The discussion was of communities, to which communities did the students consider they belonged?

The answers were many and various. Sports clubs, music and dance, families and neighbourhoods, Scouts and Guides, churches and cultural groups, the list was lengthy. The communities were formal and informal, structured and unregulated. Some communities identified were large: Cheltenham, a town of one hundred thousand people, was considered the home community by many of them. Other communities they named were very small, like the group named by one of the boys.

”Sir, I meet with …

In the early-1980s, there was debate at theological college about which books were to be included in the prescribed reading lists. There were students who insisted that the books that reflected their views were not being placed on the list. The professor of biblical studies insisted books were not chosen on the basis of evangelical scholarship or catholic scholarship, but whether they were good scholarship or bad scholarship.

The distinction between good and bad, rather than that between particular traditions or approaches or styles, seems one that is applicable to …

The government’s permission that six adults from different households might meet together outdoors allowed  back garden lunch with my sisters in Somerset. It was the first opportunity for us to meet together since our father’s funeral on 17th March and we sat laughing about memories from our youth.

My middle sister had found a bundle of seven inch vinyl singles and we pondered how  much bad music there had been when we were young. My sister had played Benny Hill’s Ernie to her grandson from an online music site. “Is …