It's this marvellous post from Asbo Jesus that has given me the inspiration.
The future of Beaker Folk worship is clearly not in a medium-sized community. What we need is a SuperMoot where people will meet in regular celebrations of 1,000 souls. Of course we will have nurture groups of 10 or so Beaker people, but the main thrust of the Beaker way will be the 1,000-strong weekly knees-ups. In that way the need for Beaker People to join in largescale worship, lifted up by the sheer loads-of-other-people-ness will be met. That's the way forward - and surely the Beaker Mission will be easier when people know that it's a big, successful fellowship they're joining. Who knows? From 1,000 we could easily reach 2,000. And then we would split, and create Beaker SuperMoot North in Newport Pagnell - and SuperMoot South in Dunstable (although it might be demolished on a regular basis).
The vision is great. Now I've just got to find another 950 people.
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
Monday, 5 March 2012
Getting the Wrong Side of the God of War
Well. Thanks to Young Keith for his presentation on the wonders of Creation. Entitled "Ooh the Universe is Scary", it featured numerous "Eyes of God" along with Keith's home-made "Partial Perspective Vortex" - a rather sensible twist on the idea from Douglas Adams, where the size of the universe is scaled down to barely more than terrifying. He projects the wonders of the cosmos onto the roof of the Moot House.
So you go in the Partial Perspective Vortex, see a nice ooh-ah view of the Universe - which, at that scale, carefully ignores all disturbing death and suffering, unless you consider what the black holes are up to in the centres of galaxies - and go away thinking God is great and the Universe is wonderful.
In theory.
Morgwyn came out full of the wonders of creation. Walked out across the gravel walk to the Great House. Looked up at the brilliant stars - including the brilliant blue Sirius - and the wonders of Mars, Jupiter and Venus above, and lay on the ground screaming that he was unworthy. Which, to be fair, is true. He's not worthy. Not by a long chalk. But I don't like to judge.
Marston, meanwhile, got the idea that "Mars is looking at me in a funny way". Believing that a God of War is never a great supernatural being to get on the wrong side of, he's now sitting in the Rainbow Room, strumming his three-string ukulele and singing "Give Peace a Chance". I wouldn't mind, only he's rubbish. And the Ukulele Workshop at the Stables is fully booked months in advance. It's a long time till Mars stops shining in the night sky, and I reckon it's going to be a long, hard Spring.
So you go in the Partial Perspective Vortex, see a nice ooh-ah view of the Universe - which, at that scale, carefully ignores all disturbing death and suffering, unless you consider what the black holes are up to in the centres of galaxies - and go away thinking God is great and the Universe is wonderful.
In theory.
Morgwyn came out full of the wonders of creation. Walked out across the gravel walk to the Great House. Looked up at the brilliant stars - including the brilliant blue Sirius - and the wonders of Mars, Jupiter and Venus above, and lay on the ground screaming that he was unworthy. Which, to be fair, is true. He's not worthy. Not by a long chalk. But I don't like to judge.
Marston, meanwhile, got the idea that "Mars is looking at me in a funny way". Believing that a God of War is never a great supernatural being to get on the wrong side of, he's now sitting in the Rainbow Room, strumming his three-string ukulele and singing "Give Peace a Chance". I wouldn't mind, only he's rubbish. And the Ukulele Workshop at the Stables is fully booked months in advance. It's a long time till Mars stops shining in the night sky, and I reckon it's going to be a long, hard Spring.
Breaking the Fragile Shell of the Heavens
Despite the howling wind and chilling cold, the sky today has been a beautiful dome of eggshell blue.
That shade of blue makes the sky look so brittle - almost as if could be broken by a gigantic extra-terrestrial spoon. I don't like to worry anyone - it just looks that way.
Sacking Another Manager
I regret to announce that AFC Beaker Folk (2007) have had to release the manager, Andrew Village-Bozo. Andrew has tried very hard in the six months that he has been here, but unfortunately he is completely useless. I brought him in as a young manager, expecting him to build a "dynasty", and he has completely failed.
Some people have claimed that Andrew's problems stemmed from some of the older players. Well, it's true that Hnaef's not as young as he used to be, and he does insist on playing in hiking boots for no discernible reason. But he and Daphne are my friends, and if that doesn't count for a lot in modern village football I don't know what does.
