The closing down of debate worries me most

The Eastern Orthodox Church has decided that yoga is incompatible with Christianity. This is an enormous problem for me, as I am a regular practitioner of this interesting meditative calisthenic technique, but also someone who judges the sagacity of a person by the length of his beard and the mournful extravagance of his hat. So I must change my daily regimen somehow. I fretted a while — but then it dawned on me that modern Britain might come to my aid. The other evening I was required to ‘clap for carers’ while simultaneously going down on one knee in apologetic homage to an oppressed person who was walking past my house at the time. I found this a satisfyingly tricky operation to co-ordinate.

All we need is a couple more of these agreeable genuflections and I will have a new exercise regime. Perhaps I could put my legs behind my ears to show solidarity with the suffering of Palestinians and bend over and touch my toes to express support for the transgender community. (I don’t mean anything suggestive by ‘bend over and touch my toes’, incidentally. I just mean ‘bend over and touch my toes’. One has to be terribly careful these days, re. giving offence and stuff.) I don’t know what Bartholomew I, Grand Patriarch of Constantinople and thus head of the Eastern Orthodox congregation would think of this idea, but I have the suspicion it would go down very well with our Anglicans. In fact, the entire general synod is probably doing something very similar right now, while keening about austerity and refugees. (I hope if there is a God that He finds the relentless self-abnegation and whining of our clerics as hilarious as the rest us do.)

Meanwhile my wife, denied the opportunity to visit her usual hairdresser because of a lockdown which does not apply to lefties, is shaving off all of her straight blonde hair because she has been told by social media that it is oppressive and she ought to show solidarity with people who do not have straight blonde hair (and they don’t mean me).