Episode 1 - The Beginning
The World as we have come to know it is a strange and wonderful place filled with interesting and colourful characters and scenery to bring a tear to the eye of even the hardest nosed of people. Everyday billions of people go about their everyday business, bustling from place to place seeing this and that and doing who knows what to fill their time. The modern world is a brilliant place to live and most people enjoy it immensely.
We have the marvel of microchip technology, the ability to fly from here to there in aeroplanes, fridges that can order food when it runs out and robots that can do our bidding (or so all those old science programmes told us). There is poverty in the world but popstars and celebrity folk are all doing their bit along with other members of the general public to help eradicate that and everyone, generally has a good sense of where they’re going and how they’re going to get there.
It’s a far cry, though, from how it all started. Some would have you believe that in the beginning there was simply the word and that this word was with God. Others state, without fear of contradiction that the world was created, along with the rest of the universe in one calamitous Big Bang and lots of fire and noise. They may both be wrong, they may both be right, who knows? Maybe the Big Bang created God and he in turn created the Earth out of shear and total and utter boredom.
You know how it is, you’re sitting at home racking your brains for something to do. You’ve already completed the News of the World crossword and you look idly at the garden shed and the huge pile of wood you’ve been collecting ‘just in case’ you need it. You take a blank sheet of paper from one of your drawers and sketch out the one piece of furniture you don’t have and vitally need and the very next morning you phone in to work ‘sick’ and set to work on your Jasper Conran besting furniture.
And so there He was, Monday morning and the blueprints tightly gripped in His sweaty palm and a shed full of bits and pieces and He set about this task with much aplomb.
He checked the plans over and over and very carefully and with due care and attention he set about creating the Heavens and the Earth. Now these things are quite tricky to put together, you have to understand. You have to have the right kind of aesthetic values that you would expect from things of that nature. Nice columns here and there, some marble flooring used sparingly can look very tasteful. In terms of planets they need to be just the right distance from the sun, have an oxygen rich atmosphere some nice picturesque sunsets to enjoy on a balmy summer’s evening, that kind of thing.
And He sat back and looked at what He’d made and smiled a knowing smile and called Mrs God to come and have a look at all His hard work, but she was out and about on womanly business and had no time for all that nonsense.
It was then that He realised that he couldn’t quite see what it was exactly He had made and after much cogitation He said,
“Let there be light” and Mrs God flipped the switch and told him that working in the dark was bad for his eyes and that he should eat more carrots, passed him a beer and made him sit down and take a breather.
“But I’ve got things to do” He had protested and she told him to worry at them tomorrow for tonight she was feeling the way that women do and took him off to bed.
That night He dreamed of waters and air and land and fog and things and made plans for the morrow.
And thusly the next day came and most of it was spent separating water and air, which isn’t as easy as you think, especially when you only have a junior chemistry set and all the glass slides have been used to look at squashed insects and bits of dirt and you’ve put a crack in the only serviceable petri dish and have you ever tried using those silly Bunsen burner things that run on lighter fuel? Useless.
Never-the-less He got the job done to a satisfactory level and He looked at the clock and saw that it was getting on a bit so He downed tools and cracked open another beer and plonked himself down on the sofa. Mrs God came home early, made him a spot of supper and He sat and read for a bit while the wife knitted him a big chunky jumper to help keep the chill off now that the nights were drawing in.
And so it went until by the following Sunday, exactly one week since his first sketch on the back of a napkin (or it may have been billions of years if you look at it more scientifically after all E=mc2 and all that) his grand scheme had been realized and there before him spread out all of His creation.
He looked around it and inside and all about and saw Man scurrying around on the surface and all the animals and the plants and all the little fishies swimming back and forth and He was pleased and finally he rested.
For a while he was happy with his Earth that he’d made. He showed it off to the missus and she was amused by it for a while. Every time there was a dinner party it was carted out and shown to the guests and each time they oohed and they ahhed and marvelled at the way the people on the surface ran this was and that and did clever things with stone and flint.