Likewise Derek Diver has shown the club great loyalty. Merely because he now requires heavyweight lifting gear to help him get upright whenever he falls over in the box does not mean that, as Andrew suggested, he's getting on a bit. While Fred Lumphard has one of the greatest medal collections we have ever seen - and not all of them in pie-eating competitions.
And I feel Andrew has most signally failed in getting the best out of Fergus Torrid. Just becausee he was useless at Westoning Wombles then useless here under the previous manager does not mean that his continuing uselessness is not Andrew's fault. I spent a lot of money on Fergus. And even more buying that cow, the barn door and the banjo.
All in all, AFC Beaker Folk have had a poor run with managers. Claude Rainy-Day changed his tactics so often that on one occasion he substituted Joe Totty after he lost the toss. Joseph Meringue thought he was special, just because he'd won the Druids in Sport Inter-County Knockout Cup with FC Portsmouth. Well, if he was so clever why couldn't he win it with us? Even after I brought Andy Shootsbadly in? If you can't win with one of my godchildren in the team what can you hope to achieve?
Then there was Abraham Grint. Well, just because he was a member of a famous wizard family didn't mean he could work any magic on the pitch. Louis Philip Schofield - what did he ever achieve? And then Hoos Hoo-hee, and I can't even remember what he looked like. And Carla Canneloni had to go for wanting to play "more interesting" football. The only football I'm interested in is the one where Joe Totty, hopefully not having exhausted himself in - ahem - other fields picks up a trophy at the end of the game.
So a run of apparently truly brilliant managers, all of whom failed dismally after I appointed them. I'm quite downcast. If only I could find some kind of common factor.
Sunday, 4 March 2012
The Meteor Storm That Wasn't
I was sitting in the Sitting Room last night, monitoring my Twitter feed last night when the news came in from all over the country - a meteor storm!
To listen to Twitter there were meteors falling like snow all over the country! I was so excited, Dear Readers, that I ran outside to witness this once-in-a-lifetime event. Archdruid Eileen muttered something about "John Wyndham", looked suspiciously at the Swiss-Cheese Plant, and then went back to her Bridge game.
Dear Readers, I saw not one. Disappointed, I went to bed and then read the news this morning. It would appear there was just the one, high-up, very large meteor - and maybe a few smaller ones. The hundreds of sightings had been just one, seen in many places, reported by many people. My once-in-a-lifetime event will have to be another day.
I am now pondering on the way the Internet changes our perceptions. Once a single meteor fireball, at 9.40 on a February night, would have been seen only by a few shepherds and maybe the odd drunk wandering home. They may have thought God was sending them a message, but after they told their friends about it, the excitement - such as it was - would have been a strictly local thing and after a year or two they would have been referred to as "Moongazer Michael" or somesuch, who reports seeing things falling out of the sky when nobody else does.
But now, a single meteor plus a few companions, by being reported at near-light-speed, gives the impression of showers of rocks falling from space. Only in the cold light of day can we discover that there was just the one. And by that time, some over-excitable members of the Beaker Folk had holed themselves up in the Doily Shed with a year's supply of baked beans and orange juice. Which made Eileen remark that, on the whole, she'd rather face the triffids.
One of these days, Dear Readers, mass-rioting will be caused by a Twitter or Facebook rumour that somebody - somewhere - is hoarding all the tins of anchovies in the United Kingdom or something equally strange. Or worldwide reports of the Return of Our Lord will turn out to be someone catching a glimpse of an open-air production of Godspell from the top deck of a bus. We had better bring our sense of irony and cynicism to new levels - difficult, by the way, when you've a romantic, train-spotting personality like my own - and apply it to tweets from people we've never met, and have no way of verifying. In other words, we should give people we have never met the same amount of credence, until their stories are verified, as we do to politicians.
To listen to Twitter there were meteors falling like snow all over the country! I was so excited, Dear Readers, that I ran outside to witness this once-in-a-lifetime event. Archdruid Eileen muttered something about "John Wyndham", looked suspiciously at the Swiss-Cheese Plant, and then went back to her Bridge game.
Dear Readers, I saw not one. Disappointed, I went to bed and then read the news this morning. It would appear there was just the one, high-up, very large meteor - and maybe a few smaller ones. The hundreds of sightings had been just one, seen in many places, reported by many people. My once-in-a-lifetime event will have to be another day.
I am now pondering on the way the Internet changes our perceptions. Once a single meteor fireball, at 9.40 on a February night, would have been seen only by a few shepherds and maybe the odd drunk wandering home. They may have thought God was sending them a message, but after they told their friends about it, the excitement - such as it was - would have been a strictly local thing and after a year or two they would have been referred to as "Moongazer Michael" or somesuch, who reports seeing things falling out of the sky when nobody else does.
