Sinister: The Wonder Years

[poetryplace2]

Brothers and sisters

As we fast approach our anniversary it has occurred to some of us that the
newer recruits to our joyful congregation may as yet be unaware of the
traditions and glorious history of this august institution. The mighty oak
of Sinister can only flourish in ever-replenished soil, and so, to remedy
this potentially calamitous situation, for several months now we have been
employing workshy students on their summer recess to venture deep into the
cobwebbed catacombs of The Archives by candlelight. We paid them with
Spangles. Some of the students were never to return from these perilous
regions, but do not weep... They were only Media Studies students. And they
died to serve the greater good.

So let me dandle you a while on the knee of Old Uncle Trousers, as I bring
you.... THE STORY OF SINISTER.

Part I: The Early Years

Date ????BC*
A traveller from The North brings news of ‘delightfulle mufic’ among the
Pictish hordes. Enthused by these rumours, a young cleric by the name of
Andrewe Dene ventures into these godless, pestiferous regions as part of a
Sabre-Toothed-Tiger Safari. Hearing the queer minstrellry emanate from the
forests at night, he feverishly takes primitive field recordings, etching
the notation into stone tablets. Since he belongs to an ascetic cult which
forbids the consumption of flesh or wine, Dene is nourished in his labours
solely by the produce of the local dairy. Hence his recordings become known
as “Ye Sabre Toothed Tiger Milk” tablets.

*Date illegible due to the vandalism of Viking invaders several centuries
later, who covered the archives with crude Norse etchings... Scholars
suggest an approximate translation as ‘This is pish’ etc.

Date   23BC
The cult of Brother Dene’s recordings spreads thoughout the country. By the
banks of the Thames, an innocent Kitchen-worker, David, is granted a
mysterious epiphany as he burns the day’s Cake... a Voice commands him to
take his wench Katrina and establish a Holy Order, based on The New Music,
the wearing of Velour, and strange hilltop rituals, known as ‘picnics’.
Shunned and laughed at by the locals, the couple take refuge high in the
branches of a tree near modern day Kew Bridge. Meanwhile, The Word
spreads...

50AD
Advances in modern technology lead to the formation of a network, uniting
the far-flung members of the fledgling cult. Through observation of the
heavens, and careful study of ley-lines, the brilliant druid Pol Mitchelle
deduces that a centre should be founded in the small village of Edinburgh.
With techniques later used in the construction of Stonehenge, huge obelisks
bearing messages of crucial importance are dragged vast distances by teams
of highly-trained mammoths. God-fearing Christians rightly term this
unseemly activity ‘Sinister’.

65AD
The first message arrives in Edinburgh. Sadly it is obscured by mammoth
dung.

70AD
The second message arrives, bearing only the mysterious rune ‘P----O----P?’.
Detailed study of the calligraphy makes it clear that it is a message of
peace from a terrible Warlord somewhere in the vicinity of Harringay...

Uncle Trousers
xxxxxxx
--------------------------------------------------------
Next week! The Discovery of the New World
Young Bobbie MacRaggartTaggart falls asleep while inhaling a new fangled
‘tobacco cigarello’. and invents the smoke signal....


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