Hey, nonny nonny.
It's one of those days at the office …
You know the sort of day I mean; when every single person in the world suffering from a bowel disorder is standing in front of my fan and all straining at once.
You can make your own sound effect for that one.
So I'm going to cop out today and simply re-post something from two years ago; a post that has at least a tenuous link to Old Dive's not-dating dilemma and one which the newbies won't have seen.
Plus it makes me giggle.
Before we start I'd just like to ask Shan to please not go off on one; this was written a long time ago before I learned that not all US evangelical churches are scary crackpot cults.
Though this one is …
So … let's go back in time and have some fun with the Church of Fornication …
Every word of this is true:
I drove past Norwich's big, scary evangelical Christian church this morning. Or at least the building site, as somebody burnt it to the ground a little while back.
The rebuilding is taking place at an astonishing pace; perhaps we should award the construction contract for the 2012 Olympics to the evangelists, as the government are so pants that they will never get it built on time.
Now I have never really given much thought to the evangelists, to the extent that I'm still at a loss to know what branch of what church they profess to being (they're commonly known around here as "that big old cult [that's c-u-L-t] place up on the ring road near Mousehold").
The only time their path crosses mine is the event of their annual cultathon (or whatever they call it), where they take over the football stadium for the weekend and bring the city to a standstill. The roads are gridlocked with tens of thousands of extremely polite Americans dressed like extras from the Waltons, which means I either avoid the city altogether or end up with smiley-noddy syndrome from all the excessive politeness.
Then it all changes …
I am travelling back from London on the train. It is packed as usual, but I manage to get a window seat and settle in for the long crawl back to Norwich.
Beside me is what can only be termed a lovely little old lady. Grey hair in a bun; old fashioned frock; reading quietly.
Halfway home; I've finished the paper and the crossword and am about to start on my book when along comes the trolley and the little old lady orders a coffee. Now, I've got a couple of free coffee vouchers in my wallet and, to reward her for not being a fat, elbowy businessman shouting into a mobile phone, I offer to treat her to coffee (big mistake).
She has a charming smile and thanks me sweetly as she accepts.
The trolley squeaks off down the aisle and she turns to me and says:
"That was really very kind of you. Are you a Christian?"
Not wishing to offend her with "Well I was brought up as a Christian, but when my brain started to work I rebelled and became the Godless heathen you see before you", I nod and say "Yes".
And suddenly people are turning and staring. A dozen faces all around me focus on my own. The blank eyes and rictus smiles of … uh, oh … evangelists!
"We're Christians" says the little old lady. "Which Church are you from?"
I start to dissemble. I'm stuck with these people for the next hour at least, and I really don't want to upset the little old lady, so I talk about my old church from childhood.
Luckily, she goes off on a long one about the lovely day they've all had in London at a "miracle ministry" or somesuch. I nod and smile in what I judge to be the right places. The scary faces are still locked on mine. Surely their necks must ache from being twisted round like that …
My heart sinks still further when she rummages in her bag and presses a bundle of tracts into my hand.
"You really must come along to our Church."
I hazard a guess: "Is that the big one up near Mousehold?"
I'm blinded by a communal BEAM from the surrounding faces.
The little old lady continues, but by now I am trying to make excuses, so she goes to plan 'B'.
She has noticed that I don't have a wedding ring and I fess up to my single status …
"This is my daughter, Emma."
And she waves to a drop-dead gorgeous girl in her twenties, who flashes me the kind of shy smile I wouldn't even get in my wildest fantasies.
"Emma is a member of our Church. She doesn't have a young man …"
WHAT?
I mean WHAT THE FUCK?
An increasingly surreal conversation follows, with the gorgeous girl smiling at me and her mad pimp mother telling me about all the young women who attend the Church, and how so many of them are reaching "marriageable age" with no "young men" of their own …
I want to tell her to look closely at me. I am a man in my forties. Would she really want me interfering with her daughter?
I want to yell at her; to tell her that in my experience, the Christian Church does not recruit members by offering strange, middle-aged men the chance to fornicate with the young women of their congregation.
