Taking Stock or Simon The Zealot

Simon the Zealot (variously also associated with St. Jude, or, could have been Thaddeus AND/OR Lebbeaus, aka Judas NOT Iscariot - which I would have thought was a fairly important distinction to make in later years of the flourishing Christian faith - as well as possible confusion with Thomas) was a very obscure Apostle, as may perhaps be divined from the blather above.

He is big in the saw canon, with one legend speaking of his martyrdom resulting from a magic trick gone badly wrong, resulting in two halves of an early Christian Jew. One would have assumed that the bottom half would have been the Jewish half, but this was a spectacular trick, because old Simon/Thaddeus/Lebbaeus/Judas/Thomas was sawn in two longitudinally! Now that must have been something to see in the days before band saws. He is said to have visited Glastonbury, as so many of that crowd seem to have done, though how this can possibly be verified is clearly beyond the wit of any but religious scholars.



The more I read about JC's crowd, the more I realise that he may well have had 12 men with him in the same way that David M0yes has 12 men. As in Zulu, they move about a lot to create the illusion that the garrison is well defended, snatching parity from certain defeat only because of the sheer bloody-mindedness of the marauding hordes and their 'buffalo horn' tactics, mercilessly hurling pointless ball after pointless ball over the top and into the path of the stalwart Enfields (I am definitely mixing my metaphors here, so help me) until the last ditch fierce final stand by the Yank in the hospital.

At the finish, Moyes stands bloodied, like some latter-day Michael Caine, surveying the carnage before him.