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.
Friday, 3 May 2013
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.
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.
Thursday, 2 May 2013
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
"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
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.
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.
Wednesday, 1 May 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, 30 April 2013
Ancient Thoughts on the Five Knolls
Today, we shall be finding inspiration from the world around us, instead of looking into dusty tomes for wisdom.
I shall mostly be considering the beauty of nature, as revealed to us in the gentle loveliness of the Dunstable Downs. The "Flying Archaeologist" yesterday reminded me that, although burial mounds on chalkland - including the eight or so barrows in Dunstable's "Five Knolls" are - green and gently folded into the downs today, when first built they would have been a stark white, shining with the native chalk. As the people of the Vale of Aylesbury looked up to the ridgeway at sunset, the barrows would have glowed a reddy-orange in the sunshine cast across the Vale, giving an illusion of the colour of life to those chalky sepulchres. Likewise at sunrise, the Vale folk would have seen the sun rising behind the mounds - casting the near sides into darkness and making them appear black. The Vale folk would have given thanks that the sun was rising, and even more so that they had a ridge of solid chalk between themselves and Luton.
The irony is that, unknown to them, they were encasing the bodies of their families and friends within the miriad small bodies of other former things. For the chalk is a compressed mass of the shells of tiny sea creatures, that lived and munched other tiny sea creatures and then died, in those sunny Cretaceous seas. Then they fell to the bed where, as Prof Brian Cox would say, "a mill-ion, mill-ion, mill-ion" creatures piled up and were transformed, through great weight of water and greater weight of time, into the soft white porous stone we know today.
I really shouldn't start the day like this. I'm going to be all humble now for hours, and you know how grumpy that makes me.
I shall mostly be considering the beauty of nature, as revealed to us in the gentle loveliness of the Dunstable Downs. The "Flying Archaeologist" yesterday reminded me that, although burial mounds on chalkland - including the eight or so barrows in Dunstable's "Five Knolls" are - green and gently folded into the downs today, when first built they would have been a stark white, shining with the native chalk. As the people of the Vale of Aylesbury looked up to the ridgeway at sunset, the barrows would have glowed a reddy-orange in the sunshine cast across the Vale, giving an illusion of the colour of life to those chalky sepulchres. Likewise at sunrise, the Vale folk would have seen the sun rising behind the mounds - casting the near sides into darkness and making them appear black. The Vale folk would have given thanks that the sun was rising, and even more so that they had a ridge of solid chalk between themselves and Luton.
The irony is that, unknown to them, they were encasing the bodies of their families and friends within the miriad small bodies of other former things. For the chalk is a compressed mass of the shells of tiny sea creatures, that lived and munched other tiny sea creatures and then died, in those sunny Cretaceous seas. Then they fell to the bed where, as Prof Brian Cox would say, "a mill-ion, mill-ion, mill-ion" creatures piled up and were transformed, through great weight of water and greater weight of time, into the soft white porous stone we know today.
I really shouldn't start the day like this. I'm going to be all humble now for hours, and you know how grumpy that makes me.
Monday, 29 April 2013
Some Subtle Subtitles for Church Vacancies
It can be hard work, trying to attract a new minister to your church. What with the phenomenally high wages and bonus schemes common throughout the clerical world, the important thing is to remember that it's the softer things that can help you attract a new minister. Here, then, are some useful phrases with which to scatter your ad or church profile - and what you will be hiding beneath the covers.
