They that go down to the sea in ships...

As the Good Book says, these shall see the wonders of God in the deep.

Impressed by the mini-Leviathan they discovered in the dark cold depths off New Zealand. Personally I would have named it a "mega-prawn" because it would make a better headline. And because I could annoy Drayton by talking about being "prawn again".

It makes you think of the great age these things must live, to grow so big.
It makes you wonder about the sense of consciousness, even self-consciousness, that these things experience.
It makes you astounded, the wonders that are still to be found on this wondrous planet.

And it makes me ponder, where are we ever going to get enough garlic butter?

Lighting the Imbolc Fire

Well, naturally we had to light another one. After all, it's a festival, is imbolc. Whatever it's all about.

I always reckon you can never have too many bonfires. Although, to be honest, this is one of the coldest bonfire days for ages. The Beaker Fertility Folk were hoping for the first rites of spring, but took to wandering around moodily wearing hoodies and thick coats.

At least at this time of the year there's a good reason  for lighting fires. They keep you warm. When the broken pallets started to run out we switched to any old brushwood we could find.

But then Young Keith got all over-enthusiastic. I suppose, in retrospect, that cutting down that leylandii to throw it on the fire was deeply appropriate on this, the last day of the Christmas/Epiphany cycle. It was like the last remnant of Christmas had gone. But fresh leylandi, even in the depths of winter, doesn't burn that well. The smoke was horrendous.

So we're back inside now. We've celebrated something - whatever that something was. And we all smell like car air-fresheners. I've had better celebrations.

Dragging you forward

It always drags you forward, religion.

Take today's twin celebrations of Imbolc and Candlemas. As with most celebrations, strikes me that their co-incidence is just that - a coincidence, since one is dated as half way from the Solstice to the Equinox, while the other is dated as 40 days after Xmas, which is 9 months after the Annunciation which is dated at a "perfect" Good Friday (25 March), which is dated for a modified calculation of the day after Passover, which is based on the date of the full moon after the Vernal Equinox. Which is why Imbolc and Candlemas co-incide. So the really interesting "fact" in the co-incidence of former Western religious festivals and Christian ones is that the human gestation period is approximately 9 months. Phew.

Now Imbolc is, as much as anyone can tell me, about the lifecycle of sheep. About this time of year the ewes are getting ready to have their lambs - a sign of spring, and mutton to come. While Candlemas is about the cross. About the child who was born at Christmas, but can't stay in the stable anymore. We've been thinking about God-with-us, and now we're thinking about God-leading-us. Leading us to Jerusalem, and we know what happens there.

They're both forward-looking. Christmas and Yule were forward-looking - one to the lengthening of the daylight, one to the growing of the light. The Solstices are the tipping points - the length of the days change very slowly. You can rest there for a while, but the reminder is that, though at Winter Solstice the winter's coldest is to come, the days are growing longer. While the darkness is at its height, there's a light shining in it which the darkness can't recognise.

And now the length of days is racing ahead. Yet the shepherds must look to long nights of work as new life starts to force its way into the world, anticipating the Spring. And the Christian looks forward, too. To new Easter life,but that life springing from the bloodied ground of Good Friday. The light is growing, but that light shows up the darkness in people's hearts and lives.

Have a happy Imbolc or Candlemas, whoever you are.

Imbolc Eve

Now everybody's been asking why we can't "just celebrate Candlemas like everyone else" tomorrow. Why, the Beaker People have been asking, can't we just light some candles and have another happy Christmassy thought about the Baby Jesus? What's with instead celebrating an ancient British festival that has some indefinable connection to the reproductive cycle of sheep?

To which I normally reply "because." I know some think that's an unacceptable answer but really it seems to work for me. It's short, for a start. Which frees up my time for other purposes.

But I do have some other reasons why. So I'd like to list them now. Then if all Beaker People could print themselves the list off and have a read they won't need to ask me. Maybe if this works, we can have them laminated (the copies of the list, not the Beaker People) and you can all keep them for next year.

The first is the answer to "Everybody else does it." Would you do everything that everybody else does? If you did you'd be calling for Fred the Shred, now he's been de-Sir-Fred-ed, to be beheaded as well. Which, to be fair, some of you are. But Drayton Parslow doesn't celebrate Candlemas because it has "-mas" in it. Although, strangely, he does celebrate Christmas. (And have you noticed it's less than 11 months away? I can't wait!)

