HOTS -vs- Hari Krishna.

In Town today (High Wycombe), the "Healing on the Streets" (HOTS) Christians were out in force. The
Idea is that you sit in one of their Prayer-Chairs. They pray at you one in each ear, they lay their hands on your shoulders, lift your palms up to heaven and after a few minutes.... Ker-Ching.... Your Cancer, Arthritis, Asthma is HEALED... So there's no need to go to the Doctor to ask about that lump that appeared the other day.

I was toying with the idea of volunteering so I could pretend Demons were coming out of my soul. I can't turn my head round 360 degrees, float up in the air or projectile vomit pea soup, but I sure could give the Saturday shoppers a good show and scare the shit out of the HOTS people when a routine Cancer healing starts to get out of control.

But just then, The Hari Krishnas turned up, about 20 of them, with robes, shaved heads and pony tails, drums, cymbals, an Accordion, painted foreheads and a truck load of enthusiasm.

They stood about 10 paces away from the HOTS posse and fired up the Hari Krishna song at max volume and max enthusiasm, jumping up and down, banging drums, and spinning round in a state of pure euphoric happiness.

The HOTS people were Not happy. They normally pray gently into each ear of their captive victim, but now they were having to shout their prayers over the noise of the Hari Krishnas.

This kept me thoroughly entertained for half an hour in spite of the fact that all the Krishna songs consisted of only two words sung in random order. The suppressed anger and chagrin of the Christians and the euphoria of the Krishnas was a recipe for a Pythonesque street battle.

Alas, the Christians kept their cool and all was well in High Wycombe.

My opinion of the Hari Krishnas went up an order of magnitude today. OK, they're still eccentric people with an unfathomable belief system, but they're fun, enthusiastic, happy and they can bang out a catchy tune and keep Saturday shoppers entertained without having to resort to false promises and un-testable claims.