Altar Egos

I resolved to resist peeking at Canon Lewis' minimised pages for a good long time. I cast my eyes around and found a ream of perfectly good paper in the recycling bin, next to the shredder. I thought the Canon would appreciate an effort at recycling, so I turned it over, and put it into the paper tray, but he printer did not restart immediately. I wiggled the mouse. Still no luck, so I decided that I had better go into the control panel and investigate - but unfortunately I accidentally activated the slumbering software and the grinning face of Dr Thomson sprang out at me as the printer sprang into action.

The blogmeister

I can't remember the exact post that Damian had made that day. Possibly something about George Galloway singing a woeful ballad to Rowan Williams' eyebrow while dressed as Hinge and Bracket at an ecumenical gathering of transvestite gas engineers.Or  Opus Dei infiltrating the Neo-Catechumenate. (Of course that may have been Eccles. I can't quite keep track). On the odd occasion I drop into the blog to read the posts by Paul Priest and Laurence England to brush up my apologetics, and find out what is going on at the Bishops' Conference, I try to keep a low profile.


On the first tab, Canon Lewis had half finished a comment in the character of a priest called Arthur claiming that there was only ONE Mass and that all traditionalist priests were addicted to lace and incense, and were grinding the faces of the poor in order to fund their expense accounts at Gammarellis.  On the second, he was suggesting, in the character of a layman called Daryl, that Fr Arthur knew what he was talking about, and that everyone who disapproved of Vatican 2 was a giant rabbit or a member of the Russian Mafia. The third tab held an lapsed character called Phil who claimed that only .3% of the population were homosexual (to which Arthur had replied that only .3% of priests celebrated the Tridentine Rite by coincidence) and that Daryl was the best Catholic he had ever met, and the fourth was a chap called Buttonmoon whose job in life seemed to be the sexual propositioning of a character claiming to be a 5000 year old witch. There were a number of other characters, including a pro-Palestinian Jew called Terry, who quoted bits about obscure Jewish festivals and said he only liked Post Vatican 2 Catholicism. Other tabs were also open - several from Wikipedia; one from Google Maps showing the Iberian peninsula; one from the Vatican website outlining the canonical penalties for rash judgment, calumny and detraction, and one on Fr Blake's blog  castigating him for being a capitalist lackey. There was also a post-it note with various other identities and passwords, which I found much later had mysteriously  attached itself to the underside of my soutane.

At this point, however, I heard footsteps, and just about made it back to my armchair and disposed of the fairtraid coffee into the plant pot before the creative Canon re-entered he room.

He was less than pleased that I had finished the printing, but was called away before he could interfere, by his housekeeper announcing the arrival of a chap called Zachary who had some business about noticeboards. I made my excuses - grabbed the printouts and left.

Now I must take Charles and Hetty out for a turn around the glebe before retiring for the night. The wonderful thing about spaniels is that they care very little about Vatican 2 (although prone to re-order any room that they are left in unsupervised) and that their only real vice is greed. TTFN