Who Ate All the Pies?

It's supposedly a familiar cry on the terraces at football grounds up and down the land, as some player who's clearly not in the prime of fitness gets a fairly gentle ribbing from the crowd. Where this peculiar saying started though, goodness only knows.

There's nothing like a tasty pie, be it fruit-laden or meat-filled, or even a decent cheese and onion pasty. My younger brother actually makes a pretty mean chicken and ham one, for the record. And let's not forget the virtues of the humble sausage roll, veteran culinary guest as so many picnics this time of the year.

But you can, or should, only eat so much pastry, or else you end up becoming more lard-laden than the fatty shortening that makes this universarlly popular treat, and which gives pies and tarts that uniquely satisfying "mouth feel".

Anybody looking at my middle aged spread (and no, it's not Flora) might well think I'd been spending too much time in Greggs, supposedly masters of the pasty, but in fact I eat very little pastry, deliberately- but far too much, I know, of other food. I do like my grub.

Nevertheless, I'm at a loss to know why somebody combined the search terms "Mark Savage Pies" in Google, and got pointed in the direction of this blog! Even stranger is the fact, according to my site meter, that they then spent quite a time reading it. I'm flattered, or should that be fattered?

There are dangers, obviously, in relying too much on a pastry-filled diet and becoming ever more flabby as a result. The same thing applies just as much to spiritual the spiritual diet, I think. We can rely too much on quick fix soundbites or Sunday "sausage rolls" of worship. Yet it's extra-ordinary what a healthy diet of bible-based food, with a prayer topping, can do for the inner man (or indeed, woman or child). Rather than pastry, we need to take in more bread- and not just five slices a day, the well-balanced way so they say.

Jesus Christ claimed to be the bread of life, giving the inner man sustenance that not even the finest pastry chef could concoct. We can never 'eat' too much of him. Spiritual sustenance from the Word of God is the real fuel which makes life taste so much richer, and I'm happy to eat of that til all the flour mills run dry.

Today is D-Day

"Today is D-Day."

The 6th June 2009 marks the 65th anniversary of the daring invasion of Normandy by thousands of Allied troops. It was the beginning of liberation for millions of ordinary people across Europe, who had lived under the oppression of the evil Nazi reich for many years.

But what did the “D” in D-Day stand for? Believe it or not, nothing! It was just an easily remembered name, but given the benefit of what happened next, perhaps the ‘D’ could mean “Decision”?

This has been a decisive week for many in British politics, with mixed results. The fallout from the elections on Thursday will have a decisive effect on many people in the public eye, as well as everybody else affected by their decisions. It all begins, though, with a simple cross.

Being a Christian is a decision. Nobody forces it on us and we have free will. In fact, Christians believe that God gave us the freedom to make our own decisions from the beginning of human history. What a great freedom- liberation indeed!
Except too often freedom has been misused, with disastrous consequences. The story of Adam and Eve shows that.

Mercifully for us though, the simple cross of Christ brought a chance to start again and be liberated again. Because of His love for us, God gave us all a chance to start all over again.

Like making a decision on where to place a cross on a 3-feet long ballot paper, making a decision for Christ might not be easy for some. It’s right to ask questions. Churches are places where questions can be asked. In countries like Britain which, for the moment, remain free, you can do so safely. That's still not the case in many countries.

Last Thursday also marked the 20th anniversary of the Tianamen Square massacre in Beijing, when lives were lost, senselessly, in the cause of freedom. In a society which officially renounced religions, Christians were among the mercilessly persecuted. And, though the gospel is spreading like wildfire in China today, it can still be a tough place to be a believer. In many other countries, it's worse still.

Is anything worth laying down lives for? Were the young lives who their old comrades will remember on the beaches and town squares of coastal Normandy today given for nothing.

Far from it. Joel Edwards, former director of the Evangelical Alliance in Britain, has just quoted the text which led to the real D-Day, on his Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4:

"Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends"

Crown Caught

It's not been a good week for the law, or at least the law enforcers. Today, Britain's top anti-terrorist branch policeman, Bob Quick, lived up to his name as he was forced to hastily resign from the Metropolitan Police Service, following the sort of momentary mistake anybody could make, but which was likely to lead to devastating consequences. It seemed highly appropriate on a day remembered in history for the most disastrous of 'mistakes' of all, yet which changed the world.

Quick was photographed as he arrived for a routine Downing Street briefing. No problem in that, except that a document marked "Secret" relating to "Operation Pathway" was clearly legible under his arm, rather than concealed safely away as it obviously should have been. The much-respected senior Met man took the only honourable course of action in resigning his post for his mistake, but as he did so, thirty years plus of invaluable experience was surrendered along with his warrant card. It seems such a tragedy, for such a momentary error.

On the same day, meanwhile, an un-named officer of the same constabulary was suspended from duty after video footage obtained by The Guardian seemed to show police had baton-charged a 47-year old newspaper seller, Ian Tomlinson, who later died of a heart attack after being caught up in the demonstrations last week as the G20 summit of the world's most powerful leaders met in London.

Justice is said to be blind- hence the blindfold and the scales carried by the statue of "Justice" which is located just metres from where this fatal event took place last week. The famous statue sits atop the Central Criminal Court,more commonly known as The Old Bailey, in the City of London itself. Here, Her Majesty's Courts Service supposedly ensures that justice is seen to be done. Many may come here to be prosecuted- too many- but it should be that only the guilty are convicted of a crime and punished.

The right of an English free man to be tried by a jury of his peers is regarded as a sacred principle dating back over 800 years, respected and copied by legal systems all over the world. Trial by jury, based on the evidence alone and the impartial decisions of twelve men and true (and women!) is one of our most treasured liberties.

Criminal trials in England are conducted in the name of the sovereign, often abbreviated to R for Regina. In theory, at least, anybody who believes there has been a miscarriage of justice can take it right up to the sovereign when all other avenues of justice have been exhausted. "R" was once considered God's representative, and thus liable to show neither fear nor favour- even though the lessons of history and many 'bad kings' prove otherwise. In practice though, the Law Lords or soon the "Supreme Court of the United Kingdom", a controversial new arm of the judicial system, are the highest court in England (we'll ignore for the moment the newer influence of the European Court- it only seeks to complicate matters further!)

How very different from the kangaroo court proceedings which 'convicted' the King of the Jews, many would say the Universe, on this night about 1976 years ago. It's Maundy Thursday, taken from the latin "Mandatum", meaning "commandment" and referring to the new commandment which Jesus Christ gave to his followers at what has come to be called the "Last Supper": 'to love one another, as I have loved you'. This moving and momentous event, the basis of the Holy Communion service which is a sacred part of many Christian tradition's worship, happened before he was hastily arrested following betrayal to the authorities by one of his own. But where was the evidence, where were the impartial jurors? Above all, what was the charge?

The nearest ancient Palestine under Roman law- ironically the basis of much modern English law- got to a supreme,impartial judge was Pontius Pilate, the pro-consul. At the dead of night, he conducted what amounted to trial rigged by the occupied people he feared might riot, and the defendant had absolutely no chance of a fair hearing or acquital, even when he spoke in his own defence. It would have made little difference if he did call on evidence though- all his witnesses, even his best friend, abandoned him at his darkest hour to protect their own interests. What kind of justice is this? If it happened today, surely there would be an outcry.

Or would there?

How quick are we still to jump to our own conclusions about people and situations, irrespective of the evidence. The evidence in this case should have had this man not thrown into a dungeon, but mounting a throne. Instead of which, the next day he was nailed to a wooden cross on a high mound used as a rubbish dump outside the city walls, known as Calvary. He was left clothed not in the garments of royalty, but with nothing more than a mock crown of thorns and a notice above his head "I N R I"- latin initials for "Iesvs Nazarenvs Rex Ivdaeorvm" - This is Jesus, King of the Jews.

There, in agony, the death penalty was not despatched swiftly. Little mercy was shown. Instead, in the mid-day heat, he bled and suffocated slowly, as was the Roman customary capital punishment, but he was innocent of any crime!

Why was there no outcry?

There was. It came from the victim himself. He cried for us :"Father forgive them, for they know not what they do". What kind of person can show that kind of selfless thought for others in the extremes of their own agony in extremis.

Jesus Christ, the King of the Jews and the saviour of the world could.

Nothing can really ever save this world now from the agony of its own depravity, debauchery, defunct debentures and dereliction of duty, than this man who Christians believe was God in the form of man, who gave so much, for so many, so long ago. It is we who should be in the dock, up before the supreme 'beak', or rather being. We should be enduring concurrent death sentences.

But there's no need for a trial for us. The verdict has been passed: 'guilty as sin' on all humanity. The Bible says as much: "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". It needed no foreman to announce this, no charge sheet to sustain the accusation, and no human advocates, however talented, could get us off on a technicality. Yet the unbelievable result of Jesus's death was 'all charges dropped, you're free to go, and live your new life to the full, for ever".

What amazing justice is this?

Divine.

In the Easter school holidays back in the seventies, when afternoon TV in Britain was still in its infancy, I used to love a Granada TV show called "Crown Court". Running usually over three days in half hour lunchtime slots, this was the closest British television could get at the time to portraying the proceedings of a real court while cameras were banned from actual court cases (with few exceptions, they still are). Although the dramatis personae of each new 'case' were real actors, the jury were ordinary members of the Great British Public. It was their verdict which determined the outcome of each case, not the writer's.

Just as enjoyable for many as the cases though, were the closing credits of each case. The music used was called "Distant Hills". This Maundy Thursday night, moving into Good Friday, I prefer to think of another distant hill, in fact nearly a thousand miles from where I sit, in Jerusalem. In that 'City of Peace' agony, war, bitterness and hatred still condemn many to premature death. If only they too could be saved by Jesus, as beautifully portrayed in Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander's hymn which was one of my schoolboy favourites:

"There is a Green Hill Far Away
Outside A City Wall
Where the dear Lord was crucified
Who died to save us all"

If you may, and if you can, keep silence to remember that, and the supreme irony that it was Good that it happened, this Good Friday. God Bless.

Hollow Cause

Today, 27th January, is Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK, marking the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp by the Soviet Union on this date in 1945. It has been held on this date since as recently as 2001.

Some might question whether we should be still commemorating such atrocities as occurred in that dreadful death factory and many others under the Nazi's sickeningly named "final solution" nearly seventy years ago, but remember we must. The evil that man does was not liberated on that day, but dispersed instead to new sites of atrocity- like Cambodia, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and...

Wherever it happens, human suffering and death caused by the loveless acts of other humans is unfathomable, unacceptable, almost unforgiveable- yet somehow those tragic survivors of even the Holocaust have done this since 1945. Their strength of spirit speaks volumes, and destroys the power of the hatred of their perpetrators. Burning coals indeed to the death mongers. Even as a man of strong faith, could I ever do the same? Please God by grace I could.

Yet I find it hard indeed to forgive the pathetic excuses trotted out by the British Broadcasting Corporation this week for failing to broadcast a humanitarian aid appeal by Britain's Disasters Emergency Committee in the wake of the immense human suffering in Gaza following the recent events there. The BBC's management have decreed that a three-minute charity appeal to the public to give money for the relief of human suffering, with no political agenda at all, should not be broadcast on any of their TV or radio outlets Why? Because it might threaten the BBC's editorial impartiality in news reporting!

This decision seems almost as unbelievable as the horrors must have have been to the cinemagoers seeing the scenes filmed by the lenses of news cameras which was finally revealed in Poland when the death camps were liberated in 1945. Years of human misery came before the world's eyes and aid and relief, practical and financial, followed despite the political turmoil and the difficulties left by six years of war. It was a natural, basic human reaction to the suffering of other humans.

So when in the name of God- whether that God is the one named by Muslims, Christians, Jews or indeed even any non-believer with a shred of common humanity and decency- did impartiality become a superior virtue to compassion? I am sickened and shamed by the actions of BBC management- it damages the reputation of our nation as much as our national broadcaster and is truly inexplicable.

The BBC motto below its crest reads "Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation". It was influenced, I think, by the passage in the Hebrew bible which speaks of a future time when "swords shall be turned into ploughshares", a time we all hope for- long for. Yet for much of the early part of this new year, that hope seems as far off as ever in Gaza, in an area which sometimes seems so poorly named "the Holy Land" and where others are still attempting a final solution. A final solution to the carnage and the charnel houses through the tools of war, through bombs and rockets, feebly through diplomacy, or through terror, prejudice and the same words of vitriol and violence which really flamed the crematorium fires of Auschwitz.

