The Father of Teeth

Text for today: II Caries cxvii-cxxxix

At a considerably earlier date, therefore, the Father of Teeth spent a gap year as a minor village deity, scaring off those spiritual enemies which were most conveniently dispatched by virtue of their nonexistence. It was only when a swarm of locusts descended, and devoured not only the year's entire crop but the sacrifices around the fertility totem at the centre of the village, that certain doubters began to call the arrangement into question.

Prominent among these was the fertility god's high priest, a venerable gentleman whose pious sensibilities were so deeply shocked by the vanishing of the sacrificial meat and cakes that his stomach had not stopped growling for three days after the débâcle. While his parishioners cowered at their hearths and did obeisance to the fertility god by breeding more mouths for the non-existent crop to feed, the high priest tottered indignantly to the residence of the Father of Teeth in order to demand an explanation, an expiation or, failing both, a compensatory lunch.

He found the Father of Teeth at home, squatting in horrid complaisance before the fire, on which rested a hissing cauldron full of locust parts.
"Knave," fulminated the high priest, "knowest thou not that the gods are displeased and that we languish and starve through thine exceeding negligence? Why squattest thou thus idly in thine indigent indigence and slothly slothfulness, while thy chosen people face a hungry demise amid a most demising hunger? And why didst thou not perform thy divine duty of protecting thy chosen village from these pestilential arthropods?"
"The locusts are no concern of mine," said the Father of Teeth; "there is a reason for everything, or very nearly, and certainly there is a reason for the fact that nobody calls me Father of Mandibles."
"It was thy sworn and contracted purpose," reprimanded the high priest, "to protect our village and all its gods, against all perils and dangers that might threaten us with the threatening of their threatening."
The Father of Teeth snatched a locust from the air, bit off its legs with six cracks and half a dozen crunches, and tossed it in the cauldron. "The locusts, whatever one may say of their table manners, have not burned your houses to the ground," he said. "Your village is still standing and the fertility god is as rampant as ever."
"But what of thy chosen people?" demanded the high priest. "Deprived of their worship and propitiation, the gods will grow angry and the entire world may be imperilled with peril by the wrath of their wrath. Wilt thou take that upon thy carnassial conscience, even in the squatting of thy squatting and the impudence of thine impudence?"

So the Father of Teeth seized the high priest and bit through his Achilles tendons with a snap and a twang, and hung him head down over the fire until he was considerably kippered and even more morally indignant. "The wrath of the gods is harder to arouse than is generally thought," the Father of Teeth reasssured him. "There are many in the world who eat their gods, and who believe that a change of diet is enough to warrant divine punishment; but happy are those who can adapt their appetites to the whims of fate."

The shrieks brought the villagers from their houses to the house of the Father of Teeth, where he served them nauseating rations of locust pulp which kept them alive until next planting season. By the time the crops began to sprout again, the locusts were practically domesticated and would not touch a vegetarian diet. Meanwhile the villagers revered them as protectors of the fields, devastators of enemy mealtimes, and punishers of absconding high priests; for theirs was never seen again.

We Sovereignly Bask in our Plucky Little Shrewdness

We are all aware, because the censored and silenced protectors of our sacred slave-holding statuary never tire of reminding us, that the process of regaining British independence from the beastly Euro-wogs was the titanic result of an unsinkable will of the people, motivated entirely by an enlightening and efficientising concern with cutting red tape and preventing free movement of the lesser breeds. By one of those strangely benignant turns of fate, of that divinely mysterious variety whereby the beneficiaries of government contracts frequently turn out to be chums of the relevant ministers, the timing of the revolution has enabled Global Britain to avoid the latest self-inflicted torpedo to rock the foundering Graf Spee that is the Brusso-Strasbourgian empire. Ever attuned to the latest trends and always ahead of the games of lesser breeds, the great British public's will to leave the Nazi-Soviet stranglehold coincides more or less exactly with the Trumpian will of corporate tax-dodgers not to vulgarise their fiscal affairs by exposing their nakedness before the prying, prurient eyes of unelected bureaucrats. Once properly acclimatised to the sunny uplands, no doubt the gratitude of British business will be palpable.

Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

We heare much loud and traytorous Complayning, that Her Majesty's Government doth prize the Lives of its fiſcal Inferiors according to the Seniority of their Age, rather than by whether each Subject of the Realm be a School-maſter or a Governeſs. Alack, that the Day ſhould have dawned, when the Stoick Britiſhneſs of our Britiſhneſs would be ſullied by Sentiments of ſuch unpatriotick Puſillanimity! For it ſhould be cleare even unto the Underſtanding of the ſimpleſt Chylde, ſuch as the ſeventeen pin-headed Daughters of my Lord Splyce-Chyldebryde, that we muſt preſerve the Bleſsings of long accumulated Experience and Tradition, above all groſs materialiſtick Conſiderations of mere commercial Competence at procuring a Wage. I will wager, that there is to be found within the entyre Realm, ſcarecely a Governeſs who hath led a Troop of Horſe into Battel againſt the beaſtlie French; yet were one to take a Survey or Cenſus of the Quantity of purple-viſaged jowl-quivering Martyrs to the Gout which have achieved the ſame, there would be ſuch a Sufficiency of Sword-arms, as to reſtore forthwith to our American Colonies and all their uppity Niggers the ſweet uncompromiſing Truncheon of Statue-reſurrecting Amity.

Mere Materialism

We are well aware, because the censored and silenced victims of woke cancellism never tire of telling us, that the British Empire was a force for good. Hence it will come as no surprise that the former British colony of Nyasaland, which we ran for sixty years and whose simply adorable commie-bashing dictator we simply adored for twenty more, is now among the poorest and least developed countries in the world, where even the abortionists have to find cheap substitutes for the virtuous Christian coathanger. Accordingly, a powerful god-bothering lobby is doing its best to prevent the passage of a liberalising abortion bill which would advance law and justice in the republic of Malawi to a point slightly ahead of the republic of Poland. Since the bill is concerned merely with such gross worldly concerns as saving women's lives, Christians and Muslims have joined their spiritual forces to protect their nasty little god from any usurpation of His murderous prerogatives.

Caudillo Kaput

Even as the mainland battles to protect its history from re-writing and its heritage from de-whiting, culture warriors among the beastly Euro-wogs persist in their genocidal war on statuary. Though lacking the pluck and gumption inherent in the slave trade, General Franco's memory has hitherto been held sacred because of his no-nonsense attitude towards Arabs and leftists. However, the Nazi-Soviet régime in Brusso-Strasbourg has forced present-day Spain into a hideous orgy of inquisitorial iconoclasm. In a particularly tactless touch, the successful terrorist's last remaining public monument was vandalised on the fortieth anniversary of the Tejerazo, when a group of patriots attempted to reinstate the moderate and sensible British values of parliamentary prorogation and reasonable military precautions against Communism.

Pessimism of the Will

Since Her Majesty's Government has no particular interest in mitigating the climate emergency, the chief executive of the Environment Agency has had a bit of a chat with the Association of British Insurers instead. He repeated the part which motivated the recent flurry to set up a sort of Conservative conference rah-rah thingy in London, namely that climate change causes refugees; and he added a good deal more bad news to which the Association of British Insurers will doubtless respond by covering themselves as public-spiritedly as possible. Perhaps most notable among the dire tidings was the assertion that the best we can hope for is that Her Majesty's Government and the great British public put the same effort into tackling climate change as they have into bringing about our world-beating casualty figures during the pandemic.

Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

With the Queenes own Royal Conſort now languiſhing upon his Bed of Sickneſs, and doubtleſs diſplaying his Efficiency of Britiſhneſs by utiliſing a Quantity of Reſources apppropriate to ſeverall Dozens of leſser Breeding, our noble Prime Miniſter hath taken upon himſelf the heavy Taske of rayſing the National Spirit, with a ſolemn Pledge that nexte Summer will be another new Dawn of national Greatneſs, with an Ox in every Cooking-pot and that only an expendable Few ſhall periſh of it. All dutifull Optimiſts and induſtrious Patriots will be in Hopes, that the Woo Han Peſtilence may prove obliging to ſuch a Degree, as to reſpect the viſionary and uncompromiſed Time-table ſet forth by our dear Leader, and that the vulgar Facts may ſufficiently collect themſelves, as to bear out his ſtateſmanlike Wordes. For the Iſsue remains in ſome Doubt, whether our imperiſhable and invincible Realm can endure another Summer of reduced Revenue from the expendable Claſses, without ſuffering entire Collapſe and falling forever into the horrid Amphibian-ſtained Gripe of the beaſtlie French. Already the Heathen Plague hath reſulted in the moſt bloody and calamitous Conſequences, for our vital Chriſtian Markets in Slaves and Guſsets. Should all proceed according to Plan, the permitted Foregathering of Families will at the leaſt enſure the Renewal of Hopefulneſs for future Inheritances, which hath been ſore tried by the chronick Inacapacity of many Heirs, in making their affectionate Preſence known at the Bed-ſides of departing Elders.

Bad Theology

Text for today: II Chronicles 26 iii-xxi

Ascending the throne in Jerusalem at the age of sixteen, King Uzziah does what is right in the eyes of God and enjoys a long and prosperous reign. He massacres various lesser breeds, exacts tribute from the Ammonites, and builds settlements for the master race in the territory of the Philistines according to the eternal real-estate plan. After fifty-two years of basking in God's favour, Uzziah enters the temple to burn incense on the altar, and meets resistance from a phalanx of eighty-one priests whose leader lectures the irritated king on the merits of division of labour. When Uzziah becomes angry with the priests, God afflicts him with leprosy, and he ends his days an invalid and a pariah.

The career of King Uzziah was doubtless known to the Saviour, and may well have been prominent in His thinking as He evolved His new covenant of arbitrary reward and apocalyptic punishment. Just as a person can sin for a lifetime and be saved at the divine whim through a single act of repentance, so a person may be virtuous for half a century and suffer calamitous punishment because of a single transgression. Particularly relevant to Jesus' doctrine of thoughtcrime would have been the chronicler's assertion that Uzziah is afflicted not when he enters the sanctuary, but when he becomes angry with the priests. In other words, God punishes him not for committing unlawful actions, but for experiencing an unlawful emotion.

Let's Have Our Coke and Eat it Too

Even though the silly blond mascot of the Stratton-Symonds administration is pledged upon his word of British honour to lead a green industrial revolution, certain bigots of a scientific bent remain unhelpfully sceptical. At least one professor, whose copy-book is already badly blotted thanks to his collaboration with those interfering foreigners at the UN, has made one of those gaffes so characteristic of the merely expert by not getting behind the Government's plans to revitalise the coal industry. Doubtless motivated by nostalgia for the good old days of sitting-room fireplaces, pit-ponies and choke-damp, the Conservatives have authorised a new fossil fuel calamity in Cumbria, and the relevant minister, Robert Jenrick, has not overruled the local authority because the relevant porn baron, Richard Desmond, has not told him to. In addition, forty expenses claimants wrote to the leader of Cumbria council claiming a sudden attack of concern for jobs in the north of England: an issue which usually worries Conservative expenses claimants about as much as the climate crisis does. Yet in the very teeth of all these reasons for rah-rah, scientists persist in their unpatriotic reliance on facts and their hopelessly literal interpretation of reality as being somehow synonymous with what actually happens.

Rush to Judgement

Tobacco's virtues, he would say,
Are greatly under-rated:
He told the truth once in a way,
For now he's choked and crated.

The breath that bellowed from his lungs
Blew forth forever meaner;
The tomb is quiet, so his tongue's
Stopped up with dirt that's cleaner.

His sermons lulled with rant and rave,
That bludgeoned thought to coma;
Come dance a little on his grave
And cheer his carcinoma.

