Covid Carols

Good King Wenceslas logged out
Feeling much dejection
All the slots had been booked out
For Tesco collection
Not deliveries there were
For his sauce and pasta
He would have to fight his way
Through the queues at ASDA
 
Angels from the realms of glory
Kindly stay right in your place
We’ve no wish to get infected
Have you heard of hands face space?
Don’t
Sing that song at us
Don’t you realise
Droplets travel further
We’ll
Have to isolate
We can’t emigrate
No way through at Dover
Wash you hands and please don’t sing
 
Now mask ye quickly gentlemen don’t mingle here today
We need your names for track and trace the church guidance doth say
Our distanced seating’s full so please book in for next Sunday
And we’re streaming on Facebook and Zoom
Meeting Room
And we’re streaming on Facebook and Zoom
 
See them dining now in Tier 4
Masks at table and an open door
All precautions so the covid spores
Don’t land on the Christmas turkey
How to eat up Brussel Sprouts for 10?
We disinvited
Aunty Gwen
At least we won’t get ugly socks again
And bits of gaudy paper chain.

While Donald watched the count at night

Saw he was losing ground

Upon his laptop did alight

And tweeted all around

"Fear not", said Pence, for mighty dread

Had seized his coiffured hair

"That Biden's old, he's got not chance

So please Boss don't despair"

All lawyers heed, clear schedules now

And double up your fee

For Trump will not admit defeat

Till 2023

Political Parties as Weather Systems

Whilst delirious from coronavirus*, I suddenly got to wondering. You know those team building sessions where you're asked to imagine yourself as a fruit, or your organisation as a species of fish? Me neither. But in these weather - saturated times, what meteorological form do our political parties take?

Conservative Party - A large, prolonged and blustery shower
Labour Party - A turbulent front, breaking up around the Middle East.
Labour Party Brexit Policy - Fog
Liberal Democrats - Hail (small, hits you hard for a while then melts away)
Scottish National Party - A biting Northerly wind.
Democratic Unionist Party - Heavy weather

*or standing up too quickly on an empty stomach

New Outreach Strategy

Breaking: Brexit Causes National Outrage Shortage

Expert in psychopolitics Dr Pavlov Kneejerk today sounded the alarm over the UK's national stock of outrage. "There is a danger of a serious shortage" declared Dr Kneejerk. "Until this week, there was a chance we had enough national outrage to share between child poverty, knife crime, food banks, global warming, the growing divide between the wealthy and the poor, and Brexit, whilst leaving a small percentage free for taking offence at complete strangers on social media."

But recent events have run national outrage levels dangerously low. "A sudden and disproportionate flow of outrage can seriously affect storage capacity" said Dr Kneejerk. The huge response to the prorogation of Parliament, which will result in the loss of only 4 days of Parliamentary time (9-12th September, as they do very little on Friday and Parliament was then due to close for 3 weeks for the Conference season), has led to emergency efforts to source additional outrage from new sources.

"There is a simple solution", offered Dr Kneejerk. "All it would take is an offer from Jo Swinson or Jeremy Corbyn to cancel their party conferences, which would free up a week of time for MPs, and would rebalance outrage stocks by matching actions to words."

Brexit - New Options on the Table

Lard Brexit - build a barrier made entirely of lard along the Irish border. This avoids a hard border (except in exceptionally cold weather) and ensures that Brexit is smooth, if not orderly.

Chard Brexit - a no-deal Brexit is piloted in a small town in South Somerset, and then rolled out nationally once teething problems are ironed out. Worked a treat with Universal Credit.

Irish Buckstop - leaders of the main political parties play the popular party game 'pass the Arlene'. Whoever's left holding the DUP when time is up has to come up with a deal which commands a Parliamentary majority. 

Toffed Brexit - Using a Parliamentary protocol last invoked in 1381, Jacob Rees-Mogg compels the entire Withdrawal Agreement to be translated into Latin, and commences negotiations with all the European states who still use it. Within a month, he and the Pope have sorted everything.

Yellow Lines - The red lines in Teresa Mays withdrawal agreement are replaced with parking regulations. All MPs are charged hospital car park rates for every minute spent in the House of Commons debating the Brexit deal. Agreement is reached within a week.

Taking Those Eels off the Table - Jeremy Corbyn comes up with an innovative but irrelevant proposal for fisheries policy.

