The Mysterious Height of Boris Johnson

A curious anomaly. 

Back in 2014, the Western Independent blog did some investigations into the Body Mass Index of then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. And based on assorted sources concluded he was 5'9" tall. And it has to be said, on a wide reading of sources, I would conclude he was indeed between 5'8" and 5'9".

"Ideal for throwing the heads of civil service departments under"

Imagine my surprise then, when reading a Telegraph article (now suddenly behind firewall) on our chubby PM, to discover the claim that he is 5'10". 

Now I know that Mr Johnson doesn't do much work. So maybe from a lot of lying down he has gained some height? It's a scientific fact that people shrink while standing up but then grow slightly when sleeping or hanging from a zip wire. But a whole inch in his mid-50s seems a tad unusual. So there are two possibilities. Either the Telegraph or Mr Johnson has decided to nudge his height up, or..... he has been regraded by an algorithm.

Investigations have now revealed that this is exactly what has happened. A review of heights by school attended have now shown the following, "normalised", heights for politicians and famous people.

Famous Person	School Attended	New height
Boris Johnson	Eton	5'9"
Adele	The Brit School	5'6"
Richard Osman	Warden Park, Cuckfield	5'4"
David Cameron	Eton	7'4"
Theresa May	St. Juliana's Convent School for Girls	6'9"
Peter Crouch	Drayton Manor School	5'1"
Priti Patel	Watford Grammar School	5'4"
Davina McCall	St Catherine's School, Bramley	8'6"

As a result of this discovery, the Government has already made a U-Turn. The chair of the body that supervises celebrity heights and weights, OfScale, has resigned. And Gavin Williamson has now said in future all celebrities will be 6'6". 

After a tweet by @lizzi60t

Boris Bus - Used under Wikimedia Commons. Created by Snowmanradio.

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Overhead Protectionist

Unfortunate typo. I was hoping to recruit a new overhead projectionist, as our old one Gnarlsley, who was always tech-obsessed, has joined a totally virtual congregation and doesn't want to attend in bodily form. Obviously, the ability to meet together via assorted conferencing and social media platforms is an immensely good thing. It enables people whose mobility and ability to get out are restricted to take a full part in the life of the church, and also means I don't have to worry about the Moot meeting up in the White Horse before meetings to hatch plots. On the other hand, while I know Gnarlsley's plan to upload himself to the Cloud is in a way what we all ultimately want, it doesn't help when I need the latest Rend Collective up on the Moot House wall.

So I advertised for a replacement. But instead of a "projectionist", I accidentally asked for a "protectionist". And Grizmella actually had the gig before I realised what I'd done.

She's been in the Moot House moving the tea lights stand backwards and forwards to try and find the right place. Thrown out our "Beaker Common Prayer New Extended Standard Forever" edition and replaced them with some 35 year old copies of "The Wee Worship Book" from the Iona Community. I did get her to do the job I thought I'd hired her for, but she insisted on putting the laptop and data projector back into the Cupboard of Oblivion and replacing them with the old steam-powered OHP and acetates. So the first song tomorrow is going to be "We have come into this house and gathered in his name to worship him". A self-defeating song that I thought I'd got rid of 30 years ago.

And now she's up in the West Gallery (when did we get one of those?) insisting that we put back the old Quire and get rid of the organ that Hnaef so surreptitiously installed over Lockdown. He was really looking forward to playing that complex, dramatic modern organ music. But Grizmella says he needs to stop Messiaen' about.

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Praise Him on the Shiny Mandolin

We're busy digesting the latest advice from the Government on safe, Covid Secure worship, especially as it might relate to the Beaker Worship Group. Obviously, given this Government, the results from a different focus group will be in by tea time and all the advice will change. So for reference if that happens, and this no longer makes sense in the context of the Government website, we're particularly concerned about the following paragraph:

Led devotions

• Small groups of professional or non-professional singers will be able to sing in front of worshippers both outdoors and indoors from 15 August. Singing in groups should be limited to a small set group of people and should not include audience participation
• There should be no group singing by worshippers. Places of worship should take account of the Performing Arts guidance.
• Where music plays a big part in worship, and recordings are available, we suggest you consider using these as an alternative to live singing.
• Any instrument played during worship should be cleaned thoroughly before and after use.

