If We Wrote the Church Welcome Leaflet Like a Child

Think of the oldest thing you can. Then something even older than that - older than dinosaurs or cavemen or even the sky.

That's the person we call the "Vicar". And he lives in the Church. Which is a big house which was built for God to live in. Except you can't find him in there. You can find the Vicar. It's God who's harder to find. I think maybe he's hiding.

We go to church in the car, and Mum and Dad swear at each other because they're late. Then when we get out the car they kind of put a bit of a smile on, and stop swearing till the end of Church. When we go into Church, somebody gives you lots of pieces of paper and books for later.

The church has lots of windows, but they're high up so you can't look out of them. And instead of curtains they have Bible people painted on them. There's Noah and James and John and Mary and another Mary. And Jesus on the cross, and Jesus in the stable being a baby. And God is in some of them, but he looks quite angry. Maybe that's because all these people are sitting in his house. And there are names of dead people written on the walls, and some dead people laying on big flat stones. Only they've been dead a long time, so they're made of stone. And they've got their names under them in case everyone's forgotten who they are.

The Vicar has some people to help him called the "Choir". They hide behind the big screen so you can't see them. They must be very shy. Maybe if we all shouted out "Choir", they'd come out and wave. But last time I did that I was told to "shush".

And there are lots of candles. But if you blow them out like a birthday, they all get annoyed. And if you run around the church when the Vicar is talking, you get dragged off and taken out the Church for five minutes. Then Dad says I've got to calm down. Dad has a cigarette while I'm calming down. Sometimes Dad takes me out to calm three or four times. Sometimes I was calm already.

They must like reading a lot when they're in Church. Because they have a hymn book - which they sing songs out of. And a service book - which they read out of. And a Bible - which they leave on the shelf in the chair in front. And then they get given a notice sheet, to tell them they've got to come back next Sunday. And then another piece of paper which has more songs on it. And they all complain and say "now we've got to learn another song we don't know". And I don't know any of the songs, but I can still dance during them. Until Dad tells me I've got to come out and calm down.

There's a big box up the front on top of some steps. It's called a "pulpit" and it's for standing in when you tell people about God. Except the Vicar doesn't go up there. He says if he was in the pulpit, it would be like he thought he was God and could tell everybody what to do. So he stands down the bottom with everyone else,  and tells them what to do from there instead.

Then there's a bit when somebody says the prayers. The prayers are like asking God for things,  but God must hate you asking for things. Because when the person's asking the prayers, everybody else ducks down and hides behind the chair in front with their head in their hands. Maybe it's because they think the church is going to crash, and they've got to get ready.

Then the Vicar stands behind that big table at the end. Some people call it a table, but some call it an "altar". I don't know why. It doesn't alter. It just stands there. The Vicar says it should be pushed up against the wall. But even though he's in charge, nobody will let him. Big thing to know - although it looks like it ought to be for putting dead bodies on, because it's just the right size, it isn't. I don't know where they put the dead bodies. They bury them during the week, so we're at school and don't get upset.

The altar is for having a Last Supper on. But it's not like supper, as they eat it in the morning. And although the Vicar says everyone is welcome, I'm not. They say I've got to wait till I'm older and can understand it. When I ask what it's all about, they tell me they don't really understand it. And they don't get very much supper, and only a little sip of wine. Except the Vicar. He gets a lot of wine at the end, for doing all the work.

And then we have a cup of juice and a biscuit, and I still can't run around. Mum says that's because I might break something. But everything in there is really old, so I don't think it would matter that much.

Then we get in the car and Mum and Dad start swearing again. Sometimes they swear about the Choir, and sometimes about the Vicar. Church always makes them very angry.

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(Inspired - again - by Revd Claire's posting, and a thought from @DrBattyTowers). And most churches aren't completely like this. Some are very good for children.)

Letting Children be Children

Wise and sensible thoughts from Revd Claire. Over here.

Maybe one of the reasons some churches don't have children is because childish behaviour is only welcomed in the PCC, and not during the services? Complaining that kids should be like those 100 years ago, who stayed rooted to their pew throughout and knew Matins off by heart, doesn't really help. These kids aren't 105 years old, and there's many fewer of them per family than there were in years gone by. This seems to make them less compliant than the angelic, docile children of the past. Good.

Introvert Church - A Liturgical Guide

The Approach

Before the service - all introverts should equip themselves with a laminated A5 size card. The card reads "Please do not bother me before the service. I am talking to Someone more important than either of us."

During the "welcome" - any introverted newcomer picked out by name and asked to introduce themselves is allowed to walk straight out.