Peoples Vole - in a British attempt to emulate Groundhog Day, a small rodent is held aloft on March 29th. If he casts a shadow, we stay in the EU, if he doesn't, we carry on holding the little blighter in the air until the sun comes out.

Prayer - A Typology

I have no idea what a 'skinny' is, but we're starting a series on prayer tomorrow and this is fun and insightful at the same time.

Fifi and the Flower Tots Replacing Question Time

Really looking forward to the BBC's replacement to Question Time, bringing together the old political Q&A format with the childrens cartoon series Fifi and the Flower Tots

Every week the following roles will be taken by a leading politician or journalist:
Stingo, the scheming and manipulative wasp
Slugsy, Stingos slow-witted accomplice
Primrose, the prim and proper guardian of good manners and decorum
Violet, the creative free spirit
Bumble, the accident prone bumble bee

For week 1, these parts are played by Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Anna Soubry and Jeremy Corbyn. All presided over the the kind and gracious Fifi Bruce, who sees the good in everyone

The Yeovil Traffic Light Jive

local road 'improvements' have inspired one man into song. Come to Yeovil and see what all the fun is about. If your local traffic lights have gone missing, you'll probably find they've ended up here.

I know I know, #firstworldproblem.

If its Christmas, it must be the Christmas Linebacker

An annual tradition on this blog is to celebrate Christmas by showing a video of a scary man rugby tackling people with Christmas presents in order to explain the Christmas message.

This ain't no sleigh ride baby!

Brexit TV Scheduling - New Additions

In a vain attempt to keep up with events, TV companies have announced yet more  new programming for late December

Deal or No Deal: Teresa May searches 22 identical red boxes for something that she can sell to her MPs. Every now and again the Junker rings up and offers her nothing.

The Half-Baked British Break Off: hosted from a small second hand gazebo by Barely Merry

Sounds of the 70s At last UKIP finds a decade which resonates with its values. Featuring old classics such as Making Plans for Nigel, Here's to You Tommy Robinson, and a remix of Money, Money, Money featuring Aaron Banks.

DIY SAS under cover of the Brexit chaos, the government sneak out plans for further cuts to the armed forces.

Are You Being Served Notice? Revival of the classic comedy set in a department store. For the first week anyway, after that it's set in deserted retail premises in an anonymous town centre.

3 ways to tell the Christmas story with food

All of these 3 have been road tested in Yeovil, and extensively 'borrowed' for elsewhere, and they all work really well:

Chocolate Christmas - telling the story through chocolates and sweets. Or just browse the chocolate aisle of your local supermarket and see what names jump off the shelf.

Merry Crispmas - telling the story through brands and flavours of crips and snacks

Fruit and Veg Christmas - well, you get the idea

and just in case these inspire you, here's a chocolate version of the Easter story.

To avoid spending lots of cash, you could use pictures rather than the real thing. But it's quite fun rummaging through for the next item whilst everyone tries to guess what it is. Enjoy.

Christmas Lights Suggestion

First Peek at Christmas TV Schedules

You saw it here first....

Luther: in an updated version of the 500 year old tale, a disgruntled millenial pins 95 Christmas present requests on his Facebook profile, and causes a Europe-wide revolution when he doesn't get what he wants. Originally billed to star David Cameron but nobody's seen him for months.

Doctor Where? Live coverage of an A&E department on Boxing Day. There's a New Year special too, where the Doctor scours the globe from India, to the Philippines, to most of Africa, trying to find treatment for her sick companions, only to discover that all the trained health workers have left to work for the NHS.

Mrs Browns Buoys. Panorama special following the irascible crew of a border crossing in the middle of the Irish Sea. May run until late 2020. Or longer, much longer.

Les Miserables. The new name for BBC regional news

Waterstones Shop Down. Amazons besiege the last remaining high street shop, in a rural town somewhere in the Midlands. A host of celebrity cast members realise that ghostwritten biographies are are too insubstantial to defend themselves against the incessant volley of attack, most of it aimed at the address next door but they called and nobody was in. Where in the shop is there a book substantial enough to save them?

The Mash Report. Stocktake at the local food bank. Starring roughly 160,000 households.

The Queens Christmas Massage. By special dispensation, delivered this year by Tyson Fury. To Donald Trump.

Match of the Day: Special Edition. Which footballer can match their salary to how much they are actually worth?

I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! No.

