Organised protest? Mass alfresco sulk, more like

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has at last spoken on the issue of the great St Paul’s Cathedral controversy, which has so far seen the departure of both the Dean of the cathedral and its canon. Dr Williams lamented the loss to the church of both men but added that the ‘issues’ raised by the protesters outside the church ‘remain very much on the table’. So not just on the table, but very much on the table. Somewhere near the centre of the table, perhaps, just to the left of the candlestick. Dr Williams did not describe the table at all, but I have taken the liberty of assuming it is a large and robust wooden table, with a leg at each corner.

But what are these important issues, then? I wandered along to ask some of the protesters last week but am not much the wiser now, to tell you the truth. I understand that they are unhappy in a somewhat ectoplasmic, indefinable sense, that they are averse to ‘what’s going on’ and how society is organised. But probe a little deeper about what precisely has upset them so and the argument sort of melts away into the ether, like a homosexual congregant facing an African bishop.

One chap I spoke to believed that the mess we were in was the consequence of us being dominated by giant reptilians from an alien planet. As he expounded his theory a number of other protesters, who had gathered nearby, began to remonstrate that this sort of nonsense would detract from the very serious point they were making, and urged me to ignore him. Another man hastily pointed out that my interlocutor was speaking allegorically, so I asked the man if he was speaking allegorically when he talked about alien lizard creatures and he said, no, he meant alien lizard creatures.