The second is that the Feast of the Presentation of the Little Baby Jesus in the Temple is just a modern, liberal re-naming. The older name, the Purification of the Virgin Mary, tells us more about the inherent beliefs involved here. As is well known our ancestors (or at least those of our ancestors who were celibate and therefore were allowed to be the priests, vicars and bishops who ran the place) thought all sex was bad. Which was why I am now reflecting that they probably weren't our ancestors after all, and maybe it was just the other people who were our ancestors. That's the trouble when you start generalising about stuff you don't understand - you end up writing stuff that sound good but is actually drivel.

Where was I? Right. So if even Mary, who'd not had sex, had to undergo the rite of Purification, then clearly the whole business of reproduction was deeply flawed in those days, and a way to subjugate women. And that's too hard a thought for me to "unpack" right now. So I'll just assure you that it's a fact and that's why we're not celebrating Candlemas.

The second reason (or third, if you count both the first two) is that it's a shiny, candle-y kind of event. And yet this is the day we find out that the baby in Mary's arms is going to cause all kinds of upset, and Mary grief as well. And frankly it's just after Christmas, I've just paid the credit card bill and the weather's freezing solid and I don't think I can take any more sadness. The world's hard enough already. If it were just nice pictures of Baby Jesus, that we could project on the screen while playing Kendrick's Like a Candle Flame on ukulele and ocarina - fine. But all this growing up and dying horribly - not in February.

So tomorrow we're celebrating the ancient British festival of Imbolc. We don't know anything about it, so I can inform you that it's a happy kind of celebration. We will light some candles and drink the special Imbolc Cider we brewed last autumn and we'll play a happy video of baby lambs skipping through attractive but unthreateningly small amounts of new-fallen snow.

And we've a special dinner later. I thought roast lamb with all the trimmings would be appropriate. Or, for vegetarians, all the trimmings.

Unbaptism and UnKnighting

I don't know why these two struck me as being similar - apart from, of course, the way they're quite similar.

Rene Lebouvier (of France in case you hadn't guessed) has applied to have his baptism revoked. The story is in the Mail. He's asked to be struck from the baptism records - but I'm not sure what that would achieve. A baptismal record is, after all, a historical record of something that happened. On a certain day, at a certain time, this event happened. That much can't be undone. Baptism either leaves an indelible seal - or it doesn't. If the former, merely removing his name won't make him any less baptised. If the latter, then it will make no difference at all. The ceremony will still have happened, but history will have been falsified.

If we accept the idea that baptism is simply a membership ceremony, then it strikes me that removing his name would still be a silly thing to do. If Burton Dasset ever decided he loved lager and wanted to leave the Campaign for Real Ale, they wouldn't go through all their records effacing every record that showed he was ever a member. They would merely record the fact that, when he stopped paying his subs, he stopped being a member. They might, if they designed databases the same way that Burton set up the Beaker membership mailing list, have an end date which they would set to the date when he lapsed. But they wouldn't destroy every trace that he loved bitter. So maybe, to keep all happy, the Catholic Church should simply find his baptismal record and write an end date in for the date he asked to leave. The baptism will still have happened - which of course it did - but his opting out will also have been recognised.

But this brings me onto the man formerly known as Sir Fred the Shred Goodwin. I word that carefully.

Are we saying that Fred was a knight for a while, and is no longer? Or has his knighthood been revoked back in time to the date that he first went down on one knee while Her Majesty tapped him on the shoulder? Or to put it another way - was Fred a Sir Fred and then no longer a Sir Fred - that is, his Sir Fred-ness has been terminated? Or after Her Majesty's revocation was he no longer ever a Sir Fred at all? It probably, logically, didn't ought to matter. But I just feel that it does.

Transfer Deadline Day News

Transfers completed

Giles Fraser - from St Paul's to The Guardian (Free transfer)

Rumours

Man City exchanging Carlos Tevez for Steven Hester (RBS) - said to be unlikely as Tevez would not accept the pay cut.

Hester unlikely to join Liverpool either. Luis Suarez, the most likely exchange offer, says he wouldn't like to be as unpopular as the Chief Exec of a bank.

Ed Miliband to Northampton Town (£3m, although he'd only have to pay half up front). Labour are once again having trouble with strikers, but Miliband has increasingly found himself "in the hole" this season.

Tory Front Bench - to bring in Emile Heskey. Even the economy's more on its feet than Emile.

