Pantomime season (Oh yes it is!)

We had the first read-through yesterday for the Bursledon Player's next production - Sinbad the Sailor and Mystery Island. Just about the right amount of young people turned up - not so many that it would have meant turning people down (or having an enormous chorus), but not too few, so I'm not going to have to ring round last year's cast who didn't come back yesterday and plead with them. This year I'm co-writing it with Rachel again; she does the jokes and I do the plot - except for the sections where she does the jokes and the plot and I just write it down.

I have to say I do like writing pantomime - I can have lots of fun finding different ways to use the traditional characters, and I just love the feeling when I think of a line that seems like it doesn't add much, but is going to be a serious bit of plot three scenes later.

Now I need to get it finished and off to the actors asap, so that they can start learning their lines. Maybe next year I'll have more than Act 1 written before auditions. Maybe.

A baby in a stable

Last Sunday Peter gave a talk based on John the Baptist's preaching in Matthew. He asked how we can preach the gospel, using an example of some 19th century ideas about hell and damnation - rescuing people who are "hanging over the edge of the pit". We were asked to think about whether or not that kind of language (or those kind of ideas) are right today - what would John the Baptist be saying now?

I've been thinking about this, and though I don't claim to have any well-worked out answers (and certainly not final or authoritative ones!) I can't help coming back to my previous thoughts about who church is for. Is it for people who don't necessarily feel they need to be there, but like the company or think they should show their face once in a while? Or is it for people who know they need something, but don't necessarily think that they'll find it in church? I know there are lots of other kinds of people between these two extremes, but my feeling is that the church in general has quite a lot of the former and not enough of the latter.

I'd really like to see the church being a first resort for anyone who is lonely, desperate, unhappy, friendless, addicted, ashamed or bewildered. But I don't believe that those people will seek out Jesus (especially not in the church) as long as they are lectured or talked down to by people inside the church. I don't think that they will come - even if they are invited - if the church is seen as a group of people who think they know best, telling the rest of the world just how wrong they are.

I think that the church has something of an image problem. Strangely, I believe that the wider culture is actually helping with this. Church is increasingly being seen as a refuge for the intellectually incompetent, the social misfits, the bizarre fringes of the human race. And that's a good thing. I think that we as a worshipping community should identify strongly with that. We are not the people who have got it all together. We are not the best of the best, or even the middle of the average. We are the people who are beginning to grasp just how massively we've messed up. But we come together on a Sunday morning (or a weekday evening) because we have found a hope, an answer, a love that will never give up on us - and we'd love everyone else to find it too.

Of course, as a church we don't have to do that. Nobody says we have to admit our failings in public. We can stand proud, knowing that not only are we children of God (true) but that he has revealed himself to us (also true). We can let everyone know that they need to be saved (this, I think, is referred to as "speaking the truth in love"), and then we can shut the doors of the church and sing our groovy up-to-date worship songs, with a request that the last member left will please turn out the lights. We can, in short, give the world the church it expects.

Should we? I can't say for sure, but in a couple of weeks time I'm going to be celebrating the birth of the Son of God, and he wasn't born anywhere that people expected. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords was born in a stable. We could do worse than think about what that means for us.

It's my birthday

Got up this morning to presents and cards on the dining room table and birthday greetings from my family. Today I am 44. It's difficult not to feel old sometimes - after all, I've only ever been younger than I am now, so comparisons are bound to be unfavourable - but it did occur to me that 44 is exactly halfway between 22, when I was recently married and had just started a family and a career, and 66, when I shall be able to retire. I think I shall describe myself not as old, or even middle-aged, but as having both experience and potential.

Lies

I hate lies. They make me angry and unhappy.

Maybe I should stop telling them.

Facebook: just when you thought it couldn't get worse...

Yesterday I posted about the proliferation of cartoon pictures on Facebook. Today when I logged on I saw this:

!!ATTENTION: the group asking everyone to change their profile picture to their favourite cartoon character is actually a group of paedophiles. They doing it because kid's will accept their friend request faster if they see a cartoon picture. It has nothing to do with supporting child ...violence, ITS ON TONIGHT'S NEWS copy and paste this to your status! Let every one know !!