Now, obviously we want to take it seriously. So we've been thinking. There's no definition of how big a "small" group of singers is. I mean, I sang in the Albert Hall once or twice with the massed choirs of Bedfordshire and to paraphrase Michael Caine: "Altos. Farsands of 'em." So would 48 be a small group? If so, given there is no definition of how big the congregation should be, we could nominate everyone except Burton Dasset and Young Keith as the choir, with a congregation of two. And given what those two sing like, frankly we wouldn't really want audience participation.

But that may take a while to sort out. There's probably a register somewhere. Or you've got to scan a QR code in Nando's to set it all up. So in the meantime we thought we'd go with an invited singing group. But then we hit a snag. 

You have a group of singers. But there should be no group singing by worshippers. You see the catch? If the singers are singing, they're fine. But if they should accidentally cross the line into worshipping, they have to stop. And given most church quires include at least one or two people who believe in God, it won't work.

So we've invited a local atheist singing group, the Christopher Hitchens Singers, to lead us tomorrow. Obviously, we still have an issue. Firstly, because if we choose some decent Charles Wesley songs, they might realise the emptiness of their pointless lives, find out that there is a God that loves them, get accidentally converted, and then they'd be worshipping and have to stop. So whatever happens, we must not convert any choir members. That would be a disaster. Secondly, what happens if they're singing some really decent worship song and a member of the congregation joins in? Against the rules, is congregational (or as the Government puts it, "audience") participation.

So they've got a very strict playlist to stick to for tomorrow:

• God is Dead (Nietzsche) 
• I'm too sexy for my Books (Dawkins)
• Imagine (Lennon)
• PZ Lover (Myers)

If that doesn't kill any joy in the Beaker congregation and stop them singing, I don't know what will.

Our other issue is around the advice to clean instruments "thoroughly before and after". And obviously this makes sense. Goodness knows what havoc has been wreaked in the past  by dirty harmonicas. But it's harder to clean some instruments thoroughly than others. Cymbals just need a bit of Mr Sheen front and back and they're sorted. Whereas you can polish up the bell of a brass instrument, but how do you thoroughly clean the insides? We've been using vats of home-made sterilizing gel. But not all worshipping communities have a Chemistry graduate on the team, and it would cost them a fortune. And even as it is, all the lacquer has come off Grinwald's euphonium. Or that's what Mrs Grinwald tells us.

And then what about the pipe organ that we discovered Hnaef had surreptitiously installed during Lockdown? He has high hopes of performing "Livre d'Orgue" in place of congregational worship. Though I worry it's needlessly Messiaenic. But how does one thoroughly clean a pipe organ? After all, some Covid 19 virus could easily have floated down a pipe and then be blasted back out during some major chord.

We've gone for training woodland creatures to crawl through the pipes with sponges strapped to them. It gives them something productive to do rather than faffing around on Aspley Heath all day, and we get a thoroughly cleaned organ. So very much a win-win.  We use shrews for the highest-pitched pipes, through voles and rabbits to badgers for the really big ones. You've got to be careful with dormice, though. They tend to fall asleep on the job. We had two went missing last Wednesday, and it was only when Hnaef cranked up the old Trumpet Voluntary that we found out where they were.

It's murder cleaning mice off the Moot House ceiling, I can tell you. And as a result the RSPCA have heard about how we're cleaning the organ. And they say they're gonna put a stop to it.

Meanwhile, Banjelika has been asking how she's supposed to clean her mandolin. It's tricky thoroughly cleaning all 8 of those fiddly strings without taking them all out and putting them back. And what about the inside? So I've dipped it in a pail of Lysol solution for 24 hours. On the down side the instrument has become unglued and unplayable. But on the up side, for the rest of us, that ain't a down side.

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St Kirstie of Property Values

It's a mixed morning in Husborne Crawley. The earth still damp from yesterday's storms renders a coolness in the air. From my Archdruidical Study, I look across at the Socially Distanced Garden, where individual 2m square areas of decking enable Beaker Folk to enjoy the scent of wild herbs and garlic in safety. It's not a herb garden as such, but we had Piri Piri last night in the Refectory and it kinda lingers.

