To verge - a grammar

Below we decline the verb 'to verge' as it is understood and practised in the cathedral, and provide a translation for the perplexed:

I verge = I wear a frock and carry a big stick
You (sing.) verge= Sometimes I let other people carry lesser sticks.
He/she/it verges= These days, the quality of vergers ain't what it used to be
We verge = But it's competitive, not collaborative.
You (pl.) verge = On big occasions, vergers hunt in packs
They verge - on the ridiculous.

The Verger!

How can we continue without mentioning the most important character in not just this Cathedral, but in any – the Dean’s Verger. Our Dean’s Verger, Robert McDougall, or Old Bert as he is usually referred, has been a verger for over forty years, although only at our Cathedral for eight. Appointed in a hurry to replace the former DV who had met with a unfortunate accident while trying to change a light bulb from the top of a precariously-balanced ladder atop the organ screen, Bert’s main qualifications were that he was available, and cheap. Rumour has it that he was only available due to being asked to leave his previous Cathedral, following being caught in the sacristy with some plant-life not considered entirely legal by the authorities. It was made worse by the fact that he was selling this to the bellringers, always a weird lot. However, these rumours could not be substantiated and he came with a glowing reference. This in itself was suspicious! Bert started life in the Royal Navy, having left home as soon as legally possible. Annoyed at there not being a current world war in which to fight, he undertook his service with determined enthusiasm. He was present at nuclear weapon testing in the Pacific in the 1950s although would have preferred to test these weapons nearer home, probably somewhere in the Rhine Valley. Upon discharge he got a job as verger at a small parish church in Yorkshire and worked his way up. Bert smokes like a train and is renowned for his dislike of the assistant organist with whom a constant battle is fought. On one occasion he spent many hours rearranging the chairs in the nave, interspersing newly-purchased plastic folding ones with the permanent wooden ones so that, when viewed from the organ loft, they spelled a somewhat rude instruction. This dislike of one organist is matched by an equal dislike of most of the other people in the Cathedral, except for the bellringers, with whom Bert has an odd affinity. It is hoped that Bert's retirement party will be held very soon.

Love and Peas

This from the magnificent Dave Walker. His cartoons are scissored out of the Church Times each week with a fervour bordering on the religious, and they are attached by nuns to the inside of the sacristy door. (It causes the Dean endless irritation that by the time the CT gets to him, there is a big hole in the middle. But as the Canon Theologian once said, "Life is like a Polo mint...")

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Dubious Religious Tat #2 Football Jesus

As the website catholicshopper.com declares without any apparent irony, "Handpainted resin statues on a solid wood base are the perfect gift for every young Catholic athlete. These statues portray Jesus actively participating with boys and girls in a variety of sports. A wonderful way to reinforce Jesus "as friend" in everyday activities. Sizes vary from 4 3/4 to 6 1/2 inches."

We are simply grateful that we Anglicans are happier to consider Jesus less as a friend, and more as a tame tax-accountant - efficient, helpful, on-the-christmas-card-list, but not someone you'd necessarily want to invite to dinner. Or encase in resin and put on your mantlepiece.

En Vacances

Harriet Goose, the Cathedral's Deputy-Under-Sub Publications Editor (With Special Responsibility for Web Design, Print Media and All the Important Things) has been spotted by one of the retired wing-commanders who frequent the Cathedral. She has been en vacances in bracing Bridlington, and was seen walking along the Front with her parents, with all parties dressed in matching orange cagoules, with hoods up, and the little nylon threads tied in bows under their chins. Which would be touching if she hadn't hinted that she was going to St Tropez, and implied that she would be accompanied by one of the loucher (and rather sexually ambiguous) Lay Clerks, who bears an unfortunate resemblance to Jeffrey Archer but with floppy public-schoolboy hair.

Perhaps she and her parents belong to a cult, whisper some fo the concerned voices in the Cathedral. Might it be time to inform the Sub-Dean who may engage in acts of muscular prayer and deliverance?
Watch this space.

The knowledge ...

As he who knows where all the bodies are buried, I feel the time has come to have some input here, just in case there are those reading this who feel this blog may be an entire work of fiction! Mind you, burying anything at all in or around this Cathedral is problematic. In some areas the somewhat unstable medieval foundations make any excavations a health and safety nightmare, and in others the presence of water necessitates the use of scuba gear! In fact, in the graveyard is so full of flowing water that the headstones no longer bear any relevance to what lies beneath – a bit embarrassing when we need to open a grave to bury someone in a double plot and someone else has moved in!