Anna Murcan

Clanger in the Cathedral

Moved by the usual gross materialistic concerns, a multitude some six times more numerous than the beneficiaries of the old bread-and-fish trick has petitioned the Heavenly Father's gate-keepers at Burgos Cathedral, who have spent over a million euros on three lumbering lumps of kitsch metalwork. The bronze portals depict the Father, His child-bride and His nasty little offspring blandly enough, although the Son might appear in uncharitable eyes to be wandering beneath the monster from The Quatermass Experiment without having switched on his light-sabre. Since the monster from The Quatermass Experiment was electrocuted in Westminster Abbey, this touch of historical accuracy will doubtless prove pleasing to the faithful. Beyond their crimes against taste, the cathedral authorities have been criticised for spending so much on expensive art-work when there are people going hungry in the city and no central heating in the building. The response was that no public money had been used: surely the church, like the rich man in the parable, can do as it likes with its own regardless of the welfare of others. Similarly, the freezing of the old folk in their pews merely means that they will attain their spiritual reward all the sooner, while the Church humbly condescends to dispose of whatever legacies may follow.

Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

It is ſayed by certain Perſons of a Diſpoſition which I ſuſpect to be merely ſcientifick, that the Woo Han Peſtilence hath cunningly concentrated the worſt of its horrid Work upon the Pooreſt and moſt needy among the Populace, and this in deſpite of that ſuperior moral Healthineſs, which naturally reſults from having no diſpoſable Income to waſte upon Drink and Tattooings, and all thoſe leſs mentionable Vices, which are the unavoidable Proclivity of the expendable Claſses. It appeareth further, that the chronick Crowding of Hovels and conſequent Concentration of miasmatick Poyſons in the domeſtick Atmoſphere of thoſe not yet confined to the Debtor's Priſon, hath ſomehow failed to arreſt to any ſatisfactory Degree, the Progreſsion of this moſt ſubtil Oriental Plague. It is to be hoped, that Her Majeſty's Government will be moved to adopt a ſtrong and unſentimental Attitude of Charity towards theſe inſalubrious Unfortunates, enſuring their moral Progreſsion by further curtailing their Opportunities for Spaffage of their poor fiſcal Subſtance, purging them of the Sin of Pride which goeth with a Penchant for Boddily Cleanlineſs, and encouraging them wherever poſsible, to relieve the deplorable Overcrowding of their Reſidences by diſcharging all unneceſsary Servants.

In the Proper Spirit

Mountain rescuers whose colleague suffered a fall while aiding a couple of libertarians in the Lake District have shown a certain lack of rah-rah in their response to subsequent events. Their friend broke his face and spine and is unlikely to walk again; by contrast, the plucky little chap whom he helped to save has made a rapid recovery from the gumption-resistant complaint which prompted the campers' breach of self-reliance. This champion of individual freedom has responded to media queries in the best tradition of Johnsonian free speech, by doubling down on the self-righteousness after the fashion of that great statesman, Dominic Cummings. Nevertheless, those who carried out the rescue remain puzzled, thanks no doubt to their unprofitable Stalinistic bias towards actions which are collective without being McCarthyite.

An Interbritannic Tunnel, Hurrah

Adults and other pessimists have derided the latest wizard wheeze for ensuring frictionlessness of Britishness between the island of Great Britain and the English colony of Northern Ireland. Since the idea of digging a hole beneath the Irish Sea was concocted by an industry rah-and-blah club rather than by the National Haystack himself, even members of the Parliamentary Brexit Party felt safe in having a pop at it; meanwhile, the director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium demonstrated almost Euro-wog levels of disloyalty by implying that a bit of cold water spiced with sarin and mustard gas might possibly prove a match for the pluck and gumption of Global Britain. The one critic who refrained from pouring scorn, and who confined himself to observing that economic and constitutional frictionlessnesses are more important than physical ones, was a member of the Democratic Unionist Party; which touchingly illuminates the whole concept in all its general sanity.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: Premolars cli-clxix

