Whit

CHAPTER 12

I think it was my friend Mr Warriston of Dunblane who observed that the ridicule of fools is the surest sign of genius, and the scorn of political or religious leaders one of the least ambiguous signals that the object of their venom is espousing something threateningly close to the truth.

To this I would only add that as most of us are only too willing to define a fool precisely as a person who disagrees with us, a degree of self-fulfilment is inevitably introduced to the process which - while smacking of a kind of facile elegance - robs the observation of much of its utility.

Either way, it has always seemed to me that the average person has no difficulty weighing their own desires, prejudices and bigotries against the totality of the world's most sophisticated philosophies and every moral lesson such systems have ever given rise to, and judging their selfishness to be the more worthy of action.

As a Luskentyrian, of course, I am far from being an average person, and as a third-generation Leapyearian (indeed, the only one), I have privilege heaped upon exclusivity, with all the responsibility and freight of consideration that entails. Perhaps, therefore, it is not really my place to judge my fellows too harshly when what we share is debatably of less importance than that which divides and distinguishes us, which made me no better than the four men I'd left on their knees wheezing and cursing outside the station the previous day. Nevertheless, whether it was good for my soul or not, I was still relishing the memory the following morning while I stood at a motorway on-ramp in Gunnersbury, being occasionally jeered at from passing cars and vans - perhaps on account of my gender, perhaps due to my hat - and, as a rule, insulted by the drivers whose offers of a lift I declined because their automobiles seemed somehow too Blandly conventional.

This was part of my strategy for shaking the faith-corroding influence of the big city off my feet. I had grown too used to the electric light of the squat (which had confused me, once I'd stopped to think about it, but had been explained to me as simply the result of the electricity company not caring whether the building was legally occupied or not as long as the bills were paid). I had considered taking more of the cannabis cigarettes last night while Boz - with backing in mono by Zeb - detailed my exploits of the day to the others and I glowed with pride in spite of myself, regardless of an outward show of modesty. In the end I had not indulged.

I had a word with Zeb, telling him that I thought it best that I continued to search for Morag in the hope that my mission might be successful before I - or anybody else - reported back the bad news concerning our cousin's double life. Zeb did not demur. Then I had said my goodnights and goodbyes at a still respectable hour and gone to my hammock, pleased at not having given in to temptation. Next morning, however, I had found myself thinking about hopping on a bus or taking a tube, while I walked from Kilburn to here in the breaking dawn. Again, I had resisted, but all these urges and hankerings were signs that I was becoming infected with the thoughts and habits of the Unsaved.

There is a perhaps perverse pleasure to be had from not taking the obvious course bred into all Luskentyrians and diligently developed all our lives; the longer I stood on the slip road leading to the motorway and turned down the offers of lifts - sometimes successfully waving on one of the other people hitch-hiking there to take the vehicle instead - the better I felt about this latest leg of my mission. I was experiencing an odd mix of emotions; elation at my feats of guile and arms the day before, relief at leaving the big city, a nagging homesickness and general feeling of missing everybody at the Community, disquiet that - unless either I or the young man at La Mancha had entirely got hold of the wrong end of the stick - my cousin Morag seemed to have developed an antipathy towards me and might even be avoiding me, and an undercurrent of paranoia that one or more of the men I'd attacked with the pepper sauce yesterday might for some reason drive past while I was standing here and jump out and attack me.

I kept telling myself there were getting on for seven million people in London alone and Brentwood was really quite far away and almost directly opposite from the direction I'd be travelling in, but I think it was that fear that finally overcame the prideful feeling of blessed righteousness I was experiencing by turning down all those offered rides and made me accept a lift from a nice young couple in a small, old and rather tinny French car. They were only going as far as Slough, but it got me started. They commented on my Sitting Board; I started explaining about Luskentyrianism and our ascetic tendencies. They looked glad to get rid of me.

I estimated it took me ninety minutes or more first to make my way out of Slough and then to get another lift, this time in the back of a builder's pick-up whose cab was crammed with three young men in what looked like football strips. They took me as far as Reading; cement dust flew up in the slipstream and stung my eyes.

