich is Ray Winstone.

One day, the laws of economics determine that the only person with any money at all is Ray Winstone. Who discovers there are no food shops left. And the last pizza place just closed. And he's just an animated head.

At which point it all kind of grinds to a halt. And you can't even buy a pair of shoes.

The Dangers of "Green" Energy

I don't know. They don't work when there's no wind. They're switched off when it's too windy. And when it's really, really windy - this happens. That's quite a carbon footprint.

Social Media Hacking Scandal Continues

I'm really embarrassed by this. Fancy me being the latest victim of the social media hacking affair that has engulfed Facebook.

Somebody has posted my photos of Manchester that I took last week. I still can't work out how they got hold of them.

Dark Morning Prayer

It's cold dark and vile. So this morning's worship will be broadcast, Radio Maplin style, through the Community PA.

Please respond at the right points. And when you hear the sounds of Beakers being poured out, be assured that it's the quality of the transmission that's the problem. And not just me turning the taps on and off because I can't face the hike across to the Moot House.

New Performance Monitoring Methods

I'm pleased to announce the new Beaker Performance Monitoring Methods, based on the Government's revolutionising of the NHS.

Under the old scheme, which we inherited from Archdruid Brown of the Tupperware Folk of Tebworth, the performance of neo-coenobitic communities was measured through a set of targets for the way in which we treated weekend pilgrims. These included:

a) Time from first arrival to being greeted by a grinning welcome-hippy in a daisy chain.

b) Number of leaflets offered to newcomers in the first hour.

c) Number of people attending each Occasion.

d) Souvenirs bought in the Beaker Bazaar.

e) The overall response score on a questionnaire.

This old method was symptomatic of the control-freakishness and top-down management associated with Archdruid Brown. And so we are scrapping the targets, and instead concentrating on religious outcomes. These religious outcomes will be based on responses to the following questions we will ask all departing pilgrims:

a) How quickly on first arrival were you greeted by a grinning welcome-hippy in a daisy chain?

b) How many leaflets were you offered in the first hour of your visit?

c) How busy would you say each Occasion was that you attended?

d) How many souvenirs did you buy from the Beaker Bazaar?

e) On a scale of 1 to 5, how positive was your stay?

I think it's all a massive improvement on the old scheme, and I'd hope that Beaker Folk would fall behind this new method of monitoring performance. Instead of picketing the Moot House, which is what they're currently doing. On the bright side, they're disturbing the bats - so I'm hoping to call the police to bring the demo to an end fairly rapidly.

Lament for Man Utd getting Knocked out of the European Champions League

All: Oops.

Wrath of God

When I was a child, I thought like a child. I spoke like a child. I reasoned like a child. And I had scabby knees from falling over like a child.

And I often wondered about the "Wrath of God". What was this "wrath" of which the Bible spoke? Well (a) it was liable to be poured out, (b) you didn't want to have it near you and (c) it sounded a bit like "broth" (not, as Drayton seems to think, like "lath"). So I concluded, reasoning like the aforementioned child, that it was a kind of primevally intelligent killer-soup of judgement. If you upset God then he would pour out his wrath upon you and it would then kind of gloop around the neighbourhood, consuming what it might devour. After it had enveloped enough evil-doers, it would presumably be satisfied.

Of course, at this more enlightened age I now know this isn't true.

In fact, I am now supposed to believe, God never gets wrathful, and has no need to pour out his wrath. He's a much nicer God than that.

And I look at the exploitation of children, and the traffiking of women, and the ability of some companies to negotiate their way out of taxes. And I look at the way we've devastated the country with road infrastructure so people at place "A" can work in place "B", while people at place "B" can equally work in place "A". And I look at the way we've doomed some people to low achievement, by expecting nothing of them and then labelling them as failures. And then blaming them for the moral failures we've encouraged them in. And I look at the way we effectively condone unfaithfulness in relationships amongst the famous - and so excuse it among others.

And I ponder an economic system where the banks throw money at you until you can't pay it back, then get the government to fund them because they've been so stupid. But the governments are weak because they've borrowed so much money themselves, to buy your vote.

