...nothing to do with West Ham football team, but some wretched television advertisement - all right, possibly the best as well as the worst ever - that has had H in stitches tonight.
Cue some impossibly handsome, freshly showered and naked-but-for-a-towel kind of cove sliding so easily towards the camera, explaining how some sort of chocolate confectionery has to be best enjoyed at a certain air temperature in order that the bubbles therein can release the true flavour of the sweet.
Cue then two unseen musing females - voiceovers I believe they are known in the trade - the one who remarks "So that's what the bubbles are there for!", to which the other responds "Sorry, was he speaking?"
Oh how we laughed! Well, H did anyways leaving me feeling so very mid-aged.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
Death On The Railway...
One heard yesterday the desperate news of a man crushed to death by a train. The railway station is local, the man not known to us here.
We do not know, but we heard it said that he was in his fifties and that he jumped - not fell or was pushed.
Why do I immediately picture someone so bereft of hope at the impending collapse of all he has worked for and dreamt of - the result of impending financial ruin - that only death could end the torment?
It may not be thus - and God save his soul and protect his family - but I fear it may be so.
We have had, in our Wolds, the shotgun farmers and we have had the starving widows, but now too it seems we are just as likely to have the bankrupt bankers. Black bin-liners to clear the desk; not the anticipated, expected annual bonus.
Do I grieve for such souls as much I would the others? Yes, without any shadow of a doubt I do.
My greatest dread has ever been death by mechanical crushing. It is my certain belief that this dread came about because when but a child of less than seven years I was nearly run-down by a car reversing out of its driveway.
Mother was following as I rode my tricycle along the pavements towards the shops. We were off to buy food for Father's tea. (Well, perhaps we weren't. Maybe we were doing anything you might care to imagine. But what we were doing was totally ordinary and safe to the child I then was.)
There was a low brick wall to my left. The driver of the car would not have seen me and my tricycle coming. He passed slowly backwards just as I reached his driveway, trapping me under his rear wheel. Mother - people - screamed as they saw what was happening and could happen. The driver heard and stopped. I lived. I might not have done.
That then, from that day, has been my abiding fear. An impersonal machine grinding my soft flesh. Our - and he is our - man on the railway line did die that way, split and sundered in a second. From life to death in a moment of agony.
God save us all from such an end. For whatever reason. For whatever purpose took him there. Good Lord preserve us.
We do not know, but we heard it said that he was in his fifties and that he jumped - not fell or was pushed.
Why do I immediately picture someone so bereft of hope at the impending collapse of all he has worked for and dreamt of - the result of impending financial ruin - that only death could end the torment?
It may not be thus - and God save his soul and protect his family - but I fear it may be so.
We have had, in our Wolds, the shotgun farmers and we have had the starving widows, but now too it seems we are just as likely to have the bankrupt bankers. Black bin-liners to clear the desk; not the anticipated, expected annual bonus.
Do I grieve for such souls as much I would the others? Yes, without any shadow of a doubt I do.
My greatest dread has ever been death by mechanical crushing. It is my certain belief that this dread came about because when but a child of less than seven years I was nearly run-down by a car reversing out of its driveway.
Mother was following as I rode my tricycle along the pavements towards the shops. We were off to buy food for Father's tea. (Well, perhaps we weren't. Maybe we were doing anything you might care to imagine. But what we were doing was totally ordinary and safe to the child I then was.)
There was a low brick wall to my left. The driver of the car would not have seen me and my tricycle coming. He passed slowly backwards just as I reached his driveway, trapping me under his rear wheel. Mother - people - screamed as they saw what was happening and could happen. The driver heard and stopped. I lived. I might not have done.
That then, from that day, has been my abiding fear. An impersonal machine grinding my soft flesh. Our - and he is our - man on the railway line did die that way, split and sundered in a second. From life to death in a moment of agony.
God save us all from such an end. For whatever reason. For whatever purpose took him there. Good Lord preserve us.
A Regular Lent...
...do you recall that preamble to the Easter liturgy that goes more or less thus: "We now having faithfully completed our Lenten observances...etc, etc"?
I do so always love that line gazing out, as one does, over the sea of faithful faces gathered in whilst they collectively wince at the painful reflection on all the things they so earnestly promised, strove or intended to do - or not - as signs and portents of preparation and reparation, yet now acknowledging to themselves that to have been so much straw in the wind.
Of course, had any of the flock the foresight or gall to glance my way at that moment they would note the most solemn of wincing as I - ever thus - can in no way pretend or aver that I have stuck one iota to the fast.
