The Slaying of St George

In common with other great moral and educational institutions, and Magdalen College Oxford, we shall not be celebrating St George’s Day here at the Beaker Folk.

We consider St George to be “stale, pale, male”, the archetypal Englishman who would rather stab a maiden-eating dragon to death with a spear than get it round the table to see whether it can find a compromise – eg only eating old people or something.

As part of our cosmopolitan, forward-looking, eclectic religious oecumenicalism we shall tomorrow instead be celebrating the traditional Catalan feast, La Diada da Sant Jordi. This will feature vegetarian bullfighting,  a procession of roses, and a free bottle of San Miguel with a slice of lime in the neck for every Beaker Person.

I know some people will be fuming about this. The St George’s Day dinner is a tradition that goes all the way back to 2018. But you have to move with the times. And the times say goodbye St George. And Hola, Sant Jordi!

Gardens I - Eden - of the Eating of Apples

"In the Beginning" - (c) Sally Coleman. With permission

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2)

Now I don’t believe in a literal Garden of Eden – an actual historical place in time, where God made Eve out of Adam's spare rib and a talking four-legged snake roamed the trees looking to trap the unwary But I do believe in the Garden of Eden. Its truths are so much easier to grasp, I find, if you get yourself out of the realm of archaeology and dodgy science and enter the world of our dreams and ideals.

Thumb Tack-Tics

Sometimes you struggle to see the reason for things. The real deep questions. The ones that seem to reach to the ground level of our existence.

You can buy 400 drawing pins (thumb tacks to our American friendss) for 80p in Poundland. This does beg the question why Poundland are selling things for 80p. But let's move on. 80p for 400 drawing pins. That's 0.2p per drawing pin. 

So why, in the average church notice board, do they use roughly nine drawing pins, one of which has the point bent right over and one which has the head broken off, to hold up eight pieces of paper? How much work do they expect 0.2p of metal to do?

0.2p per drawing pin. Come on, Christian England. Both of you. You can do better.