The archival remnants of the year.

And there you go, March already and Lent once again almost upon us.

Now, Bitsnbobs – a blog of born again atheism – likes to observe Lent by stopping stuff and this year the Lent List looks pretty complete.

No Chocolate (already started), no alcohol (a last glass right now), no butter (five days to prepare) and no coffee (one more day).

So all that’s left is the blog itself, and it is for this reason we have set out to lands unknown - to knock on the door of the Institute of Disorganised Elements which now houses the rescued and salvaged-Bitsnbobs Archives under the watchful eye of Mary P our head archivist.

Incidentally this allows us to use the initials I.D.E.A.

We have never been here before; Mary P sent us two halves of a map that didn’t fit together and setting off up the garden path, we followed our imagination and now we stand in front of the I.D.E.A.

The I.D.E.A. is stored on two boats, one moored OFF and one moored ON a small island that is accessible only by crossing a curving sand spit from a larger, but still small, island that lies in a south-westerly sea bathed in sunsets.

The curving sand spit, white to the eye and soft under-foot, is sprinkled with shells and tide pools. The spit leads to a small path that plunges into high grasses and leads along the coast to an area of wide and smooth granite where gulls wait and watch.

Should your intentions be other than friendly the gulls will sense it, rise up as one and fly their warning to Mary P who has been trained in subterfuge and the chances that you will find either of the boats will be nil, and no matter which way you struggle into the grasses you will always find yourself back on the spit.

That’s when the tide will come in and wash you away.

Fortunately we have come in peace, first to observe and sanction Mary P’s energetic efforts in cataloguing our disorganised elements and archival remnants, and secondly to honour a Lentish promises to write nothing new in the month of March but instead to pick and post archival remnants as we come across them.

All this to really say that for the next month we will be holidaying here in the archives and posting bits and bobs as we discover them – the first will appear tomorrow.