When words don’t work
Growing up in 1970s Belfast, my colleague recalls the bleakest days of the Troubles. There had seemed a terrible inexorability in the unfolding of the history through which he lived, as if there were no possibility of anyone ever calling a halt to the violence. Drinking tea, we recalled accounts of a moment when all that was to follow might … [continue reading …]
The debts men incur live after them
‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones’ declares Antony in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Perhaps in more contemporary times, ‘the evil that men do’ might be replaced by ‘the debts that men incur’ – debts definitely live after them. Family tree research has brought a frequent occurrence of Joe’s name. Joe died … [continue reading …]
A good place to die
My exploration of the pages of the Ancestry website reveal the family tree to be more a hedgerow than a tree, cousins of varying degree intermarrying so that relationships can be stated in various ways. Uncle Jack, a man who joined the army at the age of sixteen and survived appalling privations as a prisoner of war, appears not only … [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 …]
Centuries of relatives
The mid-term break means a flight to Bristol on Friday and a return to our local community in Somerset where I identify myself as a member of the Crossman family from which my mother came. It is a family with a long connection to the area. The name is said to be Saxon. The family were yeoman farmers and Parliamentarians … [continue reading …]
A new sermon for Sunday, 19th March 2023
‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ John 9:2 There will be many churches today that will say that it is Mothering Sunday and that they will instead use a different Gospel reading. There will be many churches that will be pleased to avoid a passage that challenges their assumptions. If Mothering Sunday is … [continue reading …]
Billions for the rich
‘SVB shows that there are few libertarians in a financial foxhole,’ says the headline in the Financial Times. A comment piece in the newspaper says that, ‘like banking titans in 2008, tech tycoons favour the privatisation of profits and the socialisation of losses’. Where are the champions of free market capitalism when another banking crisis threatens to devour billions? Interventions … [continue reading …]
Wondrous stories
I reckon it must be more than forty-five years, the autumn of 1977 if my memory is correct. Perhaps early 1978, but no later than that. The song was from a genre described as ‘progressive rock,’ although the term seems so broad as to be virtually meaningless. An online search for ‘progressive rock reveals a list of bands it would … [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 …]