In the hurry of my late middle age, however, said the Father of Teeth romantically, I found that I had prematurely penetrated a large, well-appointed study with a most romantic view of a large, well-appointed garden and of the sun setting behind a high wall with romantic broken glass on top. The study was luxuriously carpeted and uninhibitedly wallpapered in lilac and clinging rosebud, and the copious bookshelves were intimately packed with hundreds of slender yet voluptuous volumes by authors such as Cassandra Wilde, Brittany Playfair, Glenda Lissome and Rosalind Smoothbore. Placed to best advantage near the window was a large, well-made desk at which a large woman romantically laboured and grunted. Encased with horrifying instability in a virginal smock of washing-powder white, her bulging and heaving back was towards me, said the Father of Teeth, and so despite my hurry I strode across the study, past rows of titles by Fallopia Hartbyrne and Courtney Windbrake and Porphyria Storm, and started reading over the woman's shuddering shoulder. But no sooner had I encountered the seventh solecism of the seventh line, said the Father of Teeth, than a side-door slid open like a willing orifice among the sweltering shelves and a thin, dried-up female emerged, wearing thick spectacles and a shapeless cardigan mottled in shades of passionate purulence. With a gaze of devoted adoration at the besmocked one, who did not so much as quiver a powdered jowl in acknowledgement, the newcomer lifted from the desk a pile of some several hundred sheets of paper, each bearing as best it could a dozen single-sentence paragraphs of single-clause almost-sentences in flawless copperplate penmanship; and then she scuttled back whence she had come, without even sparing a glance at my humble and hurried self and my fourteenth least romantic grin. For in settings such as this and with company such as these, said the Father of Teeth incidentally, I sometimes find it convenient to make myself not so much invisible as implausible, which is just as effective as invisibility and considerably more convenient when it comes to not being trodden on. So the besmocked one continued to bulge and grunt without pause, scratching with a rampant gold-plated fountain pen from which the rays of the setting sun recoiled in roseate embarrassment; and such was my depth of feeling, said the Father of Teeth romantically, and such my sense of sentiment and respect for the pathetic fallacy, that I seriously considered transforming into a blood-clot and chomping a quick cerebrovascular incident into the woman's area of Broca. But I resisted that temptation, said the Father of Teeth, for not only would such a course of action terminate dozens if not hundreds of careers, even unto those of Virginia Mount, Dolly Ryder, Ganymedette deGlanders and Lizzie Eatwell, but the lady and her willing slave had, after all, dedicated their lives to the world's holiest profession, namely the palliative treatment of a passing if traumatic hormonal disorder through the sanctifying medium of holy commerce; and that had to count for something. Besides, said the Father of Teeth romantically, and as I may have mentioned before, I was in something of a hurry.

Lost Buttons

Video footage of the Martyrs of the Trumpster Epiphany shows that they came within thirty metres of the vice-Trumpster and his nucular toybox. In theory, the vice-president is only allowed to perpetrate a worldwide holocaust if the president is dead or incapacitated, so gaining access to the codes would probably not have enabled the Martyrs to bring the end of civilisation much closer than Team Trumpster have already brought it with their can-do attitude towards the climate catastrophe. Even were a nucular misapplication to occur, it is arguable that a goodly portion of the master race could be lulled away from panic with propaganda of the Edward Teller variety. Nevertheless, it would indubitably be inconvenient for foreign powers to learn what contingencies are in place for when a live and capacitous chief executive, even if not fluorescent tangerine in shade or existing in co-dependent symbiosis with a hydrophobic head-tribble, happens also to be a grinning vegetable as during most of the 1980s, or a strategically shaven chimpanzee as during the first eight years of the present century.

Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

Our noble Prime Miniſter is pledged upon his Honour, to make a cartographick Proclamation within the next ten Days, wherein that ſtraight and narrow Road will be mapped, which will bring our great Nation through the dark Foreſt of monſtruous Inconvenience, to the bright Sunſhine of finall glorious Reckoning with the Woo Han Peſtilence and its Allies among the beaſtlie French, beſides thoſe foul domeſtick Traytors who have greatly increaſed the national Agonies with their perſiſtent horrid Threats towards our Statuary. It is rumoured, that the Woo Han Peſtilence hath been ſcheduled by the great Man, to ſuccumb to our Britiſhneſs during the early Part of March, wherein the generall Reſuming of infant Labour is now contemplated; and ſhould Matters prove ſo fortunate, that Caſualties among the Children then remain within moderate and acceptable Limits, we may expect by about the middle of Spring-time a near complete Return to our accuſtomed Life of dining-out. foreign Holidays and rigorous Recruitment of Body-ſervants. It hath been proclaimed alſo, in ſcrupulous Accord with my own ſuggeſted Policy in ſundry Items of comprehenſive though as yet unanſwered Correſpondence, that the Surgeons and their Accomplices ſhall be properly ſhook up, which all reaſonable Perſons will agree is a moſt proper and reaſonable Reſponſe to their perſiſtent Pedantries and Divergences from all that is patriotick and beating of the Worl, though it remaineth as yet unclear preciſely how many Nurſes and Apothecaries will actually be hanged, flogged or placed in the Pillory.