No side is blameless here, there is no easy solution to the legacy of thousands of years of seemingly conflicting beliefs and intransigent warmongering. But what we cannot solve, we must at least salve- with medicine, food, shelter and water, regardless of the identity and the cause of perpetrator or victim. That is what decency demands, and what the DEC are trying to achieve. Seemingly the precious BBC has a different view of decency to the great majority of those who pay for them in the first place through their licence fee.

I am not taking the step that many have done over these last few days by way of protest at this astounding decision. I have not burnt my TV licence, and I am still watching BBC programmes. But I cannot stomach the hypocrisy of the corporation right now and most especially of its motto. Which is why I have removed the BBC crest as the visual masthead to my blog entry for 4th July 2007. That, the day when "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are so fervently commemorated in the USA which has so recently welcomed a new Commander-in-Chief, was also when captured former BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston, was released from his long captivity. There was another man who one could only admire for his courage and yet his gentle and mild manner on his release.

What a shame, in the original sense of the word, that Mr Johnston's boss, the Director General of the BBC Mark Thompson, a devout Roman Catholic, could not put the message behind Jesus Christ's parable of the good Samaritan ahead of the message that the BBC cannot take sides. Two people walked on by and did nothing for the suffering victim of other's crimes in the parable, but a Samaritan- hated by the Jews of the time- ignored questionable, dogmatic religious rules and instead did what we should all do in such a situation- help!

Last Sunday marked the conversion of St Paul, once the chief Jewish persecutor of the early Christian church who was responsible for the killing of many believers in that same Holy land, even the Holy City of Jerusalem, twenty centuries ago. Yet he brought a life-changing message of hope, love and forgiveness to people of so many lands and cultures. Today of all days, can we not hope that the conveyors of both good and bad news today can yet see the folly of their way, reverse this mad decision and allow the DEC to publicise this just cause, right away?

Meantime, the link from my title today will take you to the DEC website, should you want to give money where the BBC will not give airtime.

Msg Wtng

Carol Vorderman, Queen of the Consonants, placed her final vowels on the Countdown board a few weeks ago. For TV quizzes, it was the end of an era; Ms Vorderman - who was born at Christmas-time, hence her Christian name- had been there since the beginning and there were more than a few tears shed on that final show when it aired on the 12th December.

Meanwhile, back in Adventland, the countdown to Christmas is nearly over and the last of those high numbers will be revealed in a few hours and bells will chime to herald the Word which has always been there, never hiding in an anagram.

There is a message waiting indeed. It doesn't matter if some of the vowels are missing (like my blog posts this year!), nor does the Christmas story always add up to some commentators from our limited human perspective- but why should it? Life itself is a wonderfully complex puzzle which none of us will solve in this life in three score years and ten or more, let alone thirty seconds. But it's no conundrum.

In the birth of Jesus the Saviour is revealed the answer to life, the universe and everything in it's sweetest form- a tiny, helpless, naked and yet perfect baby. And no ticking clock can limit the time we should spend pondering that awesome mystery of God himself being born among us. No human mind can quite take it in, but it is God's own brilliant solution, and it makes me cry just writing about it.

May your Christmas joy be unrestrained, and your hearts filled with the peace which passes all understanding.

Fantastic Four!

Four years ago next Thursday, I set up this blog and wrote my first posting- all of two lines! Four years ago next Thursday, four British rowers brought a team including Sir Matthew Pinsent his fourth consecutive olympic gold medal in an Olympic regatta, as part of the Coxless Fours in Athens. It was an emotional occasion indeed. How do you top that?
By the sort of tear-jerking, heart-stopping, jaw-dropping performance four Pommy Powerhouses managed to put in an hour ago in Beijing, that's how, beating their Australian rivals by just a whisker. How do they do it?!
Teamwork. In an age which seems to lionise individualism, the coxless fours is an example of how the most worthwhile things in life are very rarely the effort of one person alone. Sir Steve Redgrave, or should that be the Venerable Steve Redgrave, with five of those gold medals behind him for olympic rowing events, was quick to dismiss any suggestion from his fellow commentator in Beijing, the BBC's John Inverdale, that any one member of a rowing four, even less an eight, is more important than the other. They all have their part to play.
But it's not only the high profile team in the boat, the ones catching all the camera angles whose every bead of sweat, every breath,every pained expression, is recorded for posterity, that bring olympic glory. It's the physiotherapists, the doctors, perhaps especially even the nutritionist who help to ensure that four human bodies can give every joule of the quite extraordinary power they are capable of, to bring the jewel in every sportsman's crown, the gold medal on the victory podium.
One body, many parts. Something St Paul gave a masterly treatise on in one of his pastoral letters to the early church. Every part of the human body has its function, and it's no good expecting it to do something it was never intended for. Rowers can't rely just on their arms to win a race. It takes strong lungs- Matthew Pinsent reputedly had the highest recorded lung capacity in Britain-, pounding legwork, keen eyes and ears listening to every utterance of the rest of the team and not least the coach following on the bicycle from the shore to achieve these sort of world-beating results.
I can't but think of the solitary man shouting from the shore to some rather disconsolate individuals in a boat on the Lake of Galilee some 1,973 years or so ago. He appeared to be walking, not even rowing, on the water, and called one of them over to him to walk with him on the water. One of his team, a man called Peter, at first was quick to respond and did just that-but then fear started to grip him and his mettle failed. Think what a disaster it would have been for Team GB if our four today had done that as they continued to row backwards towards their finishing line.

For the one who walked on the water was Jesus- the same Jesus who came to his team on the shore on Galilee again, and offered them a nutritious breakfast, just days after they had apparently seen defeat snatched from the jaws of victory on a cruel cross in Jerusalem. He had risen again- and was to rise yet higher, not to the raised platform of a victory ceremony alongside a man-made lake, but to the exalted throne of heaven, beyond all earthly achievements.

Yet even for the Jesus who was as I put it was "being held in a queue" in my last posting some five months ago, actually in a stone cold tomb, it was his Father's amazing, awesome, unfathomable power that brought him back to life in a human body- a body recognised and seen by more than five hundred people, witnesses of an event far greater than olympic glory, some two thousand years ago. And it was the Holy Spirit, the third person of that profound mystery Christians call the Trinity, that inspired those early believers like Paul to carry on, whatever the cost, to their destiny, their victory, to claim their prize. In Paul's case, and for many Christians since in too many lands even to this day, it took them to their own deaths at the hands of persecutors and detractors.
Despite all the controversies which inevitably follow it from fallible human beings, the Olympic games remains an extraordinary sporting spectacle, the greatest show on earth indeed. Yet even the efforts of the greatest olympians- and surely I must give due credit here to the extra-ordinary Michael Phelps who looks set to claim his eight gold medal of the XXIXth Olympiad tomorrow in the Beijing watercube- will never match that labour surpassing Hercules which raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and which still inspires countless billion believers today. A more fantastic event never was seen!

Your Saviour is Being Held...

Yes, but held where? In a queue of mis-understanding religious leaders beying for his blood just two days ago, on Maundy Thursday? In the thousands who listened to them but could not hear his still, small voice of calm? His innocent bleating rather than beying? His failure to act in the face of blatant injustice to his person, to save his own life? Could this really be the Christ, the pivot of history motionless as his dead body was hastily taken down from the cross and buried in a borrowed tomb?
Your saviour is being held in a queue. Please wait.
But for how long? Until the slaughter not just of one man, but millions of children yet unborn has stopped? Until the sword of power is replaced by the ploughshare of universal equality? Until all the hungry are fed and nobody thirsts either for the water of life or uncontaminated, donated blodd?
Your saviour is being held in a queue. Please wait.
Until the war of words is replaced by the harvest of hope? Until the darkness of despair is banished by the lightness of endless day?
Your saviour is being held in a queue. Please wait..
Until this shining, beautiful new moon yields to the bright, blinding radiance of the star of the morning. Until female eyes drained by too much mournful crying discover...what? Until the friends, still quivering with fear and incomprehension realise...yes?
Your saviour is being held in a queue. Your call will be answered shortly. Please wait.
On Holy Saturday night, peace be with you.
Mark.

Now Hands that Do Dishes...

"Can feel soft as your face, with mild, green, Fairy liquid".

Come on now, be honest. You were ready to sing the second two lines of this triplet, word perfect, the moment you read my subject line, weren't you?

The reason you can still warble along to these frankly rather banal lyrics is largely due to the efforts of the late Cliff Adams, who until his death in 2001 was for several decades the purveyor of familiar ditties on BBC Radio Two every Sunday afternoon on "Sing Something Simple".


Far from just keeping grannies and grandpas happy with these memorable melodies sung a capella except for the versatile mouth organ of Jack Emblow, among Cliff Adams' weekday jobs was making a mint composing advertising "jingles" for everything from Murray's spearmint confection to an unpromising new concoction of dried potato which actually proved to be quite a smash- and the most popular British TV advert of all time, to boot! He probably composed the Fairy liquid jingle quicker than I can write this long-overdue posting to Anyway..

BBC TV's BBC Four channel is currently running a fascinating series of programmes about the advertising industry- the words, images and predominantly people that American writer Vance Packard famously described as "The Hidden Persuaders" in the title of his seminal book on the subject in the 1970s. A programme last night on the history of TV food advertising brought back many memories for my brother and me of the ITV advertising of our childhood.

Through pester power rather than today's nutritional wisdom, put-upon parents (though not usually ours, I recall) were persuaded they could pacify their restless offspring with merely a finger of toffee and chocolate fudge, or that an equally child-friendly digit proferred by a benevolent sea captain could get the little ones eating and enjoying fish. The ingenuity with which advertising agencies achieved this was to guarantee the TV commercials and their slogans a place in the cultural memory even if the products are becoming portiona not grata in the health conscious noughties.

What a pity it is then, that while we remember the tasty, hasty snacks of our formative years so fondly just hearing the jingles- or the washing up that followed it for Mum and her little helpers, for so many the most heart-rending music ever composed coupled with the most profound words ever spoken or written will bring little or no associations this week. Today is Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week in the Western Christian calendar. Yet for a great proportion of Britons, it might as well be Palmolive Sunday.

This is the day when Jesus of Nazareth rode triumphantly into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey, an unconventional entrance to the most sacred place of the Jewish nation, certainly, but enacted exactly in this way to fulfil scripture predicting this event,written many centuries before. So excited were those who saw Jesus arriving, that they threw down branches of palm leaves along his way, much in the way we'd welcome the coming of the monarch these days with a red carpet.

A people abused and exploited by an occupying power saw this young man of just 33 as the answer to all their hopes for liberation from the hated forces of Rome. Many hailed him as their king, much like a Hosanna hero, who would break the yoke of Caesar's stronghold and take the city and nation by whatever means necessary to restore political control to its rightful occupants.

How sad it is, with hindsight, that they were not on message, or at any rate only believed in this instant solution to all their problems for just a few days. Few saw in the substantial bread and wine offered one Thursday evening in first century Palestine, the most important meal ever put before mankind and a promise far more enduring than anything Proctor and Gamble could make because it came from the maker of life itself.

Instead of taking what was on offer in the greatest free trial ever-the love of God offered by his only Son- by the end of the same week Jerusalem's passover-consuming population were abandoning him faster than you could say buy one, set one free. Barabas left jail, Jesus was condemned to his fate- crucifixion. No brand loyalty here, then, but only the branding of a cruel crown of thorns and the nailmarks of the most hideous wrongful conviction ever enacted.

Standing around him at the cross the following day, what we now call Good Friday, as this young man who had done nothing deserving death struggled to breathe, was his best friend, along with the mother whom this dutiful Jewish son had doubtless helped to wash pots and pans at many a Jewish festival. Just the night before, however, the hands of the one so often portrayed as meek and mild had washed the rough, dirty feet of the same followers who would betray, desert and disown him at his hour of greatest need.

The Party's Over...

It's time to call it a day: The fourth of January two thousand and eight will do fine for the next few hours at least. Happy New Year!