But now, a single meteor plus a few companions, by being reported at near-light-speed, gives the impression of showers of rocks falling from space. Only in the cold light of day can we discover that there was just the one. And by that time, some over-excitable members of the Beaker Folk had holed themselves up in the Doily Shed with a year's supply of baked beans and orange juice. Which made Eileen remark that, on the whole, she'd rather face the triffids.
 |
| The Martians vs HMS Thunderchild (War of the Worlds) from Wikimedia Commons |
Saturday, 3 March 2012
Starting at the Ground Floor
It's been a few days, Dear Readers, since I have had a feeling that things are not as they were. Things Are Up.
I do not know how to describe this. Every time I go back to my room - the Treasurer's Room here in the Great House - it is all the same. The same old collection of train timetables. The same seven anoraks, in slightly different shades of blue. The same calculating machine.
The same railway set - I am recreating the Varsity line as it was when Husborne Crawley Station still existed! Can you imagine? Although I have to confess this rather restricts my ability to use a varied selection of rolling stock - or, indeed, to have the traditional circles of track, or many points. A 1:100 scale representation of an eighty-mile-long, straight track is most notable for needing a mile-long, four inches wide, piece of chipboard, and so I have had to economise and show some creativity - missing out many of the smaller villages, and bending the track round so that Oxford and Cambridge are, in my model, a mere three feet apart, separated by the door that leads from my study to the bedroom. To get into the room from the corridor, you have to bend down and crawl under Isham.
I have tried to build some nice local detail into the Oxford and Cambridge ends of the track, by making models of some of the colleges and university churches. But Brasenose keeps getting smashed. The Archdruid destroys it every time she comes round to discuss some monetary matters, on the grounds that I have minor detailing wrong. One one occasion she complained the sundial in Old Quad was the wrong colour, on another that the Deer Park shouldn't have actual deer in it.
But mentioning Eileen reminds me what is on my mind. I am sure that Eileen used to be my next-door-neighbour. Yet the other day I woke up to discover that my neighbour was Marston Moretaine. That was strange enough - and could be explained by the admittedly unlikely hypothesis that Eileen had changed rooms with Marston. But it is more that - and I know you will bear with my wild flight of fantasy here - I am sure that I used to be upstairs. I remember clearly walking up to the second floor to go to bed. And yet here I am on the ground floor. I could walk out of the French Windows that I am sure I did not used to have, and straight onto the main lawn. If it were not for Bletchley station being in the way, of course. Last time I walked out of the window in the night, I plummeted eighteen feet.
It is all a great mystery. One could suspect that, one night, Eileen carried out a devious manoeuvre to transport me down two stories, hoping I would not notice or bother to mention it. Thank goodness she's not that kind of a woman.
I do not know how to describe this. Every time I go back to my room - the Treasurer's Room here in the Great House - it is all the same. The same old collection of train timetables. The same seven anoraks, in slightly different shades of blue. The same calculating machine.
The same railway set - I am recreating the Varsity line as it was when Husborne Crawley Station still existed! Can you imagine? Although I have to confess this rather restricts my ability to use a varied selection of rolling stock - or, indeed, to have the traditional circles of track, or many points. A 1:100 scale representation of an eighty-mile-long, straight track is most notable for needing a mile-long, four inches wide, piece of chipboard, and so I have had to economise and show some creativity - missing out many of the smaller villages, and bending the track round so that Oxford and Cambridge are, in my model, a mere three feet apart, separated by the door that leads from my study to the bedroom. To get into the room from the corridor, you have to bend down and crawl under Isham.
I have tried to build some nice local detail into the Oxford and Cambridge ends of the track, by making models of some of the colleges and university churches. But Brasenose keeps getting smashed. The Archdruid destroys it every time she comes round to discuss some monetary matters, on the grounds that I have minor detailing wrong. One one occasion she complained the sundial in Old Quad was the wrong colour, on another that the Deer Park shouldn't have actual deer in it.