I probably should have guessed that someone would scream the p-word at some point. And the problem with a warning about paedophiles is that you must MUST MUST!!! pass it on. Except that this looks like nonsense to me. Let's see... there are multiple punctuation mistakes. There are capital letters to call attention to the REALLY IMPORTANT part - which is not about the group of paedophiles, it's about "tonight's news". Oh well, if it's on tonight's news, it must be real, right? But what news? Where? If this is so important that it needs exclamation marks at the beginning, why not include a link to the news item?

But most nonsensical of all is this: if a group of paedophiles believe that children will accept a friend request faster (by which I assume they mean "are more likely to accept a friend request" - surely the speed with which they accept is immaterial), then it is to that group's benefit to be the only ones with cartoon profile pictures. If everyone has a cartoon picture, then any advantage those cunning paedophiles might have had will be lost. It would be utterly self-defeating.

The genius of this is that if I didn't change my picture to a cartoon I was clearly in favour of violence against children, but now if I do I could easily be one of those devious paedophiles.

Change your facebook profile picture to your favourite cartoon character

A couple of days ago some of my friends on Facebook had this as their status: "Change your Facebook profile picture to your favourite cartoon character from your childhood and invite your friends to do the same. Until Monday December 6 there should be no human faces on Facebook, but an invasion of memories. This is to support no violence towards children." Yesterday, it had changed to "Change your Facebook profile picture to a cartoon character from your childhood and invite your friends to do the same, for the NSPCC. Until Monday (December 6th), there should be no human faces on Facebook, but an invasion of memories. This is a campaign to stop violence against children." The NSPCC Facebook page says "A warm welcome to all our cartoon friends! We are incredibly grateful for your support to end cruelty to children in the UK. Although the NSPCC did not originate the childhood cartoon Facebook campaign, we welcome the attention it has brought to the work we do. If you would like to find out more about how you can get involved, please visit our website."

I haven't changed my Facebook picture to my favourite cartoon character. This isn't because I don't support the work of the NSPCC or the other organisations working to reduce the incidence of cruelty to children. It isn't because I'm a heartless git who is happy for children to suffer. And it isn't because I just can't think of what my favourite cartoon character would be. It's because putting a cartoon picture on Facebook WILL NOT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE.

Never mind that some well-meaning soul decided that this "campaign" was from the NSPCC, though I admire their positive response. This will do nothing to stop people being violent to children. Nobody who regularly beats their children because they themselves were beaten as a child, nobody who sometimes whacks their unruly toddler round the back of the head because they don't have many parenting skills, nobody who is addicted to alcohol or drugs and sometimes doesn't feed their children - and certainly none of the tiny tiny minority who set out deliberately to be cruel to children - will change their behaviour one little bit because there are suddenly pictures of Pikachu and Bagpuss all over Facebook.

If you want to reduce violence to children, give money to the NSPCC. Or get off Facebook and volunteer.

The politics of snow clearance

I've just moved our car out of the estate and round to Tesco's car park, from where I will hopefully be able to move it later when Peter needs a lift down to Hamble. It took some initial work with the shovel to get it out of our road (and then again going up the hill), but as I drove along there were small groups of people (mostly men) who were clearing sections of the road. People were getting together - not just clearing their own driveways, but getting the public road clear. And when cars got stuck, two or three people would give them a push.

So is this a failure of local government? Although a lot of people live on our estate, the council don't grit the only road around it that everyone uses. Should we expect our local council to repay us for our taxes by getting the roads clearer, faster, in winter? Or is this The Big Society? People getting together, untrammelled by prescriptive regulation, to really sort out what needs to be done?

