Another attempt to be granted entry to Hell.

One of the disadvantages (and let us be clear, there are very few disadvantages praise be to St Rupert) of having so many television channels is the occasional confusion about which programme it is that one is watching. Today, for example, while innocently flicking through the channels (hopping, or surfing as the young people call it), during an interval in the presentation about the use of Kenyan yak wool on the Crochet channel, I was slightly bemused to find myself witnessing a comedy sketch about skateboarding in the nave of Malmesbury Abbey. I was distressed at thinking that I had forgotten a Python sketch, and was only brought back to some degree of composure by realising that I had ‘tuned in’ to the BBC news channel and what I was watching was an excerpt from the continuing series on life in Kaliyuga that the British Broadcasting Corporation foists upon us when we are least expecting it.

There is, indeed, a group called Christian Skaters UK, who hope to, er. Well actually, I have no idea what they hope to do, and care slightly less, I just hope that they choose to do it in a locality not adjacent to mine. I am, as you know, very liberal in my views, but am pleased that the whirling dervishes who held their annual convention in my garden have moved on. They played havoc with the forsythia.

I am hoping that Kaliyuga is on its last legs, I am growing tired of it. Someone told me that on the 14th of February, the moon was in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars, although if I had to grade the weird and wonderful philosophies which we tiny brained bipeds have created in order to make sense of the nonsense around us, then astrology would fall far short of a D-.

I am therefore resigned to having life imitate art by coming up with even stranger religious practices. I expect the latter part of my life to be decorated by tap-dancing transvestite imams, otter-juggling lamas or tattooed Taoist trapeze artists. I won’t mention the Hindus, because they are always one step ahead, and will have done it already, whatever it is you can imagine.

I include, for your entertainment, a little vignette by the much missed messrs Cook and Moore, from the film Bedazzled (see my remark about life imitating art, above).

Interestingly – yes it is interesting, Dave – the original sketch, which you can find here, claimed that the leaping nuns came from Norfolk, which is where we now exile our more eccentric clergy, ever since New England became filled to capacity.