I spent about an hour by the side of the A4 on the outskirts of Reading - mostly spent studying my map and brushing cement dust off my jacket and trousers - then accepted a ride from a well-groomed but casually dressed chap heading for an amateur cricket match in Newbury. He asked about the Sitting Board too; I told him it was a kind of prayer mat, which I think just confused him. I studied the book of maps in his car and decided against the obvious course of being dropped at the junction with the motorway to continue along the M4, accepting it as more blessed to stay with the byways. I stuck with the man - a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company, though obviously off-duty, as it were - all the way to Newbury and chatted easily enough to him. I suspect that I was being flirted with but I'm really a novice in such matters so perhaps he was just being friendly. While walking out of Newbury I ate the sandwiches Roadkill had given me the previous evening.

In succession, my next hitches took me to Burbage (with a chain smoker; more eye watering), Marlborough (courtesy of a youngish off-duty soldier who kept brushing my thigh and hip with his hand when he changed gear, until I ostentatiously extracted the six-inch hat-pin from my lapel and started picking my teeth with it), Calne (a kindly greying fellow on his way back from what sounded like an assignation), Chippenham (in a delivery lorry with a sorry soul who was to become a father for the first time later that month, and due to hear the following morning whether he had lost his job in something ominous called a rationalisation) and finally, with the light fading fast, to a village called Kelston with another couple. They were rather older and even more chatty than the two who'd begun the day. They commented on my Sitting Board, too; I told them it was to combat a back problem. They invited me to stay at their house in Kelston. I declined politely, though I availed myself of a look at their road atlas. I slung my hammock in a wood on the village outskirts. It rained for a while during the night; I used my kit-bag as an extra covering, but still got wet.

I woke feeling damp and stiff and cold shortly after dawn and washed my face in the heavy dew that lay upon the grass, then climbed the most scalable-looking tall tree I could find, partly for the exercise and partly so that I would warm up.

Above the tree tops, the sky looked worryingly red, but beautiful all the same, and I sat there, wedged in amongst the branches for a while just watching the soft clouds move and listening to the birds sing, and praising God and Their Creation with a song of my own, sung silently in my soul.

I walked through Bath's outskirts to the A39 and after about an hour's walk started hitching just past a large roundabout. The traffic seemed much busier than the day before, and it was only as I stood at the side of the road trying to account for this that I realised today was Monday and yesterday had been Sunday; I cursed myself for a fool, not having realised this the day before. It made no difference to my journey or quest for Morag, but I had been slow not to ask myself why so few of the people who'd given me lifts the day before had been working.

It was not unusual for Luskentyrians to lose track of the days - we work on the natural cycles of lunar month and year, not artificial divisions like weeks - but I had thought that living in the midst of the Norms I would naturally fall into their ways;

I suppose the squat in Kilburn had been less than archetypically Bland. I thought of home again, and everybody there. I hoped Mr Warriston wouldn't be too worried when I didn't turn up to play the Flentrop. For a while, as the traffic roared past on its way back in towards Bath, I wallowed in a sweet, lost feeling of self-pity, imagining what everyone back home would be doing now, and hoping some of them were missing me.

I shook off the mood and concentrated on feeling positive and looking pleasant and eager, but not seductive. Within a few more minutes I got a lift from a baker returning home after a night shift; I walked from a village called Hallatrow to one called Farrington Gurney and - courtesy of a commuting office manager - was in Wells before the shops were open.

Wells possesses an attractive cathedral and seemed altogether quite a pleasant, holy place. I felt a certain pleasing fitness that I had ended up here this morning when normally I would have been visiting Dunblane, and was tempted to stay and take a look around, but decided to press on. A traffic warden gave me directions for Clissold's Health Farm and Country Club, which was less than ten miles away, near the village called Dudgeon Magna. I started walking west and kept my thumb out as I left the small town behind; a strange-looking van stopped within a minute, barely a furlong beyond the speed-limit sign.

The van's bodywork appeared at first sight to be constructed of bricks. The back door opened to reveal a group of motley-dressed young people sitting on sleeping bags, rucksacks and bed-rolls.

'Headin' for the gig?' one called.

'No, a place called Dudgeon Magna,' I said. There was some muttering amongst the young people. Finally somebody up front looked at a map and the message came back to hop in. I sat on the ridged metal floor

'Yeah, 'pparently it used to belong to a company that sold stone cladding and wall coverings and stuff,' said the lass I was sitting next to, who was about my age. I'd commented on the van's odd appearance.

