Helter skelter in the cathedral.

"For such a place, steeped in mystery and marvel to buy in to sensory pleasure and distraction, is to poison the very medicine it offers the human soul," said The Right Reverend Dr Gavin Ashenden, former chaplain to the Queen, quoted in "Norwich Cathedral helter skelter 'is a mistake'" (BBC).

"The central aisle of Rochester Cathedral has also been converted into a crazy golf course..."



1. I already knew a "helter skelter" was some kind of British ride (which is why The Beatles sang, "When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide/Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride/Till I get to the bottom and I see you again!").

2. But I didn't know precisely what the ride was. I'd thought maybe something like Tilt-a-Whirl. But no, it's exactly the thing you see in the first video above, a slide wrapped around a tower.

3. The word "helter-skelter" dates back to 1593. The OED quotes T. Nashe Strange Newes: "Helter skelter, feare no colours, course him, trounce him." The definition is: "In disordered haste; confusedly, tumultuously, pell-mell." The word started meaning "A tower-like structure used in fun fairs and pleasure-grounds, with an external spiral passage for sliding down on a mat" in 1906, with "The World's Manufacturing Company, examples of whose ‘helter-skelter’ lighthouses are at Earl's Court, Blackpool, Southport, and other places."

4. We could go down the language rathole with "fun fairs"? "Pleasure-grounds"? The British have their own language, don't they?

5. Which brings up "crazy golf." That's British for miniature golf.

6. Or are you still wondering what was the "Strange Newes" in 1593? Wikipedia tells us that Thomas Nashe was "an Elizabethan playwright, poet, satirist and a significant pamphleteer." He was friends with Robert Greene who is famous for "Greene's Groats-Worth of Witte, bought with a million of Repentance," an attack on William Shakespeare. Greene had made fun of the writer Richard Harvey in "A Quip for an Upstart Courtier," and that inspired Harvey to make fun when Greene died. Nashe's "Strange News" is some sort of response. Here's the full text. Kind of complicated, so I'll just give you an easy example of Nashe's poetry:

"Unhappyie me," quoth she, "and wilt not stand?
Com, let me rubb and chafe it with my hand!"

7. When I went to Genius.com to get the lyrics for The Beatles' "Helter-Skelter" it looked like this:



Shirley Manson is a Scottish singer — whom you might know as the lead singer for Garbage. Manson is her name by birth, so there should be no association with the murderous Charles Manson. It's not like Marilyn Manson, which is a stage name and an intentional reference to the evil man. What strange advertising decision or algorithm put the ad for Shirley Manson on "Helter Skelter" lyrics page?

8. Here's what Wikipedia has at "Helter Skelter/Charles Manson interpretation": "Charles Manson told his followers that several White Album songs, particularly 'Helter Skelter,' were part of the Beatles' coded prophecy of an apocalyptic war in which racist and non-racist whites would be manoeuvred into virtually exterminating each other over the treatment of blacks. Upon the war's conclusion, after black militants had killed off the few whites that had survived, Manson and his 'Family' of followers would emerge from an underground city in which they would have escaped the conflict. As the only remaining whites, they would rule blacks, who, as the vision went, would be incapable of running the United States. Manson employed 'Helter Skelter' as the term for this sequence of events. In his interpretation, the lyrics of the Beatles' 'Helter Skelter' described the moment when he and the Family would emerge from their hiding place – a disused mine shaft in the desert outside Los Angeles." "Healter Skelter" was written (misspelled like that) in blood at the scene of the LaBianca murders. Manson wanted John Lennon to testify at his trial. John Lennon, years later, said: "All that Manson stuff was built around George's song about pigs ['Piggies'] and this one, Paul's song about an English fairground. It has nothing to do with anything, and least of all to do with me."

9. I've been avoiding all the stories about the 50th anniversary of the Manson murders which just could not avoid getting written this month. It took that helter skelter in the cathedral to get me here.

10. A cathedral has to do with a long-ago murder... or should I say attempted murder? Or will you say an execution is not a murder, whatever the circumstances?

11. Should there be fairground amusements inside a cathedral? Is it a sacrilege? One could argue that all the amazements and decorations of a traditional cathedral are themselves sacrilege and that if you don't think they are, you ought to accept the addition of other wonderful marvels to attract and grab hold of people. Or maybe that's precisely why you should object: Don't mix marvels! Keep the religious wonders separate from worldly tricks...

12. ... unless your aim is to knock religion down to earth.