I suspect it's not really either of these alternatives. Local and national government are repeatedly unable to deal with extreme events like a couple of inches of snow, and perhaps should be better prepared and respond faster. On the other hand, they can't be everywhere and do everything. And I don't think that people get together because they are feeling empowered by Dave's big idea. I think that generally people tend to look out for each other, and they don't think it's an unusual thing to clear a bit of road - particularly if that means another driver is less likely to slide into your parked car.

I guess we get the the government that we pay for (and nobody wants to pay any more tax); but please don't politicise human goodwill and pretend you've brought about social change.

Real life

For the last week I've been meaning to post something about how astonishingly busy I've been. I expect it would have been a lighthearted look at how many different things I'd been involved with, with a serious undercurrent to make the reader think "Hey, this guy really is incredibly busy."

Unfortunately I haven't. And the not very lighthearted reason is that I've been busy, tired, and procrastinating. When I used to be employed full time - especially in the months before the NHS and I parted company - I imagined what life would be like when I was having to do all kinds of things to try and raise money/get people off our backs about debts. In my imagination I would get up early, work hard all day, and then when evening came and my loving wife and family beckoned me to come sit with them and maybe watch a movie, I'd ruefully but resolutely smile and explain that no, I had some more work to do.

Reality (as is often the case) is somewhat different. Yes, I do get up early. Yes, I try and work hard to get some money. But I don't work hard enough or for long enough to get sufficient money to stop the graph on the household budget looking like the advanced slopes at St Moritz. Because in real life there are lots of other things that need doing, where a smiling refusal doesn't make any difference. And come the evening, frankly I'm so exhausted that I've hit the settee before you can say "Why don't you come and sit down?"

Part of wanting to be a writer is the discipline of writing when I don't want to, or when I'm tired, or when there's too much else on. This blog ought to have daily entries, except in extremely unusual circumstances. Right now, I need to get my act together.

Best White Stripes cover EVER

Joy

I got too little sleep last night; I've recently both been bereaved and become unemployed; the car has broken down and I don't have enough money to repair it, and yet when I was walking up to Tesco in the freezing cold this morning because we had no bread, I was so happy I felt like singing.

Recently I've been waking up in the morning feeling happy, with an overwhelming feeling of thankfulness for all the good things I have. I am amazingly blessed. And more than that, I have an incredible source of joy, deep down inside me, that is far better than any transient feelings of happiness.

For anyone who says "I want some of whatever he's on," I'm afraid that you might not like the answer, because corny as it sounds in this superficial and cynical age, I'm fairly sure that this is down to Jesus. My joy is linked to knowing that I am loved, with an overwhelming, unbelievable, astonishing, world-saving, death-conquering love, and that nothing, not unemployment or bereavement or malfunctioning Renaults or cold morning walks to Tesco can ever separate me from that love.

Serious journalism

I was recently asked by the editor of Earth Times to do a piece for them. They'd found me through The Freelance Journalist Directory - which just goes to show that it's worth getting your name listed online! Anyway, the piece (hopefully the first of many) is here.

Things Dads Do number 1847

Sticking suede pads on the ends of their daughter's pointe shoes.

My mum died

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that I haven't posted anything on here for a couple of weeks. My mum died suddenly and unexpectedly on Thursday 21^st October. I didn't want to write about it, not for a while – but I didn't want to write about anything else either. So the last couple of weeks have been a succession of ideas where I thought “I must write that down,” followed by “but I don't want to write anything until I've written about mum dying.”

I had a phone call from my dad on the Thursday afternoon. I'd known my mum wasn't well – my sister said she'd been diagnosed with COPD, which was odd considering that she'd never smoked or worked in factories – and the last time I spoke to her she was obviously short of breath. I'd decided that I'd try to get to see her sometime soon, maybe before Christmas. My dad didn't say much, other than that the ambulance paramedics had done what they could, but her heart had stopped and she was dead. I phoned my sister and my brother, and made arrangements to travel up to Northamptonshire. I arrived too late that night to do anything much, so had to wait until the next day to go to the mortuary.