They're Coming For Your Statues

As every schoolchild worthy of their Britishness knows, this December will mark the centenary of the treaty whereby Winston Boris de Pfeffel Churchill, with a wave of his hand and some help from the Black and Tans, ensured that the Orangemen of Ulster could in perpetuity keep the British monarch's head on their stamps. Naturally this arrangement involved certain sacrifices, not least of which was the creation of the Irish Free State and subsequently the beastly Nazi-neutral Euro-wog Republic. The perils of such plucky but misplaced diplomacy have been graphically illustrated in a malevolent diatribe by the ungrateful colony's president. His role is largely ceremonial, much like the role of Parliament in relation to Rupert Murdoch; but he is nevertheless a leftist, a poet and a former lecturer in sociology and therefore the exact antithesis of any mainstream British politician. Even more dangerously, he appears capable of communicating in sentences rather than rah-rah, and has gratuitously urged his cult followers not to engage in nationalistic stereotyping, thereby placing a nuclear nail-bomb beneath the royal coach of British politics.

False Hope

Now that the master race has attained its glorious liberty from the Nazi-Soviet bureaucracy of the beastly Euro-wogs, it is natural that plucky little ministers should seek to impose East German levels of punishment for not having the right papers. Nevertheless, vexatious pessimists and enemies of the people are waving their subversive jackboots in yet another attempt to darken the sunlit uplands with melanin-rich clouds of treacherous unpatriotism. Amid the usual woke-lefty militancy about liberty and debate, the chair of the Law Society's criminal law committee even went so far as to imply that the powers and prerogatives of the Gove-Symonds administration are not yet equivalent to those of Henry VIII. More pragmatically, the chair of the 1922 Committee for Imperial Alter Kämpfer raged impotently at the blond beast's penal inadequacy, protesting that it demeans Her Majesty's Government to suggest locking up teenagers for ten years while so much of the country still does not consist of prisons.

A Saving Constitution

God save rapacious Queen
And keep her wealth obscene
Duly unseen!
Lord, who her realm defend,
Bless her with dividend,
And on the rabble spend
Nary a bean!

God rot those awful bores
With their financial laws:
Those ghastly Reds!
Vexing legalities,
Mere technicalities,
Halt with fatalities:
Off with their heads!

With all due fealty
Let all our forelocks be
Properly tugged!
Patriots, pluckily
Smug in your liberty,
Now rest content to be
Royally mugged!

John Bullion

Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

It is ſayed among the honourable Members of the Free Maſqueleſs League of Claſsical Moderationers, that the Quantity of Deaths from the Woo Han Peſtilence hath in theſe paſt Weekes been much reduced. Of great Concern and Moment at the Meeting was the urgent Neceſsity of aſcertaining, whether the Quantity of Demiſement among the Populace hath been matched by a correſponding Decline of Quality. For as my Lord Swygffyne-Whtyewyne poynted out, between thoſe Attacks of the effluvial Flux which produce ſo pungent an Effect upon the Cadences of his manly Rhetorick, it would be a moſt inexcuſable Act of Remiſsneſs upon the Part of Her Majeſty's Government, ſhould it happen that our great Nation ſuffered its People, in the Hour of their Triumph over the fiendiſh Inſidiouſneſs of the Oriental Diſtemper, to ſubject the final Agony of their glorious victorious Throes to a mean ſubſtandard Inferiority. It was juſtly agreed at laſt, among alll who retained the requiſite Quorum of cerebral Conſciouſneſs, that the Realm muſt be induced to return incontinently to its Buſineſs, leſt we fall behind the beaſtlie French in that great Competition of the Races, in which the entrepreneurial Britiſhneſs of our invincibly ſuperior Engliſhneſs is the ſole Bulwark ſtanding to ſhelter us againſt the utter and entire Annihilation of the horrendouſly endangered Engliſhneſs of our pluckily patriotick, plain-ſpoken Britiſhneſs through the promiſcuous Perfidiouſneſs of traytorous Foreignneſs. It is to be hoped, that Her Majeſty's Government will heed the Call from theſe its moſt prominent and principled Well-wiſhers, and make haſte to reſpond in Language of equivalent Plainneſs and Beauty of Diction.

