Old Ghosts,Tea And Sympathy

Such vanity! - here and there; where the ghost of old Henry Tudor rattles his chains whispering with such pale wantoness.
Ah! then the folly and the jolly can converge on each other and succour with much brinkmanship, a stiff upper lip and a god bless Tess and all who sail in 'er attitude.
And should our feet start wavering at the grate of the monastery; one foot over the threshold, the other dangling mid air at the end of a rope --it would still amount to the same thing: total anarchy as the sun finally settles on god, king and the union jack.
Which brings me to the question of what constitues an Englishman.
Is it the pedantic arrogance of someone with not a pragmatic bone in his body?
A little like an Archbishop, or a priest. A convolution of prismatic ideologies and dogmatic; far-fetched summations on the nature of god.
More so it is probably more like an herpetologist dissecting salamanders and newts (eye of newt?)... perhaps!
As I look about me in these lush surroundings that is Hyde Park, brings to mind another story.
That of the minister and the cooper's ungainly daughter.
One warm summer's day, a minister was taking in the country air walking the fields of his small parish.
When he came across the buxom but ungainly cooper's daughter cooling herself with a small handkerchief, dipping it in the cool waters of a babbling brook.
The minister's pulse quickened seeing her on her haunches as she leaned forward to dampen her kerchief wiping her face and ample breast.
Her rump was indeed sightly as it pressed through the flimsy cotton fabric of her summer dress.
"God help me!" he silently prayed,"Let these ungodly thoughts of temptation be gone from me."
But I tell you, friends, either the good lord was not listening that day, or he'd been distracted by other things.
Because before the goodly minister knew it; he found himself kneeling behind the cooper's daughter, with the source of his discomfort in his fervoured hands.
"Fear not daughter," he breathed heavily as if he'd run a country mile,
"I will not let any harm come to you." And he eased himself closer to her.
"Oh! Father, and what is it you want that you should kneel so?" she coyly replied.
"'tis nought but the kiss of an angel." The minister archly said
"A fallen angel, no doubt." The cooper's daughter said, disappointed.
For sure enough, the source of the minister's discomforture had prematurely discharged itself of its vigour and lay limply like a felled fox...
The moral: religion is a bit like a sail full of wind -- eventually it will blow itself out...
And so friends -- should I endure a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a parody of myself.