Domenica.

 Peter was late for church. He hopped out of his dented car and ran the last 30 metres to the Whangarei Heads Presbyterian Church. He entered through the main door, on first look he saw no graven images, and found a spot in the second pew from the door. 

 

A lot further south Robert had cleaned a Presbyterian church, noted the lack of graven images, attended Catholic mass, said the rosary, and was now eating a ham sandwich in the church shop.

Father Michael had given a brilliant sermon this morning. He had used lots of big words, to make himself sound intelligent and to make people assume that he was talking sense, and Robert had nearly forgotten the unwritten rules and given him a standing ovation. 

Mrs. Murphy had brought the ham sandwiches into the church shop to sell to raise money for the missions. She'd gone to help Father Michael take his frock off and Robert, the only worker in the church shop, had taken the opportunity to pinch one. "Well," he thought, "it's not as bad as doing a ram raid."

Peter realised that Robert was right - there were no graven images to be seen in a Presbyterian church. He was looking for one for part four of his series on more obscure saints. He was aware that he was running out of ideas - a quick post on small horseshoe washers had made that painfully apparent to his two readers - so he had decided to go on the road in a search for novel props.  He wondered if Robert sold graven images in his church shop.

Old Mr. Watson had brought a picture of Danie Craven into the church shop.

The poor old chap had heard Father Uburars talking about graven images in a sermon a few weeks back and got confused - he had probably left his hearing aid at home. Father Uburars had said, "We need more graven images in this church." Now it was up to Robert to deal with it. The week before Mr. Watson had brought in two packets of cigarettes which Robert had hidden under the counter.

Robert decided to hang the picture of Danie up, even though he represented a game where grown men threw a ball around. Hey, but John never said anything bad about rugby in the bible and quite a few rugby players still pointed up to Heaven when they scored a try. Little did they know that a god who doesn't seem to give a shit about things like cancer and aids probably isn't wasting time watching rugby.

Peter gave up on his search for graven images and decided to go and look for washers in Mitre 10.