I see Burton Dasset on his personal staircase, resplendent in his checked pseudo-silk accountancy systems developer's kimono, enjoying his beans on toast and dishwater-weak tea before the rain returns. Before The Event, at this time he would have been on the train into London from Flitwick, trying to read his phone while some assistant merchandiser at Arcadia had her elbow jammed in his ear. But no more. Burton's employers have noted that he and his colleagues were just as productive at home, and terminated their lease on their office in an iconic office development in Clerkenwell. And Burton is now working from home forever. A situation that suits him, as you can see, even if I live in fear that at many moment a stray gust of wind around the kimono might reveal sights no middle-aged archdruid should see.

St Kirstie Allsop, patron saint of property values, isn't very pleased with Burton's new life. Like the Government, she thinks it's important he gets out and puts himself at risk of Covid 19. Unlike the chancellor, however, this is not because she thinks he needs to eat at 2 for 1 in 'Spoons and keep Pret going, so their employees and profits can be taxed - in lieu of taxing the companies owned by members of the Government and their friends, who so wisely keep they money offshore, but we pass over that for a moment.

No, St Kirstie's tweet (a week or so ago, but I've been busy) is concerned that:

If your job can be done from home it can be done from abroad where wages are lower. If I had an office job I’d want to be first in the queue to get back to work and prove my worth to my employer. I am terrified by what could be on the horizon for so many.

— Kirstie Allsopp (@KirstieMAllsopp) August 5, 2020

Which instantly puts St Kirstie into the same realm as Telegraph columnists who, safe from their ancestral piles in Norfolk, Somerset or wherever, want to impose something else on the people who traditionally drag themselves out of bed at stupid o'clock, and squash themselves into a tin can to go London.

Burton hears accountancy calling

And she's right. The wages in many places abroad are lower.

But do you know what? They were lower before the novel coronavirus, or as people are calling it, "Trump Flu", came along. People already knew that. Burton's employers certainly do. They keep him around for his knowledge of a far-ancient tongue called "COBOL" which no young IT graduate in India apparently wants to learn. And his ability to remember obscure accountancy laws that only apply in Hemel Hempstead which no-one from Bengaluru is likely to be aware of. But all his colleagues have long since gone off to try and eke out their remaining careers as contract project managers, while all the funky jobs in Java and Ubuntu and I don't know what have departede to India, Poland and the Czech Republic. 

If anything, working from home for Burton, in the declining quarter of his career, is an act of mercy. And yes, it's tough on the people in the coffee shops of Islington and Moorgate, and the tenants of pubs in Soho and Dalston. But if you were going to build a working model of a country, would you really make the livelihoods of a million people in service industries dependent on them servicing the needs of another million people who every day travel an hour in each direction in contagious air, crammed against their fellow human beings like members of the Bullingdon Club having a "how many brain cells can we fit in a phone box" competition?

The only salvation I can see really for not sending high-tech and desk-based jobs abroad is Brexit. OK, we may have to live on beans on toast. If we can afford the beans or toaster. But at least, once the sheer horrors of No-Deal or even a "barebones agreement" are faced, the pound should drop so much that we can offshore jobs over here.

But for Burton, for now, he's safe from virus, resplendent in his kimono, ready to do a full day's work, saving a fortune in sandwich shops and Tesco Metro, and soaking wet. Because the rain's kicked in. I wonder what mysterious person locked the Great House door?

* "Burton" is played here by Brian Murphy as seen in Last of the Summer Wine, "Will the Genuine Racer Please Stand Up". BBC.

Grade Inflation is a Disaster

In one of those pieces they presumably hope only true believers read, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson is in the Telegraph. We should not amend exam grades, he says, as if people got higher results than they deserved they might be over-promoted and fail in future life.

His Prime Minister would probably never have got to Oxford if he hadn't had loaded parents who put him through Eton. This PM is running a country despite a career that consisted of writing articles that were racist, homophobic or simply untrue - with a sideshow of hanging from a zip wire, buying illegal water cannons and inventing an irrelevant and useless bus.

We have 65 thousand excess deaths in six months. The worst fall in GDP in the developed world. The biggest fall in the economy in history. A shambles of a communications strategy. And at the height of that, a laser-like focus on hunting down a few hundred desperate people who launch themselves across the world's busiest sea lanes in dinghies in the hope of better lives.