Bad Theology

Text for today: Titus 3 ix

A forger writing in the guise of Paul the Apostle sends instructions to his subordinate in Crete. As befits one secure in the truth, the forger proclaims his own honesty and the deceitfulness of non-Christians at every opportunity. He orders his dupe not to argue over genealogies or the law, and he also does not miss the chance to slip in some racial slurs; inevitably against the evil conspiracy of the circumcised, but also against the Cretans, who are paradoxically denounced as beastly gluttonous liars even by their own prophets.

Much concerned with spreading his own doctrine (to the extent of "stopping the mouths" of the Jews, doubtless by the usual peaceful means), the forger indicates his agreement with Matthew 5 xvi, where the Saviour exhorts His disciples to publicise their own good works. However, the forger is careful to emphasise that such works are to be undertaken purely for the purpose of worldly politics and make no difference to God: souls are saved only at the eternal whim of the Father, who chose the elect and damned the rest before the beginning of time, according to His inexorable will.

This perspective indicates how the forger can so casually shrug off the importance of genealogies and the law. In dismissing such matters as unimportant, he fortifies his doctrine against accusations of novelty (a highly suspicious attribute in the ancient world) and illegality, at the evidently trivial cost of dismissing Matthew 1 i-xvii, Matthew 3 xvii, Mark 1 xi, Luke 1 xxxii and John 1 xxxii, all of which attest to the Saviour's genealogical or adoptive (viz. legalistic) godly credentials. Only the most self-complacent sense of his own entitlement can explain the forger's calm effrontery in implying that all four evangelists commenced their gospels with what is unprofitable, worthless and foolish.

Transports of Treachery

Citizens of nowhere and Remoanertard extremists are seeking to cloud the sunlit uplands of Global Britain with their whines and whinges about exports to, if you please, the ever-collapsing Nazi-Soviet empire of the beastly Euro-wogs. The chair of the Road Haulage Association, the chief executive of the British Ports Association and the chief executive of the Cold Chain Federation (the association for handlers of frozen and chilled foods, not the official Conservative Party sex link-up) have all conspired to agree that, thanks to the coincidence of independence, the pandemic and the all-encompassing Britishness of Her Majesty's Government, the mainland's exports to the Continent may have fallen by as much as sixty-eight per cent. Fortunately, a spokesbeing for the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove has proclaimed that, as usual, Her Majesty's Government does not recognise the figures, which ought to be good enough for only slightly less than anyone. If real events are so disobliging as to get worse after the six-month arse-covering period expires, no doubt there will be enhancements to the mathematical ostracism. Thereafter, should matters have the impudence to develop yet more unfavourably, the figures will risk being declared unpatriotic, antisemitic and a solemn warning to uppity Celts.

Affordable Moral Leadership

Motivated no doubt by his ancestral Irish dislike of the United Kingdom, President Biden has announced that Washington will no longer facilitate the Saudi assault on Yemen with anything approaching the enthusiasm of the Trumpster administration. As a result, Her Majesty's Government is facing renewed urges to restrict Britain's own weapons trade with Whitehall's favourite Islamic fundamentalist head-choppers. Even little Toby Ellwood, late of the Ministry for Wog-Bombing, whose last major achievement was to complain that his salary was too low, has jumped upon the bandwagon and called for a fresh strategy for making money off the massacre. Since it remains as yet unclear whether Global Britain's newly-unrestrained exports of Marmite to Japan would be sufficient revenue to compensate for any loss of revenue, ministers have so far limited their response to graciously acknowledging the independence of the United States from British foreign policy.

