5.13: Something must be done!

As they walk, the three colleagues vent their frustration.

“How dare the spiders attack the tinies so close to the Potting Shed!”

“I’m not sure they’d thank you for calling them ‘tinies’!”

“We cannot let anyone get eaten.”

“But it doesn’t sound as though Alcock is going to do anything about the bulb spiders. He’s such a peacenik these days!”

“Then I think we must do something. We must summons the Order of the Sponge ourselves. Surely that's the reasonable thing?”

The next day, pTravis subtly seeks out Hipparchus. 

“In the second ‘story’ you told us, you said that ‘pilgrims of dust’ could call for the assistance of other members of the Order of the Sponge ‘on feast days sacred to its saintly founder’. When are those days?”

“Well, I thought you might ask me that. The saintly founder is, of course, St Joseph of Arimathea. The traditional Roman calendar marked his feast day on 17 March, but he is now listed, along with Saint Nicodemus, on 31 August in the Martyrologium Romanum.”

“Drat! We have missed the first and I do not think we can afford to wait for the second.”

pTravis looks quite crestfallen. He has not realised how much hope he had invested in this crazy plan. But Hipparchus touches him lightly on the wing.

“There is another possibility. The feast day according to the Greek Orthodox calendar is the 31st July and that is in just a few days.”