You know, Gavin Williamson might have a point.

Traditional Artisan Beaker Chutney Recipe

It's that time of year again, even in a year as weird as this. It's the warm weeks after Trinity. The cherry tomatoes are hanging red on the vine, the early apples have come in crops greater than anyone could feasibly eat. And people are asking me "do you have any traditional, folky recipes for this time of the year? The sort of chutney the Beaker Folk would have made, 3,000 years ago, while recovering from Summer Solstice and wondering what to eat with roast pork at the big YuleFest?" 

And I say of course. This is precisely the sort of summer-made chutney the Beaker Folk would make ready to eat with their annual hog roast. High in brown sugar, rich in tomatoes and robust enough in cider vinegar to make the journey from anywhere in Great Britain to Stonehenge, to add a bit of a kick to the midwinter revels.

Ingredients

• 2 kg Discovery or Katja apples (or some other apples), red as a setting sun and sweet as lovers' first kisses
• 1 kg tomatoes. Ripened on the vine in the Neolithic sun, washed by the soft rain of the early Bronze age, picked by Beaker maidens and crushed by hand. These aren't just any tomatoes. These are Beaker Folk tomatoes.
• 350g (about 17 pebbles) of soft brown sugar, grown in the Amesbury sugar fields
• 8 red chillis, ripened on the vine etc etc
• Pinch of artisan salt, panned from the Doggerland seas. Or just table salt will do.
• Minced garlic - about a teaspoon
• 500ml (about 18 fl oz) of cider vinegar

Method

1. Prick the sun-ripened, rain-washed tomatoes individually and put in boiling water for two minutes. Ideally the water will have been boiled in authentic beakers on large stones removed from the camp fire. But failing that, just use a bowl and some hot water from the kettle.
2. Remove the skins from the tomatoes, scalding your fingers, and reflecting you should have used a couple of forks or something.
3. Add the sugar in the cider and stir till dissolved. Use hot rocks and beakers or a large saucepan according to availability.
4. Chop the chillis and tomatoes. Peel, core and chop the apples.
5. Add everything to the mix and boil for a couple of hours until it's starting to burn.
6. Ladle into one small jar.
7. Wonder what on earth happened to the concept of "conservation of mass".

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Not Going into a Church for Private Prayer

Had a slightly sad experience today.

Out in the country, walking Arthur Smith, the Beaker hound. We got Arthur Smith a while back, when designer cross-breeds were very trendy. And he's an Alsatian/German Shepherd cross.

We were following the footpath through a church I visited years ago. On the front gate was a sign telling me that they were now open for services on Sunday mornings. On the south wall, a sign telling me it was closed till further notice. And the door was open. 

As I say, I'd not visited this church for a few years, so I was happy to see the door was open. I popped my head round the door. There were two people there on "watching private prayer" duty. Both fully masked. So I stayed there on the porch and chatted across to them.

I asked if they'd been there all afternoon. Yes. I asked if they had had any visitors. No. I asked what the point was them sitting there all afternoon, if they had no visitors. And wouldn't it be better to just leave the church open and leave people to follow their own common sense. And they said, no - they were there to make sure they knew where to clean, after their non-existent visitors had been for private prayer and left.

Now I don't know about you. But I don't like going into a church for private prayer, while being watched by two people. Feels less private, somehow. And I was only popping in from curiosity.  And they were of an age when they were both venerable and, likely, vulnerable. So I wasn't going to enter the church while they were there, in case I was unknowingly infected, and passed it on to them. 

But I asked them the question again before I left. Given that by being in the building to watch it, they were exposing themselves to risk of infection, what was the point of them being there? And they told me you can't be too careful. And what would be the alternative - locking the church up?

So I left them. I didn't rest awhile on the bench in the churchyard (which was not sealed off and, according to the logic used in the church, was a potentially contaminated surface which nobody was watching or cleaning). Instead I opened the gate that leads from the churchyard out into the field next door, where the footpath leads. I opened it with my hand so had to remember not to touch my face (since there were no masked guardians of the gate either), and sanitised when I returned to my car.