The trouble is, Emma is … er … well, let's just say that she has got me all unneccessary. Even though I know that the beautiful girl's smile is the last thing I will see before the brainwashing starts and my bank account develops a Church-sized hole, I am almost tempted …
Somehow, I manage to last the rest of the journey without actually signing any banker's drafts, but the hard sell continues full force, and as I wave farewell to the group at the station and to the beautiful, smiling Emma, I realise I have agreed to attend a service there the next weekend. They certainly know how to prey on weak and lonely men …
Perhaps there is some kind of twisted deity watching over me, because that very week the big old culty Church burns to the ground …
And I T … W A S … N O T … M E !
Honest …
And even when it's rebuilt, there's no amount of gorgeous young girls gonna drag me in there!
I promise … Really … I do … er …
46 comments:
Oh so nice to be back on the Small Glass Planet. Am making a cuppa and will sit here for awhile (and wait for it all to download) and have a laugh - need it!!!!
Missed ya!!!
Occasionally, I am obliged to attend a baptism, wedding, or funeral. (I prefer funerals, of course, because the guest of honour, so to speak, is far too dead to vomit on me or require a gift of any description. But I digress.) My point is that, knowing how downright dowdy some of the female attendees at these services can be in their civvies, it never ceases to surprise me how a decent outfit and hairdo can make even the most self-righteous, knee-pursing, scripture-spitting spinster seem like a suburban Venus. I know it’s terribly wrong of me to have such thoughts while a guest of the Almighty, but I find it awfully hard to leave my needs at the door before entering. Perhaps he should have thought a little longer and harder before making me this way.
Bless you, Lucio.
It seems all the pretty girls take the culty route these days.
Forgive me, Father, but back at school and college I joined the church choir because churchy girls were easy to lead astray.
Now, having already booked my holiday in the fiery furnace attended by the guys in red poking my bottom with pointy sticks I feel I can no longer make my situation post mortem any worse so I do what the hell I like.
In one of his plays, Jean-Paul Sartre (the John Lennon of Existentialism - Albert Camus was its Elvis) has a character declare: "Hell is other people." Now this rather grim, but catchy, phrase has often been misinterpreted to mean that a life lived among others, because of others, for others, and so on, can only be hellish - i.e. that in a Godless universe, society is the only real Hell left. I'd like to think he was trying on a bit of rhetorical hyperbole for size, but I fear I may be wrong. "Heaven is other people", while being a nice idea, just doesn't have the same ring to it, or seem a tenth as true.
Ah, "l'enfer, c'est les autres".
That's a phrase that gets well used in my blog. In fact I may well re-post one of my favourite "l'enfer" posts next time I'm too busy to write.
Sartre was right to suggest that our experience of the Other can be hellish. Needless to say, the hellishness he was referring to has less to do with trident-wielding demons and more to do with the feeling - correct, in my opinion - that we have precious little control over the judgments other people make about us. Which, once made, are all but impossible to erase from whatever uncertain notion we might have of our identity.
Now that's a Hell I can believe in!
Interfering? Is that what they call it now a days? Oh my side hurts from laughing.
It's a hell we live every day, Lucio.
I find the only way to cope with life is to point at it and laugh.
If that doesn't work, slap it hard and run away really quickly.
"Interfering" is such a lovely term, is it not, Prudence?
I do enjoy the way a good euphemism can transform the furtive into something quaint.
Ahh, this was such great reading material to accompany my morning coffee.
Thanks, Dive.
Prudence: They briefly considered dubbing it "reverse celibacy", but the "beep-beep-beep" sound this would require of the male during the act of withdrawal forced them to opt for something less laughter-inducing.
LOL I hadn't read this before so I'm glad you re-posted. Very funny! Do you think the girl was not her daughter at all and just a pull, seriously? Pardon the pun.
You know me, when you started there, I was about to zip to the bottom and put a cursory "Religion.... zzzzzz" in the comments box but hey you got me hooked. Great writing!
Ha ha! I'm laughing along with Prudence, it's a phrase which always makes me guffaw. Why IS that? he he it's the most ridiculous way to describe it! It kind of brings an image of some suburbia in the fifties, with whispered accusations and mouths behind hands "yes...she was interfered with"
I should point out that erm interference is a very serious issue and deserves no humour at all. But....GUFFAW !!!