The old vehicle had sheets of artificial brick stuck to the inside as well as the outside. The ten young people it contained were on their way to some sort of party in a field near Glastonbury.

I thought back to the map I'd looked at the night before. 'Isn't this a rather strange route to take to Glastonbury?' I asked.

''Voiding the filth,' the chap at the wheel called back cheerfully.

I nodded as though I knew what he was talking about.

'What's in Dudgeon Magna?' one of the others asked.

'My cousin,' I told her. She was dressed like the others, in layers of holed, ragged but colourful clothes; she wore sensible-looking boots that had obviously seen a few fields in their time. The six young men all had dreadlocks - I'd asked Roadkill what they were called - and the four young women all had part or all of their heads shaved. I wondered if perhaps they were part of some Order.

'Shouldn't that be Dudgeon Alto or something?' another lass asked, passing me a can of cider.

I smiled. 'I suppose it should be really, shouldn't it?' I said, tasting the drink in the can.

'Oh fuck,' said our driver. 'What are they doing here?'

'Roadblock,' the fellow in the passenger seat said. 'Bastards.' Various of the others got up and crowded round the area just behind the seats, making noises of disappointment and annoyance.

'It's the pigs,' somebody muttered back to those of us still sitting as the van slowed to a stop. The girl across from me, who'd passed me the cider, rolled her eyes and sighed loudly. The driver wound down his window.

'What's the matter?'

'… reason to believe…' I heard a deep male voice say; the others started speaking and I only caught snatches of the rest.

'But-'

'… way to a trespassory assembly…'

'Aw, come on, man-'

'… serious disruption to a community…'

'… not doing anything, we're not harming anybody.'

'… justice act that you may be…'

'… mean, what're we supposed to have done?'

'Why aren't you out catching rapists or something?'

'… back the way you came…'

'Look, we're just going to visit friends, for fuck's sake!'

'… hereby deemed to be…'

'… unfair; I mean, it's just so unfair.'

At that point the van's back doors were hauled open by two policemen wearing overalls and crash helmets carrying long batons. 'Right, come on; out!' one of them said.

I got out with the others, amongst much complaining.

'What appears to be the problem, officer?' I asked one of the men.

'Stand over there,' we were told.

Ahead on the road was a police van with blue lights flashing; we had been pulled in to a lay-by where other worn-looking vans, a couple of old cars and a decrepit coach had also been stopped. There were more police vans and cars perched on verges nearby and lots of police moving around, some dressed in ordinary uniforms, some in overalls.

We stood on a grass verge while the van was briefly searched and the police checked its tyres and lights; our driver had to show some documents. Some of the vans and cars which had been stopped were made to turn round and head back the way they had come. Others seemed to be the objects of disputes between their occupants and the police; a few small groups of people, some of them in tears, tramped back up the road carrying sleeping bags, back packs and plastic bags. Meanwhile another tired-looking old minibus was stopped and more people forced to get out and stand on the grass. Smartish looking cars and other types of traffic were allowed to carry on past the roadblock.

'Right; back the way you came,' we were told by a policeman after the police left our van and went on to the minibus. 'But look,' the man who'd been driving protested. 'We're just-'

'You've got one very borderline tyre, son,' the policeman interrupted, pointing his finger in the young man's face. 'Want us to check the spare? If it's there? You got a jack? Yes? No? want us to check that tyre again? Very borderline, it was. You understand what I'm saying?'

'Look-'

'Fuckin' police state,' somebody muttered.

'Get in the van, get out of here, get out of Avon. Understand?' the policeman said, poking the driver in the chest. 'And if I see you again, you're nicked.' He turned and walked away. This one's goin' back, Harry!' he shouted to another policeman, who nodded and then read the van's licence number into a hand-held radio.

'Shit,' somebody said as we trooped back to the van.

'I'm still going; we're still going, aren't we?'

''Snot far.'

'Fuckin' is! Good ten miles.'

'Bastards.'

'Na; we'll get a bit closer. Cross the fields job.'

I got my kit-bag out of the back of the van. 'Why exactly are they stopping everybody?' I asked.