Not that I've been a 24-hour party person ever since last posting to Anyway- last week, or was it last year? I had a very enjoyable Christmas, as I hope you did too, but constant jollity is just not the way we do things round here-even if for some the Christmas holiday will have lasted a fortnight and the return to work and school won't be complete til 7th of January.

The English are a funny race when it comes to celebrating New year-what is, when all's said and done, just an arbitrary point in the continuous revolving passage of the earth round the sun, when we decide to attempt to accurately measure that orbit again for another 365 "days", or as this is to be a leap year, 366. The very existence of leap years points out the folly of trying to number our days, months and years with too much precision, because the exact workings of the universe are complex and beyond our ken, as the Scots might put it.

Maybe we English are more pragmatic and a little less sentimental, but those of us south of the border have traditionally never quite managed to find the fun of New Year as well as other more outwardly flamboyant races- although as the pyrotechnic delights of London's celebrations brought Old Father Time to meet Old Father Thames once again last Monday night, it seems we're at last willing to have a try.

Indeed, the ritual of celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of another seems to have become almost a friendly international contest to see who can do it in the most spectacular fashion. Nowadays, the capital city of the UK even likes to have its cake and eat it not just as midnight but mid-day too. The New Year's Day Parade-London, originally the Lord Mayor of Westminster's attempt to have something matching his City of London counterpart's November streetfest, is now described as the biggest event of its kind in the world. It may have been influenced by Macy's parade in New York, New York, but Westminster, London has certainly produced a tradition to be proud of.

This year's parade, irrigated though it was by the first rain of 2008, certainly brought sparkle to the capital on what was once considered the most dreary day of the year. Earlier on New Year's Day, there was another feast for ears and eyes from another of the world's great cities, with the music of the Strauss family as played by the Vienna Philharmonic guaranteed to soothe even the heaviest hangover headache.

I took a cup of kindness or two in a favourite local hostelry with my brother and some friends on New Year's Eve, and very nice it was too. A lovely atmosphere, no rowdiness but good-humoured revelry and the shared experience of crossing the line of one year into another and singing Robert Burns' timeless lines once again while linking arms. I was glad to be there, in company and to think on the old acquaintance of the twelve months just past, which will never come our way again.


Yet I could just have easily have enjoyed the moment without any need for booze or food. What New Year's eve really represents, I guess, is our shared humanity, celebrating the succesful circumnavigation of both the mountains and the planes of this thing we call life through another twelve months. For some, it will have been a breeze, while for many others the year yet ahead will offer new challenges and not always of the enjoyable type.

Sadly, the turning of the year does not turn man from the worst of his ways,no matter how much we might hope for it. No sooner had the New Year begun in parts of the Southern Hemisphere, than the news brought horrendous stories out of Kenya, where disputed elections have stirred old tribal hatreds, rather than gladdened old acquaintances. The situation is very tense as I write, but can there be anything more obscene and against the spirit of the season than the loss of over 30 lives with the deliberate destruction of a church where some were sheltering from the violence around them.

It doesn't take long for joy to turn to pain in human experience, and yet there is always the hope, the promise, that the pain will end. All pain. All suffering. All death. Defeated! Not ultimately by act of EU or UN, despite the growing and welcome recognition in our digitised, globalised age that we must work together to solve those problems which we all face together as the Human Race. The challenge of Global Warming will surely be high on the international agenda again this year. And doubtless, every country will have different opinions on this and other issues affecting us all.

But national preferences, or at worst national prejudices, can never cause the world to move truly forward. That comes not from astronomical predictions or astrologer's presumptions, but from seeing the evidence and the promise in every human being that there is more to life than the counting of days. God knew this, when he chose to reveal himself to mankind two thousand years ago in a tiny baby. Two thousand years; but a blip in the long history of the universe but marking the most important event ever to take place in human history.

Christmas surely deserves its full twelve days of celebration, which is why the party won't actually be over, in the Western tradition at least, until Sunday 6th January, the feast of the Epiphany. Once again, our continental cousins seem to know how to celebrate this event so much better than we do in England, where for most it's just the occasion to pack away the decorations for another eleven months or so lest bad luck be brought upon the house.

Quite where such a weird superstition developed, who knows. Superstition defies logic and rational analysis, much as those of a secular mindset might say adherence to the tenets of religion limits the growth of our humanity and the true way forward through science. But they conveniently forget that one of the greatest scientists of all time, Sir Isaac Newton who was born today in 1643, was a man of deeply committed faith too. For him, to increase our knowledge of natural laws was to do God's work and and to increase our knowledge of him.

Science and Belief do not have to be constantly fighting, and neither should people. Is there not surely something very significant in that the guests at the birthday parties of Jesus Christ represented a very different view of the world to that of his own people? Contrary views can co-exist.

The shepherds who came to adore Jesus from the nearby fields of Bethlehem were considered by some in their society the lowest of the low. Who might be their equivalents today? Asylum seekers? Strange, isn't it, that the biblical account of Jesus's infancy includes a flight into an alien country, to escape the jealous wrath of a king. Later, when that king went the way of all flesh, the young child and his parents returned to the land of their birth, where they were visited by mystics and distinguished persons traditionally represented as three "kings". The served became the servers with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

The visit of the three kings is the wonderful story behind Epiphany. Of course, there are inconsistencies in the details, but does that really matter? Science too is full of paradoxes. It is though very appropriate that Epiphany should be the first feast of the secular year, and the last of Christmas. The time arrives to take in what it all means, and get working again in real life in real time. When Jesus is revealed to the magi, the secular world of time and place, evidence and senses, meets the other world of eternity and humility, and things unseen by any eye but even more wonderful than anything science can explain are glimpsed in the eyes of a child.

Epiphany, or Twelfth Night, is the reminder that Jesus came for all, not just a select race or races. He came to bring life in all its fulness to everybody. Now that's surely something worth celebrating- party on, at least til Sunday!

So Is This Christmas?

Written in the small hours of Christmas morning, 25th December 2007, in a silent London suburb

Is it merely a feeling
Or the truth most appealing?
Did God come to Earth
Through the journey of birth
Or is man the worst fool
with no hope at all?

Is it carols and candles
And carrier bag handles?
Or Mince pies, roast turkey
And bright winter jersey?

Is it a baby, a manger-
Or is there a danger
That we abandon the boy
Who would sin's power destroy

Is it family and blood ties
Or spotted blue neck ties
The man in the gutter
Or spuds smeared with butter?

Some Christmas, some year
Should we come to our senses
And let the day speak
For Jesus, our Lord, who was the defenceless

Who came to a land, where no peace there yet dwells
Where the deafening bomb blast
Replaces the bells

Should we not see him in the eyes of a child
Or any new mother, so tender and mild
Should we not know him in words of goodwill
Should we not hear him- for he cries to us still

Should we not smell him, in sweet smells of spice
Remembering too, that he carried our vice
Should we not know him, for know him we must
To witness the saviour, the righteous and just

If these few things we can believe
Then surely Christmas will achieve
The wonder of wonders
Miracle of miracles
God is with us, Noel, Noel.

Wherever you are, I wish you a peaceful, happy and joyful Christmas, and may your day be merry and bright.

God bless all my readers, new and old

Hark the Herald Angels Sing
Glory to the New Born King!

Silent Majority

"At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We Will Remember Them"

This is Remembrancetide, in the UK- and most of the Commonwealth. It's easy to overlook that unique family of nations' part in two World Wars, as we observe this annual pause for reflection. We are asked to remember all those who have given their lives for freedom and liberty in war and conflict, both now and in the century past.

How muted those words "freedom" and "liberty" can sometimes seem these days, like the muffled bells of mourning. Yet we remind ourselves again this weekend, it was for these causes that many millions gave their lives, and we should never forget them. In a world of constant rush and chatter, the best way we can respect the precious lives cut short in too many theatres of battle, is to fall silent ourselves, even if only for 120 seconds- about as many heartbeats as each of these fit young lives once knew before the true horror of war silenced them.

For those who have never lived through a whole world at war, the post-1945 generations to which I belong, remembrance could seem an irrelevance. Some,taking a different view,even say that the red paper poppies of remembrance which adorn so many British jackets and jumpers each November are a symbol too far, glorifying rather than villifying the sad facts of war.

Yet for the majority of Britons, the poppy is worn with pride. Not the red component of a national flag being jingoistically celebrated by a nation obsessed with past glories, but a reminder of the preciousness of life itself, and the grief we should all feel that war has so often, particularly in the last hundred years, prematurely ended lives with potential- lives that might even have contributed voices of sanity and wisdom which would help to end all wars,like the "Great War" was supposed to do.

Like Lawrence Binyon's famous poem I've quoted above, poppies are for the fallen. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. Politicians can argue the rights and wrongs of many causes but often their career in democracies is brief and easily forgotten. Like the former British defence secretary described by legendary TV interviewer Robin Day as "here today, gone tomorrow". Not so the servicemen who have to defend our nations. Ordinary people- fathers, brothers, uncles, sons and nowadays female relatives too- robbed of their loved ones, are those who can never forget those they have lost.

Don't we owe it to them -always- to remember, with gratitude, yet sadness, their sacrifice? Earlier this evening, I watched with my younger brother the perpetually moving and poignant Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance. There is more information on this event, and Britain's biggest service charity, if you follow the link in the title of this post. The ceremony, which has been held for eighty years now, has at its finale thousands of poppies falling from the roof of London's Royal Albert Hall. It is a solemn time which needs no words- silence speaks volumes.

Tomorrow, at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the nation will respectfully and collectively observe two minutes of silence, commemorating the exact moment at which the guns finally fell silent in 1918 in the armistice of the "Great" war which robbed so many of the breath of life. It is a scene which will be repeated at countless war memorials in villages and towns not just in the UK, but across the commonwealth, and most particularly in those places where the fallen lie. I intend to remember my Great Uncle Clifford, a private in the Royal West Kent regiment, who I never knew, at our local service.

Yet the bible reading at the Festival of Remembrance by His Royal Highness the Duke of York, Prince Andrew, himself a veteran of the British Navy task force in the Falklands Conflict of 25 years ago, perhaps portrays even more eloquently, in the words of Jesus Christ, the "Prince of Peace", the price that love sometimes has to pay. "Greater Love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends".
Actions speak louder than words. Jesus' actions, his whole life and death- and what followed- did that more than any ceremony at a simple cenotaph or a grand hall. May his supreme example, of triumph over evil, bring about the end to war for which we all yearn. When the majority will no longer need to be silent, for peace will prevail throughout all the earth.

This is the Page of The Train

What's the French- or indeed the Flemish- for 'Awayday', does anybody know?

Readers of a certain age should have no problem spotting in today's title the slogan of one of the most fondly remembered advertising campaigns of the 1980s for Britain's former train network, British Rail, then state-owned. Jimmy Saville, before the sovereign's sword of state bestowed on him a knighthood, abandoned the clunk-click, every trip of his equally famous campaign for car seatbelts, for the clickety clack of carriage on track to extol the marvellous possibilities of the newish InterCity 125 services, capable of traversing Britain at 125 miles per hour.

If you're in nostalgic mood, you can click on the title for a link to one of the original TV ads, courtesy of Youtube. Oh joy: a streamlined loco could bring families and loved ones together quickly and smoothly, whether you were in Aberdeen or Yeovil! Ignore for the moment the inevitable engineering works, strikes, and broken down power cars, and a railway utopia lay ahead of you, and all thanks to your cheap Awayday ticket. But your train of thought would have to be shunted back a very long way now to revisit those halcyon days of BR.

Spurred on by the Iron Lady's determination to privatise the iron rails of Britain's mass transport system, the Conservative government of John Major proceeded with the splitting up of the railway network in the mid-1990s, some years after Margaret Thatcher's premiership was de-railed, and even when many were labelling this a privatisation too far.

The Railways Act left Great Britain looking like a lawyers' dream, ruled by intricate inter-company rather than inter-city contracts, but a travellers' nightmare much of the time, with a unified railway replaced by around 25 Train Operating Companies (TOC's), three Rolling Stock Companies (Roscos) to lease out locos and carriages to the TOCs, and the ill-fated public limited company Railtrack who (theoretically) took perfect care of the infrastructure of track, signals and points, together with stations, bridges and tunnels. Their failure to do so led to the nearest Britain's now likely to come to a publicly-owned railway, with its replacement by the stakeholder-run Network Rail which now re-invests all its profits in much-needed improvements to the system.