Lucio: Hee hee hee.
You have a skewed way of thinking that I find particularly appealing.
Lynn: You should really go back and read all of my "Godbothering" posts; they are where I put most of the jokes.
"Interference" is a word that really requires Alan Bennet to read it. Hee hee.
Ditto.
Lucio, you might find something worth giggling at if you scroll down to my links and read the "Gene Puddle" posts. They get scarier and scarier and have some relevance to our Lolita comments.
Life can be fucking weird sometimes.
Too too funny Dive. If that little old lady only knew what a great character she makes in your devilish story. Oh and I love that you joined the church choir just for the girls.
And to think that I got you to go willingly into a cathedral!!
I must admit I'm amazed the Catholics didn't ask the pair of us Godless heathens to remove our shoes so they could check for cloven hooves, Katie.
And what other possible reason could there be for joining a church choir?
A true classic Dive. A story like that only gets better with age. Kinda like a fine wine.
It still scares the crap out of me whenever I drive past that place, though.
Brr … Christians!
Well, I appreciate the preemptive but I never mean to go off on you Dive. In fact, you know where I stand now and I don't really want to sound like I'm scolding you on your own blog anyway. I think your ranty Dive side brings out the stiff backed conservative that doesn't normally rear it's head in my daily life either. I don't know, it's a strange soap-boxy thing that washes over me sometimes when you are God bothered. I hope this comment doesn't count though-oops. I come in peace xx.
But this time I don't feel worried at all by this quaint and scary story of one particular church. I enjoyed it very much! It actually reminded me of the memoir I'm listening to right now about a fundamentalist, polygamous Mormon village by a lady who escaped that extreme lifestyle.
I'm a sucker for any story that peeks in to such an extremely different world and it's particular values.
Hey! That's why I come here! Well, that and the fact that you amuse me to no end. ;)
Hi, Shan!
Hee hee. Thank you for enjoying the peek into scary cultdom. These guys aren't the Mormons, though I'm not entirely sure exactly what they are but there are tens of thousands of them when it comes round to their annual miracle cultathon. They are so nice and polite and well dressed but something about them (other than their pimp-like recruiting tactics) scares the willies out of me.
Church of Fornication? Does it require donning rubber gloves and an apron before (pardon the expresssion) entering? ;-)
Lucio, you made me spit out my tea...beep, beep.
Cali, I refuse to go close enough to find out.
Prudence: Hee hee.
what a great story, sugar! i could picture you there, so polite and such the gentleman.... xoxoxo
Oh, hee hee, Savannah! ME? A polite gentleman?
I love it!
xoxoxo
By the way, it is currently 6.00am here on a Saturday morning. Normally, I would be entering - and enjoying - my third glorious hour of sleep (I am an insomniac, and rarely nod off before 4.00am); only the girl down the hall has, for the past thirty minutes, been noisily enjoying a serving of the aforementioned "reverse celibacy". Not only that, for the last ten of those minutes, she has been seeking to camouflage the ruckus of her rutting by playing what I have come to believe is the only CD in her collection - if owning only the one CD can actually be classed as having a collection.
Now, I don't object to her screwing her little heart out, or doing so with all the vocal abandonment of a second-rate porn vixen. What I DO object to is her pointless assault on my musical sensibilities, which I have taken great care over the years to shelter from aural imbeciles like her. In fact, one more rotation of that vile CD and I will be over at her apartment doing with carefully chosen invectives what you, Prudence, have been doing with your tea - only with a great deal more pleasure!
Lucio: I sympathise greatly.
That's one of the blessings of living where I do; to hear anything other than the occasional birdsong I have to walk into the village.
To hear people rutting I would have to drive all the way in to the city and listen at windows (the village is full of old folk who need a complicated system of levers and pulleys to achieve their annual spring rut … and they do it to a soundtrack of Glen Miller or Nat King Cole).
In that case, I guess the simplest answer to my problem is for me to relocate to a retirement village, and to ensure that my new neighbours are never with a supply of (mechanical) lubricant.
I'd recommend what I did; hate everybody so much that I moved as far from the bastards as I possibly could (at least on this crowded little island).
