Waiting for Captain Scarlet
Just outside of Weston Zoyland, I passed the signpost for Andersea. It is a cluster of houses set amidst the flatness of Sedgemoor, but as a child I always associated the placename with the name of Gerry Andersen, the maker of some of my favourite programmes. Prompted by the association, I searched online for Gerry Andersen, to discover that yesterday …[continue reading …]
Ciaran uncelebrated
In normal times, this Friday would have been celebrated as Saint Ciarán’s Day. The people of the parish of Seir Kieran in Co Offaly would be holding their annual ‘pattern’, a pilgrimage walk to the holy sites in the parish – the well, the tree, and the monastic site. I remember a sense of bafflement when, on a midwinter day, …[continue reading …]
Liberalism contained the seeds of its own destruction
More than twenty years ago, I attended a Christian Aid conference in London at which there were questions about the identity of the organization. A person in the small group discussions asserted strongly that there was no need to play up the “Christian” identity as everyone present, Christian or not, had a desire for justice. I struggled to explain that …[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 Sapin and promising abundant reward …[continue reading …]
Dwellings
The lane adjoining the house is more a track than a lane. Unsurfaced, it becomes rutted mud in winter weather. Decades of holes being filled with gravel or hard core have not brought much improvement in potential driving conditions. The lane leads only to fields. There is no right of way over it, other than to landowners gaining access to …[continue reading …]
What’s the afterlife like?
Few of the four hundred or so students that I teach are religious: a few Christians, a few Muslims, but overwhelmingly people who identify as agnostic or atheist. Despite holding no religious beliefs, the majority of them believe in an afterlife, although they are vague about what it might be like. The students would have been baffled by someone like …[continue reading …]
Stopped overnight
It is a long time since the A38 was the main route from the Midlands to the West Country, but its lay bys between Worcester and Tewkesbury still provide overnight parking for lorry drivers taking their statutory rest. The drivers find safety in numbers, two or three stopping in each spot. The distances in England are not great, but sufficient …[continue reading …]
Unchained feelings
Perhaps dissecting the lyrics of songs is unwise. Perhaps there is a danger of reading into a song meanings that were not intended. Perhaps there is a danger of overthinking words that were secondary to the music. Perhaps lines that were sung for fun can take on a seriousness they did not possess when the song was recorded. The late …[continue reading …]
Still waiting
Sunlight shone through a gap in the curtains. The sound of a tractor passing the cottage told Maggie that it was later than she thought. Her clock had stopped at some point and she had not replaced it. Normally waking at the same time each morning, Maggie had felt that a new battery for the clock was not necessary. The …[continue reading …]