I went with my dad up to the hospital, but he didn't want to go into the little room where my mum's body was, so I went in alone. Before I went in, I had rehearsed some of the things I wanted to say to her. They were mostly apologies for one thing or another. I went in, and there was someone who looked like my mum, but was much too still. I started to talk to her, and realised that I didn't need to say sorry at all. She had loved me – I know that for certain – and I didn't need to apologise for not being the person I imagined she wanted me to be. I've not got everything right, and some things I've got wrong, and some things I've done kind of OK but they weren't really what anyone expected. But that didn't matter. She had loved me as I am, not as who she thought I could or should be. I'm sure I must have frustrated or disappointed her sometimes – what child doesn't – but when it came down to it, it didn't seem to be important. I discovered that what I wanted to say to her was “Thank you.” Thank you for that constant, quiet love. Thank you for being there. Thank you for being forever busy keeping things clean and getting the dinner ready and making tea and reminding me tactfully that my brother's birthday was next week, I hadn't forgotten had I? “Thank you,” I wanted to say, “thank you for just getting on and doing what you did best in the whole world, which was being my mum.”

The funeral was last Friday and I have to say that it was a good day. It sounds odd to say it and when I've said that to people in the last few days they've all said something like “Well, as good as these things can be” – but it was genuinely a special day to remember her. Of course I miss her, but the point is that I know that she's not dead, not in any final sense. On the contrary, as a Christian I believe that my mum is in some way now more truly alive, that she has left behind a world where there is sin and shame and pain and death, and is called to live in a world without any of those things, where she will be truly herself, created to live joyfully as an image of God. Of course I will be sad when there's no phone call from her on family birthdays, but how can I not also be happy when I know that she has no pain, that she is called to be with the God she served faithfully, that one day I will join her, caught up in a love that is higher and wider and deeper and stronger than anything we can know or imagine, stronger even than death itself.

Crazy Special Offer! (More Tesco madness)

Can anyone explain to me how, unless you want three jars of Oregano, 3 for £1.60 is a good offer?

Consumerist Christmas

I went up to Tesco yesterday and in the reduced section there was a huge stack of cut-price mince pies. Now I know that mince pies (unlike hot cross buns) are a year-round food, but they are associated with Christmas, and indeed Mr Kipling, the manufacturer, has thoughtfully put a design on the box that features a gas lamp, snowy fir trees and a cottage with lighted windows. They've even adapted their trademark "exceedingly fine" phrase, and called them "exceedingly merry" mince pies. I don't think that it's unreasonable to infer that these are mince pies that are particularly designed to be bought for Christmas. "Just the thing," you may think as you buy your seasonal provisions, "some mince pies in an attractive Christmassy box." So why, in the name of heaven, do these mince pies have a best before date of 20th October? They're a food associated with Christmas in a Christmas-themed package and they are going to go off a whole one sixth of a year before Christmas even starts!

I know that retailers make a lot of money from Christmas (though I have my own opinions about that) and I understand that they want to start selling Christmas-themed goods as early as possible to maximise profits, but it just seems bizarre to sell things in Christmas packaging that won't even make it into November.

When the Internet is great (and when it isn't)

Yesterday I exercised my prerogative as a citizen who needed advice and went to the Citizens' Advice Bureau. (I note, by the way, that I've been a grammar pedant and put an apostrophe in their name, whereas they don't.) I'd been on their site to find the location of the nearest branch, but I hadn't clicked on any of the links there, because I wanted to talk to someone face to face and get an informed opinion. I'm a great believer in the internet as a source of useful information, and in education to help people sort out the information from the misinformation and the opinion dressed up as fact, but I actually wanted someone else to give me advice.

So off I went. I'd remembered the location from the website, and it was a straightforward walk - until I got to where I thought the CAB should be, and discovered it wasn't there. No worries. Thanks to the wonders of GPS, Google Maps on my phone showed me where I was - which turned out to be exactly where Google said the CAB should be. I wandered up and down a couple of side streets and eventually asked a couple who were getting into their car. They told me I needed to walk another 100 metres down the road - and when I did, going way past where Google said I should go, there was the CAB.