But mentioning Eileen reminds me what is on my mind. I am sure that Eileen used to be my next-door-neighbour. Yet the other day I woke up to discover that my neighbour was Marston Moretaine. That was strange enough - and could be explained by the admittedly unlikely hypothesis that Eileen had changed rooms with Marston. But it is more that - and I know you will bear with my wild flight of fantasy here - I am sure that I used to be upstairs. I remember clearly walking up to the second floor to go to bed. And yet here I am on the ground floor. I could walk out of the French Windows that I am sure I did not used to have, and straight onto the main lawn. If it were not for Bletchley station being in the way, of course. Last time I walked out of the window in the night, I plummeted eighteen feet.
It is all a great mystery. One could suspect that, one night, Eileen carried out a devious manoeuvre to transport me down two stories, hoping I would not notice or bother to mention it. Thank goodness she's not that kind of a woman.
Going, Dutch
The Dutch are introducing a new, mobile euthanasia service. We look 20 years into the future.
Mr Van Allen?
Hi, I'm Jan from Terminal Horizons. You ordered euthanasia?
Yes, you do seem a little down. What's the problem? Oh, a terminal disease can have that effect. The pain, the waiting around.
And it's good you ordered us yourself. Mr Frenken last week - his family booked us as a surprise for his 80th. Took a bit of persuasion. When they said he was going to a "better place" he thought they meant a week at Center Parcs.
Nice photo. Your grand-kids? Little Anna does look sweet.
Right, better crack on. I've got three tonight, and you're the first. Amazing to think, with our liberal democracy, tolerance and cycle lanes, that anyone would ever want to make an early exit.
Finish watching the match? It's only just past half-time. And isn't this the second-leg? Come on, Mr Van Allen. It could go to extra time and penalties. I've not got all day. Frankly, if you wanted to pick your time slot you should have gone for our drive-through option. Well, drive in, obviously. And with the all-in-one service you needn't even bother hiring a hearse later.
Look, it's not all about you. I've to more visits this evening. Put you back, I put them all back. And you wouldn't want to head off into oblivion knowing you've kept two other people alive unnecessarily, would you? Not to mention it's going to be a late night now for me.
Changed your mind? Oh, you'd not want to do that. We've got the double loyalty points scheme at the moment. Not, obviously, that they're going to be much use where you"re going. Or, rather, not going. But if nothing else, think of all the paperwork I'd get involved in. Thanks to our integrated system, your death certificate was emailed out the minute the GPS identified I'd reached your house.
Look, Mr Van Allen. I've got.a job to do. I do home euthanasia, not counselling. I get paid by outcomes. And you sitting there, resolutely alive, knowing whether Ajax are through to the next round or not is not defined as an outcome in my contract. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to explain to you that according to the small print, I am entitled to carry out precisely the procedure I'm about to perform.
It's been nice meeting you, Mr Van Allen. You were obviously a very nice man, if a little indecisive. Oh. Gone. Cool.
Rats - forgot to get a signature. Oh well, I'll do it for him - it won't make any difference now.
Right, two calls in Utrecht and then off to the pizza shop. I really must keep my mind on which job I'm doing - nearly asked if Mr Van Allen ordered pineapple there. And poor Mrs Meertens. Now that was a slip-up. She only called up for a Four Seasons and side-order of wings.
Mr Van Allen?
Hi, I'm Jan from Terminal Horizons. You ordered euthanasia?
Yes, you do seem a little down. What's the problem? Oh, a terminal disease can have that effect. The pain, the waiting around.
And it's good you ordered us yourself. Mr Frenken last week - his family booked us as a surprise for his 80th. Took a bit of persuasion. When they said he was going to a "better place" he thought they meant a week at Center Parcs.
Nice photo. Your grand-kids? Little Anna does look sweet.
Right, better crack on. I've got three tonight, and you're the first. Amazing to think, with our liberal democracy, tolerance and cycle lanes, that anyone would ever want to make an early exit.
Finish watching the match? It's only just past half-time. And isn't this the second-leg? Come on, Mr Van Allen. It could go to extra time and penalties. I've not got all day. Frankly, if you wanted to pick your time slot you should have gone for our drive-through option. Well, drive in, obviously. And with the all-in-one service you needn't even bother hiring a hearse later.
Look, it's not all about you. I've to more visits this evening. Put you back, I put them all back. And you wouldn't want to head off into oblivion knowing you've kept two other people alive unnecessarily, would you? Not to mention it's going to be a late night now for me.
Changed your mind? Oh, you'd not want to do that. We've got the double loyalty points scheme at the moment. Not, obviously, that they're going to be much use where you"re going. Or, rather, not going. But if nothing else, think of all the paperwork I'd get involved in. Thanks to our integrated system, your death certificate was emailed out the minute the GPS identified I'd reached your house.
