A Message From Our Sponsor: Click On The Advertisement Above To Keep The Peebles Showboaters in Butter Biscuits

As a man whose upbringing would have struck Pastor John Calvin as unduly joyless, I need no reminding of the impossibility of entering into a pact with the Devil. Indeed, this very afternoon, as part of the Peebles Showboaters’ Theology And Cinema course of which I am tutor, I watched The Masque Of The Red Death, in which a Satanic, and yet unusually restrained Mr Vincent Price attempts just such an act, only to discover that - while it may be possible to hold dominion over a spooky castle, and to have among your servants an impetuous dwarf and a tiny dancer - diplomacy with the Lord of Flies is a tricky prospect. Yet, as you my have noted, this “blog” hosts advertising from the information superweasels, Google. You may click on the advertisement above, and in so doing keep the Peebles Showboaters in butter biscuits. (In the last six months, our earnings have totalled $1.86; a fair return for my labours, and roughly equivalent to the hourly rate I used to receive for howking tatties in the frost-hardened dreels of East Lothian.) I have no idea how Google selects these advertisements, but they are usually complimentary. In recent weeks, the advertisements on this page have been for crematoria, wreaths, and industrial-strength pan drops, which is a slightly depressing summary of my interests, but realistic none the less. But I was intrigued, the other day, to see a small advertisement for “Scottish Teeth”. It had disappeared by the time I tried to investigate it, but it did cause me to think. It has never been harder to find an NHS dentist; has the health service now taken to selling the remnants of its handiwork as souvenirs?