After a wait, I was seen by a pleasant and enthusiastic member of their team, who listened to me, and then gave me a few leaflets but told me that my main source of information would be their online advice guide. He couldn't really give me advice, he explained, because there were too many variables. What I really needed to do was get information online, so that I could make up my own mind, and then go back to talk to them again if I needed further help.

So there you are. The advice bureau advised that I should go to the internet for information. The internet is great for telling me that there's a CAB within walking distance, but not so good for finding it exactly. I suspect that the Advice Guide will give me a similar level of macro information, but I'll still need individual guidance on how to apply it to me.

There's a point at which information available to everyone becomes information that is of decreasing use to any one individual. Current iterations of the internet are moving towards personally useful information for everyone, pushing ever further away the point at which "widely available" becomes "personally inapplicable", but my feeling is that there's still some distance to go.

Thingy Whatsit and the Doodahs

I had a brief conversation last weekend about how bands aren't called "First-Name Second-Name and the Somethings" any more, and since then I've had occasional "Yes!" moments when I've thought of another. I suspect I might have alarmed the person who was walking down Shirley High Street as I was cycling up when I suddenly shouted "Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers." I had fairly strict rules for myself about this - it has to be two names, followed by "and the" and a noun. So Martha Reeves and The Vandellas was allowed, but not Martha and The Vandellas (or Antony and The Johnsons). It didn't have to be an actual name, and I allowed more than one word after the "and the" - I could have Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars or Bobby "Boris" Pickett and The Crypt Kickers. Both of those, by the way, I considered for a subcategory of "really long names in the format name-name-and-the-noun".

I suspect I've had about as much mileage as I can from this. We need more bands with names in this format - except that unless you're starting a kitsch tribute band, having a name like that is going to make you sound as dated as Brian Poole and The Tremeloes.

Online/offline balance

The problem with having a busy and productive day is that that doesn't necessarily include time spent sitting blogging or updating Facebook. So if I'm having a really boring time, I have lots of opportunities to tell the world about it, but if I'm doing anything that makes me think "I'd like to tell the world about this" I'm too busy to do so. So I had quite a good day yesterday, felt quite happy because of some news that I will write about another time, wished my eldest son a happy 20th birthday (I've been a parent for twenty years. Twenty years!), just generally got things done. And the only time I spent online was ordering books from Amazon that children need for college. And now I've run out of time to write anything insightful because we have to get ready to get Rachel to Fleet, where she's doing her Modern Trio at the Tudor Rose Festival.

Congratulations Western Michigan University

You have made my day.

For anyone who hasn't found this site (I got there via Reddit); go to the home page and then press z+v on your keyboard.

Edit 17th Oct: Western Michigan clearly got wise to the number of people accessing their site and removed what I assume was a student joke. If you missed it, pressing z+v changed the central panel to say "Zombies. Classes cancelled. If infected stay home."

Good while it lasted.

Being ill does not guarantee more time

Having spent the last couple of days with stomach cramps (still in evidence) and vomiting (hopefully resolved), I've noticed how often I tend to think that because I'm ill I could get more things done. There's a train of thought that goes "I am ill, therefore I will get fewer things done. I am doing fewer things, therefore I will have more time. I will have more time, therefore I will be able to get more things done."

Now you know this is mad, and I know this is mad, but it doesn't stop it from rattling round on a loop in my head; I decide that since I'm not at work I'll use the time at home to catch up on work; I'll get all the jobs done around the house that I've not managed to do when I'm healthy; I'll write more and blog more and be artistic and creative and...

Of course what happens is that I look at all the things I want to do, and think to myself, "Actually, I don't feel very well."

[Redacted]

I have just been asked by my employer (who shall not be named) to remove my last blog post, as it mentioned my employer in connection with my dissatisfaction with my job. I might be leaving this employment sooner than I'd planned!