At any time during the service, any ad-hoc response requested by the worship leader - as it may be, questions aimed directly at the introvert such as "isn't life great" or "what's God done for you this week?"  may be met with a Hard Stare.

If you are requested to discuss God's recent blessings with the nearest stranger, remember that the weather is one of God's blessings too.

Ministry of the Word

Responsive reading of Psalms is perfectly acceptable. "Guess the next verse" games where individuals are picked out randomly to give answers are not.

Under the Geneva Convention, it is illegal for a preacher to follow a leading question such as "and I'm sure we'd all like to think we follow these rules in our own households - wouldn't we?" with direct eye contact.

When asked to break up into small groups to discuss "how we experience God's purposes in our own lives" it is acceptable to look at your feet throughout.

Response 

Asking people to write down prayers on pieces of paper for summary by the person offering prayers is fine. Going round person-by-person for a request each is going too far.

During the sharing of the Peace, adopting the foetal position on the floor risks attracting more attention than it should in civilised society. Staying locked in a "praying" position may maintain your personal space, although it may instead just attract extraverts to join you / lay hands on you. Answering a "call of nature" at this point every week may lead to someone calling you out the front for healing of your weak bladder. The best bet is to stand rigidly in a spot against a wall, where you cannot be hugged, with a vacant gaze.

After the service

Visitors and newcomers be warned. The extraverts have made the definition of "not ignoring anyone" far more intrusive than the quiet nod or word of welcome that lets you get on with drinking your coffee in peace. If you are in an old church, take the opportunity to get a good look at every single memorial and piece of stained glass. If in a new one, feign an interest in the notice sheet. If questioned, you only have to give name, former denomination and a vague clue to your occupation.

Plugging the NHS Funding Gap

Amidst all the talk of NHS budgets, growing population and increased life spans, it is becoming obvious that something must be done.

That's where Beaker Health comes in. Providing a wide range of traditional, proven and - above all - cheap services, we feel we can tailor our treatments to you, the hapless patient.

Aromatherapy - medically proven to make you smell nicer, with no obvious side effects.

Beating the patient with sticks, to drive the demons out - this is very much our universal treatment. On the grounds that unclean spirits cause all the ill in the world, and knowing that beating with sticks is medically proven to drive them out, our beating-people-with-sticks practice is very much at the cutting edge (and bleeding back) of medical opinion.

Homoeopathy - suffering from a serious complaint? Our small drops of water are guaranteed to make absolutely naff all difference.

Nose candling - of course nose candling is a controversial treatment. And the smell of burning nose hair is ghastly. But we've got all these Tibetan cymbals, and it seemed a shame to waste them.

Leeches* - if it was good enough for Robin Hood...

Prayer for healing - I've a sneaky feeling this works sometimes. But you know how capricious God is - after all, he let you get ill in the first place. But God does mostly enforce the Laws of Science, so I'd suggest a back-up with medicine as well.

Hypnotherapy* - our trained hypnotherapist can be so effective, you won't even worry about the size of the bill!

Thinking happy thoughts - our "Thinking happy thoughts class" is quite effective at dealing with minor anxiety and being a bit down in the dumps. But its effectiveness on more serious psychological illnesses and broken limbs is questionable. So, for more serious cases, we recommend being beaten with sticks to drive the demons out.

The Beaker "high fibre" diet. Many people advocate a change in diet for all sorts of medical conditions. We feed our patients large quantities of fermented doily waste-paper. After a couple of days, they've normally completely forgotten what the original problem was.



* yes, I know hypnotherapy is useful for some conditions. And leeches are now at the cutting edge of medical science, along with maggots. Cut me some slack...

Why Music Groups Have Bass Players

It was reading the thoughts of Artsy Honker that reminded me of the old joke. And it was her comment that the Telegraph had an advert for a karaoke-type hymn playing machine that reminded me of Thomas Hardy's "Under the Greenwood Tree".

In UTGT, you may remember, the village Quire - a bunch of musicians and singers - is chucked out in favour of an organist. The implication in the preface seeming to be that the vicars of those days preferred the relative control of dealing with one instrumentalist - and that often the vicar's daughter, or, if the schoolmistress his employee - rather than a stroppy bunch of independently minded small tradesmen.

Indeed, the vicar could go further, and introduce the 19th Century equivalent of the hymn CD player - a barrel organ. Basically, you turned the handle and, be you as sober as a Methodist or as plastered as an Anglican, the tune came out as the writer intended.

In these woeful days, it would seem, the barrel has turned full circle. In the great clergy-organist war, if ever it really existed, nobody is the winner. Where have all the young organists gone? Gone to play on X boxes, every one.

