Thursday, March the 23rd, 2006

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Cranky Pagan Pudding Recipe

This all happened a long, long time ago, before you were born. It was a pagan time, a bit like The Wicker Man, but with no sign of extravagant bouffants, yellow polo-neck jumpers, and repressed police officers. Think more along the lines of flint arrowheads, woad, and grunting. When we turn our minds to ancient peoples, be they pagan sun-worshippers, cave dwellers, or marauding warriors, we tend to think of them as a homogenous mass rather than as a collection of individuals. We ascribe to them the sameness which is one of the more arresting characteristics of beings from other planets in science fiction—a common language, wardrobe, hairstyle, and so on. If we ever do meet alien life-forms, they will almost certainly be as multifarious as are living things on earth. This is, of course, no less true of our pagan ancestors.

So I want you to consider that the pagan to whom we will now turn our attention was not just an inarticulate woad-daubed bog dweller wrapped in filthy animal hides—though he certainly fit that description—but that he had a personality, too, one that made him unique, as is every single one of God's creatures. The name of this pagan has not come down to us, but what we do know is something of his character. He was cranky.

Cranky, cantankerous, petulant, call it what you will. Had you been a primitive pagan, with matted hair, running sores, rotten teeth, and the distinct possibility of being laid upon a stone slab and sacrificed to the Sun God, you too might have thrown the occasional tantrum. Yet the capacity of the human spirit to cope with the most appalling circumstances is quite astonishing, and it has to be said that all of the cranky pagan's compadres bore life's ills with fortitude. The cranky pagan did not. He moaned and moped and grizzled and grumbled and flew into boiling tempers. He was moody and impossible.

You might wonder why his companions did not shun him, or beat him about the head with clubs until he stopped being fractious, or indeed why they did not put him first on the list to have his heart torn from his breast and offered in trembling supplication to appease their enraged Sun God. We can not be sure that they had such a list, but archaeologists have found mysteriously neat scraping marks on certain stones, and it does not take a great stretch of the imagination to conclude that the marks were made by some pagan hierophant designating appointed victims. These ancient people may have been primitive by our standards, but they had a sense of order, and a system. Bureaucrats flourish in every time and every place, alas.

Cranky he may have been, but the cranky pagan was a superb cook, and that is why he was not just tolerated but treasured. To gain some idea of just how much he was valued, imagine that all you have eaten for the last six months is the meat of birds and small mammals, usually raw, tearing at it ravenously with your aching teeth, blood dripping down your jaw. And then along comes the cranky pagan, growling and grunting as usual, but excitedly, and with a gleam in his eyes, shining brilliantly through the splattering of woad that covers his face. He points yonder, and jabbers, and beckons you to follow him. Wiping the blood of a weasel from your chin, you creak to your feet, and plod after the cranky pagan. He leads you to the edge of the bog. There, on a flat piece of ground, he has deposited a heap of goo. He bends, dips his grubby hand in it, scoops out some of the goo and shoves it into his mouth. He swallows, and then speaks. Obviously, he does not express himself in modern English, so in reporting what he says I have taken certain liberties.

“Do not look so surprised to see me shovelling this goo into my mouth and swallowing it. You need not whirl your arms about in such alarm. I have invented pudding. I gathered a collection of nuts and berries and mashed them all together, and then I worked out a way of making the mash hot, with fire and flame, and this is the result. It is delicious. Try some.”

And there you have it. I only wish we knew precisely which nuts, which berries, went into this pudding, but we don't, and perhaps we never will.

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