As it's the day of our patron saint here in England,
I thought I would help out those of you who are unfamiliar with him by writing
a brief (and fictionalised) account of his life:
Born on 23rd April 1077, he was named George Aristotle Benevolent by his loving
parents, who had been completely surprised by his birth, thinking the pregnancy
was just a weird case of stomach gout. He could read by the age of two, which
is even more impressive bearing in mind there were no printed works within 250
years of him. He had a younger sister, Dorothy, who would grow up to be the
first female Pope, although it was kept quiet at the time and they pretended
she was only at the Vatican to peel bananas. When he was 10, he accidentally
stepped on a grass snake and was convinced it had sunk poisonous fangs into his
ankle. This led to his 'dark years' in which he threw himself into a debauched
lifestyle, believing he would imminently die anyway due to the venom (which he
presumably thought was very slow-acting).
He was married four times - including twice to the same woman, an
abnormally tall seamstress named Dell Twigg, who would go on to be the
inspiration for the character 'Malvolio' in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, and
who appears, in cartoon form, on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band.
George only worked for three years throughout his life. He was a goat
herder on a meadow in what is now Walthamstow. The rest of his time was spent
'wandering and wondering', much to his parent's dismay, who dismissed his
claims of religious pilgrimage as 'a pile of dung to disguise his constant
laziness'. It is thought that the legend of George slaying a dragon arose from
an incident in Turkey when he accidentally sat on a wasp.
He died in poverty at the age of 47, having achieved little besides bringing
the concept of tattoos back to England from his travels in Mesopotamia.
RC 23-4-26
Thursday, 23 April 2026
St George's what?
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