And I know they're doing what they think is for the best, and I know guidance has been terribly muddled. But I do think it's a shame two people gave up their afternoons to sit in masks, in an empty church, to put off the one visitor the church had in in all that time. I do think it's a shame that, due to their and my different perceptions of the concepts of "risk" and "private prayer", they were right - they might as well leave the church locked. And I'm not saying my view is right (though I think it probably is), but I'm just a little saddened that we're in this situation.

Please note for Sunday's worship in the Moot House, all Beaker People are now expected to sit in their bubbles, in the hastily-erected Georgian box pews we have "borrowed" from another church. I don't think they're planning to re-open for a while, so with any luck we can get them back before anyone notices. 

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Liturgy of Masks: 3020 AD - The Rite of Fourfold Sanitisation

Archdruidbot VCL XI: Lift up your masks.

All: We lift them to our ears. 

Iobfe: But not until after we have sanitised our hands.

All: Mustn't be too careful. 

Archdruidbot VCL XI: Let us join in the Prayer of Fourfold Sanitisation.

Iobfe: Oh God, bless us in our sanitising before the removal of our masks.

All: And in the removal of our masks.

Iobfe: And in our sanitising of our hands after our removal of our masks.

All: And in the sanitising of our hands before the putting-on of our masks.

Iobfe: And in the putting-on of our masks.

All: And in the sanitising of our hands after putting on our masks.

Iobfe: And in our going out.

All: At carefully considered intervals.

Archdruidbot VCL XI: As it was taught to us by our ancestors.

All: Though we can't remember why.

Archdruidbot VCL XI: Let us have clean hands and pure hearts.

All: And be clothed in the masks of purity. Amen. 

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Collateral Damage in the Mask Wars

Imagine the scene. You're an 18-year-old worker in one of those little local supermarkets. Let's say, for the sake of pathos and interest, a 5 foot nothing young woman. You're wondering what on earth grades you're gonna get at A Level in this weirdest of all summers and you've no idea what the job market is going to look like in the autumn or alternatively what university is going to imply. But you managed to convert your former part-time job to full-time, and it's only 7 quid an hour, and you've been exposing yourself to Covid 19 infection from customers since March, and Boris Johnson hasn't announced a pay rise for you and most people didn't put up rainbows for you, but at least you can make a contribution at home.

You've been in the shop since half five this morning, and amongst your jobs have been  dealing with respectively:

• cleaning a freezer,
• a 15 year old kid with his brother's ID who's trying to get booze,
• the group of youths who arrived together and didn't socially distance and whom you suspected were 
• someone who is angry that a local convenience shop doesn't stock tahini or agar jelly,
• trying to distract you while one of their mates tried to nick a bottle of whisky from behind your counter, 
• marking down hundreds of sandwiches, 
• and one poor soul who wandered in with their mask on back to front and wondered why it wasn't working. 

So it's just an ordinary day.

You're just at the end of your shift. You're knackered. You're dreaming of the home straight and a glass of whatever 18 year old shopworkers drink when they get home these days. You've pushed a trolley load of flour out to stock up the shelf, so you know you're going to go home looking like the Homepride Flour Monster. You look up. And, worst of all nightmares, it's a right-wing libertarian controversialist journalist. No mask on, grinning smug face, taking selfies to get "likes" from his (or her, but on this occasion his) weird fans on social media.

You could ask him to put a mask on. But then he's from a cossetted background - aren't all the edgy ones - and his father used to own a factory, so he's got hundreds of years of patronising the working classes behind him. You could call the manager. But she's 5 foot 2 and even if she were 6 foot 5, what's she going to do? Refuse to serve him? Irrelevant - he didn't come here to buy anything. He came here to show off. Throw him out? Then he's got a video and he's a martyr for the Dim Right Wing. Call the police? Seriously? 

So you ignore him. You hope that one day, he might grow up.

Unfortunately for you, at that very point a member of the opposite faction in the Mask Wars comes in. Takes a selfie of himself, resplendent in a mask emblazoned with the words "I am wearing a mask and I even have a slight tendency to hay fever." Sees the grinning idiot mask-less and demands to know what you are going to do about it.