You know, that killer-soup idea probably wasn't any worse than the one where God's never angry?

Wasting Money on Ceremonies

Local hero Paula Radcliffe criticises the Conservative Government for wasting money on medal ceremonies, the BBC tells us.

And she's right. For goodness' sake, we're British after all. Not for us the American-style 5-hour speech in which we thank everyone from God to our life coach and the great-great-auntie we never knew we had for what we still manage to make clear is our own, unaided success.

No, we're British. In a truly British medal ceremony, the winner would shamble, shame-faced, up to the podium. There would be no national anthems as we don't like to make a song and dance about things. Embarrassed by having won without at any point having had to face insuperable odds, they would mumble shyly as they refused to accept the medal on the grounds that "I don't really deserve it. Give it to that plucky Swede who came fourth." Then, shocked by being thrust into the limelight, they would retire from public view and spend the rest of their lives doing good works or running a pub in Tarporley.

The exception of course would be in 2016 if one of the British nations won the Rugby 7s. In which case the captain of the winning team would exultantly celebrate their love of their native country. Probably New Zealand.

The two gods of Christmas

On a theme I have touched on before, I note that as ever the people of Husborne Crawley (and outlying settlements such as Woburn, Bedford and Milton Keynes) are starting to decorate their houses with their idols.

Today is of course the Feast Day of Jolly St Nick.  St Nicholas might or might not be amused were he with us now - rather than being at the North Pole, clinging onto a melting ice floe and making smart-phones, as of course he really is - to see all the effigies of himself that are appearing outside houses, on roofs, in shops and on office desks around the country.

And if I may stretch my analogy beyond all reason - Santa - the god into whom St Nick, via the Germanic andd rather scary "Father Christmas" has morphed - is the last resort of the Market worshippers. For when the Market is failing its devotees, and the demon Recession (which is, lest we forget, good for the Environment (tm)) snaps at our heels - it is then that we turn, in darkness and dread fear, to Santa. Foul chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth hope for a Good Christmas on the High Street. One thinks of the Children of Israel, when Baal's not delivering the goods, wondering if Astarte can kick-start the recovery.

He's a fairly useless god, is Santa. He builds up your hopes till Christmas Eve and then, like the hopes of snow in early December, he melts in the misty drizzle of an unseasonably warm Christmas morning. He is flattened by the on-rush of the worshippers of the great god New Year Sales, as they head for the websites after dinner on Christmas day.

And leaves another god in his wake. A little, quiet, unassuming one who sneaks in on Christmas Eve, unable even to speak at this stage, while everyone's down the pub. Who isn't embarrassed by his image deflating on people's lawns in the run-down to Twelfth Night. Because he's used to being ignored and forgotten, laughed at and jeered at - beaten and bruised. He sneaks in while we're looking at big, bright, red Santa. But if you're not careful he can stay well beyond Boxing Day.

Happy St Nicholas' Day. And God bless us, one and all.

Creative use of Bats in Worship

I had been wondering how to use our new-found leathery friends in worship. Not least because we're not allowed to use them in any way - after checking with a few legal bodies, I've confirmed that we're not allowed to dunk them in fluorescent paint and switch on the UV lighting, no matter how attractive that would have made them look. No, making bats glow in the dark is always wrong. And, more pertinently perhaps, illegal. In fact, it's not even legal to own or sell dead bats (or any part thereof). So bang goes my idea for the Beaker Bazaar. And, of course, the spell in Macbeth is now an incitement to commit an offence.

So we've come up with quite a worship aid. We've adapted an ultrasonic detector to pick up their night-time squeakings, which we projected onto the Big Screen. It gives us a lovely visual aid and some of the more suggestible Beaker People are now busy trying to work out whether the bats are trying to tell us something.

And the good news is that in theory we are not interfering with the bats. I say "in theory". In fact, of course, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle tells us that the minute we start to measure them, we change them. I just hope that we can't be prosecuted at the quantum level.