'They're the fucking pigs, man; it's their fucking job.'

'The fucking Fascist Anti-Fun Police.'

'Bastards!' somebody said from inside the van. 'They've spilled all the drink.' There were groans as people watched rivulets of pale yellow liquid trickle out the rear doors.

'You not coming with us?' the girl who'd given me the cider asked.

'Dudgeon Magna,' I said, pointing.

'You'll be lucky,' one of the young men said.

'Thank you. Go with God,' I said. They closed the doors. The van started up and turned round, heading back towards Wells. I waved to the people looking out the back windows and set my face to the west again.

'And where do you think you're going?' asked an overalled, crash-helmeted police officer, standing directly in front of me.

'The village of Dudgeon Magna,' I said. 'To see my cousin Morag Whit at Clissold's Health Farm and Country Club.'

The officer looked me down and up. 'No you're not,' he said.

'Yes I am,' I said, trying not to sound too indignant.

'No,' he said, pressing me in the chest with his truncheon, 'you're not.'

I looked down at the truncheon and put one of my feet out behind the other so I could better control my centre of balance. I leaned into the truncheon. 'Where I come from,' I said slowly, 'we treat guests with a little more courtesy than this.'

'You're not a guest, love; you're just a fucking nuisance as far as we're concerned. Now fuck off back to Scotland or wherever it is you come from.' He pushed at me with the truncheon. My chest was hurting where he was pushing, but I was standing my ground.

'Sir,' I said, looking him in the eyes beneath the pushed-up visor of the crash helmet. 'I'm not entirely clear why you're intercepting all these young people, but whatever it is you think they are going to do, I am not interested in it. I am going to visit my cousin at Clissold's Health Farm and Country Club.'

The officer took the weight off the truncheon, then started tapping me in the chest with it in time to his words. 'And, I, just, told, you, you're, not,' he said, finally pushing me hard and forcing me to take a step backwards. 'Now do you want to turn round and fuck off or do you want to get into serious fucking trouble? Because I've just about fucking had it with you people.'

I glared at him through narrowed eyes. I raised my head. 'I want to speak to your superior officer,' I said frostily.

He looked at me for a moment. 'Right,' he said, standing to one side and motioning with his baton. 'This way.'

'Thank you,' I said, taking a step past him.

I think he tripped me to get me off balance; the next thing I knew he had me on the ground, my cheek ground into the damp, gritty tarmac of the lay-by, his knee in the small of my back and one of my arms pushed so far up my back I let out an involuntary shriek of pain; it felt like my arm was going to break. 'All right!' I screamed.

'Dave,' he said calmly. 'Search this bag, will you?'

I saw boots appear to one side and my kit-bag, lying on the ground beside me, was wrenched from my hand.

'You're going to break my arm!' I shouted. The pressure eased a little until it was merely very uncomfortable. I felt my face flush as I realised how easily I'd been first fooled and then brought down. Any self-satisfaction I'd felt at my exploits in Essex two days earlier was being wrung out of me now.

'What's that?' my attacker asked.

'What?' the other one said.

'That there. What's that?'

'Bottle of something.'

'Yeah; and that?'

'Yeah… could be something, couldn't it?'

The pressure came back on my arm again and I sucked in breath, trying not to cry out. I sensed the policeman who was pinning me down lower his head to mine, then felt his breath on my neck. 'I think we've found a suspicious substance here, young lady,' he said.

'What are you talking about?' I gasped.

I was dragged upright and held, still painfully, in front of the one who'd brought me down as the second policeman held two of my vials in front of me. I could feel my hat, crushed between my back and the policeman's chest.

'What're these, then?' the other one asked.

I grimaced. 'That on the left's hearth ash!' I said. I was having to work hard at not appending 'you oaf!' or 'you idiot!' to a lot of these utterances. The contents of my kit-bag had been strewn over the tarmac. The bag itself had been turned inside-out.

'Harthash?' said the one holding the vial.

'You mean hashish?' the one behind me said.

'No! Ash from a hearth,' I said, seeing some other policemen walking over towards us. 'It's for a ceremony. The other jar's for my mark. The mark on my forehead. Can't you see it? These are religious substances; holy sacraments!'