But anyway, I digress … [more to come]

Dubious Religious Tat #1 - Pope on a Rope Soap

The Cast Part Three - nuns and random others

The Sacristans - Sister Mary (Specific) and Sister Basil
Sister Mary is one of 5 sisters named Mary at her convent. She is the youngest, but people have avoided referring to her as Sister Mary the Youngest because of all the hassle with Pitt the Elder, Pitt the Younger, Pitt the Middle etc which still causes ripples several hundred years later. She has threatened to revert to her birth name, Muriel, if she is ever mistaken again for one of the other Sister Marys - Sr Mary (Regular) and Sr Mary (Irregular) - both named for their bowel issues; Sr Mary (Particular) named for her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Sr Mary (Unspecific) who suffers from dementia and is usually living in 1941.

Sisiter Basil is not named after one of the great doctors of the church, like Basil of Caesearea or Basil the Great, but after her hometown of Basildon is Essex, because it is easy to remember. Her upper body is entirely covered in tattoos, and in a previous life she was a boy racer. She enjoys alco-pops, but has to throw the bottles out of her window on the third floor of the convent rather than be discovered putting them out with the rubbish. So far she has caused several thousand pounds worth of criminal damage to the luxury car showroom over the wall.

The Cast part Two - Laity (2)

Development and Marketing Manager - Brent Clipper
Brent is alternately blessed and cursed with the gift of being much to cool for the cathedral. His marketing strategy involves glossy brochures with artistically out-of-focus shots of gargoyles and melacholy choirboys lurking under black umbrellas. This causes endless confusion among the retired wing-commanders and elderly flower-ladies who make up the regular congregation - who are already naturally suspicious becuase he is Austalian. Brent's shirts are handmade in a small Italian village from cotton grown only on the north facing slopes of a local mountain range, harvested while the Hail Mary is recited, and dyed using only the organic products of the sheep-farming industry. Despite this, they are quite nice shirts. In his alternative life, he is a renegade urban graffiti artist whose tag is "Clip".

Deputy Publications Under-Manager - Harriet Goose
Most of Harriet's time and energy is expended in trying to persuade her colleagues that she has a life, and the rest of the world that she has a really important job. A 30-year old virgin, she lives with her parents and nurses a secret passion for crocheting, and a not-very-well-hidden passion for Frank Stanford. She steams open her colleagues' mail and exercises all her ingenuity to hack into the server and read their emails. As web manager, she has slowly been changing her job title to make it sound more impressive - if she keeps this up, she will be calling herself Dean by Christmas. In an attempt to amke Frank jealous, she has recently been flirting with teenage choristers and with Johnny the organist. Sadly, this is failing miserably so far.

Director of Music - Edmund Venables
A brilliant and irascible musican, Edmund strikes fear into the hearts of the choristers with The Look - a stern combination of furrowed brow and piercing eyes which could freeze cheese. In his spare time he retreats into a hermitage he had built on his wife's family estate and composes incomprehenisble atonal music which receives rave reviews worldwide.

Our committment to cheese

The Cathedral is very committed to cheese. Select quantities of impressive cheeses are fed to worshippers at regular intervals; the Director of music survives entirely on Bach and brie; the Administrator has been poisoned when a jealous lover spiked his morning coffee with a feral Stilton.

The link below is an entirely spurious personality test based on cheese preferences. God help you if you come out as Colby.

http://www.quibblo.com/quiz/2OBTrG/What-kind-of-cheese-are-you

What the Administrator's desk is like

Cartoon by Dave Walker.

What running a cathedral is like

Cartoon by Dave Walker.

The Cast Part Two- Laity (1)

The Administrator - Frank Stanford
Frank is the cathedral's most eligible bachelor - or at least the only one with a full set of teeth and a disinclination to wear frocks. In his early forties, he is a landowner with a taste for good wine, adventurous travel and vintage sports cars. He is often accompanied by his two large labradors, Boanerges and Rex, who function as body guards when he is being pursued by any of the army of slightly unstable women who harbour dubious marital fantasies about him ( and Boanerges and Rex). He has worked in the Cathedral in various capacities since his 20s. Much to the Dean's discomfort, he knows where ALL the bodies are buried.

