The exodus had, indeed, continued, but I thought the comment a little unnecessary, all the same. \u2018Can you maybe just skip along to the Enlightenment, Natty? The Medieval Bedes do seem rather\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Reactionary? Yes, and you can imagine what happens in the Reformation\u2026\u2019 (We pretended we could), \u2018Well, there\u2019s the Commendable Bede, who did a lot of work for the poor of Jarrow but wrote pure drivel, coming up with some fantastical cosmology where the moon was the sun with its fire out. Enlightenment only in terms of chronology, you could say. The Recommendable Bede is only recommendable in comparison to the Commendable Bede. The Readable Bede wrote children\u2019s stories, but deliberately, rather than the infantilia that the Commendable Bede produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Going into the nineteenth century, as you would expect in the Industrial Revolution, there is an interest in using time to measure speed. That begins the work of the Veloci Bede, and continues with the Increased Bede. Learn\u00e8d stuff to be sure, but it\u2019s more chronometry than chronology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bert Tatsfield nodded; we were passing over a set of points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Then the Undisturbable Bede investigates chronologies within Romantic novels. The conclusions are fairly unsurprising (time moves faster when everyone is happy), but the reason is because the author is having more fun when he describes the misery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018He dies of cholera, and then you get the Smokable Bead, also something of a Romantic, but more William Blake than Emily Bront\u00eb. Building on the work of the Venerable Bede, who divided the hour into Puncti, and mentions the atom only briefly (the time of the blink of an eye, according to the Greeks), the Smokable Bede establishes the atom as one millionth of a Puncti, and then further divides them into Wonders, Cupolas, Visions, and Parpadae Angelicae (the atoms of angels), giving no indication whatsoever of how they might be measured. Neither, incidentally, does he give any reason for adopting this system over the minutes and seconds which were unknown in the Venerable Bede\u2019s day but universally accepted by his own time. In a pamphlet he circulated around Newcastle in the 1880\u2019s he gives a measurement of the lifespan of Moses, correct to three decimal places of a Parpadae Angelicae, without offering any evidence or argument whatsoever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Complete rubbish, in short, but unfortunately the twentieth century has seen a sharp decline in standards from even that low point. The Risible Bede, The Unintelligible Bede, The Laughable Bede, The Ignoble Bede and now the Ignorable Bede, although he is trying to style himself \u201cThe Bede to Read\u201d. He is desperately trying to harvest the cult of Bedism but I don\u2019t see it hanging on much longer.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018I don\u2019t see us hanging on much longer,\u2019 said Bert, now roused from his dozing, \u2018Pass me a beer, Gonby, and get the cards out.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018But we don\u2019t have a table!\u2019 cried the Professor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018I will stand on all fours and have my legs scratched by cats before I hear another word about these contemptible Bedes,\u2019 said Bert, at which Natty James fell silent for some time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u25a1 \u25a1 \u25a1 \u25a1 \u25a1<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We were on our fourth or fifth round in the Haymarket by the time we began to be irritated by a bearded chap on the next table, who claimed it was possible to reckon time by the amount of beer consumed, and urged his acolytes into keeping a steady stream of \u201cdog\u201d so they didn\u2019t \u201close track\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/dogandtray.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n\u2018And how much chronology have yous ever written, ea?\u2019 replied the Ignorable Bede with a lift of his beard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Better to be silent and thought of as a fool then to write Time, Gentlemen, Please! <\/em>and remove all doubt.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Thassuncoal for!\u2019 cried one of the Bede\u2019s hangers-on. I looked around the Haymarket. Few of the flat caps would have concealed heads concerned with chronology, even the populist doggerel of the Memorable Bede, but I despise violence as an unnecessary and unwelcome encroachment upon drinking time, and decided to intervene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Let us settle our differences like civilized men…\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Gentlemen, gentlemen!\u2019 I said standing to separate the puffing chests, \u2018There is no need for this nonsense. We are not stags, elephant seals or dung beetles. Let us settle our differences like civilized men.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018What do yer suggest, like?\u2019 asked the Ignorable Bede.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018A drinking competition.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n It took a while; the men of Jarrow can drink. Gradually, though, the Ignorable Bede became in turns the Ignorant Bede, the Imprudent Bede, the Intolerant Bede, The Intolerable Bede and the Incomprehensible Bede. We were all pretty merry, in fact, by the time the Unwakeable Bede was carried out by his now-less-admiring acolytes and deposited in a random stall in the Haymarket, thus giving rise to the limerick:<\/p>\n\n\n\n which we recited in crescendo<\/em> on the way to St James\u2019 Park. It was our first visit since 1905, and a more enjoyable game than the 8-0 spanking we received on that occasion, but a defeat nonetheless, as Wolves struggled to find their feet back among football\u2019s elite. We would have to wait three more tri-annos before we saw a win up there, by which time the posturing of the Unwakeable Bede (the name stuck) would have faded into irrelevance in the wake of the revelation of AFC Lindisfarne Priory\u2019s bought ledger<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In which we learn that not all Bedes are Venerable….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[101,113],"class_list":["post-800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-the-professor","tag-venerable-bede"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gonbys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} There was an old man from Jarrow\n Whose chronology was so shallow\n That he drowned in his cups,\n Spewed his guts and woke up\n In a fruiterer\u2019s wooden wheelbarrow <\/em><\/pre>\n\n\n\n