The second officer was taking the top off the ash vial. 'Sacrilege!' I yelled. The second officer sniffed at the ash, then dipped a moistened finger in. 'Desecration!' I screamed, as the other policemen came up towards us. I struggled; the grip on my arm tightened as I was lifted onto my tiptoes. Pain surged through my arm and I shrieked again.

'Steady on, Bill,' one of the other officers said quietly. 'We've got a telly crew back there.'

'Right, sarge,' the one behind me said. The pain eased again and I gulped some deep breaths.

'Now then, young lady; what's all this about?'

'I am trying,' I said through clenched teeth, 'to make my lawful and peaceable way to visit my cousin Morag Whit in Clissold's Health Farm and Country Club, in Dudgeon Magna. This… person behind me was most insulting and when I asked to speak to his superior officer to report his unmannerliness he tricked me and attacked me.'

'Suspicious-looking substance, sarge,' the one with the vial said, presenting it to the older man, who frowned and also sniffed it.

'That is gross irreverence!' I yelled.

'Hmm,' he said. He looked at the kit-bag's contents on the ground. 'Anything else?'

'Other jars and stuff here, sir,' one of the others said, squatting and picking up the vial of dried river mud. A crunch sounded from under his foot as he rose. He looked down and moved something sideways with the edge of his shoe. I saw the remains of the tiny zhlonjiz jar.

'My God! What have you done?' I screamed.

'Now now,' somebody said.

'Heresy! Impiety! Desecration! May God have mercy on your Unsaved souls, you wretches!'

'This could be something, too,' the desecrator said, rubbing the dust between his fingers.

'Are you people listening?' I shouted. 'I am the Elect of God, you buffoons!'

'Put her in the wagon,' the sergeant said, nodding his head. 'Sounds like she might have escaped from somewhere.'

'What? How dare you!'

'And get this stuff bagged for checking out,' the sergeant said, tapping the vial of hearth ash and turning over the limp kit-bag with his foot as he turned away.

'Let me go! I am an officer of the True Church! I am the Elect of God! I am on a sacred mission! You heathens! By God, you will answer to a higher court than you have ever glimpsed for this insult, you ruffians! Let me go!'

I might have saved my breath. I was marched off past numerous other vehicles, groups of people, white lights and flashing blue lights and bundled into a police van some way up the road, still protesting furiously.

In the police van I was handcuffed to a seat and told to shut up. A burly policeman in overalls and crash helmet sat at the far end of the passenger compartment, twirling a baton in his hands and whistling. The only other people in the van were a sorry-looking young couple who smiled at me nervously and then went back to holding each other tight.

The van smelled of antiseptic. I found myself breathing quickly and shallowly. There was a queasiness in my stomach.

I flexed my wrists and scowled at the officer, then closed my eyes and arranged my limbs as comfortably as I could. I attempted to do some deep breathing, and might have succeeded had we not shortly been joined by some loudly protesting youths who were bundled into the van by a clutch of overalled, crash-helmeted policemen.

Shortly thereafter we were driven off at high speed.

The True Church of Luskentyre underwent something of a schism - albeit an amicable one - in 1954, when we were gifted the estate at High Easter Offerance on the flood-plain of the river Forth by Mrs Woodbean, who had become a convert three years earlier. Mrs W was about the dozenth full convert, lured to the now quietly flourishing farm/community at Luskentyre by my Grandfather's reputation for holiness and lack of interest in taking money off even the richest of his followers (an aspect of his renown which he had realised early on only made people all the more generous; another example of the Contrariness of life).

It was, sadly, a tragedy which spurred Mrs W to act. The Woodbeans had a son called David, their only child. Mrs W had been told after his birth that she could not bear another baby, and so the boy was all the more precious to them, and was kept cosseted and pampered. In 1954, when he was seven, he walked through a glass door in a shop in Stirling. He wasn't mortally wounded but he lost a lot of blood and an ambulance was called to take him to hospital; it crashed en route and the boy was killed. Mrs Woodbean took this as a sign that the modern world was too saturated with technology and cleverness for its - or her family's - own good, and decided to renounce the majority of her worldly goods and devote her life to Faith (and allegedly to having another child at all costs, an ambition which was fulfilled years later, when she gave birth to Sophi at the age of forty-three, though at the cost of her own life).