Genuinely, this is what I can see right now

I think that it probably says everything you need to know about our household that on the computer desk there is a (non-functioning) laptop balanced on top of the printer, and on top of that there is a D&D miniatures Rock Titan. Someone has put a pair of safety scissors in the Rock Titan's hand and balanced a cute toy puppy on its head.

Honestly, this is how I live.

Click below to see the pic.

On being adored

There's a lot to be said for being adored. In Moulin Rouge Ewan McGregor sings, "The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return", but there's a very special feeling that comes from knowing that someone, somewhere, thinks the world of you. Someone has a photo of you placed so that you are always in the corner of their eye. Someone checks your Facebook page several times a day, and when there's nothing new to see, looks through all the pictures that they've already seen a thousand times. Someone wonders what you think, imagines what you might say, constructs variations on variations on an imaginary conversation with you about the nothing-very-much most important things in the world.

Of course it won't last. It's not love. But it is, right now, just wonderful.

I have been robbed

Rather annoyingly, I had several emails today from PayPal, the last one of which said they they had limited access to my account while they made further checks. It turns out that someone calling themselves Arthur Waller has somehow taken two payments out of my current account via PayPal, the first for $163 and the second for £178. It's not fun being stolen from - oddly enough, being a Christian, it's not hard to forgive "Arthur Waller", but it's difficult to see how we'll make it through to the end of the month if we don't get our money back pretty promptly. Do I believe that living as a Christian means forgiving people? Yes, certainly. Do I genuinely believe that God will help us get by with a lot less money than we'd planned on having? Erm...

Update 00:40: just got an email from PayPal to say that the investigation has completed and the funds will be returned to my account within five working days.

Some things come back to haunt you

The recent rain and wind have removed several layers of advertising from this billboard and revealed a Tory election poster. Unfortunately for David "I'm sorry that wasn't in the manifesto" Cameron, the promises he made are still out there. Let's hope he sticks to them better than these posters did.

ICU baby (shakin' that ass)

Not convinced

I've made some changes to the look of the blog - mostly by starting off with one of Blogger's templates and then trying to fine-tune it. To be honest,I think it's going to need a lot more work. I'm tempted to go back to my old layout, but (a) I actually want a fresh start, and (b) my old template seems to have vanished.

Hello again

One of the (several) things that I was going to do today but didn't get around to was giving this blog a bit of a makeover in preparation for starting a more regular posting schedule again. Unfortunately, as so often happens, life got in the way (in this case, my phone started playing up - freezing, saying I had texts but not displaying them, etc.) so I've spent the time that was earmarked for blog renovation trying to avoid doing a hard reset and then doing it anyway. But I decided that I'd get a quick post on here anyway, even if it's only this.

I hate weekends

It's the feeling of walking in the front door on Friday evening, tired, not wanting to do anything, and looking at the prospect of two days of cleaning and cooking and washing and transporting children and shopping and DIY and church and getting to Sunday evening feeling just as tired with the inevitability of Monday to come. If lack of achievement is measured in things that should be done but are not, in broken promises and unfulfilled resolutions, then the weekend is Failure Central.

You know things are bad...

when you sit at work Googling 'burnout' instead of working

Welcome to multicultural Southampton

I get by with a little help...

I have been having a bit of an emotionally up and down time recently, and there are some habits and personal issues in particular that I think that it would be helpful for me to write about. I don't want to keep a journal, but I have thought several times about starting a blog. "But," I hear you cry, "you already have a blog - you're writing it now!" Yes indeed, but here's the thing: I know that only a few people read this blog, and most of them are accidental visitors via search engines, but I think that a couple of people who know me read this occasionally, and I wouldn't want to tell them any of the stuff that's on my mind. In other words, if I genuinely feel that I have some emotional stuff to talk about, friends and family would be the last people I would want to share it with. I'm sure this isn't uncommon: there would be fewer therapists if everyone talked to their friends and family. Nevertheless, it struck me that the people that I think of as closer than strangers friends would be the people to whom I would be most wary of telling the truth about myself.