Teresa May Card School: Election Snap, and other games for all the family

This morning the Prime Minister was due to announce the launch of Election Snap, a new card game from the Conservative party. Should have gone to Specsavers. It is one of a growing range of games from the Teresa May Card School, many invented in the quiet hours of her childhood in a vicarage, waiting for her dad to finish writing another sermon.

Election Snap: a riotous game for all the family. Can you tell the difference between one middle aged, middle class, white privately educated male with no career outside politics and another? Neither can the electorate.

Bridge (Burning): which political leader can be quickest to resign at the first hint of bad electoral news? Usually won by Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn is struggling to understand the rules.

Patience: available in several different versions. The Libdem version takes about 100 years to play out, and even then it turns out to help the other players more than you.

Solitaire: Also known as Michael Gove's political career.

Go Fish: Robust UKIP response to any question raised in the EU parliament about quotas.

Texas Hold 'Em: mass penitentiary on the Mexican border for illegals.

Family Fortunes: in the US version the main aim of the game is to have a very large one, but make out that it doesn't affect the way you play in the slightest

Beggar My Neighbour: or in George Osborne's case, Beggar the Whole Country

Special editions: the Conservative pack comes with 2 knaves, the Jack of Goves and the Jack of Johnsons. The Libdem pack will deal with anyone, and the Labour pack is red throughout but with no Aces and is hard to reshuffle.

Appointing a Vicar

over the next few days we will be mostly doing this.

Prayers appreciated, if you're that way inclined.

The vicars 12 days of Christmas

12 bright christingles
11 visual aids
10 dentious sermons (can be swapped for 10 uous links)
9 lessons and carols
8 all the pies
7 choristers
6 seats remaining 
5 more sings!
4 shepherds and 
3 wise men
2 Bethlehem
And the Holy Nativity

What Will the new Bake Off look like? sneak preview of New TV Listings

some of the treats in store....

Cold Feet  new political show, featuring Boris Johnson and anyone who has ever thought about standing as leader of UKIP

Fantastical Boasts and Where To Find Them  extended coverage of the US election

The Great British **** Off  the classic show gets that special Channel 4 treatment. Moved to a 9pm slot, all the contestants are 20-somethings with dubious sexual history a short temper and a microwave. Mel and Sue are replaced by Alan and Jimmy Carr

Can't Pray? We'll Take You Away!  documentary about everyday life around the world for people who've converted from Islam.

Doctor Where?  our intrepid Time Lord travels to Africa, where the population is in the grip of an epidemic, but the only trained medical staff have been poached by the NHS.

East Emmerdale Street  The government builds a new town in the Yorkshire Dales, and local authorities in Manchester and London take the chance to relocate all their social housing tenants there, so that they can build unsold office blocks and luxury flats for tax evaders.

Two and a Half Men  documentary about the Liberal Democrats

Strictly: new UK border policy. Anyone wanting refugee status in the UK has to endure 12 humiliating rounds of elimination by public vote.

The Botox Factor  a new presenter is thrown off the show after 3 weeks because lack of cosmetic surgery 'makes her look out of place'.

The Big Bung Theory  a round of up the weeks football news.

School tests create surge in new medical conditions

In recent weeks teachers have noticed a number of new illnesses among their students. Little is known about many of these diseases, but there is a strong suspicion they are linked to government testing. Here is the latest list of new disorders:

Adverbal diarrhoea

Burst apostrophe

Checking pox - spontanous outburst of pimples occurring when a student notices with 1 minute to go that they've misread the question

Compound fracture - inability to hold 2 parts of a word together. Most common in teenagers.

Conjunctiontivitis

Consonantipation - usually due to a blockage in the vowels

Tense future - usually afflicts children the week before SATS tests

Homophonia - fear of words which sound the same. There is a related strain occurring in foreign languages, which is an irrational fear of two nouns of the same gender occurring too close to each other in a sentence.

Severe inflection: this could take the form of Phonemonia, or Pluralisy, which usually affects several parts of the body at once

Passive tense - the student is so stressed they are unable to get out of bed

Past tense - Ofsted was last week

Possessive Compulsive Disorder - someone who finds it difficult to share a pencil during an exam.

Prolapsed pronoun

Punctuated ulcer - in extreme cases, the patient ends up in a comma.