Just the one iota - if such a thing can be singular - perhaps, and that in being so, so sorry for having taken one's hand from the Gospel plough as ever one did.
Lent, of course, is not a marathon endurance race of self-restraint or denial. There are no heroic garlands for managing a bare forty days withot a drink or a raised temper.
This we know, but is it not a mark of the feeble soul who cannot abstain from meat or drink or whatever a mere month and a bit? All right, a tee-total vegetarian is not the sort of clerical image I would wish to push on the world, yet such was my intent this year. No beef, no beer. Seemed simple enough at the time. But 'twas never thus.
Three things comfort me here. Our beloved Saint Peter for starters, keeper of the keys and so forth, was the most abject exemplar of failure to sustain in times of trial: "Me know the Lord? Get out of it!"
Then there is the remembrance of one Lenten time when coffee was forsaken utterly. Did I turn to God in my time of temptation? Did I heck. All I could think of was that first caffeine hit after the Vigil. It was the only - the only - thing on my mind the entire season. Not entirely helpful to anyone or for anything.
Finally, blessed above all, was dear Robin - late Prior of Q - who once confided that he always took a bite of chocolate on Good Friday of all days to remind himself what a hopeless soul he was.
But he wasn't of course. He was a veritable saint. Patron saint of Lent in my book and a regular guy.
I do so always love that line gazing out, as one does, over the sea of faithful faces gathered in whilst they collectively wince at the painful reflection on all the things they so earnestly promised, strove or intended to do - or not - as signs and portents of preparation and reparation, yet now acknowledging to themselves that to have been so much straw in the wind.
Of course, had any of the flock the foresight or gall to glance my way at that moment they would note the most solemn of wincing as I - ever thus - can in no way pretend or aver that I have stuck one iota to the fast.
Just the one iota - if such a thing can be singular - perhaps, and that in being so, so sorry for having taken one's hand from the Gospel plough as ever one did.
Lent, of course, is not a marathon endurance race of self-restraint or denial. There are no heroic garlands for managing a bare forty days withot a drink or a raised temper.
This we know, but is it not a mark of the feeble soul who cannot abstain from meat or drink or whatever a mere month and a bit? All right, a tee-total vegetarian is not the sort of clerical image I would wish to push on the world, yet such was my intent this year. No beef, no beer. Seemed simple enough at the time. But 'twas never thus.
Three things comfort me here. Our beloved Saint Peter for starters, keeper of the keys and so forth, was the most abject exemplar of failure to sustain in times of trial: "Me know the Lord? Get out of it!"
Then there is the remembrance of one Lenten time when coffee was forsaken utterly. Did I turn to God in my time of temptation? Did I heck. All I could think of was that first caffeine hit after the Vigil. It was the only - the only - thing on my mind the entire season. Not entirely helpful to anyone or for anything.
Finally, blessed above all, was dear Robin - late Prior of Q - who once confided that he always took a bite of chocolate on Good Friday of all days to remind himself what a hopeless soul he was.
But he wasn't of course. He was a veritable saint. Patron saint of Lent in my book and a regular guy.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Bless You!
...odd the things one comes across.
This from a useful tome on the practical application of science:
It seems that some time past an experimental anti-depressant drug was noted as having an unexpected impact on the women on whom it was being tested.
For when the women sneezed the drug induced an orgasm! (Quite a find you might argue, and who am I to disagree indeed?)
Being diligent researchers of course the boffins were concerned about these 'side-effects', so one of them asked "What do you take for this syndrome then?"
"Pepper" said the woman!
Bless her!
This from a useful tome on the practical application of science:
It seems that some time past an experimental anti-depressant drug was noted as having an unexpected impact on the women on whom it was being tested.
For when the women sneezed the drug induced an orgasm! (Quite a find you might argue, and who am I to disagree indeed?)
Being diligent researchers of course the boffins were concerned about these 'side-effects', so one of them asked "What do you take for this syndrome then?"
"Pepper" said the woman!
Bless her!
Friday, February 08, 2008
Begone Bearded Bard....
...What a loon! What on earth possessed the Bearded Bard to be so inept as to assume he could, as head of the Anglican Church, stand up before any congregation - never mind it were an 'intellectual gathering' (one reaches for one's pistol naturally at the very name of the thing) - and say anything quite so daft as that Sharia Law was a) a good thing or b) that we ought to be having it here.
'Holy Fool' does not do justice to the man. He is too plain daft to be the sanctified other. Let him be some unauthorised scholar, labouring away safely in some quiet college, if he wants to come out with such nonsense. But as the Head Boyo of what's left of C of E he had no right to be putting all us underling clerics in this ridiculous position of having to run around after him trying to explain - well God knows what he was saying to be truthful.
