Thanne Longen Folk To Goon On Pilgrimages*

And so it came to pass on the nineteenth day after Anti-Weasel Mass Eve that Spinnaker Dobbindong the Inexcusable recalculated his business expenses for the first time that month. To his surprise and consternation, he found that his mileage allowance would be seriously short for that month, so he decided to go on a pilgrimage.

The most Holy place to the strict Uttabolluxer wishing to make his peace with the Skhighhibhoss is – of course – Tourhisttrhap However, after checking the brochures; Dobbindong concluded that the facilities on offer at most of the nearby hotels did not quite fill his material needs. So, after a brisk web search he discovered the 23^rd most Holy Uttabollux site, Cameldrhoppinges, the place where – it is said – the Great Prophet Nhigel (May His Plums Dangle Mightily) first played Strip Scrabble with his seventeenth wife, Gladys the Strumpet.

It was here that Dobbindong came across a cave in a fortuitously inaccessible place**

Some weeks later Dobbindong claimed to have discovered deep within the cave several otherwise unknown Post-It notes made by the Great Prophet Nhigel (May His Plums Dangle Mightily) about how his ministry – and its very lucrative tourist trinket and Holy relic retail subsidiaries – would henceforth pass down the line of descent from his 43^rd wife Gertrude the Filthy-Minded. Dobbindong also claimed that he had found a tattered family-tree in the cave which showed unambiguously that he was indeed the only living descendant of the aforesaid Gertrude, and therefore the true spiritual leader, and – more significantly – the owner of all the lucrative subsidiaries and franchises throughout all the Uttabollux holy places.

This – of course – led to a schism in the Uttabollux community with a great deal of very wide-ranging and in-depth theological debate, including the use of heavy artillery.

At the end of this most enlightening debate, a badly-wounded Dobbindong and those few of his followers still alive fled the country and set up a new community deep in the most boring part of America. Here their community survived and prospered, becoming one of the richest, unenlightened and most scientifically-backward cities in the Midwest – where even mentioning the word ‘evolution’ in mixed company results in a ten year hard labour sentence. In fact, so removed are the members of this community from the rest of the society that surrounds them, there is strong talk of them putting forward a presidential contender for the next US election. Many experienced commentators on the presidential system believe that such a contender’s utter ignorance of the world beyond Dobbindong City would give enough edge over his opponents to enable him to win.

*The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer (1342 - 1400)

**Luckily Dobbindong was able to acquire the title deeds to the plot of land containing the caves, which – in order to preserve the spiritual purity of the place – he fenced off, planted land mines and employed the world’s most psychotic and well-armed security guards to patrol.