Making a living
it would be more than a decade ago, for I was living in Dublin. I was walking down a road when an ice cream van passed in the fading light of a chill summer evening. ‘A hard way to make a living’. ‘What is?’ ‘Being an ice cream man’. ‘Maybe it’s something you inherit. Your father did it, so you … [continue reading …]
Loyalist hopelessness
In a Loylalist area of Newtownards in Co Down, two men hijacked a Tesco delivery van. After a series of collisions en route, their progress was brought to a halt in a Loyalist area of east Belfast when the police used a ‘stinger,’ (a chain with spikes lain across the road) to puncture all four wheels. It was an act … [continue reading …]
Going on holiday
At last, the English summer holidays have begun. It is fifty years since our first summer holiday in Westward Ho! (The only place in England with an exclamation mark in its name). In the 1970s, a railway track still ran along the railway valley from Barnstaple to Bideford. The line had been closed to passengers by Dr Beeching in 1965, … [continue reading …]
Heathercombe Brake School Photographs
There are 679 (or thereabouts) photographs here. Some of them are duplicates and some of them are in random order. Paul Pope sent me a zip file in 2014 and I have been meaning to sort and upload them ever since. To have digitized these from prints to computer files must have taken many, many hours. They are nearly all … [continue reading …]
The old scams seem to work
There can be few people with email addresses who have not received at least an occasional email that seeks details that would allow the sender to defraud them. The “Spanish Hostage” scam is the oldest approach used (thus named because when it began two centuries ago people wrote letters claiming to be held hostage in Spain and promising abundant reward … [continue reading …]
Always on the losing side
Driving through Weston Zoyland, I wondered why a Saint George’s flag was flying from the church tower, then I remembered that yesterday was the anniversary of the Battle of Sedgemoor. The former parish church from which the flag was flying is the Battle of Sedgemoor Visitor Centre. The building that was once used to hold five hundred prisoners from the … [continue reading …]
A Sermon for Sunday, 14th August 2022
“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” Luke 12:49 The word “fire” from the Gospel reading can provide an acronym with which to think about difficult teaching: “F” for “fire”; “I” for “I” in which Jesus speaks about himself; “R” for “reward”; and “E” for “eternity.” “F” for fire, pictures of … [continue reading …]
Hippy towns
Visiting Glastonbury, there was a memory of visiting the Canadian town that was its counterpart, Nelson, British Columbia. It was in 2008 that I was there. “Where are you from?” I had asked the man in the record shop. “New York”, he said. “You don’t sound it.” “I came here when I was eighteen. I’ve been here forty years.” “You … [continue reading …]
Lest there be yet another programme on Woodstock
The anniversary of the 1969 Woodstock festival approaches. Hardly a year passes without there being a programme on some channel telling the story of the festival. If the true story had been told at the time, perhaps it would not still be remembered Woodstock had always held a mythical place in the imagination of those of us who seemed to … [continue reading …]
See Emily Play
The nurse changed the date. “Today is 1st May.” “Good morning, Emily. How are you this morning?” 1st May? Oh no, it would be so boring. Standing outside for hours and then a dinner where there would be very long speeches. All those old men and all those toasts. “Daddy, do I have to go today?” “Of course, we must … [continue reading …]