| What to say | What it means |
| looking for an energetic minister | After three years without sleep you'll forget what it is to dream. |
| a mature congregation | For the first four years, the Parish Share will be padded by legacies. |
| We are interested in Fresh Expressions | We now have Pet Services every week, and Communion once a month. |
| We have not passed any resolutions, but would expect sensitivity towards those whose views were so strongly expressed in the debate. | "Y" chromosomes are strictly obligatory. |
| An active lay ministry team | They've a habit of mining the vicarage garden, to keep themselves in work. |
| A rural benefice | Seventeen villages, four churchgoers in each. And they all want a weekly service. |
| Someone able to spread warmth | The boiler's always breaking down. |
| With a strong grasp on their vision | It normally takes us three months to completely break a new minister's spirit. We'd appreciate a bit more of a challenge. |
| An exciting time for our church. | We're thinking of buying a new Hymn Book. |
| a people-centred pastor | Your phone will never stop ringing |
| open minded | The Choir form the backbone of the local wife-swapping circle |
| Good at building bridges | The argument started about whether to move the tea light stand, and now the Flower Arrangers are refining uranium. |
| A developing ministry | We've got some funding, and we're dying to work out what to do with it. We're hoping you may have some ideas? |
| Styles of worship include Cafe Church, BCP Morning Prayer, High Mass, Folk Communion, Goth Mass, Messy Church and Benediction. | We're looking for a very energetic chameleon. |
| Strong involvement with the local schools | You'll never get out of governors' meetings. |
| We really need young families | We're stating the obvious, and we've no idea what to do about it. |
| We need a minister with strong, conservative theology and a heart for men's ministry. | Someone who's definitely not gay. |
| Looking for a minister who can engage with the church community... | In fact, we really want a married forty-year-old man with three churchgoing children. |
| ... with a strong Sunday School... | ...so we hope your wife will be leading it from now on. We're all knackered. |
| ...a minister with a passion for growing church | We reckon the last few just liked decline. |
| ....able to work as part of a team.... | Pliable |
| Prophetic | Inclined to denouncing the outside world. And quite right, too. It's dreadful. |
Sunday, 28 April 2013
Liturgy for Ed Balls Day
For those who don't know what this is about...
Archdruid: Ed Balls be with you.
All: And Ed Balls with you too.
Archdruid: Ed Balls.
All: RT @ArchdruidEileen Ed Balls
Hnaef: Ed Balls.
All: RT Hnaef Ed Balls
Charlii: Ed Balls.
All: RT Charlii Ed Balls
Young Keith: Ed Balls.
All: RT Young Keith Ed Balls
Ed Balls: Ed Balls
All: RT @Ed_BallsMP Ed Balls
Hnaef: Ed Balls? How did he do that?
Archdruid: He gets everywhere.
Archdruid: Ed Balls be with you.
All: And Ed Balls with you too.
Archdruid: Ed Balls.
All: RT @ArchdruidEileen Ed Balls
Hnaef: Ed Balls.
All: RT Hnaef Ed Balls
Charlii: Ed Balls.
All: RT Charlii Ed Balls
Young Keith: Ed Balls.
All: RT Young Keith Ed Balls
Ed Balls: Ed Balls
All: RT @Ed_BallsMP Ed Balls
Hnaef: Ed Balls? How did he do that?
Archdruid: He gets everywhere.
Love is all Around
Thanks to Rodrick for this morning's talk on "Jesus says we have to love each other". Very effective.
So much so that I decided that, henceforth, I should make it my aim to love my fellow Beaker Folk as I'm supposed to. But, knowing that we are not allowed to face anything we can't stand, I thought I'd take some preventative measures and make a list of the people I will be designating as exemptions, so I don't fail in this calling. Currently the list (with reasons) stands at:
Burton Dasset (nerd)
Marston Moretaine (fool)
Charlii (money-grabbing gold-digging potential rival)
Hnaef (posh)
Milton Ernest (implausible name, even for a Beaker person)
Mansfield Wodehouse (too northern)
Mrs Wodehouse (always ill)
Aelfine (too delicate)
Rodrick (too challenging)
Raughrie (always moaning)
Bernie (always cooking roadkill)
Going further afield, I also need to add from the Bogwulf Baptists:
Drayton Parslow (fundie)
Marjory Parslow (too much like me)
Kayleigh (too much like Kylie)
Kylie (too much like Keeley)
Keeley (too much like Kayleigh)
So I'm currently managing to love every body else like I'm supposed to, which is a great achievement. I am, however, aware that the above list consists of all the people I've met or thought about since I heard Rodrick's challenge. So it may have to get longer.
