Here follows a transcript of a late night argument I had with Anne, the Talun Chronicle’s tea lady.
I find Anne to be a wealth of knowledge and experience.
She’s 96 so she’s seen a lot of life and I respect her views and opinions greatly.
The rest of the staff had left the office for the evening and Anne and I had stayed behind to tidy up some loose ends, polish the ducks and break out her ‘special tea chest’ as we often do.
What we didn’t realise until much later was that Anne’s collection of rare Lapsang Souchong had become contaminated by her home made window cleaner and her Garibaldis had mutated.
While the following makes little sense, I still believe it to be a fine example of how two people with differing religious beliefs can discuss their personal faiths in peace and friendship without resorting to twatting each other over the head with heavy objects.
Maybe the world can learn something from this transcript.
Maybe I’m once again talking bollocks.
Who can tell?
A prophet seldom knows his prophecy.
Or something.
Brad:
(Absent-mindedly picking weevils from his beard and apropos of nothing)
Anne. I believe in the Great Banana.
The Great Banana is omnipotent, omniscient and all powerful. He created everything and everybody.
The Great Banana has spoken to me and told me that all other religions on Earth are a lie perpetrated by the Crawling Black Spot to lure mankind to sinful practices and the great compost heap of everlasting decay.
I have no proof for this whatsoever, other than my faith in the Great Banana and the truth of his words.
You may have a different belief but the Great Banana has told me that your beliefs are wrong, and as his is the only true word, YOU are therefore wrong.
I demand that you respect my belief even though it goes against everything you believe in and probably, to you, seems more than a little crazy.
I am happy to enter into any discussion regarding the existence of the Great Banana, but I do not have to prove anything, my faith is enough. It is up to you to disprove the existence of the Great Banana.
If you cannot, it is therefore self-evident that the Great Banana does exist. I am completely aware of the fact that you cannot disprove the existence of the Great Banana so I will use that to justify my belief and as proof of the undeniable existence of the Great Banana. If it cannot be denied then, ipso facto, it is undeniable.
However, I demand that, until you prove without a shadow of a doubt that the Great Banana does not exist, we all agree that he does exist and his words and teachings be given the respect they deserve.
On that basis, I demand you dismantle your religious beliefs and organisations because they do not agree with the one true word of the Great Banana and are blasphemous and an affront to my beliefs.
The word of the Great Banana is true. This is self-evident because you cannot prove that the Great Banana does not exist.
If you cannot prove that the Great Banana does not exist then he must exist, and everything he says is true because the Great Banana says it is.
The Great Banana speaks the truth because the Great Banana says he speaks the truth and the Great Banana has to exist because it cannot be proven that he doesn’t.
If the Great Banana exists then he speaks the truth because the Great Banana says he speaks the truth.
When the Great Banana says he speaks the truth, it has to be the truth because the Great Banana speaks the truth, therefore the Great Banana speaks the truth because he cannot lie because, as has already been established, the Great Banana speaks the truth.
Believe whatever you want to believe, but just don’t be a twat about it.
Anne:
(Considers this for a moment, then knocks the tea urn off the trolley with one swipe of her massive, hairy arm.)
Your banana is a different shade of yellow to the banana I believe in, rendering your beliefs in bananas (great or not) null and void. Your opinion about this abhorrent shade of banana offends me and I’m not feeling very safe right now. I will report you to the authorities and them arresting you and locking you up for several years will be proof that my shade of banana is correct and that you will burn in banana hell.
Brad:
I take offence at you taking offence and agree that a state of war exists between us due to our irreconcilable differences. Prepare yourself for Banana (and plantain) based Jihad, heathen scum.
Anne:
Plantain!?! Fucking savage.
Brad:
How dare you bear false witness against the sanctified banana brother. May your children burn in the fires of a million discarded yellow skins (mistakenly burnt by teenagers who swore they read on the interwebs that smoking it got you high)
Anne:
Does it get you high?
Brad:
No. Tried it once. It does taste fucking terrible though and it smells like arse.
For is it not written in Bob 14, Chapter 9:
‘The Plantea Musaceae Musa shalt be the holiest of fruit (possibly berry) and that all other fruit shall fall by the wayside to be trodden on and squished by the hob nailed boot of the righteous.
Lo, let it be heard throughout the land – never shalt thy Lord be placed in custard, nor sliced in half beside some raspberry ripple ice cream.’
Anne:
Go yea, and place sliced banana in custard, and sip from that forbidden sauce, and return hence, and tell me that it did not delight thy tongue.
Brad:
I would never taste the flesh of the anointed one upon my sinless lips, the exalted one speaks the law that they shall only be used to kiss the stalk.
Live with your unholy green banana, in all it’s depraved un-ripeness.
Utter thee the brain fogging mantra of thy kind; “it shall ripen at home, it shall ripen at home” and know not the sin these words place within thy soul.
The Great one shall never be peeled. (Besides which, they give me wicked indigestion, I think I am a touch allergic)
Anne:
It’s the potassium imbalance. Try a little salt on the side.
Brad:
Oh that’s very helpful, I’ll try that, thanks very much!
