Diary of a Sociopathic Vicar – Part 30

People can get very excited by doors, which I find hard to understand. A door is a threshold, separating one thing from another. It might separate two rooms in a house. It might be considered in more philosophical terms, of separating stages of life, or relationships. However you look at it, there’s a limited range of things that can be done with a door. You can open and close them or leave them alone. You can pass through them, or not. After that, you start to run out of options.

To provide a context for these musings, Al was on the door of the school building we were using for church services - I’d burnt down the old church, so we had to have the services somewhere. He was doing meet-and-greet – properly known as being the sidesperson – welcoming people to the service, making sure they had service books, that kind of thing.

Then a new person had turned up. Normally seeing a new person at church is a cause for wonderment and great rejoicing. Not in this case. Instead, he insisted on standing in the doorway and repeating, “Permission to come aboard”. This was rather annoying because it meant Al couldn’t shut the door and frankly, it wasn’t as warm as it might be.

Al had considered hitting the man, but instead had fetched me.

“The door is open. Are you coming in or not?” I asked.

“Permission to come aboard.”

I suppose I could have just said “Granted”, or something like that, but the way he kept repeating it was too formulaic. It was if he were trying to draw me into something.

Instead, I said, “It’s up to you if you come in or not, but you’re letting all the cold air in. I’m closing the door, but if you decide to join us, the service starts in two minutes.”

With that, I closed the door in his face. It was one of those doors with the wire reinforced glass windows, and I could see him standing there with a look of confusion. Al grinned at me, and I raised my eyebrows. I just had time to finish getting ready before the service started.

After the service, with the aid of a few volunteers I cleared the school hall away ready for the start of the school week. As I left, I saw the person with the door problems hanging around outside the school.

Walking casually over to him, I said, “Morning. I see you decided not to join us after all.”

“Good morning. Am I correct in assuming that you are the Rev. David Wilson?”

“Yes. And you are?”

“Mordred of the family Williams.”

“Ah! The lay reader,” I said, and he nodded. He had e-mailed me a couple of weeks ago, to say that he was moving into the area. A lay reader is an ordinary member of the congregation given minimal training and then permitted to take services and preach. They then climb into a pulpit, where they consider themselves to be six feet above criticism.

“So, tell me,” I continued, “Why didn’t you enter today?”

“Because you didn’t give me permission to board.”

I realised this could be a long conversation but decided to persevere. “And why did you need permission to board?”

“Because it’s a ship.”

I resisted the urge to glance over at the school buildings. I already knew that they lacked sails, anchors, and a rudder.

“A little more explanation, perhaps?” I asked.

“The Church is not backed by gold; it’s backed by people.”

“Continue,” I said, although as a priest, I would have said that the Church was based on God, not people.

“That makes the people - the congregation - the creditors of the Church. That means that the Church works on commercial principles. Commercial principles are derived from maritime law, and so that makes the Church a ship. Do you understand?”

I understood completely. I was talking to a fruit bat. Still, being a lunatic has never been a barre to entry to the Church of England. The question is whether to play along with someone’s delusions, or to try and correct them. The latter is time consuming and rarely successful, so I tend to play along.

“In order to be licensed as a Lay Reader, you must have been confirmed.”

“Yes.”

“Which is a universal, non-specific process within the Church of England, so any required permissions will be granted by default.”

“Oh,” said Mordred of the family Williams, looking rather deflated.

“I’m curious,” I said, although I was not, “Why do you refer to yourself as Mordred of the family Williams, rather than Mordred Williams?”

He immediately brightened. “That’s because there’s no such person as Mordred Williams! Mordred Williams is a legal fiction concocted by the government in order to control me. As long as I don’t create a joinder between my real name and the name the government wrote on my birth certificate - without my consent, I might add - they have no power over me. Any papers that I receive addressed to that false name have no legal standing.”

I could see this argument lasting less than a second if tested in court. This is why you should not give children names like Mordred. It is asking for trouble. Standing before me was the end result of such practice.

I finished the conversation by saying I was pleased to meet him and expressing a desire to see him at the next week’s service. Although both these sentiments lacked truth, they were expected.

After my usual Sunday lunch with my fiancée, I returned to one of my little projects -finding out who Al really was. So far, the only clue I had was that he had a connection with a band called Uranium Death Cult, who had once been quite successful. I started trawling through Google images – the band had guarded their identities jealously, always using pseudonyms, always wearing stage makeup whenever they might be seen. Yet fans will take photos of anything associated with a band, especially around the stage door where they think they might get a candid photo. Naturally, the bouncers try to stop this happening, but I had hopes that something might slip. In any event, I was expecting that I might see Al in one of the photos, but nothing.

Do you realise how boring it is sifting through fan photos? You’re as likely to get a photo showing a portion of chips bought from a van behind Hammersmith Odeon as you are a photo of a band member.

But diligence pays off.

I found a photo of a publicity poster of the band posing in front of bikes. Thanks to my association with Al and his chapter of Hells Angels, I could identify the bikes as “rigid framed chops”. The interesting thing is that these bikes are all customised and individual to their rider. A fingerprint, I suppose you might call it.
And one of the bikes was Al’s.

Would Al have lent his bike for the publicity shot? I wasn’t sure. But if he hadn’t, then what did it mean? What it meant was that I had another breadcrumb on the trail of Al, and a lot more work ahead of me.

This activity had taken the entire afternoon, but I could see that the information was useful. I walked through to the living room and checked the early evening news on TV while waiting for dinner. It was pretty much what you would expect – politicians challenging each other over this, that and the other, a bit of sport, analysis from a pundit, then on to the local news.

Which was about how some unfortunate curate at Musdon Minster had plummeted to his doom from the tower gallery, striking the floor in a most horrific and permanent way.

Disclaimer: In his analysis of doors, the Rev. David Wilson fails to discuss the revolving door. Considering the theological implications of the revolving door, it is an omission that at best can be described as sloppy.