While the vicar is no victor. For what with running around between half a dozen parishes, s/he would probably welcome a musician with some creativity of their own. Ah well, until we encourage a great outbreak of ukulele playing, I guess it's on with the CDs.

And why do music groups have bass players? So they've got someone who can communicate with the drummer.

Dressing for Dangerous Drivers

A bit shocked that a sheriff  has decided that a driver who killed a cyclist - a second cyclist, at that - should get a 5 year driving ban.

Also stunned by the sheriff's comments about the victim not wearing a helmet -

'The sheriff said Mrs Fyffe "wasn't to blame in any way for the accident", but added: "She was not wearing a safety helmet and that in my view contributed to her death."'

Well, if she wasn't to blame, don't blame her. Whether cyclists are safer or not wearing helmets is a complex enough matter without foolish judgements being made in court. If the driver had hit a pedestrian who'd suffered similar injuries, would the sheriff have made the same stupid comments? The thing that caused Mrs Fyffe's death was being hit by a driver who'd done much the same before. A driver who's going to get 300 hours' community service, and will be driving again before his 55th birthday.

Give me strength.

On a Clear Blue Sky Kind of Day

It's a shiny blue day around Husborne Crawley. A real lark's on the wing - God's in his/her heaven - all's right with the world kind of a day.

Which of course leads me to wonder a little on the nature of the world. Those tadpoles, squirming so cutely in the warmth of the Frog Pond, will become food for mosquito larvae, other tadpoles, cats, and herons as their little lives progress. That Northampton Town won the first playoff semi-final means that Cheltenham lost. The midge that hovers over the Husbourne brook, dancing like magic in the strengthening light, is the trillionth to do so - and tomorrow will rest, like its trillion predecessors, in the gravel on the bank.

Such brilliance, yet transcience. Such joy, yet suffering. As ever I turn to the possibilities - a world of physics alone, where death and life are mathematical outcomes of probability, and futility the utter end. Or a world apparently created by a whimsical God - one capable of giving us the laws that mean I can walk this earth knowing that, mostly, I can walk around without suddenly falling straight through - where I can, from one minute to the next, be assured of my continuance. And yet one where those same laws - acting, as it may be, through a stray encoding error on a gene, can produce a cancer, or a dreadful and fatal condition in an unborn child. A world where my freedom to heal lies alongside the opportunity to kill.

And I'm going to go with that whimsical God. I'm going to believe there's a deeper Magic below the prosaic surface. I'm going to assume that, random and scary though this life is, the point is buried in there somewhere. I'm going to believe that today's clear blue sky above my head is a way in for a comet, and a protection against cosmic rays - and is a reminder of a Protecting Veil above us. I'm going to assume that our hope and futility meet at a cross made of wood on a hillside under a darkling sky. And I will be amazed, and awed, and apprehensive. But I will not be afraid. At least, not all the time.

Sheena is a Parish Councillor

Well done to my cousin, Sheena. Based on the exit poll, she won her election last night.

She was standing on a platform of taking Britain out of Europe, nuclear disarmament, legalisation of canine marriage, the introduction of a new armed police force, disestablishment of the Church of England and replacement of the monarchy with a freely-elected Life President.

In her new role as a councillor on Faxton Parish Council in Northants, she will be responsible for the administration of the dog-walking field and the one street light. Still, I suppose even Napoleon had to start somewhere.

Revising the Family List by Numbers

Dear Readers, it was Archdruid Eileen (may the sun never go down before her face, revealing her wrinkles) who gave me the job of revising our Family List. We were at the last Meeting of the Moot when she suddenly announced,

"We don't have an up-to-date list of Beaker Folk. How can I know who's sick, who's not been to Pouring Out of Beakers lately and who's not tithing, if I don't have a Family List? Geek-boy - you like lists - your job."

Obviously, I bridled at the description of "Geek-boy". But I do like lists, so I took on the role of List Maintainer gladly.

However I did hit an issue. I share, with many people possessed of financial and computing skills, a genuine lack of interest in other people's names and faces. Other people might say "I've not seen old Bertwick lately - do you reckon he's well?" but that means nothing to me. On the other hand, I have discovered it does not mean much to anyone else either, except those extroverts equipped with people skills and highly-functioning facial recognition. When people say "I've not seen old Bertwick lately", they are normally met with blank looks. They then have to fill in with further information - "sits near the back on the right, bit of a limp".

