Eccles joins the Orange Order

So I dreamed that I was on the point of death, and the only person around to see me die was Father Wallace Thompson of the Evangelical Protestants.

The flag of William O'Range, a celebrated Irishman.

"Eccles, my boy," he said, "you are going fast, so what shall we put on your tombstone?"

"A simple 'Rest in Peace', Father," I groaned.

"DON'T CALL ME FATHER, YE PAPIST SCUM," he retorted. "Anyway, in the Orange Order we don't allow 'Rest in Peace', as that's a Catholic prayer for the dead. No, everyone is either SAVED or UNSAVED immediately. It looks as though your tombstone will bear the simple message 'ECCLES - UNSAVED' unless..."

"Unless...?"

"Unless ye can be instantly saved by your faith."

"So what's all this we had in the Gospel about a judgement at the end of time?"

"Ah, that Matthew chap wasn't a true Protestant, he made mistakes. No, when you die you either go instantly to Hell, where you have to read the worst of Catholic literature for an eternity - Crux articles by Austen Ivereigh, new blasphemy from James Martin, even the comic theories of Tina Beattie..., and you'll be wailing and grinding your teeth, OR...

Now renamed "How to raise your voice without defending the faith".

"Or...?"

"Or, as a member of the Orange Order you will be instantly saved, and can march up and down the Shankill Road in Heaven, playing the flute, wearing the sash and praising King Billy."

So I joined the Orange Order and died with a smile on my lips. But it was only a dream.

A rainy day in Heaven.

How do saved persons vote?

In the UK, we are in the grip of election fever, and many of my readers are struggling to decide which party or parties to vote for. When you see the policies now considered acceptable by almost all parties: abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, same-sex marriage, sending children up chimneys, recapturing Calais, exporting all British ducks to Mars, taxing custard, making it compulsory to recycle all used socks, independence for Scunthorpe, free orange juice for Damian Thompson, locking up all bald people, exiling Stephen Fry to Fiji, ... you realise that nobody has any policies that a saved person could support. Except perhaps the one about Stephen Fry.

This is how a saint votes. Note the expression of distaste.

The main question at present seems to be "Do I listen to Bishop Kenney, who says that UKIP is unsaved, or do I listen to Bishop Egan, who reckons that practically every politician is unsaved?" At a more basic level, is the European Union the New Jerusalem prophesied in the Book of Revelation, or is it the new Babylon, to be consumed by fire? I don't know: perhaps it's somewhere in between the two.

"Roger Helmer says he can beat up the two of us single-handed."

We come now to the question of Romanians: are they saved? For some reason, these have been singled out by some as the worst Europeans to have as your neighbours. Here, however, I have some personal experience.

Our new next-door neighbour.

Recently, a Romanian nobleman, the Earl of Dracula, moved in next door to us. He's basically a very quiet person, and apparently works nights. Indeed, I never see him in the day time, although occasionally he drops round in the evening and asks to borrow a cup of blood

Apparently, our neighbour supports the Romanian Independence Party.

Basically, he's a model neighbour and I don't see what all the fuss is about. I've got other problems: my Brother Bosco, who has a habit of saying "Bite Me!" whenever he loses an argument (which is most of the time), seems to have gone missing. I do hope he hasn't been annoying the Earl of Dracula.

Finally, to answer the question raised in this post: go to the polling-booth, write "unsaved" against the name of every candidate standing, and write "only I is saved" at the bottom of the ballot-paper.

No other course of action is possible. Indeed, if you look carefully at the photo of Padre Pio, you can see that he did precisely that.