Most railway industry professionals and analysts soon recognised the arrangements left by the Railways Act were a mess. This bureaucratic bungle might well have signalled the end of the line for Britain's claims to be a great railway-running nation, even though the UK invented the passenger train and has now lent the rest of the world BR's brilliant brand- InterCity (though sadly it's no longer liveried on this island's own trains).

Fortunately, however, more forward-thinking minds were at work, both in government and the civil engineering industry, and it now looks as though Britain actually could be at the start of a new golden age of rail travel. At a time when aircraft are starting to be seen as something of the bete noir of global warming- rightly or wrongly-, travelling by train suddenly looks more green and more appealing than causing the carbonised airways to cough and splutter even more.

Yesterday evening, Her Majesty the Queen, just a few hours after opening another session of the UK parliament in the Victorian splendour of Pugin's Palace of Westminster, opened a new era of rail travel at another gothic architectural icon, which seems set to become a palace of the permanent way: St Pancras International. London's new gateway to Europe will see High Speed 1 services beginning, appropriately, in just a week's time on the heir to the throne's birthday. I wonder if he'll be celebrating with a short 135 minute hop over to Paris: the prince of rails as well as Wales?

I was speaking to a couple of friends this week who'd had the privilege of being part of an exercise organised by the owners of St Pancras International, London and Continental Railways, who are also responsible for the British arm of the Eurostar service which has hitherto served London Waterloo international albeit at a speed more akin to British Snail this side of the channel before the full opening of HS1. From 14th November, the journey from central London to Paris might remind many of another great InterCity slogan: Eurostar becomes the journey shrinker.

My friends told me that they were absolutely awe-struck by the restoration of the train shed roof,once the biggest single-span iron structure in the world. They described it as a masterpiece of powder blue ironwork which, they said, matched the perfect blue of a cloudless autumn sky. Meanwhile, the gleaming sun shining through the hundreds of self-cleaning glass panels onto the gilded clock below, and the carpenter's craftsmanship of the parquet floors of the undercroft below the platforms, left them in no doubt that this is an achievement which ranks with the best railway architecture in the world: a stunning station. It's surely worth a visit even if you're travelling nowhere, and I agreed with them as I watched the new terminus unveiled by her majest in a life webcast yesterday evening.

Rail travel from its very beginnings has been marvellously liberating. Indeed, the great age of railway building in the mid-nineteenth century gave whole communities throughout the world a freedom of movement they could never have dreamt of previously and even gave us the first Awaydays courtesy of one Thomas Cook esquire, who started his world-famous business in July 1841 with a shilling [5 pence] a head rail excursion for a group of churchgoers from Loughborough to Leicester- towns both served by the rail franchises of 2007 from St Pancras International.

But perhaps the real liberation that a rail trip, whether for a day or a month, can bring is in the changed view of the world it gives you. Down to earth, yet inspiring wonder as you gaze upon hills and mountains, coastlines and forests, deserts and arctic wastes, rivers and streams, bustling towns or isolated villages. All these vistas are possible from a train. You could be following a journey which may lead to happy reunions and new discoveries, or you could be on your way to your chosen work in life.
It may seem like an over-romanticised portrait of the railway scene to the claustrophobic commuters struggling to find a seat on the 8.21 each morning, but I think there's an analogy in train travel to the journey which is life itself. See it for what it can be, with all its possibilities no matter which branch lines you explore along the way, and you'll perhaps have a positive view of journey's end. Jesus Christ described himself as "The Way"- and those who follow him see as the permanent way to a life of fulfilment and peace at journey's end. I wonder if this is why so many vicars love trains?

wireless western words

THIS IS MY FIRST POSEY POST! Welcome aboard the 15.11 Reading- Cardiff train, courtesy of First Great Western.

Up, Up and Away

Now here's something you don't see every day! This really was a Boeing 747-400 passenger aeroplane passing over Eastbourne Pier on 18th August 2007- and I haven't been tinkering in the photoshop either! Incidentally, that ever-enchanting character,
"The Snowman" can clearly be seen to be whooshing over Brighton Pier, also in Sussex, with his young admirer in the Christmas classic if you look closely. This visitor however was seen over Eastbourne's shoreline at the world's biggest and free- seaside airshow, the cleverly-named AIRBOURNE, which had its 2007 finale about half an hour ago when a myriad of fiery delights lit the sky in the mammoth closing firework display.
The pyrotechnic artistry rounded off four days which, if not exactly blessed with the best of summer weather, once again drew appreciative gasps and fixated the eyes of young and old on the skies to witness the gravity-defying antics of the world's top aviators, and for others kindled poignant memories of The Battle of Britain, a defining event of ariel combat in the second world war, fought in this very airspace sixty-seven summers ago next month.

When I saw the 747 of Oasis airlines, making its maritime visit before flying a scheduled service from Gatwick to Hong Kong later in the day, I was immediately taken back 38 years to 1969, and my first ever sight of a "jumbo", which we delightedly dashed into my junior school playground to watch flying over from Heathrow as the now defunct TWA, Trans World Airlines- or as it was whimsically called in the industry "Try Walking Across"- proudly earned the prestige of being the first transatlantic carrier to bring these huge beasts to British skies. TWA's slogan at the time took Jimmy Webb's big pop hit for The Fifth Dimension of two years earlier and turned it into a memorable jingle, with the associations of these new giants of the skies now offering the tantalising prospect of cheap, worldwide air travel for everyone.

What actually keeps planes in the air is as much a marvel in 2007 as it was in 1967, or indeed in 1907, for it is easy to forget that powered flight has been with us for only just over a century. What can be done with the mega-powerful jet engines of the 21st century when married with the skills and courage of the best pilots still brings childlike wonder to me. The crowd-drawing top of the bill event at Airbourne once again had to be the nine magnificent men in their flying machines from the Royal Air Force Red Arrows. They are indisputably the best and most famous aerobatic display team in the world, and it brings tears of pride to my eyes just to write those words. I never tire of watching them.

But looked at not through rose-coloured binoculars but with another viewpoint, the continued existence of airshows and the ever-gorwing ease of air travel is a cause of great concern for some, not celebration. While Airbourne draws thousands to add something spectacular to their holiday enjoyment, in a thistle field a mile and a half or so from "the world's busiest intennational airport", hundreds have spent the last week in uncomfortable conditions endured for the sake of their cause, the halting of further expansion at "LHR". A sixth terminal and third runway are proposed, but would destroy hundreds of homes in the process. The protestors are amongst a growing number who see the kerosene-consuming monsters as among the biggest villains of the piece -and indeed the peace- when it comes to global warming.

Meanwhile, fantastic though their aerial antics may be, The Red Arrows only exist at all, ultimately, because man's in humanity to man demands that most developed countries decide they need air forces to defend their shores and their skies, and to deter would be aggressors or keep the peace in the world's trouble spots. Airbourne 2007 had less military jets than usual, because so many of them are currently involved in the controversial British campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mass travel has certainly helped to broaden the mind, some might say, but has it brought us any closer to a day when there will be no more warfare, no more surface to air missiles and no more terrorist bombs being made harmless by the brave personnel of the RAF Bomb Disposal Squad whose tools of the trade were also on display today? I fear not. The flying warhorses of the skies may be able to develop ever more thrust and carry even more sophisticated fly by wire technology, but ultimately they do little to ameliorate the worst effects of human beings flying off the handle with each other.

Man continues to be at war with man. Fools continue to rush in where angels fear to tread, let alone fly. It's easy to despair with hate in the air. But I continue to enjoy airshows because I know a time will come when there will be no more war, no more suffering. When, just as man has always longed to fly like the birds, he will mount ujp on wings of eagles and will be changed forever by the experience. And a time will come when all humanity agrees that we "ain't gonna study war no more". It will be down by the riverside, it will be down by the seaside.

Meanwhile, up in the air again, or so many Christians believe, the man crucifed by another Pilate will return, like a wing commander gathering his aircrew. Jesus was surely the one man who rose above our real limitations, our earth-bound thinking full of selfishness and even evil intent. Like a search and rescue helicopter, he will and does stop us drowning in our own woes. He will not need a Typhoon or a Hurricane, but will take us all to a higher plane. I can't wait to see that spectacle and to be on that flight, one day soon.

Be Preprayered

It's a mega birthday blog today, as a new month also crowns a landmark celebration for the biggest youth movement in the world. Happy Hundredth to Scouts everywhere!

Scouting's global success is a quite incredible story of what the human race can aspire to be today, and what it can hint at becoming, when it looks to a better future. That future, as it always has done, begins with its children and young people.

On this day in 1907, Robert Baden-Powell, or BP, started a movement which now has some 28 million members worldwide. The oil company which shares his initials may once have claimed to be 'Britain at its best', but this occasionally eccentric yet passionate British champion of youth arguably did more to help youngsters internationally "Do Your Best" than any other person of his century.

Baden-Powell was a military hero, famous for his courageous defence of Mafeking during the Boer wars. Yet he was no warmonger and nor did he have any social pretensions. But in his way, he was as much a social reformer as any politician. Lloyd George no doubt knew Baden Powell.

The first ever scout camp, this week in 1907, was held in the tranquil and beautiful setting of Brownsea Island, located a mile from the Dorset coast of England in the second largest natural harbour in the world. It provided a safe haven for around 20 boys from very diverse backgrounds- some private schools, and nearly as many from slums and tenements. Little did they, or he, know then what they were pioneering.

Scouting today provides challenges undreamt of by Baden Powell and his boys. Every activity from abseiling to zoology is offered somewhere in scouting's world, which stretches across barriers of creed, culture and colour from Aachen to Zambia. Indeed, this week a representative selection of forty thousand Scouts have turned Hylands Park in Chelmsford, Essex into Scouting City, UK as they celebrate the Centenary World Jamboree, carrying on a tradition inaugarated by Baden Powell in 1920.

Elsewhere, scouts are gathered for their own celebrations on every continent. In mainland Europe, for instance, my younger brother, who has been a scout leader for a quarter of a scouting century,is one of thousands attending the tenth "Haarlem Jamborette" outside the historic Dutch town 20 kilometres from Amsterdam. Scouting's BIG in Holland!

What can explain this incredible success story, in a world which on the one hand is becoming ever more a global village, yet on the other seems so fractured by the clashing of cultures and the worst of man's dealings with his fellow men and women? It must be more than the vision of one moustachioed chief scout of a different era that has done all this.

Dare I suggest it's partly because scouting everywhere pays homage to the best patrol leader of all. One who has shown a way for all humanity, and when followed as he should be, helps not just young people, but all people to march on with strength and courage through the sometimes tough terrain of life to journey's end. Along the way, he encourages us to do our best, and as we do find our true selves in fun, in sharing, in working, living and- yes- loving together.

The devastated flood-hit communities of Gloucestershire were last month extremely grateful for the efforts of scouts in the historic town of Tewksbury who were prepared to offer them not just the use of their scout hut as a refuge. but free food and drink and above all, a welcome and friendliness at a time of great devastation.

"B-P" would have understood, and been proud, of the way Scouts responded in England's west country, but its typical of the efforts of boys and girls and their leaders in the movement around the world, in war or in peace. B-P himself was greatly influenced by the devastation of the so ironically named 'Great War' that he pledged to do his best to build a better world based on international brotherhood and understanding.

I'm sure Lord Robert Baden-Powell would forgive me for slightly amending his famous words which became the scout motto. Yes,we all need to "be prepared" for whatever lies ahead, whether we can see it or not. But maybe even more important is to Be pre-prayered. Baden-Powell was very influenced by the Boys' Brigade, the movement founded by William Smith which enjoys many similar activities to scouting backed up by a distinctly Christian ethos.

Scouting does not limit itself to any particular 'religious' tradition, but faith remains an essential part of its ethos and raison d'etre. The Scout "law" in its way makes a nod to some of the 'ten commandments' given to Moses familiar to all in Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities. Loyalty, Trust, a sense of family, courage, respect for self and for others. Values which seem to have become almost dirty words in some sections of society are as vital a part of the Scout philosophy in 2007 as they were in 1907.