In fact, Dear Readers, what I discovered is that nobody  really knows anyone's name. Or, if they do, they can also recognise them by where they normally sit.  In the terms of data normalisation, somebody's name is redundant data. Indeed, it may be duplicate - what happens if two John Smiths or Kayleigh Bayleys are at the same church? Given the seating disposition of most of our worshippers - that is, they always sit in the same place, and will fight to the death anyone stealing their favourite seat - their seating location is more useful than their name. The second most important point about them is not their name - it is their main distinguishing (and publicly displayed) physical attribute.

There is another advantage to dispensing with names on the Family List. We remove ourselves from the authority of the Data Protection Act. And therefore, I am happy to publish the new, data-safe yet more informative Family List below.

Back row LHS, husband refuses to share the peace
Three rows from the back, LHS, red hair
Five rows from the back, LHS on the end, squints at the OHP
Five rows from the back, LHS, halfway in, 4 noisy kids

Four rows from the back, LHS, by the aisle, annoying cough

Four rows from the back, LHS, by the wall, walks out if the sermon's about money

Six rows from the back, LHS, under the spotlight, always blinking

Five rows from the front, LHS, in the middle, three kids, don't know who the father is

Four rows from the front, LHS, by the wall, allergic to Arminianism

Four rows from the front, LHS, falls asleep during the sermon

Three rows from the front, LHS, by the wall, fanatically opposed to female archdruids

Back row RHS, tweets all the time
Three rows from the back, over on the right, always gazing at the woman with the red hair opposite
Six rows from the back, RHS on the end, moans about his arthritis
Five rows from the back, RHS, halfway in, avoids eye contact

Four rows from the back, RHS, halfway in, sucks mints throughout the service.

Four rows from the back, RHS, middle seat, brings own tea lights

Six rows from the back, RHS, reads the King James Version

Five rows from the front, RHS, kids run around screaming the whole time

Four rows from the front, RHS, in the middle, cries during sermons on Peace

Four rows from the front, RHS, refuses to drink instant coffee

Three rows from the front, RHS, by the wall, no better than she should be

Eating on Less than a Pound a Day - the Beaker Way

There has been much rubbish spoken lately about how to live on food costing less than a pound a day. And yet it's so easy! Here at the Beaker Folk, our eco-chef Bernie manages to produce simple, traditional foods on less than a pound per head. Here's how he does it, as we go through a few days menus. NB as with all irresponsible media diets, consult with your doctor before you cause yourself serious health issues by following this regime. He/she had better be ready for all the problems you're gonna cause yourself, and may even be able to talk you out of it.

Sunday

I don't know about you, but we like to start our weeks on Sunday. It's traditional, it's hallowed by 2,000 years of religious observance, and you can pretend to yourself there's two weekends in every week!

Breakfast: Water. I wouldn't like the Beaker People to come to worship all bloated and lethargic and full of bacon. Water for breakfast ensures they are in the right state emotionally and physically. Low blood sugar, combined with tiredness from the hunger pains overnight Saturday, can really help to encourage spiritual experiences.

Lunch: Hedgehog roadkill with a blackberry jus. We encourage the Beaker People, following their primal ancestors, to be hunter gatherers. In the autumn they roam every roadside for miles picking Nature's Bounty from the hedgerows. Then we freeze them in giant vats. The same goes for the hedgehogs.

Dinner: Crow in apple sauce. Crow is in many ways Bernie's signature dish. They taste awful, so the best bet is to hide it under as much apple sauce - grown in our sacred orchard - as you can. Boiled potatoes and parsnips are the perfect side dish.

Monday

Monday is named after the moon. So we celebrate this connection by eating eggs, which look a bit moon-shaped.

Breakfast - boiled eggs. Thanks to the Beaker Chickens we have plentiful eggs, at a relatively low-cost. The Beaker Folk sometimes take advantage by eating six or seven, which gives the Community a convenient saving in its toilet paper expenses as well.

Lunch - roast chicken. The advantage of having all those chickens is that sometimes they drop dead. It's a popular Beaker game, sat at dinner pulling the wishbone and trying to diagnose the cause of mortality.

Dinner - Cut-price Banquet. By hanging around in Tesco's for hours, Bernie can often make fantastic savings. Our Cut-price banquet is made up of all those things that Bernie grabbed just after they were reduced in price. Chicken and stuffing sandwiches, sushi, sliced bread and wilted bags of prepared salad is just the sort of thing we can look forward to on a Monday!

Tuesday

Breakfast - wallaby bacon. An old local speciality. We believe they originally escaped from Woburn or Whipsnade, before developing communities in the wild on the Beds / Bucks borders. All the hunter needs is wit, cunning, and the courage to run across three lanes of the motorway to scrape up a squashed marsupial.