Mrs Ws extraordinary act of charity was unique in its scale, but converts were bountiful in smaller ways all the time, though by all accounts Salvador produced a great show of grumpy reluctance when accepting a gift, and made sure the donor always knew that he was doing it for the good of their soul (on the grounds that it was indeed more blessed to give than to receive, and Salvador's soul was already doing quite well, thank you, and so could afford to be generous when it came to accepting tribute).

People heard about our Order through the media (very occasionally), sometimes through the warnings of sincere but misguided priests and ministers who had not heard the adage concerning the non-existence of bad publicity, but most often just by word of mouth (it has to be admitted that no attempt to spread the word through the commercial distribution of the Orthography has ever been successful). As I have said, there is a sense in which we were the first Hippies, the first Greens, the first New Agers, and so a few brave souls who were in the vanguard of social change, and at least twenty years ahead of their time, were sure to be attracted to a cause that would shake the world in various guises a few decades later.

In the years following the establishment of our Order, my Grandfather gradually stopped looking for the - by now almost mythic - canvas bag, and settled down to the life of what we now call a guru, dispensing wisdom, experiencing visions which helped guide our Faith and providing a living example of peaceful holiness. The sisters continued to share my Grandfather and have his children - most notably and wonderfully my father, born on the 29th of February 1952 - and, with gaps for pregnancies, continued with their mobile shop business until the year of the schism.

Mr McIlone elected to remain at Luskentyre, which was, after all, his, though he insisted that Salvador accept his entire library as his parting gift. By this time there were five full converts, that is, people who had come to stay at Luskentyre, to work the land and fish the sea and be on hand to listen to our Founder's teachings. There were perhaps another dozen followers like the Fossils, who would come to stay (usually providing their own keep in some form or another) for a few weeks or months at a time. Two of the more ascetic full converts - apostles, as they called themselves by now - decided to stay at the farm on Harris after the gifting of High Easter Offerance and Grandfather, doubtless wisely, put no pressure on anybody to go or to stay.

Grandfather and the sisters had seen many photographs of High Easter Offerance and some silent ciné film too, projected onto a sheet in the parlour of our only other sympathiser local to Harris, whose house happened to have electric power. Still, it must have been an adventure for them when, in the spring of 1954, they finally packed all their belongings in the ex-mobile library - now ex-mobile shop - and drove to Stornoway, where the van was driven onto a huge net on the quay side and then winched aboard the ferry for the long, rolling journey to Kyle of Lochalsh. From there they headed slowly south on the narrow, winding roads of the day, away from the fractured geometries of the storm-flayed western isles to the comparatively balmy climes of central Scotland, and the abundant expanses of smooth-sloped hills, coiled river, breeze-rustled forests and sunny pastures of the Forth's broad run.

Mr and Mrs Woodbean had already moved out to the little turreted house over the iron bridge from the main farm. My Grandfather, the sisters, their children and assorted followers - including the Fossils, who had come along to help with the move - held a service and then a party to celebrate the relocation, installed themselves and their modest possessions in the mansion house and old farm, added Mr McIlone's library to the already impressive if under-used one which existed in the mansion house and in the weeks, months and years that followed, got down to the business of renovating the farm buildings and restoring the neglected fields to productivity.

Mrs Woodbean's brother had made a fortune after the War dealing in scrap and army surplus; he toyed with the idea of becoming a convert for a while and during this period either generously donated to the Order several pieces of potentially valuable ex-service equipment which would in many cases later be pressed into previously unthought-of practical applications, or used the farm as a dump for useless junk on which there was no quick profit to be made (depending who you listen to).

The only things he did provide which really were useful - I suppose the Deivoxiphone doesn't count - were a couple of short-wave radio sets mounted on sturdy, if wheel-less, army trailers. Mr McIlone was persuaded to accept one, and both were eventually persuaded to work, powered by wind generators. The radios provided a link between the two outposts of our Faith which was both fairly reliable and relatively secure (my Grandfather was starting to worry about the attentions of the government, and at one stage appeared to be convinced there was an entire Whitehall agency called the Department Of Religious Affairs, or DORA for short, which had been set up specifically to spy upon us and disrupt our every dealing, though he laughingly dismisses this as an exaggeration nowadays; a parable taken literally).