As for putting up the poor old Bish of Southwark to bleat further nonsense about the writ of British law being just an 'umbrella' under which all other religious laws can shelter, I simply shudder.
How can he have not foreseen the damage his words would have on relations between British Muslims and others of different or of no faiths? What kind of dream world does he inhabit?
He must go and soon is not swift enough.
'Holy Fool' does not do justice to the man. He is too plain daft to be the sanctified other. Let him be some unauthorised scholar, labouring away safely in some quiet college, if he wants to come out with such nonsense. But as the Head Boyo of what's left of C of E he had no right to be putting all us underling clerics in this ridiculous position of having to run around after him trying to explain - well God knows what he was saying to be truthful.
As for putting up the poor old Bish of Southwark to bleat further nonsense about the writ of British law being just an 'umbrella' under which all other religious laws can shelter, I simply shudder.
How can he have not foreseen the damage his words would have on relations between British Muslims and others of different or of no faiths? What kind of dream world does he inhabit?
He must go and soon is not swift enough.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Harry Gregg's One Life...
...Well more than one really. Quite a few actually. 'The World's Best Goalkeeper' for starters.
'The Hero of Munich' too. Though not according to the man himself. You would perhaps have heard Harry speak last night in personal memory at the fiftieth anniversary of that dreadful aeroplane crash, which killed half a team of the most promising footballers of their day and many of the journalists who followed them in their pursuit of glory and triumphs.
It was indeed an era of 'jumpers for goalposts', a time when promotional photographs would show the boys practising their skills and grinning for the camera, not in some mighty stadium - or on a Brazilian beach - but on waste-ground behind the houses of the men who would pour out of a hard week's work at Trafford Park to rejoice in the artistry of the players of Old Trafford across the way. (That was the message to the team from Matt Busby - show respect for the workers. And they did.)
But when Harry Gregg dismisses claims that he was a hero for going back into the aircraft to saves lives when others were fleeing - and it was the choosing of the risk that makes him brave - it is not the stern, generational self-deprecating sentiment he reveals, but the tormented, unending agony of the guilty survivor.
He lives and they died. Them he could not save and Harry's pain is that he believes he needs to be forgiven by them for this. Forty years he stayed away from the the families of the men who died, because he could not bear to look them in the eye.
Ten years back, however, Harry was persuaded to attend a fortieth remembrance service with those families. And they thanked and praised and loved him for what he had done, not spurned him for what he had not. It was some great relief from a heavy burden.
If you do not understand the guilt of a survivor, then count yourself very fortunate for only they who live with this pain can comprehend its strength and power.
I've had it seven years. I'm not sure I can wait another thirty or more to be forgiven, but then perhaps Harry's one life gives hope for mine.
Thank you then Harry Gibb for living a part of my life as well as the many of your own.
'The Hero of Munich' too. Though not according to the man himself. You would perhaps have heard Harry speak last night in personal memory at the fiftieth anniversary of that dreadful aeroplane crash, which killed half a team of the most promising footballers of their day and many of the journalists who followed them in their pursuit of glory and triumphs.
It was indeed an era of 'jumpers for goalposts', a time when promotional photographs would show the boys practising their skills and grinning for the camera, not in some mighty stadium - or on a Brazilian beach - but on waste-ground behind the houses of the men who would pour out of a hard week's work at Trafford Park to rejoice in the artistry of the players of Old Trafford across the way. (That was the message to the team from Matt Busby - show respect for the workers. And they did.)
But when Harry Gregg dismisses claims that he was a hero for going back into the aircraft to saves lives when others were fleeing - and it was the choosing of the risk that makes him brave - it is not the stern, generational self-deprecating sentiment he reveals, but the tormented, unending agony of the guilty survivor.
He lives and they died. Them he could not save and Harry's pain is that he believes he needs to be forgiven by them for this. Forty years he stayed away from the the families of the men who died, because he could not bear to look them in the eye.
Ten years back, however, Harry was persuaded to attend a fortieth remembrance service with those families. And they thanked and praised and loved him for what he had done, not spurned him for what he had not. It was some great relief from a heavy burden.
If you do not understand the guilt of a survivor, then count yourself very fortunate for only they who live with this pain can comprehend its strength and power.
I've had it seven years. I'm not sure I can wait another thirty or more to be forgiven, but then perhaps Harry's one life gives hope for mine.
Thank you then Harry Gibb for living a part of my life as well as the many of your own.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Saint Cuthbert - Fat or Thin?
