Never Figured, Did He. By Uncle Monty.

Never Figured, Did He.
Story By Uncle Monty.
Photos By Alex Albion.
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He plonked down his big flabby bottom on

the old iron and wooden bench at the Church’s

18th century cemetery garden. He began to

munch on his big bag of MacDonald’s take-

away junk food. Soon he was taking big gulps

of beer from his open beer can. He was about
age 30 and perhaps also on government un-

employment benefits. But now, he was as

happy as a little meadow lark. It was

Thursday afternoon at St. Paul’s Deptford

Parish at the Anglican Diocese of Southwark

with those short autumn days

now upon us all.
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But he was soon in for a rude awakening at the

unexpected arrival at the cemetery garden of

the parish’s Rev’d Father Paul Bulter (shown

above in my caption image of him) dressed in

his very traditional and rather quaint all-black

clerical vestments. The beer boozer never figured,

did he, on being politely but firmly escorted off

the parish grounds by the said Rev’d Father?
A rather imposing figure in his clerical robe and
by his Anglican-Catholic presence, The Church
of England priest was no pushover in dealing

with such common beer louts.
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Public drinking is strictly a "no no" at the

cemetery garden and the Rev’d Father has a

no nonsense approach to the problem of such

beer boozers who think they can drink and

spew out their guts at anywhere they want.

The parish has rightly imposed a ban on

all alcohol and beer drinking after it got so

bad at the cemetery garden it became instead

almost like a “Beer Garden” for many of the local
riff-raff and obnoxious characters that began to
take over the place at the expense and safety of

of its regular parishioners and church visitors.
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David John Diamond, Priest, Canon,
Rector of Deptford, 1969-1992.

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While certainly admiring the Rev’d Father’s

approach, the danger for such clergy is the

ever-potential for violence against them. British

clergymen are now quite frequently attacked and

robbed both inside and outside of their respect-

ive parishes all across the face of "Broken New

Britain." Being dressed as a cleric is no longer
any guarantee of personal safety. In fact,
quite the opposite is true thesedays in which
violent perpetrators assume such identifiable
clergy as easy prey in their perception that

they’ll not fight back or call the police or are

seen as just physical weaklings anyway. With

that prevalent view, the clergy then are seen

as passive targets by such criminal

and violent elements.

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Also, the major modern problem of theft

from, and vandalism of, churches won't go

away. Along with the sacrilege of stealing

sacred artefacts and religious furnishings

that continues to grow despite the Church's

concerted steps to safeguard such treasures.

The criminal hands of such thieves will never

be cleaned, even when they're sometimes

caught red-handedly doing their

church thievery.

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At St. Paul’s Deptford parish, the church is

now shut to the public after the conclusion of all

services of worship due entirely to such godless
and wicked people stealing whatever they can
inside the church itself during broad daylight.
The taking of church copper roof fixtures is
a common problem, too, with metal thieves
on the loose ready to strip such churches of
their valuable copper for big money at

scrapyards around the country.
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While still at St. Paul's, the reality soon hit home

for the imbiber dude. Never figured, did he, that

he would be so quickly escorted out of the parish's

cemetery garden to do his daytime beer boozing

and greasy food munching elsewhere. Good

riddance then to him and all his ignorant type.

Bravo, I say, to the good Rev’d Father …

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Faithfully, Uncle Monty.

+ALL SAINTS DAY, 2oo8.

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:: Please Note ::

The Rev'd Father Paul D. Butler is not

related to his own diocesan bishop The

Rt. Rev'd Thomas Butler of Southwark.

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