ragon
THE
P RTAL
January 2018
Page 5
Smet Smet
Snapdragon seems to have gone mad
T hose of
us of an English turn of mind have always had a certain sympathy for
Cambridge, undeniably damp though it is. Less energetic than Oxford and rather more
earnest in its approach to study, it is the sort of place that would happily provide shelter to the
old and incontinent as their working life gently fizzles out in a blaze of inconsequentiality.
Wandering past the Copper Kettle last week on my way to Mass I was struck by the kindness
of one of the local tramps who was clearly on the best of terms with what I took to be a Big
Issue salesman standing his ground on the important issue of the price of his valueless paper.
It took a moment to grasp that the tramp was the Master of Magdalene, as dishevelled in
Cambridge as in Canterbury, and the Big Issue seller the well known avant garde theologian
and Dean of Peterhouse. All very appropriate and heartening in a dull, post Christian sort of
way: albeit not quite St Francis bumping into St Clare in down town Assisi.
Reviewing the year in a listless sort of way brought
on by a very disagreeable supper for the local hunt
servants, I was struck by the enormous amount of bile
floating about in what passes for the thinking world.
Why the President of the United States of America is
disliked so much is quite beyond me. Clearly the man
is an idiot but he has a charming wife, who is equally
clearly very level headed, and a very sensible cabinet,
some of which have been paying tax for years.
Our own political arrangements cause huge amounts
of unpleasantness and the situation in Australia, with
ludicrous breast beating about the dual nationality of
those lucky enough to be in the federal parliament, is
simply too upsetting for words. Thank goodness the
MCC is losing so sportingly at the moment and we
can all unite around a matter of real importance. In
Southern Africa thief number one has been replaced
by thief number two and the world rejoices. Here Mr
Trump sends a short message to the fellow occupants of
his care home and questions are tabled in Parliament.
Meanwhile Sanaa and Aden burn and all we can do is
sell a few more fighter bombers to the petrol salesmen.
Chesterton, sack the authors of unanswered questions
and wear decent red shoes. Presumably this is what
he has in mind whe n he muses aloud, in what passes
for thought, about not leading us into temptation.
Incidentally has anyone else been finding it difficult
to get the newly minted €500 notes out of the Vatican
Bank? Now that is one reform which really would be
useful.
And while he is about it, why not marry off the
hundreds of sexually predatory clerics cluttering up
the in trays of various social service departments
across the world and send them to the interior of Brazil
where there is a desperate shortages of priests? Tough
on crime, tough on the causes of crime and a bit tough
on their more youthful parishioners I suppose. Lead
us not into temptation… and how does the rest go?
Now that the great feast is on us, can I urge all our
faithful readers to sink back into a decent chair, put
their feet up on a passing child and revive the ancient
and laudable habit of reading aloud. The nice thing
about the old, at least one of whom we should all bring
in out of the cold for the annual bath and teeth clean,
Moving swiftly from one care home to another, is that they are deaf and lonely. It simply doesn’t matter
the news from the Church of England continues to what one reads, although my late dear father was a
provoke. As Christmas presents go, I imagine Her trifle malicious in insisting on intoning the tide tables
Majesty must have been as pleased as the whole of the for Lymington to one and all.
Diocese of London with the latest offering from the
The point is that everyone is involved, better
committee of bishop pickers. Given the new woman’s
previous vocational experience as a nurse, it bodes educated, moderately amused and given an excuse to
well for some really top quality care in the community. drink British sherry while those who read get on with
demolishing something more amusing. The children,
As an obedient daughter of the church, albeit one at least those too brutish to be allowed Puligny
old enough to have auditioned for Anna’s job all Montrachet, can be set to work roasting chestnuts on
those years ago, it seemed proper to restrict myself dangerously open fires.
to a brief overview of the year in Rome. Shockingly,
Happy New Year one and all.
the Holy Father continues to ignore calls to canonise