...Possibly not the first question you'd ask yourself when considering Saint Cuthbert: was he a fat or a thin monk?
Granted, many may not pass any a moment giving reflective consideration to the fellow. Even a 'Who he?' remark might be heard among you. Sad that really, as the life of this early Christian British - we'll address that point of his Britishness in a moment - hero is a rich and interesting mixture of the scholar, the monk, the cleric, the soldier too, the hermit and the peace maker.
British? Irish many say, and indeed Cuthbert's allegiance to the Celtic rite - an adherence he renounced in obedience to the Church and his monastic vows - may indicate a homeland. Scots perhaps, born close to Melrose Abbey where his monastic life commenced.
It is not though either Cuthbert's nationality or even all he was as a temporal and spiritual leader that compels my attention tonight. Was he a fattie or was he not I ask?
And why so? This so...
Go to the Holy Island of Lindesfarne, as I have done once more today, where Cuthbert was Prior - when he wasn't busy being hermit then Bishop then back to hermit once more - and you will see a tall, lean modern statue of the man gazing south across the Priory lawn towards his monastic Church then on towards Farne Islands.
Well could you understand the sculptor's thinking here: stern life-long fasting not the diet to build a big fellow. Ascetic by habit and conviction, one can't really picture Cuthbert tucking into the massive monastic meals that some Abbeys did and do enjoy.
Convincing though the portraiture, my diffuculty with this image is that I know a real live monastic Cuthbert who is neither tall nor lean in the slightest. Doubtless - indeed so - a man of deep spirituality, committed to the cause etc., my Cuthbert is nonetheless a jolly round fellow. Always has been and not, over time, losing girth far from it.
So say 'Cuthbert' to me and I picture not this awful lean - gaunt almost - figure that sits on Lindesfarne lawn. But was the sculptor right? I suspect he might have been more lifelike in his presumption than I. For I noted today for the first time, just how narrow and tight the residual spiral staircases are at Lindesfarne.
The night stairs from dormitory to choir are so narrow a couple of pencils would have problems passing each other. The day stairs rather slightly wider, though not by much, and granted that Prior Cuthbert would have had his own quarters apart from the rank and file, that not withstanding the whole tone of the place reeks of 'slim or stuck'.
Really. No Friar Tuck could fit, literally, into Lindesfarne. Nor indeed would my modern Cuthbert.
As we then begin our season of liturgical fasting (I hate 'Slimming For Jesus', but you can see the joke I hope), I must aspire more to the Cuthbert of ancient tradition than of modern actuality.
Granted, many may not pass any a moment giving reflective consideration to the fellow. Even a 'Who he?' remark might be heard among you. Sad that really, as the life of this early Christian British - we'll address that point of his Britishness in a moment - hero is a rich and interesting mixture of the scholar, the monk, the cleric, the soldier too, the hermit and the peace maker.
British? Irish many say, and indeed Cuthbert's allegiance to the Celtic rite - an adherence he renounced in obedience to the Church and his monastic vows - may indicate a homeland. Scots perhaps, born close to Melrose Abbey where his monastic life commenced.
It is not though either Cuthbert's nationality or even all he was as a temporal and spiritual leader that compels my attention tonight. Was he a fattie or was he not I ask?
And why so? This so...
Go to the Holy Island of Lindesfarne, as I have done once more today, where Cuthbert was Prior - when he wasn't busy being hermit then Bishop then back to hermit once more - and you will see a tall, lean modern statue of the man gazing south across the Priory lawn towards his monastic Church then on towards Farne Islands.
Well could you understand the sculptor's thinking here: stern life-long fasting not the diet to build a big fellow. Ascetic by habit and conviction, one can't really picture Cuthbert tucking into the massive monastic meals that some Abbeys did and do enjoy.
Convincing though the portraiture, my diffuculty with this image is that I know a real live monastic Cuthbert who is neither tall nor lean in the slightest. Doubtless - indeed so - a man of deep spirituality, committed to the cause etc., my Cuthbert is nonetheless a jolly round fellow. Always has been and not, over time, losing girth far from it.
So say 'Cuthbert' to me and I picture not this awful lean - gaunt almost - figure that sits on Lindesfarne lawn. But was the sculptor right? I suspect he might have been more lifelike in his presumption than I. For I noted today for the first time, just how narrow and tight the residual spiral staircases are at Lindesfarne.
The night stairs from dormitory to choir are so narrow a couple of pencils would have problems passing each other. The day stairs rather slightly wider, though not by much, and granted that Prior Cuthbert would have had his own quarters apart from the rank and file, that not withstanding the whole tone of the place reeks of 'slim or stuck'.