Sir Alex Ferguson - to host Strictly Come Dancing.

Tory Front Bench - to buy Chelsea. Not the club, the place.

EU Directive on Stable Doors

The Church Mouse has blogged again. Though it threatens to be a one-off.

However, with a small amount of inspiration from the Mouse, I've dug into a little-known piece of EU Regulation. The EU Directive on Stable Doors is as follows:

The stable door must always be shut. If the stable door is open, it should be shut as soon as possible. Preferably before the horse has bolted. Although after may be acceptable - and is certainly more likely.


Just because the French and German governments left the door open a few years ago, that is no excuse for other nations to leave the door unlocked. The French and Germans had to leave the door open, as otherwise how could the horse have had some exercise? That was a limited, understandable opening of the stable door. The horse had a bit of a canter, sure - but by no means did it bolt.


The limited and responsible opening of the stable door that the French and Germans carried out is not to be copied by other, less irresponsible countries opening the door (or leaving it open) whenever they feel like it. The Greeks seem to have cut the door up and used it for a beach barbecue. While the Italians have blown the bloody doors off.


Should the horse have bolted, shut the door as soon as possible. And then blame the British - even though they refused to look after the horse in the first place.


If you keep forgetting to shut the stable door, Germany will send someone round to lock the door for you.


If you're very careful and shut the stable door, albeit on an empty stable, the IMF may lend you another horse. You need to keep this one in the stable. Lock the door this time. After you've put the horse in it. 

Death of King Charles I (1649)

Today being the anniversary of the martyrdom of Charles I, we're abandoning any normal liturgy.
Instead we're going to remember how, on that cold morning outside Whitehall Palace, the forces of nothing-being-much-fun won. And we remember how the monstrous Cromwell went on to found a hereditary institution in place of the existing hereditary institution - which lasted right up to the point where everybody realised how useless his son was. But not before he'd murdered anD enslaved an awful lot of Irish people.

So, as an insult to Oliver Cromwell, we're going to start the day with mince pies and Christmas cake. Ignoring the cold, we're going to dance round a maypole. We're going to have Spaniel-Racing on the Big Meadow. And a game of football, should the ground thaw at all. Finally we're going to drag Cromwell and Ireton in effigy round the grounds and then hang them from a big tree. We're not quite sure which side Ireton was on, but we reckon a plague on all their houses.

For today, everybody must wear wigs. Today's universal greeting will be "Rupert - you're so dashing!"
Please can Beaker People all wear vests for the outside activities. I wouldn't like to see anyone shivering, especially during the Oak-tree Climbing competition.

On Booing at Patrice Evra

First up, I should declare an interest. All the members of the Beaker Folk leadership team are Liverpool supporters. It is not a requirement of membership for Beaker People to be Liverpool supporters - for we accept people of all faiths and Nuneaton Town - but it is a strange, statistical quirk of fate, I guess. Also I speak only for myself on the subject below. The Hnaefs can speak for themselves, if they want to.

There was much complaint yesterday about the way that Liverpool fans at Anfield booed Patrice Evra. And I'm not going to defend it. It's gormless and idiotic. Should we have been running a Beaker coach trip to Anfield, I would have dealt with any such behaviour from Beaker People severely (but not instantly, as they have a habit of confiscating cricket bats at football grounds, with good reason). But it was not merely unsurprising, it was inevitable.

Did Luis Suárez racially abuse Patrice Evra at that previous fixture? Probably. I can't say for certain, because I didn't hear it. The charge that was proven against him was on balance of probability, not the "beyond reasonable doubt" of a criminal court. Is Suarez a racist? Probably not. is he an idiot? Probably, based on a whole series of incidents. Did Liverpool over-react, defending Suárez when they should have shut up, printing T-shirts supporting him that they shouldn't have done? Yes. I can understand why they did - understand the depths of tribal loyalty and the sense so often felt by Liverpudlians that the world is against them - but understanding isn't condoning. They should have shut up, up front, and not stoked the fires.