You look up at the two of them, standing there. Shrug and go off to serve the bloke who's buying six Jaffa Cakes and eight cans of Stella for a big night in. And the masked avenger tells you if you don't do something about it, he's going to write to your Head Office, mention you specifically by name (you have a name badge. Just your first name, to ensure people don't have it too easy to track you down), but it'll do for identification purposes) and tell them that if, in future, you don't throw grinning manboys from the shop for non-wearing of masks, he is going to demand a boycott on Twitter.

It is unfair that weird libertarian show offs can bully people like this for their amusement and lols on Instagram. It is unfair to put the policing of weird libertarian show-offs into the hands of poorly-paid staff - predominantly young and female. It is wrong that the government put into place penalties so poor that it's not worth the police enforcing them. Penalties that the average libertarian right-wing show off could pay with pocket money from their dads. It you're going to penalise them for endangering human health - and remembering there are very good health reasons why some can't wear masks - penalise them so hard it hurts, and it makes the papers and the police think it's worthwhile.

And for the rest of us, it's tricky. You don't know whether a given person has a genuine reason not to wear a mask, or whether they've swallowed some drivel posted in Facebook and need to be educated. But if you can see the person concerned is a nearly-famous columnist, do us all a favour. Don't smack them in the face - it only makes them a mask martyr. Just mutter something mildly offensive under your breath from a distance of 2m. Tut, if you must. The only oxygen a mask would stop them receiving is the mask of publicity. So don't give it to them.

I wish I wasn't even writing this, but it's not about the idiot libertarians or the masked avengers. It's about the poor sods that work in shops and get caught in the crossfire. Don't make them collateral damage in the Mask Wars.

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Advice on Ocarina Playing in Church Services

People have been asking for my guidance on the use of ocarinas (or is it "ocarinae"?) during services in church buildings.

The advice is quite clear.

Don't.

This has been in place for 5 years now and I see no reason to change it just because there's a virus about.

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How to Stop Your Glasses Steaming Up While Wearing a Mask

Obviously, as a leading spiritual leader, in a leadership role, people often come to me for leadership.

And one area where they've been asking for leadership is in how to stop their glasses steaming up when wearing a mask.

I've no idea why they ask me. I have perfect distance vision, so I never wear glasses when out and about. I am long-sighted. Which is, to be honest, a bit of a pain if I'm needing to check packaging for ingredients or "do not use this on gerbils" type warnings. But on the other hand, you can't go fishing glasses out of the Archdruidical Handbag every thirty seconds to read packaging. And you can't wander around shops wearing reading glasses without crashing into walls and other shoppers. Which is not advised in these days of social distancing. So what I tend to do is  just buy the stuff anyway, go home and use it on the gerbils anyway.

But obviously I can still apply the traditions of folklore and a bit of faith and quantum mechanics to the problem. So here we go.

1. Wash the lenses of your glasses by the dew of morning, the day after the first full moon in August.
2. If you rub your specs on the back of a badger, the resultant static repulsive force can repel moisture for up to 13 minutes. So remember to take a badger shopping with you. Ideally a tame one. 
3. Don't wear your glasses. Just walk around squinting. This has the advantage of encouraging people to socially distance.
4. Get special demisting lenses, on the principle of car windscreens, powered by hearing aid batteries in your ears.
5. Always walk around shops backwards. It takes your mind off your steamed-up glasses.
6. Say the ancient Beaker Glasses-clearing Spell. But be careful. It's only one consonant out from the ancient Beaker Death-Dealing Demon Summoning Spell. We've lost a lot of good, if short-sighted, Beaker Folk that way.
7. Wear a mask that covers your glasses as well. Then you won't notice if they steam up.
8. Get a tattoo that makes it look like you're wearing a mask. Then you won't get hassled to wear one. 
9. Get a mask that looks like a half-face tattoo. Then everyone will leave the shop and it won't matter if you walk into things because your glasses are steamed up.
10. Tiny little windscreen wipers on the lenses. A staple joke of 1970s comics whose time has finally come.
11. Just wipe the steam off them occasionally. But remember to scream "I'm touching my face now! Everybody sanitise!"
12. Get someone else to do the shopping. Let their glasses steam up instead.

Personally, I suggest the last one. Speaking of which, if anyone is going shopping, can they pick me up a couple of gerbils from Petsmart? I'm afraid there's some sad news about Val and Brenda.

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