Really. No Friar Tuck could fit, literally, into Lindesfarne. Nor indeed would my modern Cuthbert.
As we then begin our season of liturgical fasting (I hate 'Slimming For Jesus', but you can see the joke I hope), I must aspire more to the Cuthbert of ancient tradition than of modern actuality.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
His Father's Library...
Christ has given us to understand that there are many rooms in His Father's House. This is splendid news of course as it gives hope for us all. Somewhere there will be an allotted space - howsoever tiny or peculiar - for each and everyone, if only we would choose to take up residence therein.
A veritable heavenly Gormenghast no less, peopled with some utterly bizarre coves no doubt, each pottering about in their unique and particular manner. I do rather love that notion, it is so wonderfully inclusive. Heaven will have its standard saints of renown and proper fame, but also there will be room given to the so many who never quite understood their purpose on earth or ever appreciated that their quirks and oddities added to the necessary theme of redemptive humanity.
I would aspire no more - and no less - to be one of these latter sorts. It's a goodly and a Godly intent. And should it so pass that I find, in time - or rather perhaps out of time and into eternity - that a room in that mansion is mine, I do so jolly hope it can be the Library.
For there must be a Library in that mansion mustn't there? None would be complete without it. Some may wish for the billiard room or the kitchen garden in which to feel at ease, but for me the Library is the thing.
An eternity in which to read could be for some a hellish prospect one owns. But when I consider the volumes I simply must either return to or to try anew, I simply find there cannot be sufficient time in this mortal life to do it all and that Heaven must supply the gap.
To put it thus. In just some twenty hours or so it has struck me that I cannot rest until I have once more completed 'War and Peace', taken a revisit to 'Moby Dick', been nostalgic about a thirty year old yet intensely relevant dissertation on the nature of literary fiction titled 'The World and the Book', absorbed the entire output of Thomas Mann and not just 'The Magic Mountain', taken at least a dip once more into Albert Camus not to mention finally reread Sartre's 'Roads to Freedom' trilogy, compared Herodotus to Thucydides again, given Dante one more go, not failed to appreciate George Eliot as one did as a callow youth, spent a happy month in the company of Eliot, T. S., remembered what it was like to be sixteen and enthralled by Robbe-Grillet, suffered with dear mad William Blake and pondered in the serious company of Tennyson.........there is hardly an end, and all this is just what one would wish to achieve before the weekend were out.
You can see the difficulty. Quarts into pint pots do not ye go. There is the day job to consider, yet to mention family commitments and so forth.
Time simply does not permit it all. Only eternity is sufficient for the purpose.
A veritable heavenly Gormenghast no less, peopled with some utterly bizarre coves no doubt, each pottering about in their unique and particular manner. I do rather love that notion, it is so wonderfully inclusive. Heaven will have its standard saints of renown and proper fame, but also there will be room given to the so many who never quite understood their purpose on earth or ever appreciated that their quirks and oddities added to the necessary theme of redemptive humanity.
I would aspire no more - and no less - to be one of these latter sorts. It's a goodly and a Godly intent. And should it so pass that I find, in time - or rather perhaps out of time and into eternity - that a room in that mansion is mine, I do so jolly hope it can be the Library.
For there must be a Library in that mansion mustn't there? None would be complete without it. Some may wish for the billiard room or the kitchen garden in which to feel at ease, but for me the Library is the thing.
An eternity in which to read could be for some a hellish prospect one owns. But when I consider the volumes I simply must either return to or to try anew, I simply find there cannot be sufficient time in this mortal life to do it all and that Heaven must supply the gap.
To put it thus. In just some twenty hours or so it has struck me that I cannot rest until I have once more completed 'War and Peace', taken a revisit to 'Moby Dick', been nostalgic about a thirty year old yet intensely relevant dissertation on the nature of literary fiction titled 'The World and the Book', absorbed the entire output of Thomas Mann and not just 'The Magic Mountain', taken at least a dip once more into Albert Camus not to mention finally reread Sartre's 'Roads to Freedom' trilogy, compared Herodotus to Thucydides again, given Dante one more go, not failed to appreciate George Eliot as one did as a callow youth, spent a happy month in the company of Eliot, T. S., remembered what it was like to be sixteen and enthralled by Robbe-Grillet, suffered with dear mad William Blake and pondered in the serious company of Tennyson.........there is hardly an end, and all this is just what one would wish to achieve before the weekend were out.
You can see the difficulty. Quarts into pint pots do not ye go. There is the day job to consider, yet to mention family commitments and so forth.
Time simply does not permit it all. Only eternity is sufficient for the purpose.
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