Fr Finigan goes to Margate

The parish of Blogfen is today in deep mourning at the news that its priest, Fr Tim Finigan of the excellent Hermeneutic of Continuity blog is moving to Margate.

Fr Tim Finigan and Fr Sean Finnegan, priest-bloggers par excellence.

The most obvious theory to explain this move is that traditionalist priest-bloggers are like Martello towers, and need to be placed at strategic points round the coast to repel invaders: thus we have Fr Blake in Brighton, Fr Finnegan in Shoreham, and several other reliable people in similar places, such as Fr Marcus Holden in Ramsgate.

The Anglicans considered a similar strategy at Walmington-on-Sea.

Indeed, moving inland we do not seem to find a similar concentration of high-profile traditionally-minded priests - although one well-known blogging deacon has apparently been sent to Coventry by his bishop - so there we are. Q.E.D., as the Latin liturgy has it.

Look inside a Martello tower and you may find a priest.

What's Margate like?

Neither the Bible nor Shakespeare mention Margate, but it does feature in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land in the section called The Fire Sermon:

On Margate Sands.  
I can connect  
Nothing with nothing.  
The broken finger-nails of dirty hands.  
My people humble people who expect  
Nothing.

The Margate shelter where Eliot wrote The Waste Land (yes, really).

Buddha's original Fire Sermon was not preached at Margate, and it is said that he complained for many years that he had missed an opportunity of sampling the best of British fish and chips, not to mention cockles, mussels and whelks. Without a healthy diet of seafood how can you found a good religion? We know all about Galilee...

Anyway, it just remains to wish well to Fr Finigan, and of course to Blogfen too. Meanwhile, there are always day trips for those suffering from a hermeneutical deficiency...

Special trains on Sunday mornings?

Our return to Notting Hell

We decided to leave my bruvver Bosco hidin wiv Juliano Assangua in de Ecuadorian souvenir shop, and we came back to London to stay wiv our friend Damain Thopmson again. Dere is a lot goin on in London dis weekend, as I will rellate.

We finds ourselves in Little Giddin.

We is still havvin a little trubble wiv our Satan-Nav, and instead of takin' us to London, it landed us in a holly place called Little Giddin. Our chuaffeur, Hannan, tapped de machine, and it stopped its usaul dialogge, originally programmed by Anti Moly:,

Turn left, no I mean right, look where you is goin you nearly hit dat little old lady you poor old fool, aint you gonna get your eyes tested? Woeful.

Instead it waxed poetical and said:

If you came this way, taking any route, starting from anywhere, at any time or at any season, it would always be the same: you would have to put off sense and notion.

Which is very luvvly, but don't help much when you is lookin for de A1 Motorway.

We is lost.

Still, we got back to London finally, and found dat Damain Thopmson had buoght an oil painting, called Moaner Lissa, which he wanted to give to his great friend Cradinal Murphy-O'Connor as an 80th birthday present. It used to belong to de Luovre in Paris, but Damain is a rich man cos of de runaway success of his book "De Fix," and he made em a generuos offer.

Anti Moly had been readin about an old Spannish lady who restored frescos, and said "I can do better dan dat." So she set abuot restorin de Moaner Lissa. Sadly, I fink dat at de end it didn't look quite right.

Moaner Lissa, after restoratoin

Still, Damain says it will give Cradinal Cormac somefink to remember him by.

Damain was very excited too because he heard dat someone called Harry was phottographed wiv no clothes on. He was wonderin whevver it was Joanne Harry, de great juornalist, but it turns out to be a Prince.

Well, apart from Cradinal Cormac's birfday party, to which we is all invited, de other grate social event of de weekend is de Notting Hell Cranival. By traditoin, de gruonds of Castle Thopmson is given up to music and dancin, while Damain retires to de cellar and puts a pillow over his head. Dis sounds like fun.

Cradinal Cormac dancin at last year's Notting Hell Cranival