Deborah Makarios – Deborah Makarios

February 24, 2026February 24, 2026

The Patron Saints of Modern Life

There’s a saint for everyone and everything, it seems. A saint of professional pasty crimpers, for example. He was Cornish, as one might have guessed, and is also the patron saint of tin miners and cream clotters. (Might this imply an ecclesiastical position on the cream first vs jam first debate?) A saint for farriers – basically horse podiatrists/manicurists. A saint to be invoked against wolves. Yet none of these spiritual “use cases” are particularly widespread in this day and age, one would think.

Woodcut style illustration of a monk with a halo, kneeling to shake hands with a wolf. — Believe it or not, this isn’t even the guy to invoke against wolves.

However, there are also saints for more modern things. St Clare of Assisi is the patron saint of television – dubious honour – because she saw a church service (which she was too sick to attend) projected on the wall of her cell. St Joseph of Cupertino is the patron saint of air travellers, since he was known to levitate. Also the patron saint of students facing exams, since he was also known to be “remarkably unclever” but miraculously passed his exams anyway. St Carlo Acutis is the patron saint of gamers, because he was one – born in 1991, he’s one of the most recent of the Catholic saints.

Yet with all these modern patronages from saints old and new, I feel there are still some gaps which could do with filling in today’s world, and I have here a few suggestions.

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February 10, 2026February 10, 2026

The Two Mysteries of Dalziel

If you have ever taken an interest in heraldry, and more particularly, Scottish heraldry, there will have been a moment when you have asked yourself: what’s with the naked guy??

The coat of arms of Dalziel is heraldically described as “Sable, a man’s body proper” – which is to say, black, with a naked guy on it. It should be noted that “proper” in heraldic terms refers to something being displayed in its natural colour – a lion vert is green; a lion proper is yellow – rather than any armorial judgement on the inappropriateness or otherwise of full frontal nudity.

A heraldic display including the Dalziel coat of arms showing a naked man on a black background, and the motto I Dare. — The heraldic supporters also look a bit baffled, if not slightly embarrassed.

Whether the naked man is proper in non-heraldic terms is one question. The larger question, of course, is what on earth is he doing there? Who thought this was a good idea?? And why???

The story goes that many many years ago, back in the reign of King Kenneth “Kinslayer” the Second, i.e. not long before dates went from having three digits to having four, a beloved kinsman of King Kenneth the Kinslayer was slain – not, in this case, by Kenneth – and he was Not Amused. (King Kenneth, that is, though the kinsman was probably not amused either.)

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January 27, 2026January 27, 2026

A Farewell to Hat

Today I let an old friend go: a round brown (fake)fur pillbox hat.

It first came into my possession about nineteen years ago, when I was preparing for my 21st – a costume party – and hunting up odd hats in second hand shops for the use of anyone who came without a costume. To my intense surprise, the furry little hat actually fit my remarkably bijou head, and so I kept it and wore it often.

Painting of white-haired pink-cheeked old lady with blue eyes and a brown fur pillbox hat. She has a lavender and green shawl over her shoulders, pinned at the front with a square golden brooch. — My old hat was like this but not nearly so tall.

I was wearing it one night as I passed through the centre of Christchurch, returning from an evening theatrical event. It was winter, so I was also wearing my big belted khaki overcoat and sheepskin boots, and as I crossed a largely deserted Cathedral Square en route to the bus station, I heard a distant – and possibly intoxicated – voice cry out, “The Russians are invading!”

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