The little people discovered fire on the very day that God was showing off to his nephew all that he had done and He was pleased that things seemed to be going so well down there.
As time went by, however, his interest started to wane and the activities of his Earth stopped being so amusing and started to irritate Him. Not that He was a vindictive person, you understand, but he started to see imperfections here and there, things that could be improved or even scrapped altogether. Problem was that to create everything from the ground up again was going to take him much longer this time around so he came up with a better solution.
He found a clever little chap who called himself Noah and passed him some plans and a list of instructions of what to keep and what was being dumped and set him this mighty task to build a big boat of some kind.
‘An Ark, Lord?’ asked Noah.
‘Yeah, something like that, Noah mate,’ replied God, ‘big enough for all the animals and your family.’
‘That’s going to be a mighty big project, Lord.’ Said Noah, ‘When do you want it done by?’
God stroked Him beard and looked at His watch and said, ‘A week next Tuesday?’ to which Noah nearly choked on his cereal.
‘You’re having a laugh ain’t ya?’ spluttered the would be saviour, ‘A week? Where am I going to get enough wood and nails to build this thing in a week? Not to mention tar and food and bedding and stuff.’
‘Don’t you worry, Noah,’ said God tapping the side of His nose in a knowing manner, ‘you leave that up to me, just you build this boat…’
‘Ark,’ interrupted Noah.
‘… ark then…’
‘No Lord, Ark… with a capital “A”’, said the sailor to be.
‘Interrupt me again and I’ll ask Joshuah over there instead of you,’ said the Lord, ‘Now you just get on with building this Ark and don’t worry about the raw materials, got it?’
‘Right you are Boss, you can count on me.’
And He did, and Noah did and God washed everything He didn’t need down the drain and for thirty-nine days and thirty-nine nights he went on a little holiday knowing that everything was safely locked in the Ark for when He came back. When He got back his head was full of new ideas and that Sunday He cobbled everything together in a single afternoon, pulled the plug stranding poor old Noah on top of a mountain and dropped all his new creations back onto the Earth and this time He was pleased.
‘Finally,’ He thought, ‘I can sit back and watch how things pan out’
And He did.
We have the marvel of microchip technology, the ability to fly from here to there in aeroplanes, fridges that can order food when it runs out and robots that can do our bidding (or so all those old science programmes told us). There is poverty in the world but popstars and celebrity folk are all doing their bit along with other members of the general public to help eradicate that and everyone, generally has a good sense of where they’re going and how they’re going to get there.
It’s a far cry, though, from how it all started. Some would have you believe that in the beginning there was simply the word and that this word was with God. Others state, without fear of contradiction that the world was created, along with the rest of the universe in one calamitous Big Bang and lots of fire and noise. They may both be wrong, they may both be right, who knows? Maybe the Big Bang created God and he in turn created the Earth out of shear and total and utter boredom.
You know how it is, you’re sitting at home racking your brains for something to do. You’ve already completed the News of the World crossword and you look idly at the garden shed and the huge pile of wood you’ve been collecting ‘just in case’ you need it. You take a blank sheet of paper from one of your drawers and sketch out the one piece of furniture you don’t have and vitally need and the very next morning you phone in to work ‘sick’ and set to work on your Jasper Conran besting furniture.
And so there He was, Monday morning and the blueprints tightly gripped in His sweaty palm and a shed full of bits and pieces and He set about this task with much aplomb.
He checked the plans over and over and very carefully and with due care and attention he set about creating the Heavens and the Earth. Now these things are quite tricky to put together, you have to understand. You have to have the right kind of aesthetic values that you would expect from things of that nature. Nice columns here and there, some marble flooring used sparingly can look very tasteful. In terms of planets they need to be just the right distance from the sun, have an oxygen rich atmosphere some nice picturesque sunsets to enjoy on a balmy summer’s evening, that kind of thing.
And He sat back and looked at what He’d made and smiled a knowing smile and called Mrs God to come and have a look at all His hard work, but she was out and about on womanly business and had no time for all that nonsense.