Look, Mr Van Allen. I've got.a job to do. I do home euthanasia, not counselling. I get paid by outcomes. And you sitting there, resolutely alive, knowing whether Ajax are through to the next round or not is not defined as an outcome in my contract. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to explain to you that according to the small print, I am entitled to carry out precisely the procedure I'm about to perform.
It's been nice meeting you, Mr Van Allen. You were obviously a very nice man, if a little indecisive. Oh. Gone. Cool.
Rats - forgot to get a signature. Oh well, I'll do it for him - it won't make any difference now.
Right, two calls in Utrecht and then off to the pizza shop. I really must keep my mind on which job I'm doing - nearly asked if Mr Van Allen ordered pineapple there. And poor Mrs Meertens. Now that was a slip-up. She only called up for a Four Seasons and side-order of wings.
Friday, 2 March 2012
When Summer Wine Runs Out
A sad showing this evening at the Beaker Last of the Summer Wine Club, of the episode "Magic and the Morris Minor". It's not, by quite a long way, the best ever episode of that amazingly long-lived series. But it's the last episode to feature Bill Owen (aka Compo).
Goodness knows how, between using doubles and filming in front of blue screens, Alan Bell got that last programme out. And Owen's timing, though still funny, is terribly laboured and slow - unsurprising in a man in his 80s who was dying of cancer.
I watch the episode and think of the loveable if disreputable urchin - barely past bus-pass age - of Short Back and Palais Glide or Of Funerals and Fish 25 years earlier - unable to resist jumping on a wall or climbing a tree. I consider the pain and tiredness that the programme must have brought on even before his illness. And I do feel a sense of great regret.
Thus passes the glory of the world - from a sprightly 60-year-old to a dying man of 85. Happens to all of us, of course, if we live that long. But let's jump on walls and climb trees and gather rosebuds while we may. You're a long time dead and, if you believe there's a bloke at the pearly gates with a clipboard, I doubt very much if the correct answer to the question "did you ever walk along a wall or climb a tree" is "no - that's terribly childish and uncivilised."
Goodness knows how, between using doubles and filming in front of blue screens, Alan Bell got that last programme out. And Owen's timing, though still funny, is terribly laboured and slow - unsurprising in a man in his 80s who was dying of cancer.
I watch the episode and think of the loveable if disreputable urchin - barely past bus-pass age - of Short Back and Palais Glide or Of Funerals and Fish 25 years earlier - unable to resist jumping on a wall or climbing a tree. I consider the pain and tiredness that the programme must have brought on even before his illness. And I do feel a sense of great regret.
Thus passes the glory of the world - from a sprightly 60-year-old to a dying man of 85. Happens to all of us, of course, if we live that long. But let's jump on walls and climb trees and gather rosebuds while we may. You're a long time dead and, if you believe there's a bloke at the pearly gates with a clipboard, I doubt very much if the correct answer to the question "did you ever walk along a wall or climb a tree" is "no - that's terribly childish and uncivilised."
The Relocation of Burton
That's sorted Burton then.
As he wandered back from the White Horse last night, singing a merry re-interpretation of "The Tailor's Britches", he was intercepted. Burton's ground-floor premises have many improvements on his old room - including the lack of stairs. But it includes all his old belongings - including his collection of 1930s timetables for the Number 14 Bus and his hideous collection of lycra cycling gear.
The new room is laid out as an exact replica of his old one. I'm hoping he's just going to accept the move as "one of those things", or ideally that he'll think he's always lived there, but has just been imagining the stairs. If not we've already boarded up his old doorway. However to assist him tonight should he wander upstairs, I've pinned a note to the wall where his door used to be.
It says:
"Not Burton's Room.
Definitely Not.
Burton's Room is on the Ground Floor.
The one with "Treasurer" on the door.
Remember?"
Foxes have holes and birds have nests. But Burton's going to have to learn to live downstairs.
Thursday, 1 March 2012
The Ground of Being
I like Stroppy Rabbit. Don't always agree with her. But the fact I don't always agree with her is not something that would make her get all grumpy, and I approve of that. If we all agreed with each other, where would we be? Stepford, probably. Or maybe Royston Vasey. So I'll go with passionate but respectful disagreement.
For example. In her post "Missing the the point (again)" she remarks, beautifully in passing, "..whether or not God exists is a boring question. It's been pretty well settled that God does not exist. Some theologians have got round this problem by saying that this is because God is existence, or the Ground of All Being, but then that leaves the question of what that might mean."
