WHEN I WAS A child there were seven educational and pedagogic establishments in Salisbury Cathedral Close, all of them contaminated by Anglicanism which was in those days bellicose, harsh, punitive.
As I dawdled on my way to school I would pass ordinands, naked save for a dog collar, wrestling to the death; gibbets from which hung decomposing apostates; nuns exhibiting their lacerations, Sten guns and bloodied wimples; stoicf agellants; pious trebles submitting to castration; mitred zealots lapidating blasphemers; pyres of witches …
I am possibly and the craze for ecumenical hug-ins. It was before guitar strumming curates thrilled congregations-in-the-round with renditions of Kumbaya and We Shall Overcome.