Were Liverpool fans going to be silent at Evra yesterday? Of course not. That's not a matter of being racist - it's about loyalty, misguided as it may be. Their man - whom they believe to be innocent - was sitting in the stands, while Evra was on the pitch. they believe Evra is a cheat. They were going to boo him - in just the same way that some Man Utd fans were going to sing about Hillsborough, and Leeds fans sing about Munich. It's not funny, it's not clever, and it's shocking to the middle classes who thought football was a nice sport to watch now. Well, maybe from behind a nice big window in a hospitality box it's all changed. But the people down on the sides of the pitch are still working class, still attached passionately to one side or the other, still eating pies not prawn cocktails and still loathing the other side's guts - especially when it's Luton v Watford, Portsmouth v Southampton, Spurs v Arsenal or absolutely anyone against Man Utd.

Working class males have always been quite good at hating other people when they're of a different type. Once upon a time - and even now, occasionally - the nation is quite grateful for that, as it helps us fight wars. At home, in peace time, in a culturally diverse environment, it just takes longer for them to realise that the rules  have changed than the ruling classes would like.

But that's why a football fan isn't going to let a little thing like an FA charge being proved make them believe their man is in the wrong. Good grief, football fans will make claims that defy the laws of physics in their demands for referees' decisions to go their way - never imagining their claims are wrong, or even impossible. Balls that have clearly gone over the line will be claimed to have stayed out of the net. Offside players will be believed to have been 10 yards from where they actually were. And it will never occur to the supporters that they are anything other than right - and that the referee, the linos and the other side's supporters are all utterly deluded.

That kind of tribalism is there all the time in our society - and not just among the working classes, although they are less adept at hiding it as something else. It's been there since the Tower of Babel and it'll be there till the last trump. Stirring up the anger, as the TV and media have been doing - endless shots of  Suárez yesterday, for no better reason than reminding us he wasn't playing and why. It was cheap easy TV, especially during a fairly dull game.

Next time Liverpool play Man Utd, Evra will be booed by Liverpool fans and, if he plays,  Suárez by United ones. That's just business as usual. Foolish tribalist supporters from Man Utd and other clubs will claim Liverpool are all "racists", thus blackening a club and all its supporters. We're not, though the club have been foolish. But it's a working-class game at heart with working-class passions, and sometimes that means people will do stupid things. One day the old divisions will end. We will all realise that in Jesus there is no East or West end of the East Lancs Road. That the Runcorn bridge joins together, just as the Mersey divides. That there is no Mancunian or Scouse. Or all the fans will become middle class, and polite applause will ring out from both sets of supporters, when a goal is scored. But it's gonna be a long time coming.

Lament for a Broken-down Car on a Frosty Morning

Archdruid: Some trust in Pontiacs, and some in Corsas.

All: But we will trust in the man from the breakdown company.


Archdruid: God spreads the snow like wool and scatters the frost like ashes.

All: He hurls down his hail on our windscreens.  Who can de-ice this icy blast? 


Archdruid: O Lord how manifold are your mercies!

All: And how murky are our manifolds!


Archdruid: O Lord, how many are my woes! How has my gearbox risen up before me.

All: Many are saying "The breakdown truck will not deliver her."


Archdruid: I lie down and sleep. I wake up again.

All: And still the breakdown truck does not arrive.


Archdruid: How I loathe those that build dodgy clutches.

All: I despise those that put cheap components into otherwise decent cars.


Archdruid: But though grinds and screeches last for the night, still Roy cometh in the morning.

All: He's a very nice man.


Archdruid: But I will wait for the breakdown van, as the night-watch waits for the  morning.


All: More than the night-watch waits for the morning, we shall await that van - even though he drives through the valley of the shadow with a four-hour estimated arrival time.

London Stone

Uproar in the Daily Mail. Developers are planning to move London Stone a way down the road.

Most of you won't know about London Stone. It's a lump of limestone in Cannon Street. It's been there for a long time - Shakespeare mentions it. Some say it's Roman, some Druidic. Needless to say, some think it's a sacrificial stone. Needless to say, "some" in this context means "Blake".

It's sat in a little cage and it's easy to walk past and you don't even notice it as your rush past - which is true for so many truly great things in London. I don't want it moved up the road - I want it where it is, nestling there, watching the centuries go by. And yes, I know it's been moved around in the past. But I don't care.

h/t for the story (I don't read the Mail, myself) to Pagans for Archaeology. But if you want to hear from the Stone itself, you'll have to go here.

---

Where Albion slept beneath the Fatal Tree
And the Druids golden Knife,
Rioted in human gore,
In Offerings of Human Life


They groan'd aloud on London Stone
They groand aloud on Tyburns Brook
Albion gave his deadly groan,
And all the Atlantic Mountains shook