A Most Unfortunate Accident

Policies enacted under the casually racist Head Boy David Cameron, and his fanatically racist sidekick Tumbledown Tessie, may inadvertently have led to racist consequences, according to a study carried out in Bristol. Under the pretext of protecting potential deportees against female genital mutilation, the coalition introduced measures inadvertently similar in effect to the Blairites' Muslim-baiting Prevent programme, with people of African descent being stigmatised, isolated and harassed. Doubtless it was with a similar degree of inadvertence that a hireling and/or dupe at the Ministry for Wog Control shrugged off the idea of engaging with communities as a "non-starter" amid Brexiteer slogans ("taking control") and Blairite euphemisms ("asking uncomfortable questions"), while a minister blithely ignored her employer's record of inadvertently closing down women's shelters as she belched out some righteous noises about physical and psychological suffering.

Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

About ſix of the Clock this Evening, ſomewhere betwixt the ſeventh and eighth Servings in the ſecond Courſe of High Tea Palate-ticklers, my maxillary and gaſtrick Labours on behalf of the Farmers and Fiſhermen of our ſacred Realm were moſt rudely interrupted by a noiſome Clattering from the Street. It ſeems, that a certain olde Soldier hath recently expired having formerly engaged in ſome meddleſome radical Enterpriſe, to keep rebellious Apothecaries and Nurſes from that benignant Deſtitution, which alone enſures their continuing though grudging Inclination to protect the Health of the deſerving Claſses. The rattleſome Diſturrbance to my economick Repaſt was occaſioned by the Applauſe of the Rabble, each ſtanding in the Entrance to his Hovel and clapping his unwaſhed Hands in barbarous Tribute. It is no doubt a Bleſsing, that the lower Orders ſhould recogniſe and praiſe the Neceſsity for the merely medical and ſcientifick Profeſsions to live upon Charity, but the crippling Burden of Taxes upon the penurious Gentry, coupled with the unwarranted Interruption to my conſuming Effort to maintain the agricultural Supremacy of our great Kingdom, conſpired to cauſe me ſuch patriotick Exaſperation, that I could not forbear leaping from my laborious Trencher and firing my neareſt Blunderbuſs into a Knot of applauding Rowdies. As one who hath aſpired almoſt ſince Birth, to the Command of thoſe who defend our Flag from the Incurſions of Treachery and Foreignneſs, I hope ſoon to raiſe a charitable Subſcription of mine own, which will raiſe a few Millions towards my Expenſes in Powder and Shot.

Moral Leadership

The House of Donors has risked yet further reform by defying Her Majesty's Government a second time on the question of how enthusiastically Global Britain should trade with genocidal régimes. Her Majesty's Government is trying to avoid unnecessary red tape by keeping vexatious lefty lawyers and other enemies of the people away from matters of justifiable wog profitability and placing the power to judge entirely in the disinterested hands of Her Majesty's Government. To do the superannuated place-men justice, the salient example was the Heathen Chinee: had the question been trade with wogs of the white race who might happen to enjoy a bit of limited and specific environmental hostility, Hr Majesty's Government would would certainly not need to worry about rebellions among the racist rabble on its own back benches in the Commons, and would most likely have been spared the distasteful inconvenience of further debate.

Available Now

After much delay, thanks largely to the nice people at Lulu making their always cumbersome and frustrating publication process slightly worse, my latest is now available as both a PDF ebook and a real book, with another fine cover photo by the wonderful Giovanna - see also Ringmaster Grin, Shadows With Claws and Providence Fell. Among the various improvements at Lulu, the facility which enables potential buyers to read sample pages has vanished, so I may inflict an extract here at some point. Extracts from parts of my always desperately available backlist are linked in the sidebar under the Fiction heading. Crimes Against Reality is more or less what one would expect from a writer like me in a year like 2020, so if you have money at all you may prefer to spend it on chocolate.