Lunch - Rose Hip pie. You'd never believe how this tastes. Awful.

Dinner - Peacock. It's a lovely, tasty bird. But it's only a matter of time before the Abbey finds out it's our fault they keep disappearing. Served with boiled potatoes.

Wednesday

Breakfast - Bread. In remembrance that we do not live on it alone. If we're lucky, Bernie has managed to scrape together enough flour to bake some lovely fresh wholemeal bread. If we're not, it's the out-of-code stuff left over from Monday night.

Lunch - Owl. Woden was the god of wisdom, and the owl is a wise old bird. So what could be more natural than having a nice roast owl? Be aware that owl-hunting is illegal in this country - yet more interference from Brussells, I reckon. But they can't prove, if you drive into one, that it wasn't an accident.

Dinner - Cheesy Wotsits. If you buy the bumper packs they can be surprisingly cheap. And eaten in vast quantities, they can cause young people to dream dreams and older ones to see visions. Unfortunately they can tend to cause an increased expenditure on toothpaste. Serve with boiled potatos.

Thursday

Breakfast - Porridge. We recommend porridge to any Beaker person who is hungry at any time, as it's filling, healthy and, above all, cheap. Not those little pots, though. Do you think I'm made of money?

Lunch - Fondue. We think most traditional things are good, and what could be cheaper than dipping unidentifiable parts of cheap meat into a sauce made out of all the odd bits of cheese Bernie found at the back of the fridge?

Dinner - Doily Surprise. Being in the paper doily industry, we do build up a lot of  chads. But, soaked for long enough in an enzyme solution, you can render them into something almost indistinguishable from wallpaper paste. It then makes a repulsive and potentially lethal pie, topped with mashed potatoes, but it's dead cheap.

Friday

Friday is a traditional fast day, so we save on  money and improve everyone's spiritual (and arguably physical) health by giving everyone the day off. Water's allowed, if you must, but even that's on a meter these days. And the water from St Bogwulf's Spring is hallowed, full of tasty minerals, and contaminated by diesel fuel. Best not.

Saturday

Breakfast - Eggs. After half a week, you'd hope people could face eggs again. For an exciting variation, Bernie will often cook omelette with an egg filling.

Lunch - Badger with boiled potatoes. There's nothing like a roast badger. Obviously, there's a number of diseases you could catch, but whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Badger is particularly popular in the early months of the year, when they're lying all over the place.

Dinner - Saturday night is pizza night! We save money by using those little sachets of sauce you can pick up in service stations, and smearing those over plain dough bases. Because it's the weekend, we will even splash out on catering packs of medium, Slovakian authentic cheddar for that continental touch.

The May Morning after the Walpurgisnacht Before

Some May Eve that was.

10 minutes after we lit the Wicker Person (I know that the traditional term is "Wicker Man", but we strive for equality in all things, including neoreconstructive folk ritual), the Central Beds Environmental Secret Police turned up, and demanded we release Young Keith's uncle, the police constable, from the heart of the edifice. We explained we'd only put him in there for historical and filmographic accuracy, and we were going to let him out in a minute, but they were having none of it.

So we let him out, and then they complained we were using green, unseasoned wood.  Well, quite. But is it our fault the supply of pallets in the hedgerow has dried up? So we sprayed it in petrol to ensure it burnt cleanly, and they went away happy.

Next thing we know, we discover  that Marston, who was supposed to be looking  after the mulled metheglin, had looked after it rather too well. When we remonstrated with him, he threw baked potatoes at us, then grabbed a disguise and ran out the community. Well, when I say "disguise", let me put it this way. One of our  'Obby 'Osses is missing.

So this morning everybody's got that chemical hangover you get when you have to raid Marston's Stella Artois store because he's drunk all the traditional stuff. And Marston's still missing. We're guessing that he's headed for the one place a fugitive 'Obby 'Oss could hide unnoticed on a May Morning - i.e. Oxford.

And meanwhile Jack-in-the-green has got into a huge fight with the Lord of Misrule, and the Piper at the Gates of Dawn has driven his 4x4 into gates again. I don't know where he gets his name from - he's useless at spotting gates in the half-light. Though I suppose if you're 30 centuries old you can be forgiven if your sight is failing, how come it doesn't get picked up when he renews his licence? And Marice, who got elected to the key female role thus year, has offended everyone by combining her interests in rural pursuits with her discovery of the book 50 Shades of Grey. So if there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now. It's just a spanking for the May Queen.