Ahem, I mean, speak to me not of your foul accoutrements. Salt should only be used on chips and egg, the yellow book states it so.
Anne:
It is a bananas fate to ripen! To behold a ripe banana and its journey from unripe to ripe and callously allow said banana to remain unpeeled is to besmirch the whole of bananadom and further evidence of your false narrative of the great ethylene producing one.
Brad:
Your teachings are full of error and heresy!
The One True Banana is forever ripe, never to be cursed by the Crawling Black Spot and general ickyness.
Its skin will be forever gleaming yellow, a bright beacon amidst the evil of the world.
A green banana is a banana which has not yet been shown the way by our saviour and an overripe banana is one which has turned its stalk away from the word of the Great One.
The use of ethylene to falsely alter the glorious procession from green to lustrous yellow is the darkest of the occult arts.
For does it not say in Arbuthnot 23, Chapter 4, Verse 12:
‘Thy fruit should ripen on the tree. Artificial processes deprive thy fruit of essential amino acids and only serve to increase profit for the dark one’s fallen son, the evil Tesco.’
Anne:
The only ones who believe this vile narrative are the ones who arrived on the boat bearing our holy ones namesake.
Brad:
If only I was to be chosen to ride the holiest of holies, the great Banana Boat, out of Manaus, location of the Revered Plantation of His Herbaceous Flowering Bushes. It will be just reward for a life spent in honest devotion to the Yellow One.
Thy words do not offend me, they only serve to betray your own ignorance.
Anne:
You talk of ignorance as a lamb talks of innocence.
And like a lamb to the slaughter you shall have a reckoning, and it shall be your ignorance, reckoned before you, and you shall weep.
For the great, slightly green, not fully yellow banana shall brook no ignorance and shall strike you down, and you shall die, and you shall not ever undie, and this shall be the fate of all your kind.
Brad:
Your words are false!
Like the ripeness of your fruit!
When the judgement befalls all, YOU shall be the one hacked from the bush by the Great Machete of Moragangonophilitessonsson.
Your fruit shall be cast onto the environmentally friendly compost heap.
And something about being girt around the paps.
For does it not say in Explanations Chapter 10:
‘The dark one shall rise up from the broiling sea, a green banana in his left hand and in the other, some kind of weird, twisty stick with a bell on the end.
Custard shall spew from his blistered lips and yea shall know him by his name which shalt be written on a little blue sticker, and the name written on it will be Fyffes and death will surround him.
His deeds will judge all, and first upon the pike will be the green ones, the unripe ones.’
Anne:
And should this come to pass then I would rejoice.
For there is a time for all things; a time to grow, a time to ripen, a time to peel, a time for over-ripeness, a time to be overlooked and to decompose and to diminish and to lay on the floor of the jungle and see that thy decomposition brings life to the one true banana and to know that it is not the one you are talking about.
Brad:
Lo!
I am overcome with religious fervour!
A light through yonder window breaks, oh wait, it was just a bus passing by, number 73 I think…nevertheless, the great one speaks to me. He says that all bananas are holy, whatever colour they may be.
His words flash like burning magnesium through my mind.
Brother, we believe in the same thing, just at a slightly different stage in the ripening process.
We should blaze a trail for peace and understanding, show tolerance for ever so slight differences in religious scripture, heal the schism between our two churches and focus our combined intent on the true evil in this world:
The evil sprout.
Foul miniature pretender to the throne of the holy St. Cabbage!
The bullet sized destroyers of bowels.
Come, let us work together and scourge the Earth of the foulness that has destroyed so many lives.
Besides, I have to be up early in the morning and I am dying for a piss!
Anne:
Sounds like a plan… I’m already in trouble because I said “I’ll be home at ten”. Sprouts eh? They strike terror into my very soul…
Brad:
I quite like them but don’t tell anyone.
Anne:
Burn the veg, blasphemer, heretic, burn the veg…roasted with a little butter, not for too long though, not too soft and not too hard. Serve with carrots and peas.
Brad:
(Suddenly bursting into song – to the tune of ‘Yellow’ by Coldplay.)
Look at the fruit.
Look how they shine for you.
And everything you do.
Yeah, they were all yellow.
A rubber duck.
A rubber duck for you.
And a Sou’wester too.
And it was called yellow.
Daffodills and sweetcorn.
Selected traffic cones.
And it was all yellow.
Your skin.
Oh yeah your skin and flesh.
Turn into something beautiful.
And you know.
You know I love you so.
You know I love you so.
Lemons and chips.
Big Bird and Pikachu.
Starlight and Edam too.
Yeah they were all yellow.
I slapped a bee.
I slapped a bee for you.
Oh what a thing to do.
It was not all yellow.
Your skin.
Oh yeah your skin and flesh.
Turn into something beautiful.
And you know.
For you I’d make custard from scratch.
For you I’d make custard from scratch.
Its true.
Look how they bend for you.
Look how they peel for you.
Look how they shine for…
Look how they bend for you.
Look how they peel for you.
Look how they shine.
Look at the fruit.
Look how they bend for you.
And all the things that you do.
Anne:
(Shaking her huge, battle scarred head and smiling.)
So anyway, another cuppa?
Brad:
Oh yes please!