The only sound here at the moment is Miles Davis on the turntable and the occasionaly slurp as I attack my wine.
G'night all …
Ah, it's stopped! All is quiet on the sonic front and I can finally return to the land of nod - where, before I was so rudely awakened, I was being serenaded by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Patti Smith, Beth Orton and Fiona Apple.
Sweet dreams to us all...
Good night gentlemen and I am glad I live out of ear shot! (wink, wink)
Oh, Dive...I SO wish you had lost your good manners with the woman and told her upfront that you would like to give her daughter a good lap and if she passes, well...then...hey, you might like to attend her church services. I wonder how far you could have pushed it...
I firmly believe that churches use sex to evangelize. I remember the day two young mormon boys wandered down my lane to my little house in the forest. It had to be 90 degrees, the boys had long sleeves. They were adorable. I offered them a drink of lemonade. I felt bad for them in a motherly kind of way. A friend later told me they only use the good looking boys to do missions in middle class neighborhoods. They are looking for desperate housewives to prey upon. I was one at the time!
Alan Bennett, Dive. Ahhh pure genius. Yes, I can hear him saying it. lol.
Lucio made me all moist [almost!] spit out my coffee too! You two, honestly, what superb repartee.
Now Dive, you remember my niece Amber don't you? All of 17 and gorgeous like her mother? They are christians dear, with a capital C. Didn't you know that little ladies like l'interference? I'm not suggesting that Amber has actually tried this yet but one can see that she is heading in that direction!
I loved this post. I'm a bit like that little old lady on the train, offering my niece instead of my daughter (who is rather pregnant and due to give birth next month btw).
I remember that train, many, years ago when I studied at UEA. How did the church burn down? Are they rebuilding it?
Mme Benaut: Yes, it's amazing what two windbaggy, middle-aged farts on opposite sides of the equator (and with possibly a little too much "free time"), can achieve when they put their minds to it!
I suspect that if we'd bumped into each other in a pub, rather than on the net, we'd probably have poured enough whiskey down our gullets to keep several Scottish distilleries in business until the end of the century. Which isn't to say that the distinguished firms of Glenfiddich and Chivas Regal don't owe me a favour or two!
"Ridi, Pagliaccio..."
Sorry I dropped in late. I had the 'M' yesterday. Thus I needed to go straight to bed, but not before saying my prayers :D
That must have been an awful hour or so! I remember when that church burned. Everyone rallied to get re-built asap.
See? Train rides can be quite interesting, to say the least!
Sheesh! You guys get busy when I go to bed.
Lucio: nice choices.
Prudence: Goodnight!
Maria: When surrounded by a dozen creepily grinning evngelical Christians my first thoughts were of self-preservation.
Neetzy: Round here they pair up sweet little old ladies and (how sick is this) disabled children when they come knocking.
If they used sex I might be a cult member by now.
Lynn: He has the perfect voice for gentle innuendo, does he not?
Mme: Lucio made you feel all moist? Hee hee hee. That one got me before I read the rest of the sentence.
I do indeed remember your lovely niece Amber. It's a shameful waste when pretty girls go Christian.
And congratulations to your daughter! Woohoo!
Hi there, Gutsywriter. Welcome.
They are not only rebuilding it, they are making it into a US style mega-church. Here's a scary link:
http://www.networknorwich.co.uk/
Publisher/Article.aspx?id=70771
If you want to wallow in memories click on my "Norwich" link (way down in my sidebar) and scroll and click your way back to the earliest ones. There are lots of photos of the nicest parts of the city that may spark a few reminiscences.
Lucio: welcome back again. How on earth do you find time to sleep?
I'm a Macallan or a Talisker man myself, but I'm sure that with a comprehensive enough comparative tasting we would come to some decision on which is nicer.
Hi, Joy. Bummer about the M. I hope it stays away for the weekend.
Train rides suck. Hee hee.
I should have read this yesterday—I'm sorry I missed it. I remember your telling it before, and it's as wonderful the second time around. hee hee hee hee
Talking of cute churchy girls …
OW!
Thank for making me laugh...
My pleasure, Rose.
That was such a funny story... it brought a smile to my face when I was feeling a bit edgy, so thank you...
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