So much so that I decided that, henceforth, I should make it my aim to love my fellow Beaker Folk as I'm supposed to. But, knowing that we are not allowed to face anything we can't stand, I thought I'd take some preventative measures and make a list of the people I will be designating as exemptions, so I don't fail in this calling. Currently the list (with reasons) stands at:
Burton Dasset (nerd)
Marston Moretaine (fool)
Charlii (money-grabbing gold-digging potential rival)
Hnaef (posh)
Milton Ernest (implausible name, even for a Beaker person)
Mansfield Wodehouse (too northern)
Mrs Wodehouse (always ill)
Aelfine (too delicate)
Rodrick (too challenging)
Raughrie (always moaning)
Bernie (always cooking roadkill)
Going further afield, I also need to add from the Bogwulf Baptists:
Drayton Parslow (fundie)
Marjory Parslow (too much like me)
Kayleigh (too much like Kylie)
Kylie (too much like Keeley)
Keeley (too much like Kayleigh)
So I'm currently managing to love every body else like I'm supposed to, which is a great achievement. I am, however, aware that the above list consists of all the people I've met or thought about since I heard Rodrick's challenge. So it may have to get longer.
Saturday, 27 April 2013
The Proper form of Male Headship
I see that once again, and no doubt much against his will, Pastor Mark Driscoll has been dragged into the limelight for a sober, biblical and godly analysis of the relationship between men and women.
To be fair, this verse in Proverbs is one that it is easy to lampoon. Eileen, the self-styled Archdruid next door, has a habit of turning it round it as "the average husband is a drip". And in referring to a nagging wife as a dripping "faucet", Pastor Mark is clearly quoting from an Ishmael song, not even the Nearly Inspired Version, and not from the true Scripture which renders it as "...the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping."
But I do believe it is important that we establish the ground rules of a marital relationship based on Biblical principles. That is why I have always been clear with Marjory that I am the one who is in the place of God in our marriage, and she in the place of the obedient, pure and hard-working Bride.
And so we have come to the proper order of hierarchy and obedience. I make the really important decisions - which form of Dispensationalism to believe in; whether the Fall was inevitable; who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews; the best ways to calculate the Age of the Earth from the king lists of Judah and Israel. While Marjory is allowed to make the secondary decisions, those which do not impinge on our immortal souls - where to go on holiday; financial investments; the amount of the Bogwulf Baptists' tithes that should go to me (as pastor) and Marjory (as Church Secretary and Treasurer - an important but, clearly, secondary post). Likewise, because our bodies are temples, it is important that I keep the house tidy, do the cooking and washing up - these cannot be delegated because our very health depends on them being carried out correctly.
I am pleased to say that, with very few complaints, which we resolved by agreeing I was right, Marjory has been prepared to fall in with these arrangements. And, I should add, suggested that, on the same basis, the removal of household rubbish and unblocking of the plumbing is so important it needs a man to do it as well. It is good for a woman to know her limitations.
To be fair, this verse in Proverbs is one that it is easy to lampoon. Eileen, the self-styled Archdruid next door, has a habit of turning it round it as "the average husband is a drip". And in referring to a nagging wife as a dripping "faucet", Pastor Mark is clearly quoting from an Ishmael song, not even the Nearly Inspired Version, and not from the true Scripture which renders it as "...the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping."
But I do believe it is important that we establish the ground rules of a marital relationship based on Biblical principles. That is why I have always been clear with Marjory that I am the one who is in the place of God in our marriage, and she in the place of the obedient, pure and hard-working Bride.
And so we have come to the proper order of hierarchy and obedience. I make the really important decisions - which form of Dispensationalism to believe in; whether the Fall was inevitable; who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews; the best ways to calculate the Age of the Earth from the king lists of Judah and Israel. While Marjory is allowed to make the secondary decisions, those which do not impinge on our immortal souls - where to go on holiday; financial investments; the amount of the Bogwulf Baptists' tithes that should go to me (as pastor) and Marjory (as Church Secretary and Treasurer - an important but, clearly, secondary post). Likewise, because our bodies are temples, it is important that I keep the house tidy, do the cooking and washing up - these cannot be delegated because our very health depends on them being carried out correctly.
I am pleased to say that, with very few complaints, which we resolved by agreeing I was right, Marjory has been prepared to fall in with these arrangements. And, I should add, suggested that, on the same basis, the removal of household rubbish and unblocking of the plumbing is so important it needs a man to do it as well. It is good for a woman to know her limitations.
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