It's the "pretty well settled" that caught my attention. I don't know where I was the day the vote was taken, but I'd had voted the other way had I been there, I'm pretty sure.
See, "the Ground of All Being" is a terribly 1950s kind of way of putting it, but I do see some of where it comes from.
If God exists, far as I can see, the "Ground of Being" is the thing God must be. Here in the blue corner we have this multi-dimensional, possibly multiversal thing which is the whole of space and time as we know it (and mostly don't). Over in the red corner we have a suggestion that God is a localised fairy-story superman. I don't go with that. If God's God, then God's the thing it all comes from, the source of reality, the ground that all logic, all physics, all mathematics, all stuff flows from - or God don't exist. You can have it either way. But that ground of all being - God's got to be that, if God exists.
Doesn't mean God can't choose specific, of course. It's God's universe, and I'll accept God can manifest Godself all kinds of ways - maybe one special way per planet, or per isolated pond of space-time from which no meaningful information can ever flow, or just once, ever, on Earth - or all sorts of ways I can't imagine. And also in folk-memories and dreams and myths and all sorts of things, embedded into the world and the subconscious in exactly the way that the Ultimate Question wasn't, in Arthur Dent's brain.
My head hurts now, but I just wanted to say that. And if they hold another vote and you're there, Stroppy Rabbit, can you put in a proxy "yes" for me on the existence of God? Ta.
For example. In her post "Missing the the point (again)" she remarks, beautifully in passing, "..whether or not God exists is a boring question. It's been pretty well settled that God does not exist. Some theologians have got round this problem by saying that this is because God is existence, or the Ground of All Being, but then that leaves the question of what that might mean."
It's the "pretty well settled" that caught my attention. I don't know where I was the day the vote was taken, but I'd had voted the other way had I been there, I'm pretty sure.
See, "the Ground of All Being" is a terribly 1950s kind of way of putting it, but I do see some of where it comes from.
If God exists, far as I can see, the "Ground of Being" is the thing God must be. Here in the blue corner we have this multi-dimensional, possibly multiversal thing which is the whole of space and time as we know it (and mostly don't). Over in the red corner we have a suggestion that God is a localised fairy-story superman. I don't go with that. If God's God, then God's the thing it all comes from, the source of reality, the ground that all logic, all physics, all mathematics, all stuff flows from - or God don't exist. You can have it either way. But that ground of all being - God's got to be that, if God exists.
Doesn't mean God can't choose specific, of course. It's God's universe, and I'll accept God can manifest Godself all kinds of ways - maybe one special way per planet, or per isolated pond of space-time from which no meaningful information can ever flow, or just once, ever, on Earth - or all sorts of ways I can't imagine. And also in folk-memories and dreams and myths and all sorts of things, embedded into the world and the subconscious in exactly the way that the Ultimate Question wasn't, in Arthur Dent's brain.
My head hurts now, but I just wanted to say that. And if they hold another vote and you're there, Stroppy Rabbit, can you put in a proxy "yes" for me on the existence of God? Ta.
Festival of Fog
And on this most Welsh of days, the weather has joined in by providing us with white mist. Remarkably white, actually - not the gray and murky mist one so often gets round here.
For me the Festival of Fog is supremely about our state of unknowing, and how much better un-knowing is than knowing. For in the daylight we can see clearly. In the dark we can't see at all. The latter is a disaster, as we wander around bumping into things; the former devoid of romance and mystery as things appear in their ghastly clarity.
But fog, like snow, brings a glamour and transformation to everything. In the dark, God is Dead - he cannot be seen, touched or heard by worldly eyes, hands or ears. In the light - there are his demands! Hard, testing demands that we cannot live up to; and an alternative that says we give up all hope in our own abilities.
But in the fog there's a world of half-truth and paradox; of groping for the truth and then discovering you've just accidentally stroked the face of a passing copper.
In the fog, we've just enough sight not to trip over obstables nor walk into trees. But further off the reality becomes more blurred. A dim figure in the middle-distance could be an angel, a postman or a tree stump. The dull stomping you hear could be blokes working on the road to Aspley - or the Crack of Doom opening. The rumble of the traffic on the M1 morphs into the rushing of many waters.
So let us celebrate uncertainty, and come down uneqivocally for doubt. And may the words of our hearts reflect the fog in our heads in this most imprecise of all weathers.
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