But above all, perhaps, the best summary of what Scouting means to me- once a timid 11-year old who after enjoying cubs chickened out of Scouts because of too many then frightening-looking "bigger boys"- is what I am about to go down and join other supporters of the movement young and old, as well as today's Scouts worldwide, at 08.00 local time today at numerous Sunrise Ceremonies. They recall the exact moment one hundred years ago, when B-P sounded the Kudo horn to inaugarate that first Brownsea Island scout camp. And I might say, with pride in my scouting connections:

On My Honour, I promise that I will do my best
To do my duty to God and to the Queen,*
To help other people
And to keep the Scout Law

Amen to all that, and keep on Scouting!

[Note: "The Queen" is replaced with appropriate wording in countries and territories which have different heads of state ]

Ici Londres

Bonjour tous le monde- especialement les gens Francophone! Please excuse my very rusty schoolboy French, but you could be forgiven this July weekend for thinking that the British capital and its environs had been spirited away by Tardis to mainland Europe- but Who's complaining?

Well the good time traveller isn't for one: Dr Who is expecting a dose of Australian glamour come Christmas day when Kylie Minogue moves into the famous police box for the now obligatory Christmas special, while last year's guest companion, Catherine Tate, will be taking off on new adventures as a regular companion with the last of the Time Lords come next Spring after a truly spectacular season finale to the world-renowned sci-fi series last Saturday.

Whovians could have felt bereft the following Saturday night, i.e yesterday, now that their hero has vacated the screen, but there was more than enough spectacle around the metropolis this weekend to keep them occupied. So much in fact, that I'm going to wait til later this evening to update this blog and perhaps add a photo or two to tell you more about it!

Free news

No, nothing more needs to be said here about Tony Blair who has been out of office exactly a week today- but already it seems like a lifetime ago, and he's one of yesterday's men. However, he's been officially appointed already as the new Peace Envoy for the Middle East. But so what? The man of the moment is neither Blair nor Brown, but another proud Scot and a very fine newsman. I write of course about Alan Johnston, the BBC's Gaza correspondent who had been held captive for 114 days until the great news came in a couple of hours ago of his freedom.

As his colleagues on the BBC's World Today, put it a few moments ago "it's one of those days when it's good to be at work".

I know what they mean and how they feel, along with the two hundred thousand around the world of all faiths or none, who have been praying and hoping for Alan's safe release and have been putting their messages of support on the BBC's website.

How ironic- and appropriate- that this modest, unassuming newsman should gain his freedom just a few hours after the BBC itself was in the spotlight with the release of its annual report, and the first AGM of the BBC Trust, its new sovereign body. The BBC, as a public body which every UK citizen supposedly owns, is much maligned and has to face charges of "dumbing down" practically every day. Its journalists on home territory are seen by some as raging liberal lefties, while others see it as a tool of the establishment. Curiously, some have even accused it of anti-Palestinian bias much in recent years.

Alan Johnston's release, and his dedicated work, put all the puff, praise and pejorative prattlings into their proper place. The words "I'm Free!" may for long have been associated with the late BBC comedy icon John Inman in his Mr Humphries role but now they properly and mercifully belong to Alan Johnston. It is his day, and how overjoyed we all are to see it.

God -Allah, Jahweh, call him what you may here- has heard our prayers. As I said in my parallel posting to my radio blog RadioFar-Far (link on right) a few hours ago, the BBC motto is "Nation shall speak peace unto nation". Please God it may be so,not just in Gaza but throughout the Earth.

Midsummer Mire-Doers

You have to feel more than a tinge of sorrow for the hundred and fifty thousand or so soggy souls who paid £150 each and ventured down to the watery West Country this weekend, for the world-famous Glastonbury Festival.

Once again, what claims to be the world's largest contemporary arts and music festival was accompanied by torrential rain, which turned the normally green fields of this part of historic Somerset into a muddy mire. What has happened to our summer, which right now we're supposed to be in the middle of, literally?

The irony is all the greater, given that the Glastonbury festival began as an event to celebrate the June Summer Solstice, the time when in the Northern Hemisphere the sun appears to "stop" for several days as it reaches it's farthest point north, at the tropic of Cancer. Sadly, it seems to have disappeared altogether for much of the last 72 hours.

At Britain's latitude, this point in June brings the longest day, which occurred last Thursday and did at least see an impressive sunrise even here in the London suburbs, eighty miles or so from the UNESCO world heritage site of Stonehenge, Wiltshire, where the solstic takes on mystical proportions and thousands of revellers were able to gather to greet the dawn on 21st June.

Henge and homestead however were hardly the hotspots they were this time last year in what was actually a truly flaming June, preceeding one of our warmest summers ever. The chilly start to the day saw me staying cosily in my bedroom, apart from a brief venture outside to the garden, but dawn was none the less awesome for all that I viewed it through two panes of glass.

Sunrise and sunset still awaken some primeval sense of awe and wonder in most of us, be we painters or poets or ordinary Josephs. The Glastonbury focus came about because this legendary spot was supposedly visited by one of the New Testament Josephs, possibly the foster father of Jesus, along with his young son. This tale is the origin of the famous lines in William Blake's seminal song, married so stirringly with Hubert Parry's music to produce the ever-enduring "Jerusalem".

Whether those feet ever did tread on England's green and pleasant land, who can ever really say with certainty, though I suppose it's not beyond the realms of possibility. Nothing can be, when a child is born by miraculous virgin birth, and goes on to defeat even death itself. The Christian view of life and death may appear on the surface in contrast and conflict to that of the pagans who parade around ancient sacred sites in the west at this time of the year, and yet a recognition of the power and purpose of earthy and celestial symbols is common to both.

Maybe Jesus too got muddy feet, rather than smelling summer meadows and picking daisies to make childish chains, as he enjoyed the seasonal delights of his father's creation in England. But the songs that continue to celebrate him, as they have done for centuries, will continue to echo through fields and towns, not just at midsummer but every day. The events of two thousand years ago, at Gethsemane, Golgotha and Garden tomb, launched Jesus Christ, superstar, on to the world stage. What Christianity has done, and continues to offer all men and women free of charge, far surpasses any Acts the Glastonbury pyramid stage can offer.

Please Release Him

On Sunday, I wrote about freedom. Today, this page is dedicated to freedom of expression and of those who report the news. Mercifully only rarely, do reporters unjustly lose their liberty in doing so, but today is a time for remembering one of those horrible occasions.

It was 100 days ago exactly, to the hour, that Alan Johnston, the BBC's correspondent in the Gaza strip, was abducted by anonymous captors as he went about his business, He was not taking sides but merely doing his job, so that his audience might know and better understand what was happening in this troubled parcel of land in the Middle East where for so long there has been anything but good news.

All that any journalist of integrity can do in confict zones is to report events. The solution of complex problems and just solutions are for others to decide. And sometimes all we can do is sit in our comfortable armchairs and weep. Yet we are not powerless.

A few moments ago, journalists from media all over the world paused. At the BBC itself, directors, producers, cameramen, and doubtless many other staff took time out to keep vigil for their missing colleague and to keep his loved ones in their thoughts. Many of them will have held up posters of Mr Johnston while they did so, while his elderly parents in Scotland released one hundred balloons.

This is not the place today to make devotional points. Enough of the trouble in the area Mr Johnston had come to know and understand finds its roots in religious intolerance, and misunderstanding between peoples. Instead, this blog today has followed the BBC news website suggestion to add this picture of Alan Johnston to websites, in solidarity with those of many political persuasions around the world pleading for his safe release by whichever faction is holding him.

Alan Johnston is a man who means no harm and has caused none. He was due to end his posting to Gaza shortly anyway. Whatever the rights and wrongs of your people's situation, please give Alan Johnston back his freedom, now, in the name of peace. And if you are but a viewing bystander too, stand with him please whether in silence or words, for the sake of the free word.

Royalty-free Tree

Feel free to use this tree. Apparently, that's just what twenty-five bellicose barons and the 'baddest' King of England, John, did this very time 792 years ago , as the first Magna Carta, or 'Great Charter', was sealed,purportedly on this very spot beneath this ancient yew which is probably older than England itself.

Could it have been more than mere coincidence that led to me driving just seven miles or so from my home to the pleasant village of Wraysbury, in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, on the 'official' birthday of the present sovereign- which this year was just one day after the anniversary of that monumental event in British history? Maybe, but as I waited for the friends who'd invited me to meet them here to arrive from another Thameside location some twenty miles further west, my mind was filled with thoughts of just what that historic event meant for individual liberty, but also with loftier remembrance of a liberty that no prince or premier, nation or natterer has power to grant.

Magna Carta set out on paper, if not in stone, the nearest thing England has ever had to a 'Bill of Rights'- although it was never intended to be this and in fact failed initially to achieve its purpose of averting a minor civil war. Later revisions and constant reference to it as precedent however, mean it now forever vindicates the freedom of the individual citizen under law. No more could men be accused of wrongdoing and cast into the hands of unaccountable and tyrannical monarchy, nor their liberties and property be taken from them, without the fair trial of their peers and due process of law. The charter's two most famous provisions are as clear as the nose on Bad King John's face:

'No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions ... except by the lawful judgement of his peers.'
'To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.'


No wonder Magna Carta has proved to be a proof text for the world's most significant democracies ever since. Politicians may come and go- as Tony Blair will do, funnily enough, on my birthday later this month. There is ample reminder at present both sides of the 'pond' of how their practices often reek as much as the now stagnant pools of water where once Old Father Thames flowed either side of Magna Carta Island. But the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary are rightly seen as much as the crucial accessories of just society, as crown and sceptre are the tangible symbols of constitutional monarchy in the present day United Kingdom. Saturday 16th June 2007 turned out to be a day when I realised I am still very proud to be British, once all the media meddling and false witness about our national life is discounted.

King John had abused his assumed divine right to the extent that his barons would have no more of it, but a June day in 1215 ensured that no future monarch could ever get away with such a display of contempt for what we would today call 'human rights'. And yet, unjust imprisonment is still the fate of all too many in an unending stream of justice-starved regimes in the 21st century world. So many of these poor souls, only standing up for what they believe, have never had a fair trial. Were it not for the tireless efforts of Amnesty International et al, many of them would never have the hope of liberty.

Yet true liberty is surely more than a freedom from physical chains, it is a freedom of mind, body and spirit which no monarch can decree or celebrate with earthly honours, as the latest recipients of "gongs" will have done yesterday in Her Majesty's Birthday Honours List. Among them was (Sir) Salman Rushdie, who receives a knighthood nearly two decades after his seminal work The Satanic Verses put a price on his head from one particularly harsh interpretation of Islamic teaching.

Religion has been the object of so much abuse, torment and misapplication through the eight centuries since King John swore his oath before twenty-five bellicose barons on an English summer afternoon, that it can almost make his calamitous acts seem like kindergarten antics by comparison.

Yet 'true' religion - or as many prefer to describe it, faith- remains the only real solution to man's enduring mis-treatment not just of his fellow human beings, but of the natural world itself. After taking a somewhat roundabout route to get to the object of our search today, my arboriphile friends and I were able to gaze in wonder at the sight of a natural specimen which existed centuries before environmentalists came to this spot to launch a 'green' magna carta, or those who assumed the mantel of the great and the good got together in Germany for an ultimately rather ineffectual G8 summit as they sought to grapple with the world's pressing issues of the moment.

Only one man ever really got to grips with the earth's real problem- and he did it by hanging on a tree in agony and finally giving up his life, because of all the awfulness of our human nature. Yet like the freshness of a summer rainstorm on the long, lingering hours of daylight at this time of year in England's green and pleasant land, Jesus Christ drained our stagnant places by that death. At Easter he rose again, and in the next forty days until he ascended to his rightful throne, he showed, nay proved, to people of faith that there is more to life than meets even the most discerning eye.
The National Trust, of which I'm a member can work wonders with Runnymede, Ankerwycke, Churchill's Chartwell and many hundred other historic places, but only trusting in Jesus, I believe, can change hearts of stone into hearts of love. And indeed, this is all that God, requires of us in a precious prophetic passage given to Micah probably even before that Berkshire yew was a bird-carried seed:

He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.


I will try to post to this blog more again soon, at least monthly, but meanwhile you might like to check out some of the links on the right where you can find some of my other writing and the contributions of other websites I find both informative and inspirational.

The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and give you peace.

Things can only get...?

