Heathen Studies: An example to us all

This must not, I repeat not, happen again.  I have spent the entire holiday weekend dealing with the gentlemen of the press, some of whose claims to gentility would test even the most generous of Herald’s inquiries.  The only thing that can be held up , in way of mitigation, is that being barricaded in the office I avoided the inevitable visit to some dreary wayside tavern to celebrate the Risen Lord with the wife’s sister and her graceless husband, a man who reminds you that charity should begin at home but in his case, it might just skip next door.  If I hadn’t been impressed by the sheer planning and plain low cunning that went in to the whole thing I might have called for names to be named and retribution to be swift and bespoke.

 

It all began about a year ago.  It was revealed that one the exam boards were considering allow pupils to study Heathenism as a legitimate faith in Religious Studies lessons.  I find such stories always to be avoided; it’s like when they say scientists have proved that eating dog biscuits will make you live to a hundred – they never say who the scientist was and if he has tested his theory on more than three people, two of whom lied to get a free sample.  It, of course, made banner headlines in those papers which prefer to create heat rather than enlightenment and whose readers can be trusted to become apoplectic at the supposed news that the League of Nations has ordered everyone to speak French on alternates Tuesday or that the nation’s youth are being given School Certificates for lounging about.  I know it was my father’s firm belief, and I still maintain, we could give the modern tykes a run for their money – or rather not – in that regard.  Either way the seed had been sown.

 

The plot was allowed to simmer and occasionally a new ingredient was added.  When word came out that a Vegan option was being added to the Heathenism course and that students would not have to sacrifice a goat to the ancient gods of the these Isles, well, letters were written as to the softness of modern life and the effect on the Goat Breeding and novelty horn-spoon industries.  A little later a ‘life-style’ piece involved an interview with a certain ‘Mayleaf Mossfriend aka Pauline Haddock, who it was said was to act as Chief Examiner and had taken her role as Heathen Priestess out of the countryside and into the suburbs with her book ‘Leylandii Leech-Craft’.

 

I must confess I had forgotten all about it and barely noticed when some bright spark claimed that the School Inspectors sent forth by Her Majesty’s Government to make sure teachers were not slacking and that claims they ‘were on a nature ramble’ were not mere covers for letting school go early to enable staff to take in certain country cricket festival weeks, were being told to ‘go easy’ on schools with a religious bent as what they lacked in the 3 Rs they made up for by drumming a bit of God fearing rectitude into young minds.

 

What happened next really did show fore-thought.  About a week ago a notice went up on several lamp posts around the neighbourhood of our own blessed place of learning, St Audrey’s.  It seems to be a practice known only these in these realms that when the Borough Council wishes to inform the populace of the construction of the Alderman Cowbeech motorised by-pass the best way to solicit the views of the public is to place a board on a lamp post, which as night follows day, will soon be hanging round the base of said, awashed with the spray of a thousand cars and thoroughly illegible.  In the brief minutes before this occurred someone noticed that the school had apparently applied for planning permission to build a henge and also for ‘change of use’ for the tennis courts to become a sacred grove.

 

The meandering stream of semi-conscious concern soon joined the torrents of misunderstanding when the next day the letters page of a glossy, countryside periodical received a missive to the effect that, given certain parents got a little keen on God-bothering in the local parish in order to pass little Giles and Georgina in to the St Dymphna the Well-Regarded school for young tots, would a donation to the Woodland Trust have the same affect for a Heathen School.

 

Letter trays began to fill and even the redoubtable school secretary, Miss Slindon, began to run out of excuses as to why the Head could not be contacted; although the one about him leading the Staff Amateur Dramatics performance of musical version of ‘Oh Calcutta’ to village halls and W.I.s in South Eastern parts of Lincolnshire was entirely true.

 

What led the hacks of Grub Street to finally hammer at my door was the sight. Upon Maundy Thursday, although I am convinced the date was entirely coincidental; a dozen men of a certain age with more or less convincing beards, dressed in gaily coloured robes and decked with the skulls of beasts for the fields and fells; banging gongs, rasping at trumpets and generally making a din paraded around the hour of dawn somewhere near the Rugby score box.  The press soon followed and I have been be in a state of siege ever since.

 

I am not one to bear a grudge but I may take lessons from Mrs The Hon Sec in that regard – she has never forgiven the saucy little miss who visited the local Alms Houses who thought my dear wife was a willing recipient, not a stoical helper of the said institution.  All I am saying is that, having had a weekend ruined by these misplaced larks some chaps ought to be finding elderly aunts to visit soon.