The Dean's PA - Sylvie Johns
Sylvie is by far the most qualified of all the Cathedral staff, and she had a highly successful career as a landscape architect before inexpicably giving it all up to do the Dean's dirty work instead. If Frank holds the institutional memory, Sylvie holds the confidences of the staff and can make a savvy guess at any point about who is doing what to whom and why. She is widely regarded as a more important pastoral presence than all the clergy combined, but there are some who see her as a dangerous power behind the throne.

Cathedral Dogsbody - Albert Shuttcock
In his early twenties, Al is the only member of the Cathedral staff to have a full, rampant and entirely ungrey head of hair, and also one of the few to have a full, rampant and entirely uninvented sex life. (Probably) A technical genius, it is Al who can change the lighting from 'Restrained Evensong" to "Funky Disco" setting on a whim when he wants to punish the Precentor for a particularly tedious sermon. He periodically plugs himself in to the Cathedral server and achieves a kind of Nirvana, which can disrupt the sending of emails for others. He often forgets to eat, and his desk is strewn with lunchboxes growing small and crunchy new civilisations. If it happens at the Cathedral, Al will probably have set it up, plugged it in, downloaded it illegally or duct-taped it down. Nuns love him.

The Cast Part One - Clergy

A brief guide to the figures who will make themselves known in these posts in the coming weeks and months.

The Dean: Very Revd Oliver Snell
Oliver came late to the priesthood after a dazzling career in Public Relations, from which he has never fully recovered. Blessed with a certain double-jointed ability to wriggle out of trouble, he courts the media wherever possible. His mission is to chair a Quango. It is widely beleived that he bought his degree, a moderate Second in Land Management from Cambridge. He pays a great deal for his haircuts.

The Sub-Dean : The Revd Canon Winifred Box
Win was a Commonwealth javelin thrower before she was converted at a beach mission and gave it all up for Jesus. She sees her role as the sergeant-major of the Cathedral Close, holding back the waters of chaos with Canute-like persistence and about equal success. Her boyfriend gives everyone cause for hope - he is a tattooed former Buddhist monk who breaks horses for a living.

The Precentor: Canon Bob Swallow ( and his wife Bea)
Bob recently retired after a lifetime's work translating Suppuration and Stringing Nettles, the autobigraphy of the 9th Century East Anglian Saint Osfrith, who lived in a cowshed and was tragically stung to death by bees. His other passions are enumerating precisely the semicolons in the Church of England Ordinal. His wife, the very-appropriately-named Bea, is an expert on the Dewey Decimal system. Surprisingly, they have several children.

The Canon Pastor: Canon Edie Hurdlecroft
Edie was a Scottish presbyterian by birth, and is still slightly perplexed by the liturgy and apt to stand for long periods smiling vaguely into space. She is widely believed to love all living things, and often tries to pat them, which has worked well with children, but has proved problematic with crocodiles, and the Administrator's labradors.

The Canon Theologian: Ven. Canon Dr Pamela Holford-Crivvens.
Although relatively young in priest years, Pamela is often confused by the nature of reality, though it has got easier since she started to label her own possessions, particularly her shoes. She is largely peripatetic, since she cannot easily find her office. Often she is to be found writing sermons under trees, or editing articles while sharing a park bench with derelicts. She has an irrational fear of librarians, and otters.

Quote

After Earth Hour, when all the streetlights had been turned off.
The Administrator:
"Some thieving git has made off with our downpipes!"

Quote

Good Friday
The Director of Music, to a chorister:
"Stop scratching, vile child! This is the most solemn day of the Church's year."

Where was Moses when the lights went out?

Earth Hour: As the lights went out all over the city, and Albert, the Cathedral Dogsbody flipped the trip switch and plunged the Cathedral into darkness, curses were heard from the cupboard, where the Frank Stanford the Administrator was furtling to avoid the unwanted attentions of Bridget the bellringer. She was one of his numerous wannabe wives, a fact he attributed to to the indefinable glamour which came from working in an office which contained two thirds of a gothic window.

The Canon Theologian had stolen someone else's desk, not being able to find her own in the gloom, and was adapting a sermon for the local public school. It had all gone a little peculiar after the opening lines, and she was now pursuing a strange line of reasoning in which the atonement was likened to a flock of geese pursuing the Prime Minister. Across permafrost. It gave her a brief pause for contemplation, but then she shrugged. The Sundays after Easter were all a little temperamental, as were the geese.