Folks,
Dux:

LOL.

Just the pensioners, eh?

It certainly seems that the many traditions of Britain are as widespread as they are unique. Of course every country, both young and old, has its own traditions and colloquial variations.

The world knows about that annual tempting of fate known as running with the bulls in Pamplona. It's one of those events that make the saner among us scratch our heads in confusion.

Spain has at least two monumental food fights. Who could forget the famous grape war of Binissalem. Up north, in Basque Country, it gets even stranger. There, young villagers hang from a live goose's neck until the poor animal expires -- all in the name of tradition.

Over in Greece, the island of Chios erupts in an annual fireworks war on Orthodox Easter pitting one parish in the town of Vrodandos against the other. In Belgium, they swallow live fish. In Turkey, camel wrestling is all the rage. And in the town of Malanka in Ukraine, residents dress up as Nazis and create simulated wartime checkpoints once a year to celebrate the end of World War II.

If anyone actually wants to eat phallus-shaped bread, drink through phallus-shaped straws from phallus-shaped cups, kiss ceramic phalluses, sit on a phallus-shaped throne and sing dirty Greek songs about the phallus, then they should visit the little Greek town of Tyrnavos each year on "Clean Monday." This is one of the most famous pagan fertility festival/carnivals in Greece.

The USA is just 68 years shy of 300 years old as a sovereign nation and it is a bit over that since those stiff shirts the Pilgrims supposedly (it is now questionable) left their muddy buckled shoe prints on that big rock near the newly christened settlement of Plymouth. And yet we have our own well or lesser known traditions.

Every summer in Lizard Lick all the various church denominations get together in the finest tradition of universal faith for a big covered dish luncheon down by the lake. All the retiring or reassigned pastors challenge the new pastors to a "walking on water" contest. The new lads all think it is just a joke until, with great fanfare and much cheering they see the pious old guys troop 12 to 15 feet straight out into the deepest part of the lake without sinking or even creating much of a ripple. The new Catholic priests are genuflecting like mad and the Baptist, Methodist and Pentecostal boys are down on their knobby knees by now as they watch the radiantly smiling line of 'saints' parade back to shore as dry as a bone.

Next, the cheering stops and the poor new chaps are all lined up on the brink of what even the most faithful amongst them must surely know will be a very wet and humiliating experience. It is high summer and the sun is beating down and being reflected back up from the lake. By now the line of clerics are as wet with sweat as they would probably be after taking the plunge anyway. At this point in the proceedings, someone usually takes pity on them and clues them into the location of the big fallen log lying submerged by the edge of the lake....