Fill in the missing word yourself, according to your preference, or read on.
Here we are at this early hour- or is it late- on Election Night 2007, or rather post-election morn. Due to various procedural changes to protect against postal voting fraud, many of the results of the local council elections which took place in England and Scotland yesterday will not be declared until later today. May the fourth be with you!
The process which is democracy, however flawed, will bring new stars onto the political stage today, while others will just have to hope that the warring words will soon die down, at least until the next election. Yet some of the customary dynamic drama of the dark hours, waiting for the winners and losers to be revealed after the people have had their say, is lost in the chore of checking- though in Scotland, the story seems to be one more of a farce than a force, with allegedly over a hundred thousand spoilt ballot papers caused by the confusion of voters and tellers getting to grips with mainland Britain's first attempt at proportional representation for local elections but not for the Scottish Parliament elections, which were also held yesterday in the same week as the 300th anniversary of the sealing of the union between the Scottish and English realms.
While a more representative voting system in any form is to be welcome, these failings are a sad confirmation that trust- not just in politicians but in general- has become a devalued currency this last decade, while ironically the pound seems stronger than ever against the once mighty dollar.

Things can only get wetter might be the forecaster's choice of words for a song this week, as the record Spring temperatures which have held sway over the UK for five weeks with hardly a drop of rain seem set to finally disperse over -you've guessed it- the coming Bank Holiday weekend (our belated British celebration of Mayday). But for Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, it seems like the autumn of his prime ministerial career is nearing it's nadir, as his long-trailed resignation announcement seems imminent following the elections and his own promise that a "definitive" statement on his future will come next week.

The eulogies for Blair are unlikely to be as fulsome as the tributes seen yesterday in Winchester, one time capital of England, as Alan Ball, one of the "heroes" of the 1966 England soccer world cup squad was given a proper sending off at his funeral to the accompaniment of choristers, and chanting reminiscent of old Wembley's terraces. Will Tony Blair's reputation survive as long as "the boy" (Ball was the youngest England player at just 21 in that glorious cup year of 1966)? Somehow I doubt it. Where footballer's fame lives for ever, Joe and Josephine Public are renowned for their fickleness when it comes to their affection for their leaders.

You've got to feel a certain sadness for Mr Blair, as the easily-forgotten achievements of his ten years at Number Ten seem set to be buried under the forest of newsprint devoted to his exit through the blackest door in London. Press and public alike are more likely to focus on his fateful decision to take Britain into war in Iraq, a tragedy which still claims the lives of British servicemen and civilians of all nationalities alike in the post-saddam anarchy of that sad state.

It all seems a very different climate to the winds of change which you could palpably feel blowing that weary May morning with the post-election euphoria of the Labour landslide after eighteen years of Conservative rule. There was a very real sense of optimism and hope,and for my part, I was full of that as I retreated to the Pavilion Gardens in Brighton for a time of prayer after spending the night in the excited bustle of a BBC news bureau on election night alongside an old friend working for their regional TV service that night.
But, as fallen Tory star Enoch Powell famously remarked "Every political career ends in failure". Sadly, it's part of the job description. Only death in service, which befell Mr Blair's pre-decessor as Labour and opposition leader, the far from ordinary John Smith, is guaranteed to win plaudits rather than brickbats. Such is the nature of politics. Even Margaret Thatcher, whom history will record as Britain's first ever woman prime minister and respected as a great stateswoman internationally- not least by the late Russian leader Boris Yeltsin- fell by well-plotted backstabbing by her erstwhile colleagues, albeit not in Rome but in Paris.
Yet if politicians have to leave office followed by less than glorious clouds, at least Tony Blair can depart in the knowledge that he has tried his best, to adhere to his principles and in so far as it was possible, to mix pragmatism with idealism. Mr Blair claims Christian allegiance, though was mercilessly chided by the media when it was suggested he prayed with the man some would see as his nemesis, George Walker Bush.
But 28 years ago today, Margaret Thatcher entered Downing Street by that same black door, pausing on the doorstep to quote words attributed to St Francis of Assisi- though subsequent commentators have suggested "where there is discord, let me bring harmony" actually comes from a prayer written in France in 1912. Truth and fiction seem blended here as is ever the way with politics; it seems to be becoming harder by the day to work out what's really going on in those gothic towers beside the Thames, let alone in the machinations of international dealings across the sea with Washington.

At least the Queen is celebrating the "special relationship" in Virginia, USA at the moment in a somewhat more dignified manner than the backbiting and caterwailing which so often accompanies the parlaying of representative government, whether at local or national level. Maybe the queen knows better than most that service is what really matters. As fallible, fallen humans, we can only try to make things better, for everybody's sake. Whether they get better depends as much on faith as action. Many would say that Britain has not got better over the last decade, but worse. More violent, less peaceful. More greedy, less sharing. More cynical, less caring. There may be an element of truth in this- but what's new.

The truth in my eyes is that as long as we rely on our own wisdom and strength to accomplish anything of worth, we get nowhere. Pride, arrogance and self-interest or just expediency will always be the enemies of lasting achievement for the betterment of humanity- which surely should be the motivation of all politicians, whatever their political colour. But what can happen instead if you put the needs of the world and the nation in the hands of the man from Galilee rather than Westminster first?
Jesus too knew failure and an inglorious departure from general favour-and for three heart-stoppingly awful days for his followers. All the power and hopes they had harboured seemed lost on the rude cross of Calvary. His only epitaph seemed to be the inscription scrawled in Latin initials as cynically and quickly as a satirists's barb on that obscene instrument of unbelievable torture: INRH: The King of the Jews. He was hastily buried in a borrowed tomb, and the powers that be thought they had restored order.
How wrong they were. Jesus' resurrection on Easter Day, his forty days of teaching to his renewed followers who believed him dead but saw him alive- over five hundred of them- is something I believe really happened, and in which we can truly trust. Jesus himself did not promise days of cloudless sunshine- he was a realist as much as the living hope of better things- but the promise is that one day, he will come again, and then all mankind will see him, and things truly will be better, not just for ten years but for all time. It's about the only promise we can really trust; therefore, I at least will take up my cross for the man of the cross not just on a warm May day at election time, but every day.

Forgive our Foolish Ways

No, your eyes do not deceive you: this really is a new posting to Anyway - no fooling! If you were one of my regular readers and have been disappointed with the lack of any output from me at this URL these past three months, I apologise. I'll try to get back to blogging more regularly now; please check out the site if you can though I can't promise to post as frequently as in the past.

Can we really be a quarter of the way through 2007 already, though? Well, computer says yes, and so does the calendar, believe it or not. Many did not, it seems, in the second half of the sixteenth century in France. That was when Charles IX declared that his realm should in future keep the Gregorian calendar, and the date for the start of a new year should be moved from around the beginning of Spring to the middle of winter, i.e to January 1st. Folk who continued to observe the old celebrations on the first of April however became known as "April Fools"- or for some bizarre reason only the French can account for I guess, as 'April Fish' "Poissons d'Avril".

Well, whether the custom began with the French or not is open to question; Wikipedia, my source for the above account, mentions many of the traditions ancient and modern which have made "All Fools Day" a popular day for hoaxers and jokesters all over the world- one reason why the on-line encyclopaedia's team limit editing of the "April Fool's Day" entry to established users on this day- in case people are led even further astray by reading untruths than they have been already.

Come to think of it, I could even have tried to fool you by saying this was the reason for a lack of postings from me since the end of 2006- i.e that this is really my New Year's Day blog,and follows on from the previous one headed "New Year's Heave". But I don't think I'd get away with that one, particularly as it's now well past mid-day in the UK. In Britain, at least strictly speaking, it's April Fool's Half-Day: any attempts at perpetrating a prank after the sun is directly overhead today supposedly backfire on the would-be fooler: "April Fool is dead and gone, but the rest can carry on".
Nevertheless, I love April Fool's Day- as long as nobody catches me out and I become the victim. When I worked in the catering industry, I should have known that some of my colleagues were being unusually kind in making my morning break drink for me; supposedly a cup of tea, it actually included coffee, cocoa powder and the savoury substance Marmite as well, all in the same mug. Yuk! Much as I love Marmite, this particular fool did not amuse my tastebuds.
I also couldn't wait to see what pranks the British press and their online editions were attempting to palm us off with today- April 1st is also Palm Sunday this year, of which more later. According to The Observer, Britain's oldest Sunday newspaper and not inclined to the regular truthless ways of the "redtops", Tony Blair is to take up a new career on the stage when he retires as Prime Minister sometime this year.

The story goes on to say that so impressed was the director of the Old Vic theatre company in London, Kevin Spacey, that he offered Blair an important role in an upcoming run of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible". Oh yeah, right, along with the guest starring role in an Only Fools and Horses Christmas Special? Tony might have suprised many viewers with his performance in a recent comedy sketch alongside catchphrase queen Catherine Tate in her role as the schoolgirl with attitude, Loren, but really, whether this is true or not (come on, do us a favour!) as Blair said in his Comic Relief cameo," I ain't bovvered!"

On the other hand, I think Samuel Langhorn Clemens, or should I say Mark Twain, had it right when he gave his verdict on this day:

April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.

He was a wise man, was Tom Sawyer's creator. The world's foolishness has continued much as it always has since I last wrote, day after day. Man's inhumanity to man astounds with its incredible awfulness, warring factions bring grief to thousands of innocent families caught up in their petty or long-standing fights, and our obsession with using and abusing the limited resources of planet Earth have made it a rare day when global warming did not make the headlines.
Meanwhile, in Britain trust in the media has taken a tumble, with revelations of numerous scams on premium-rate phone line quizzes on TV and umbrage has even been taken as Songs of Praise was forced to admit next Sunday's Easter Day special was recorded immediately after an Advent service last November, with false lighting and unseasonal clothing, to save money. It's proving harder and harder to know what is the truth these days, and what is pure fiction or fantasy. And politicians seem to be among the least trusted of any group in our apparently democratic society, with the ongoing scandal of "votes for honours" and even the PM himself interviewed by police.

But is there anything new in the folly of the ways of man? Last weekend, Britain commemorated the 200th anniversary of the passing of the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade Act in the UK parliament, and the sickening conditions that free-born human beings were subjected to.

Here at least was something to celebrate, wasn't there? Maybe- but it wasn't to everybody's tastes and Tuesday saw an African disrupt a national service of commemoration in Westminster Abbey in front of the Queen brought to an embarrasing unscheduled break by an African demonstrator making a non-violent but very public protest indeed at what he deems the hypocrisy of attempts to offer an apology on behalf of the nation to the outrage of the slave trade. On the other side of the Irish Sea, meanwhile, last Monday brought a scene many thought could never be seen: firebrand Ulster Unionist veteran Rev Dr Ian Paisley and Sinn Fein's leader, Gerry Adams, sitting next to each other round the same table. It is to be hoped that their historic agreement truly is an answer to the prayer of centuries, but it would be a fool that pretends there won't be difficulties and setbacks along the way.


April Fool's Day this year also falls (pun intended!) on Palm Sunday. This is the commemoration of the week when the folly of humanity was revealed for what it really is, but God's forgiveness of the world he loves so dearly was made most evident. Palm Sunday starts Holy Week, the most solemn and yet moving event on the Christian calendar. Today commemorates the 'triumphal' entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, where he was greeted by Jews of every age as their king, come to overturn the oppression of Roman occupation and to bring them deliverance. Hearts were full of hope and the air was resounding with "Hosannas" and the cheers and greetings of devoted followers.

Five days later, all of those devoted followers had left Jesus of Nazareth, whom billions believe was God in human form, to his fate in a cold Jerusalem garden on the darkest night in human history. The next day, only a helpless, some would say foolish, few followers were there to see him crucified mercilessly on a crude Roman cross the most ignoble of deaths. The people of God were allowing the one they had only recently lauded -and who, believers say, is our one true hope for humanity- to be slaughtered. Could anything more foolish have ever been witnessed?

Yet this was God's way; the "foolishness" of God is greater than man's wisdom. There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin. So my emotions today, and that of all who believe Jesus is the best friend anyone can have, who never fools with us, are mixed. There is that nervous, uneasy laughter you have when you are trying to pretend that everything's all right in your world, but something fearful is about to happen. There is joy and the shared experience of the Palm Sunday procession and worship-but there is the recognition that without the salvation of Good Friday and the merciful miracle of Easter Day, life itself is a foolish thing. These foolish things, this year, remind me of Him, our saviour Jesus Christ the holy 'fool' who died for all. Will you bring your own mistakes and foolish behaviour to him this holy week, knowing you're forgiven? I know I will, with tears of both laughter and sorrow.

