Trouble in our little neighbourhood.

 The Armed Defenders Squad is up our little street.

They're going from house to house.

It was pretty weird when they came to our house. Shelley was still in bed playing on her phone so she missed most of the excitement. They were short on words and sort of slid through the house with the leading guy of three pointing his gun at every door before they went through. When they got to our living room they saw something of interest.

They all stopped. One said to me in a gruff voice, "Who's that?"

"It's just Angry Jesus." I answered.

Another one of the squad grabbed the picture off the wall and examined it closely. "It looks like him to me, only he looks really angry. Where did you get this?"

"He's a regular guest on my blog." I said hastily. "He gave it to me to put up. He's got quite a big ego and gets, well, angry quite easily. So, I put it up to keep him quiet."

"Well, he's wanted." said one of the trio. "He escaped yesterday. The authorities in Rome thought he was dead but he's gone."

"Are you sure you've got the right guy?" I asked inquisitively. "Angry Jesus was invented by me."

"Are you saying that you're God The Father?" asked one of the cops suspiciously.

"No. I'm Richard (of RBB). I didn't make the world or anything like that. I had absolutely nothing to do with that big flood and I've never met Adam or Eve."

I could tell they were doubting my words. Here I was, on a Monday morning, I'd been for a walk and was about to write a blog post. You really don't expect the Armed Defenders Squad to show up in our quiet little grove. Then one of them spotted my violin case.

"What's in there?"

"That's my violin. I'll show you."

"No. Step back from the case. Is there a machine gun in there?"

"No. You're thinking of Al Capone movies. It's just a violin. Oh, and a couple of bows. No shoulder rest though."

"Sir, a shoulder rest could be a sort of code name for a clip of bullets." one squad member said to another.

"You don't look like someone who knows much about the violin." the guy who was obviously the boss said to me. 

"You're not the first person to tell me that." I replied.

That was a mistake because now the three policemen looked really suspicious. One was getting a pair of handcuffs from his belt. I spoke quickly.

"Look, I can see how you got confused. Christians say that a guy named Jesus died last Friday. They closed all the supermarkets around here because of that. Maybe you got the wrong idea that he was on the run around here because he evidently came back to life on Sunday. The supermarkets closed then too. Look, I have a brother who is a Catholic. He'll know more about all this than me. Angry Jesus is a smaller fish. He only really appears on my blog. I guess he does have his own blog too but he hasn't posted for a while because Google is being a right shit and screwing up all my emails. Fortunately The Blessed Curmudgeon was able to turn on the torch of light and help me to get my main email going again but Angry Jesus's account is still locked, I think."

"Who is this Blessed Curmudgeon fellow?"

"Well, right now, he's sort of the main competitor of Jesus. He's setting up a church so he can charge money to go to it. He's also setting up a church shop and some are saying there will be a bar attached. He has planned a pretty extensive wine list. I don't think he'll stock cleanskins."

"What's he got against cleanskins? A lot of people on the force really enjoy those; and they're cheap. Where can we find this guy?"

"He's up north. Has a house near the Whangarei Heads. He has a blog where he talks about buying furniture and stuff for the garden."

"Buying furniture eh? I think we need to have a talk to this Blessed Curmudgeon fellow. A lot of these church shops are a front for people to get rid of second rate condoms and cloudy white wine. Do you have his address?"

"No but his blog is called The Curmudgeon. He shouldn't be too hard to track down."

"Okay, you're off the hook for now but don't think about disappearing. I'll get onto the Northern Police and we'll have a chat with this Blessed chap. After all, he's now the closest thing we've got to Jesus."