It was then that He realised that he couldn’t quite see what it was exactly He had made and after much cogitation He said,
“Let there be light” and Mrs God flipped the switch and told him that working in the dark was bad for his eyes and that he should eat more carrots, passed him a beer and made him sit down and take a breather.
“But I’ve got things to do” He had protested and she told him to worry at them tomorrow for tonight she was feeling the way that women do and took him off to bed.
That night He dreamed of waters and air and land and fog and things and made plans for the morrow.
And thusly the next day came and most of it was spent separating water and air, which isn’t as easy as you think, especially when you only have a junior chemistry set and all the glass slides have been used to look at squashed insects and bits of dirt and you’ve put a crack in the only serviceable petri dish and have you ever tried using those silly Bunsen burner things that run on lighter fuel? Useless.
Never-the-less He got the job done to a satisfactory level and He looked at the clock and saw that it was getting on a bit so He downed tools and cracked open another beer and plonked himself down on the sofa. Mrs God came home early, made him a spot of supper and He sat and read for a bit while the wife knitted him a big chunky jumper to help keep the chill off now that the nights were drawing in.
And so it went until by the following Sunday, exactly one week since his first sketch on the back of a napkin (or it may have been billions of years if you look at it more scientifically after all E=mc2 and all that) his grand scheme had been realized and there before him spread out all of His creation.
He looked around it and inside and all about and saw Man scurrying around on the surface and all the animals and the plants and all the little fishies swimming back and forth and He was pleased and finally he rested.
For a while he was happy with his Earth that he’d made. He showed it off to the missus and she was amused by it for a while. Every time there was a dinner party it was carted out and shown to the guests and each time they oohed and they ahhed and marvelled at the way the people on the surface ran this was and that and did clever things with stone and flint.
The little people discovered fire on the very day that God was showing off to his nephew all that he had done and He was pleased that things seemed to be going so well down there.
As time went by, however, his interest started to wane and the activities of his Earth stopped being so amusing and started to irritate Him. Not that He was a vindictive person, you understand, but he started to see imperfections here and there, things that could be improved or even scrapped altogether. Problem was that to create everything from the ground up again was going to take him much longer this time around so he came up with a better solution.
He found a clever little chap who called himself Noah and passed him some plans and a list of instructions of what to keep and what was being dumped and set him this mighty task to build a big boat of some kind.
‘An Ark, Lord?’ asked Noah.
‘Yeah, something like that, Noah mate,’ replied God, ‘big enough for all the animals and your family.’
‘That’s going to be a mighty big project, Lord.’ Said Noah, ‘When do you want it done by?’
God stroked Him beard and looked at His watch and said, ‘A week next Tuesday?’ to which Noah nearly choked on his cereal.
‘You’re having a laugh ain’t ya?’ spluttered the would be saviour, ‘A week? Where am I going to get enough wood and nails to build this thing in a week? Not to mention tar and food and bedding and stuff.’
‘Don’t you worry, Noah,’ said God tapping the side of His nose in a knowing manner, ‘you leave that up to me, just you build this boat…’
‘Ark,’ interrupted Noah.
‘… ark then…’
‘No Lord, Ark… with a capital “A”’, said the sailor to be.
‘Interrupt me again and I’ll ask Joshuah over there instead of you,’ said the Lord, ‘Now you just get on with building this Ark and don’t worry about the raw materials, got it?’
‘Right you are Boss, you can count on me.’
And He did, and Noah did and God washed everything He didn’t need down the drain and for thirty-nine days and thirty-nine nights he went on a little holiday knowing that everything was safely locked in the Ark for when He came back. When He got back his head was full of new ideas and that Sunday He cobbled everything together in a single afternoon, pulled the plug stranding poor old Noah on top of a mountain and dropped all his new creations back onto the Earth and this time He was pleased.
‘Finally,’ He thought, ‘I can sit back and watch how things pan out’
And He did.
posted by Lazlo Woodbine at
9:35 AM
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