New Year's Heave

So, here we are then, at the climax of another 365 days, when Old Father Time, AD2006 version, has to surrender his throne to that young upstart 2007. Already in the Antipodes, the famous fireworks over Sydney Harbour Bridge, which created such a memorable image seven years ago for the millennium, will have fizzled out and jaded revellers will be feeding the new babe with tinnies and prawnies as their Summer also reaches its height. Having made contact this year (by which I still mean MMVI for the moment) with paternal cousins in Oz for the first time, I've a special reason to think of them with affection at this time.

Back here in Blighty, though, the celebrations won't be getting into gear for another four hours or so at least yet. New Year's Eve, in England at least, is a strange beast. Everybody feels they ought to be celebrating it, but a great many people don't seem to know how. And if Christmas Night seems over too soon, then the significance of this night is even more short-lived. Twelve bongs, a few thousand simultaneous bangs and then the ringing headache after too much booze, and for many- that's it. I've often thought that, actually, 1st January is just a public hangover cure masquerading as a public holiday.

Perhaps part of the problem is that this has become such a long break in the UK that most folk are tired out come midnight on the 31st. Tuesday the second will indeed have to be a heave for some,- though not those in North Britain, aka Scotland-back onto crowded commuter trains and the further shock to the wallet of the London Congestion Charge resuming, after all the festive excesses and credit card overtime. New Year can certainly bring folk down to earth quicker than a rocket stick.

Maybe it's also the case, though, that the start of the recognised civil New Year throughout most of the world now, has absolutely no significance beyond an arbitrary date on the calendar. 31st December and 1st January no more celebrate an actual astronomical event than the constellation of the Great Bear depicts an actual ursine. The earth's annual transit of the sun actually takes up rather inconveniently a little more than 365 actual days so there never was or is a point when we can truly mark the passing of this unit of time.
Maybe, in some ways, the Judaic and Islamic faiths have a more accurate calendar by focussing on the lunar year rather than the solar one, but this does lead to the somewhat inconvenient occurrence of some of their feasts and fasts at the most incongenial time some years- though this year's Hajj to Mecca, reaching it's climax co-incidentally on 1st January in the Western Calendar, seems to have attracted as astounding a number of pilgrims as ever. No doubt everyone is praying that there will be no repeat of the tragedies of recent years where sheer weight of numbers has led to stampedes and many fatalities.

For most of us, though, the turn of the year offers a convenient point for our own "annual assessment", whether in employment or not. It's the time to look back on what has been achieved and what has not during the previous twelve months, and it's the time to look forward to what the new year may offer. If ever a Christian feast were to be created for it, I guess it could be the feast of Hope: "O God Our Help in Ages past, Our Hope for Years to Come" certainly seems to have been a prevalent post-Christmas hymn heard on radio services this week.

Some may see hope in the year ahead for changes in the world's worst trouble spots. I'm no supporter of capital punishment, but the execution of Saddam Hussein on 30th December certainly brought to an end one chapter in the history of the pain-filled nation which is currently Iraq. But it hasn't solved the problems, which remain, and many must still be filled with fear, not just in Iraq but throughout the Middle East, as a new year begins.

On the other hand, it's a new beginning for the United Nations, with a new Secretary-General about to take over from Kofi Annan. Ban Ki-Moon certainly looks like being a very different personality to his pre-decessor, being described in a BBC News Article as a "mild-mannered" man more interested in administration than diplomacy. But mild manners can maketh man and can lift nations from despair to hope. Superman's alter ego, Clark Kent, after all, was definitively meek. I certainly don't envy Ban Ki-Moon his job, but I do pray and wish him well in it.

When all is said and done, each new year brings the hope that we are drawing closer to the return of another superman- one who, literally, was man but was also above the limitations of man and his petty, hateful, mindset. Jesus, the boy born in a lowly manger in that ill-regarded outpost which today suffers surrounded by the brick walls of fear and division which is the modern day Holy Land, grew up to be a man who offered more hope to humankind than any dictator, international leader or statesman ever can. He offered people the chance to be their real selves, to discover life in all its fulness, to be rid of enslavement to our own shortcomings- aka sin- and to find new life in him.

I don't know what this next year will bring, either for me, for you, or for the world. I could be the guy with the half-full glass of optimism, or the misanthrope with the half-empty poisoned challice of fear. I'm neither. Reminded this morning at my church's last service of 2006, I turn again to John Betjeman's lovely poem, Christmas, for a reminder of what to celebrate on New Year's Eve. Being part of the family of man, of course, and the community of nations, but more so, being one of those many billions that God so loved that he gave his ONLY son for us:

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives to-day in Bread and Wine.

I wish you a joyful, peaceful and prosperous time ahead- and thanks for reading my ramblings in 2006. Keep journeying with me, anyway, as we tread into 2007. Happy New Year!

Blank Holidays

These last days of December are a peculiar phenomenon in the UK. In three-sevenths of years (disregarding leap years for tidiness), the 27th and/or the 28th are designated as "Bank Holidays", and financial service workers, at least, either endure or enjoy the continuing Christmas festivities with a clear conscience as they take their legal entitlement to extra leave. Whenever one or both of the original December holidays- the 25th and 26th- fall on a Saturday or a Sunday, the next weekdays are observed as the official holiday(s).

This arrangement seems to have received royal assent sometime in the 1970s, but it probably would have happened anyway whether or not it had official sanction. 2006 is not one of those years where the calendar and the largesse of the Department of Trade and Industry cause extra bank holidays to occur after Christmas, but for industry at least it's still laid-back Britain until the 2nd January. So many firms, small and large, take a winter break and in my view that's no bad thing.

Some, of course, rail against the now established tendency to take nearly a fortnight's absence from the workplace between Christmas and New Year's Day, claiming it has an adverse effect on the economy and favours our competitors. What Scrooge-ish rot; I'm all in favour of it. This is probably about the closest 21st-century Britain will ever come to keeping the original "Twelve Days of Christmas" immortalised in the carol of the same title but originally reflecting a Christian festival which emphasises so much more of the whole Christmas story than can fit into the too swiftly passed 24 hours of Christmas Day.

Each of the four days after Christmas Day has a feast or commemoration associated with it in the church calendar. Good King Wenceslas has helped to ensure that everyone knows about the Feast of Stephen, the first Christian Martyr, which is more commonly observed in Britain and it's former colonies as "Boxing Day". For those outside the UK, I should perhaps explain that this is not a governmental edict to indulge in post-festive bare- knuckle fighting, but refers to the tradition of the church opening it's alms boxes on this day and then distributing the contents to the poor of the parishes. By extension, it soon became also the day when tradesmen hoped to be favoured by the seasonal generosity of their clients in gratitude for a good year's service to them.

Today though, and regrettably, about the only boxes you'll see being opened on 26th December are the night safes of the banks as the biggest names in the high streets and malls deposit their takings for what more cynically might now be called Buying Day. Whereas once you could rely on two days freedom from the trend to spend, today's 24/7 world allows only the briefest of amnestys from the passage of cash and the worship of mammon, it seems. And for the viewer of commercial television, there's no let up even on Christmas Day as we're reminded constantly on screen that "sale starts 9 a.m Boxing Day".
For heaven's sake, do we really need all this? Are we so desperate or greedy for a clothing or homeware bargain that we will leave homes and families on Christmas night to queue for the Next sale to open it's doors, and start fighting with fellow mad shoppers when it doesn't do so on time? It speaks volumes, I think, of how far British society has fallen from one of respect, courtesy and reverence to an every man for himself mentality which is the polar opposite of the spirit of the season.

I don't want to appear so other-worldly that I won't admit to enjoying a bargain, even after the excesses of spending and giving of Christmas- but it can wait another day. On the 27th and 28th, I was out there too, rummaging among the designer labels or the Waterstone's bookshelves for cannily reduced products I probably wouldn't have got before Christmas. But there's a price to pay for our bargains which is every bit as obscene as the sweatshop rates still so prevalent in the two-thirds world where most of the garments are manufactured these days. And the days of leisure of some are gained at the expense of the quality family time that shop workers too should be able to enjoy with their loved ones on Boxing Day. Governments hark on about the breakdown of family life, but given this largely unchecked descent into unfettered till-opening, is it any wonder that so many suffer through our long hours, overwork culture?

Meanwhile, for those not tied to the barcode and the stockroom, the respective "feasts" of St John the Evangelist, The Holy Innocents and The Holy Family provide more opportunity to spend time in rest and, dare I hope, reflection. Few churches these days will have special services for these events, but at least there is a special feeling in the air, still, which if you take time to breathe it in adds much spiritual rather than financial value to this protracted sequence of Holy Days.

You could feel it today in the winter sunshine which has at last replaced the gloomy grey cloud which has afflicted much of the British Isles for the last couple of weeks. You could breathe it and smell it in the seasonal fragrance of the somnolent shrubs and hedges of the Walled Garden in Sunbury on Thames where I grabbed an hour or so of fresh air this afternoon. You could sense the festive essence still in the sights of wildfowl who've escaped the Christmas feasting to enjoy their natural habitat on the waters of the nearby River Thames.

And after dusk, though the solstice has now passed and sunset already becomes later each day,for the moment you can still observe and enjoy that wonderful Christmas spirit in the comforting lights of many different colours that still adorn so many homes, shops and public buildings and surely should do til next Monday, the start of the New Year, at least. Unless you happen to be a certain pub chain which seems to have decreed Christmas ends on Boxing Day so down come the decorations. Shameful.

For once this year, the post-Christmas blues can still be enjoyed more illuminating a Christmas tree rather than sorrowing an anti-climaxed soul, for me at least. We can, as one of the carols says "keep a Christmas in our heart". Indeed, it's right that we should do so, really, until January 6th, which is the "Feast of the Epiphany". We may moan about many of the ways mainland Europeans seek to change our national ways at times, but I rather wish that some EU edict would decree that 6th January is recognised as it should be here, as it already is there. That feast commemorates the visit of the magi (wise men, or three kings) to the infant Christ and is symbolic of his revelation to all the world.

"Twelfth Night" therefore is the time when, as another carol puts it, "need they no created light". Our celestial ball is starting to bring more hours of daylight, but there's still much darkness in the world. It will take more than a fibre optic or a mini-watt bulb to illuminate, or should I say eliminate, that. What we really need is for our inner selves, our spirits to be fed as much as our tummies will have been come that date when the feasting stops for the time being. Maybe if we once again start to enjoy and observe these "holy days" until then, we might catch a little glimmer of that light to see us through til next Christmas.

Waiter, Waiter!

Last night, I went out for a "bonzer" scoff of some Aussie-themed tucker with two friends and my brother to celebrate his birthday. My younger sibling has always been very gracious about having to celebrate his natal day amongst all the other distractions and busy-ness of the week before Christmas, but I can't help feeling a bit sorry for him. You wait all year for it to come round and then it can almost get lost under the postman's pile of Christmas cards and festive goodies filling the fridge. And it's over before you know it.

I wonder if we treat Christmas a bit like that? Today is Christmas Eve, a day with a unique atmosphere which you cannot bottle like the Cointreau I finished my meal with last night. There is a buzz in the shoppers thronging the streets in a last minute dash to get gifts for their loved ones, or more likely enough vittals to see them through to, ooh all of 24 hours or so. Maybe even 48 if you count Boxing Day.

But it is also a Sunday. A special Sunday too: the fourth Sunday in Advent. Ask most ordinary Joes or Marys on the street today what Advent means, and you might if you're lucky get the response "chocolate calendars"! The last of the doors will have been most eagerly opened today by wide-eyed children everywhere in the parts of the world that celebrate Christmas. But will they have a clue why they have to wait so long to open number 24, or so it will have seemed to them.

Advent is about waiting. The trouble is, we live in a society that doesn't like waiting for anything. It's got to be instant- instant messaging, instant winning with the lottery or instant mash for hard-pressed Mums today who haven't the time to cook anything for tonight's meal because of all the preparations for tomorrow.

