Thursday, 23 April 2026

St George's what?

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

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