Many of these seem to be mutations of previously harmless bits of grammar. Kept in isolation, or small groups, grammar is benign, but large swarms of grammatical terms seem to exhibit different behaviour, and have a toxic effect on those using them. The misplaced apostrophe has always been capable, on it's own, of exciting high levels of stress and rage, but this is the first time we have seen such dramatic effects in other sections of the English language.

It's our problem-free/ Academy/ Hakuna MATata

Under new freedoms given under the governments Academies programme, Hakuna MATata* (motto 'no worries for the rest of your grades'), has just been launched. The curriculum is based entirely on songs from well-known musicals, arranged into multi-disciplinary houses. For example

House of Bjorn and Benny: Languages and Life Skills
Does Your Mother Know?  - Internet Safety and Stranger Danger
Money, Money, Money - Counting and commerce
Take a Chance on Me/Winner Takes it All - The Dangers of Gambling
SOS - Using the emergency services
I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do - Marriage and relationships
Voulez-Vous - French
Mamma Mia - Italian
Chiquitita - Mexican perhaps? anyone know?
Honey, Honey - Diet and Nutrition
I Believe in Angles - Trigonometry, Spelling

House of Javert - Teamwork, Health and Wellbeing, Spatial awareness
I Dreamed a Dream/Who Am I - Philosophy, Personal Vision Statement
Master of the House - Discipline, Leadership
Do You Hear the People Sing - Hearing Test (done annually)
At the End of the Day - Telling the time
Bring Him Home - Orienteering
Red and Black - Colours
Castle on a Cloud - Construction Skills
Empty Chairs at Empty Tables - Leaving the Classroom the way you found it

House of Simba - Science and Nature
Circle of Life - Biology
Shadowland - Light, Physics
Hakuna Matata - Managing Stress
I Just Can't Wait To Be King - optional for people who choose the 'being famous' subject stream

Sadly, plans for a House of Cats are on hold due to the tutors annoying habit of wandering off at all hours of day or night to teach at other schools. Old Deuteronomy will now be an introductory module to Jesus Christ Superstar, the RE stream.

These plans have been closely guarded by superinjunction, until the publication of the latest research on attainment in academies. As the above curriculum is likely to have no positive impact on attainment in SATS, it meets the academisation criteria for most schools.

*MAT = Multi Academy Trust. 

Church of England Transfer Window News

A lot of managerial change in the latest transfer window:

(Breaking News: freelance cleric Dean Saunders, formerly of Aston Cathedral, has called for spectators to be allowed into matches for free. Following the lead of other historic grounds, the Dean argues that, despite the costs of maintaining the premises and paying team salaries, clubs should rely on the generosity of visitors to meet running costs.)

Rt. Rev Guardiola, a pioneer leader with a great track record, has been made Bishop of Manchester. Once in charge, he'll discover that he can only change the team if players actually ask to leave, and has no control over the formation or playing style. Kit colours can only be changed after consulting with every supporter. Of every club.

Rev. Mourinho is still in post, despite falling out with a churchwarden on the first day of the season, alienating most of the PCC, and a general lack of inspiration at the main gathering each week. A senior and loyal member of the congregation has had his pew removed, and the congregation is tiring of the sermon series on Passive Aggression, which has now been going for 6 years. Bishop Abrahamovic, having personally headhunted Rev. Mourniho from a neighbouring Diocese, is too embarrassed to ask him to leave. The only way to sack a vicar is to go through the cumbersome and costly clergy disciplinary process: thankfully for the Bishop, the churchwarden has initiated proceedings.

Rev Dr Neville, a noted 1990s worship leader and well reputed church growth analyst, has joined the Roman Catholic church. It's early days, but the congregation don't appear to be enjoying the new songs.

Preb Wenger is standing for the 20th time for General Synod. Under his leadership, Emirates Minster has become well known for the quality of its youth choir, the elegant choreography of the worship, and the thoughtful but understated homilies. Older members of the congregation still talk about the mission held in the late 1990s, supported by a team of Dutch evangelists, and wonder if this years generation of interns will ever repeat it.

The Diocese of Leicester has experienced unprecedented church growth this year. However because Bishop Ranieri hadn't seen these kinds of results before, everyone is assuming it is a flash in the pan, and will go away. After all, we've so much experience of failing managers that we know what to do with them, but success is unfamiliar and unsettling. Archdeacon Vardy is being lined up for a role with a national coaching agency.