Rochie-the-Pooh

With apologies to A.A. Milne.

Rochie-the-Pooh, a bear of very little brain, lived in the Hundred Acre Wood under the name of Arthur.

Living under the name of Arthur.

One day he was feeling very hungry, and he said to himself "I think I'll go and see my little friend Austen Pigleteigh. Maybe he will have some cake for me." As he walked along the path, Pooh hummed to himself.

Now, please make no mistake, 
A cardinal likes cake!
You think that I should diet?
Only an indietrist would try it!

"But what if little Piglet doesn't have any cake?" asked Pooh. "Should I go and see my friend the wise owl MASSIWOL instead? No, he has taken up theology now, and he won't listen to me if I hint that it's time for a little something. Or rather, a big something would be better..."

Massiwol reveals the true meaning of Vatican II to a fascinated Rochie-the-Pooh.

"Perhaps I should have gone to see Christo Ber Goglin," said Pooh. " "He's not very busy today, just doing an audience. Of course I could telephone him first and ask him if he has any cake - he won't mind being interrupted. No, it had better be Piglet."

In the most depressing part of the forest, the WherePachaIs bog, lived Mike Eeyore, the donkey. Pooh's journey took him past the wreck that Eeyore called home. "Hullo, Eeyore!" he said. "What a lovely morning for eating cake!"

"Is it a lovely morning?" replied Eeyore gloomily. "Nobody told me. Even Christo Ber Goglin, who is knows everything, hasn't told me what I should think about the weather today. It's so depressing."

Oxford University Press becomes Muslim-friendly

Following the decision by Oxford University Press that its authors should not mention pigs, pork, sausages, or other pig-related words in children's books in order to avoid offending Muslims, it was announced today that all pigs in existing works would in future be replaced by camels. Said a spokesman, "You can't be too careful. Look what happened to Charlie Hebdo."

The sort of filth we need to stamp out.

In the new OUP Animal Farm, the animals of Manor Farm, led by two camels, Mohammed and Abdul, revolt against the evil Farmer Jones. In best Muslim tradition they do this by means of a jihad, and impose Sharia Law. In the end, however, the camels betray the Islamic Revolution.

The pig must go!

Likewise, in the Blandings Castle books of P.G. Wodehouse, the stories are rewritten slightly, so that the Sheikh Al-Emsworth is obsessed by his prize camel, the Emir of Blandings (it would not be appropriate for the camel to be female!) His burkha-wearing sister Lady Fatima Bint-Keeble is also in attendance, although she naturally plays a submissive role. The dissolute brother G'Allah'ad Threepwood is no longer allowed to drink alcohol, but he loves his regular tipple of lemonade. He eventually becomes a heroic suicide bomber.

Goodbye, Piglet! You're unclean.

Meanwhile, the character of Piglet has been dropped from the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, to be replace by Camlet, a young camel. The story is also being made more Muslim-friendly with the addition of a flogging (Kanga, an unmarried mother), a paw-cutting (Tigger, for dishonesty), and a decapitation of the intellectual Wol.

Prime Minister David Cameron had no comment to make on the changes being made, except to ask whether it would be possible to include a transgendered character or even a same-sex marriage somewhere in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, to reflect the diversity of modern Britain. He was invited to take this issue up with the Muslims.

This must go too.

Finally, it was realised that even children sometimes consult dictionaries, and so from now on the prestigious Oxford English Dictionary will no longer contain the words pig, pork, or sausage.

Oops... Sir Francis Bacon.

We should reassure readers that the writings of Sir Francis Bacon will continue to be published, although the author's name will be changed to Sir Francis Halal-Meat.

Equal marriage

Now, children, I've been requested to teach you about equal marriage; more precisely, I've been threatened with the sack and the possibility of being banned indefinitely from teaching if I don't, so let's get started.

The owl and the pussycat - icons for equal marriage.

Yes, let's start with the owl and the pussycat. Edward Lear was a great campaigner for equal marriage, and his moving love poem was written as part of the struggle against a society which saw something unnatural in the romance between an owl and a cat. Note that, owing to persecution by the Catholic Church, they were denied a church wedding, and were forced to be married by a turkey that lived on the hill - evidently, a liberal priest in the mould of Giles Fraser.

Giles Fraser conducts a wedding.

Owls suffered a lot from persecution in the Victorian era: many became recluses, condemned by the intolerant society of those times as "Too wet to woo."

An owl, refusing to come out of the closet.

Let's move on now to the story of Alice in Wonderland. Can we have any doubt that she was in love with the white rabbit? Although initially underage, she made several attempts to "grow up," by eating and drinking various controlled substances, but her romance was always thwarted. In the end she gave up the struggle, and threw herself into a looking-glass in despair.

Alice - a victim of Victorian narrow-mindedness.

A more successful romance in the Alice books is of course the love story of the walrus and the carpenter, who celebrated their passion by dining on oysters (a well-known aphrodisiac).

Why can't we be married in church?

Now, children, do we have any more examples of equal marriage that we'd like to discuss? Pooh and Piglet? Yes, that's a very good example, Catherine. They spent a lot of time together, and they were obviously very much in love.

"Christopher Robin thinks I should marry a female teddy-bear. What a bigot he is!"

Well, that's all for today, children. I have to go and teach chemistry to the older children now, and of course same-sex attraction is a very important part of this.

One day a hydrogen atom met another one, and fell in love...