Of course, the radios had a very definite air of clutter and newfanglehood about them, but - perhaps because the radio provided such a perfect image of the human soul - Grandfather had always had a soft spot for the device, and was more inclined to suffer the presence of one of them than any other symptom of the material age.

The radio also provided a new aspect of - one might even say weapon for - our Faith when Grandfather awoke one morning from an obviously Divinely inspired dream with the idea of Radiomancy, whereby one tunes the radio at random, then turns it on, and uses the first words one hears - either immediately or as a result of sweeping gradually further and further along the frequencies to either side - as a means of prediction and divination.

So we were not so remote from our original home, but more importantly, with our relocation to this leafy arable alcove just off the central industrial belt, it was easier for potential converts to visit and make up their minds whether they wanted to Believe, or even to come and stay and Work and Believe. A slow trickle of people, young and old, mostly British but with the occasional foreigner, paid court to my Grandfather, listened to his teachings, read his Orthography, conversed with him and thought about their own lives, and - in some cases - decided that he had found the Truth, and so became Saved.

Grandfather thought up the Festival of Love in 1955. It occurred to him that it might not be wise to rely entirely on providence to provide Leapyearians, who were now seen very much as prophets and perhaps potential Messiahs. Indeed it might even be seen as impious to expect the Creator to ensure a child was born on any given 29th of February; it could be thought of as taking God for granted, which did not sound like a good idea.

Grandfather's Faith had embraced something very like the idea of free love from the start, thanks to Aasni and Zhobelia's generosity, and he had had revelations which certainly appeared to sanction the extension of his physical communing beyond the two sisters, and to allow his followers the same leeway with their partners, providing those concerned were agreeable and sufficiently enlightened to reject possessiveness and unreasoning, unholy jealousy (which had been Revealed to be a sin against God's bountiful and forgiving nature).

So, if the Order was to give nature a gentle helping hand with producing a child at the end of February in a leap year, it obviously made sense to encourage those ready, willing and able to assist in this matter to enjoy themselves as much as possible nine months earlier. Our Founder therefore decreed that the end of May before a leap year should be the time for a Festival; a Festival of Love in all its forms, including the holy communing of souls through the blessed glory of sexual congress. The month before should be a time of abstinence, when the Believers ought to deny themselves the most intense of pleasures in order to prepare for - and fully appreciate the advent of - the Festival itself.

Of course, the cynics, apostates and heretics - and those sad souls who hold it an article of their own perverted faiths that everybody else's motives can never be any better than their own - will point to the presence of several attractive young women amongst Grandfather's followers at this time as some sort of reason for our Founder's idea concerning the Festival. Well, we have grown to expect such shameful drivel from the ranks of the profoundly Unsaved, but it has been pointed out by no less than Salvador himself that even if the beauty he saw around him at that time did somehow lead his thoughts towards such a happy and Festive conclusion, what was that but an example of God using the Fair to inspire the Wise?

Not coincidentally, I think the first real attempt by the press to sabotage our cause occurred around this time, and confirmed to our OverSeer that he was right to shun publicity and refuse cameras access to the estate.

Aasni and Zhobelia seem not to have been discomfited by the concept of the Festival; they apparently felt secure in their joint relationship with Salvador and had devoted themselves both to the upbringing of their children and the upgrading of their home. They had, also, made friends with Mr and Mrs Woodbean and seemed to draw comfort from that as well. The sisters had not ceased to develop their culinary and condimentary skills; now that they were free of the need to travel the islands peddling their wares in the ancient van, they could devote even more time to the expansion and refinement of their range of sauces, pickles and chutneys.

At about this time, too, they began to experiment with other more substantial dishes, and made their first tentative excursions into the strange and exciting new world of cross-cultural cuisine-combining, as though through such provisional promiscuity and the amalgamation of the Scottish and the sub-continental, they could participate in their own terms in the freshly formulated Festivities. It was then that the process really began that would lead to such dishes as lorne sausage shami kebab, rabbit masala, fruit pudding chaat, skink aloo, porridge tarka, shell pie aloo gobi, kipper bhoona, chips pea pulao, whelk poori and marmalade kulfi, and I think the world is a better place for all of them.