Britain is a land famed for it's polite queueing or as Americans would have it, waiting in line. But the tradition shows signs of cracking. Time is the new gold, it seems and people no longer want to wait to get their goods. They'll give anything to save time. The Argos chain of catalogue stores are alert to this, and today their hard-pressed staff will be frantically bringing out orders placed on-line, by phone or even by text by folk too lazy or too impatient to take their turn in the queue in store but just want to pick it up later.

Yet sometimes, nature has a habit of reminding us that, actually, we can't always have what we want instantly and we just have to wait. Harrassed travellers at Heathrow Airport, just to my North from where I sit, had to learn that this week as the thickest December fog Britain has seen in many years grounded many internal and short-haul flights. Mercifully for people travelling to their beloved families this Christmas, the fog has now lifted and flights were expected to be back to normal today, but a lesson will perhaps have been learnt.

I wish the same could be said for our society as a whole and that people would re-learn some of the true meaning of Advent. As Christmas Eve, today is a wonderful treasure, but to benefit from its full joy, everywhere that celebrates it has to wait a few more hours before the reason for the season finally brings forth the most precious gift of all. For believers, it's the Christ child. For those who profess no faith, love will still come down and reveal itself again to most in loving families.

But not to all. Still we wait for the day when there will be no more tears from the lonely and deserted, no more grief from the bereaved, no more sickness or sadness, no more pestilence or poverty. Will we ever see that day? Well, the writer of one of the Bible's Psalms, possibly King David himself, one of Jesus' earthly ancestors, certainly believed so. He said "I believe I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living".

In a world that lacks so much, yet assumes it has plenty, there is still a real hope of a better tomorrow. There is hope because in the Northern winter, the season of dead nature and cold, people still celebrate the warmth and light of life in all its fulness- even when that fulness might mean a bloated belly for a little while. And Advent is all about hope. Not just anticipating the celebration tomorrow of the birth of Christ, but of his promise of coming again and bringing all things in history to completion, instantly.

This is a promise which keeps me and other believers going and celebrating every day of their lives, not just on the 25th December (or early January in the Orthodox tradition). But the promise was bought at a price greater than any Harrod's price tag, in blood redder than a santa claus suit on the Good Friday cross- but taken back to the creator and replaced with new, everlasting life on Easter Day. Even Duracell can't promise that with their essential batteries.

If you've been a regular reader of Anyway, I thank you for your support and interest this year- and for waiting! I know it's been a couple of months now since I last posted anything, partly due to other writing commitments recently. But I still love sharing these thoughts with you from time to time, and if you've been helped or touched by them in any way, or have any questions, please hit the comment option at the bottom of this posting. Otherwise, I hope you'll stay visiting and I wish you and your families a joyful, peaceful and Happy Christmas.

Moonstruck

There was a full moon last night- or more precisely, very early this morning here in the UK, at 04.13 British Summer Time; make the most of that time zone for in less than a month it will be back to our standard time zone of GMT and the long hours of winter darkness beckon.

But why fear winter? I was way off in the land of nod when our earth's diminutive brother, lifeless yet full of power and light, reached another peak, but I'd caught a glimpse of it just after midnight and likewise earlier in the week on the Sussex Coast. In both cases, it left me awe-struck, or should I say moonstruck.

I don't know how many full moons I must have seen as my own seasons of life have come and gone as our terrestrial ball has spun and orbited in space for over four decades. Looked at like this, I am a mere pinhole camera, taking snapshots of a tiny moment in the eons of the universe. I am a crude observer, trying to capture the wonder of it all, yet still experiencing joy, surprise and peace much as the ancients must have felt too at another month's passing and the coming of the full moon.

No matter how much science, technical progress and the discoveries particularly of the late twentieth century have altered our view of the lunar landscape, it has yet to explain beauty. Science cannot answer why the moon over water is one of the most romantic sights man or woman can ever see. Who needs elaborate special effects and artificial lighting when what is really a giant reflector in the night sky can offer more than the finest film camera can ever see.

You've never needed the cinema, TV or VDU screen to marvel at the moon. One thing I was, shamefully, unaware of until this Thursday, when BBC Two repeated a fascinating documentary about our only natural satellite, is that the full moon appears the same at every point on earth. No corner of our globe escapes it's benevolent beaming.

It's been over a mo(o)nth since I last wrote to this blog- in fact, just slightly longer than the lunar cycle. During that period, one group of believers has celebrated the harvest, as many Christian churches have yearly been doing since the Victorian era though echoing a tradition dating back to ancient times. Another faith, Islam, has begun it's holy month of fasting, Ramadan, the duration of which is intimately tied in with the phases of the moon. And for the third of the patriarchal religions, the Jewish community, a new year has just begun and the old one has been remembered and people have repented en masse as remembering the creation of the earth with joy at Rosh Hashanna, and then the most solemn festival of the year at Yom Kippur passes. Long may these things be observed.

As a now-departed senior friend of mine once said, we're all different- and thank goodness! We differ in our beliefs, our observances, our creeds, our hopes, our dreams. We sometimes argue about them passionately, though mercifully mostly short of war. Nevertheless, in the past couple of days, a respected former British Foreign Secretary has incurred the wrath of some people of faith for daring to express his own opinions about the difficulties of communicating with some of the his constituents who choose to wear the burkah, the face veil worn by some Muslim women.

Yet we still all inhabit the same, fragile, delicate, beautiful, complex, fascinating spaceball which we call The Earth, and watch its bosom buddy the moon. Bound together by their mutually dependent physical forces, and our planet's eco-systems, its climate, its rhythms, its tides. We did not create these so how can we dare we allow ourselves to be a vehicle of its destruction.

But sadly, man turns too late to reason so often, to understand the vitalness of co-dependence, and the special gift of life we have been given, by some power we people of faith choose to believe in while others feel no need of. Lunar love-in turns to lunacy when a crazed gunman slaughters five beautiful little girls in a peaceful Pennsylvania community with the painfully ironic name of Paradise.

Paradise lost. It lost the bodies of young lives who might yet have contributed something beautiful to this earth. It robbed its mothers and its fathers of the heart-warming joy of raising their daughters and replaced it with the obscenity of burying them before they'd even reached their teens. Can anything be salvaged from the senselessness of acts like this which are seldom out of the news from more than a few months?

As long as the moon shines, I believe it can. As long as man has hope in his heart of a better tomorrow, is sorry for all his wrongdoing to others and gives thanks for what this wonderful world is and can be, there is the possibility of redemption. I believe the outworking of that is found in the life of one man, who came that we all might have life, in all its fulness- but how he chooses to deliver that promise, is the stuff of faith.

BBC One television, long associated with a circling globe against a sea of space as its logo, has today launched a new series of channel idents to a mixed reception. I've seen about four of them so far already, including a scene of some fishermen somewhere in Asia against a moon-drenched sky glimmering on a silvery sea. It's a simple yet powerful image- as delightful to a tiny child as the most world-weary adult. It reminded me of how I felt at midnight yesterday, as the clouds of night were kissed by the moon of day. The powers of darkness had once again been overcome by pure, white, milky light.

As surely as we have faith that the waning moon will again be full, may we always be awed - or rather, changed- by the Light of the World, as nearer and nearer draws the time when the Earth shall be filled with the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea.

What's in a name?

No, I really am "Mark A Savage", honest guv'nor. It says so on my birth certificate so it must be true. No hiding behind a pseudonym on this blog, though whether I should or not is another matter.

I had to laugh when I turned on for the Daily Service on BBC Radio 4 last Tuesday, to hear the end credits for the previous programme: "Mark Savage went to 'Meet the Bloggers'". Did I? I must admit that I don't remember those particular encounters, and if I did- where's my lovely cheque for 15 minutes of BBC airtime- I could do with the cash right now! Still, given my own love of blogging, it seemed really appropriate that he should have put this typical Radio 4 gem together. I seriously feel I really ought to contact my namesake: it's rather spooky that we're both radiophiles, it seems.

Anyway, Meet the Bloggers proved to be really interesting, when I got round to listening to it this Sunday afternoon. You can catch the latest edition if you're reading this in September (it's a series of five) from the Radio 4 website by clicking on my posting title above,and following the link to the "Listen Again" feature. Mind you, it's just as well I'm an honest soul, as I actually did get a cheque which I think was intended for that BBC producer/presenter some years ago while I was working as a broadcast assistant. Needless to say, I rapidly sent it back to it's proper home, though perhaps with a little sorrow that I hadn't managed to make the full-time career in radio that clearly this native Savage had.

The trouble is, you can't rely on your name alone these days to testify to your uniqueness as a person. Even less so can you count on the integrity of others to respect your right to its exclusive use in a financial capacity. We're told that identity theft is rife- yet I can't help wondering if this is sometimes an over-hyped story designed to make money for those same sort of people that made a fortune out of scare stories of the dreaded "Millennium Bug"- which proved to be about as harmless as a ladybird in most cases. The company which tried to sell my brother extra identity theft cover on his insurance policy the other day must think they've found a goldmine in our fears of someone impersonating us.

Then there are the cases where people quite legitimately choose to change their names. Ask when Reg Dwight or Harry Webb last had a hit and many folk would look blankly at you or think you're having a laugh. Tell them that you're talking about Sir Elton John and Sir Cliff Richard respectively and it would be a different story. Clearly, there can be great advantages to changing your name, though sometimes the most bizarre of real family names do you no harm. Yes, there really was a Clarence Birdseye, just as much as a simply named Thomas Cook, WH Smith and even, once, an old McDonald who had some cows before he decided they'd make better burgers (sorry to offend any of my vegetarian readers).

This week's news has included the confusing and ultimately rather sad tale of a girl allegedly kidnapped from outside her school gates in Stornoway on Scotland's Orkney Islands. Her tearful, shaking mother appeared before cameras earlier in the week, emotionally pleading for the safe return of "Molly Campbell" amid claims her father had abducted her to take her to Pakistan to be forced into marriage.

Yet by the end of the week, we saw that "Molly" was safe and well in Pakistan, with her father and siblings. She had apparently gone there of her own accord. Except now she wished to be known by her Islamic name of Misbah Iram Ahmed Rahma, thus carrying with her the surname of her father who had been estranged from her mother for five years. Amid all the tug-of-love wranglings of the story- I found myself really feeling for the mother when the story first broke, and said a quick prayer- for the media there's the new ethical dilemma of what they call the subject at the heart of this story while it's news. Misbah or Molly? What name should she be called? It's her right under British laws to have an identity of her own choosing, after all.

Showbiz celebrities might have even more liberty, to choose names and cast them off again at their whim and fancy. There is at least one pop star fallen from grace who went through several incarnations very different from the name on his birth certificate. In Britain and the US, at least, it's also something the rest of us can do with ease if we choose, traditionally and officially by deed poll. But probably for most it's a complication too far, given that so much paperwork and before long, I fear, compulsory identity cards carry the names we were born with.

Yet God who carries "the name which is above all other names" recognised that nomenclatures can harm or heal, bless or curse. Is that maybe why Abram gained a syllable and became Abraham, the father of many nations- especially in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic worlds? Whereas the hated persecutor and executor of Christians, Saul, changed a consonant and overturned his life, and became one of the greatest apostles of Christianity and writer of much of the New Testament.

"John Mark" wrote the first of the gospels but most of us know him as Saint Mark, presumably to avoid confusion with Saint John. His familiar name means "warrior" or "warlike", somewhat ironically in homage to the Roman god of war, Mars. And I'm a Savage by name (my late father's) but not by nature- anything but. But perhaps the name's not so inappropriate after all. I would give up anything and everything- even the fame of seeing my by-line in print (as I have done several times this year) or at the end of a radio programme, for the namesake of Our Father, whose name is hallowed indeed, and his son, Jesus the Christ. I suppose I like to see myself as a warrior for Christ, in fact.

I'm not telling you here what my "A" stands for- but it's not actually Anthony like a certain present premier who's garnered a lot of column centimetres in the last couple of days and all because of a mug which suggests the personal qualities of all who bear this name, even if many of them like number 10's current occupant prefer the diminutive "Tony". But does his name alone mean we can really believe everything Mr Blair tells us about his plans for the future?

OK, so ultimately, what IS in a name? It depends who gave the name and how you prove it, I guess. One piece of paper can't prove you are who you say you are. It can't say anything about who you really are inside, your history, hopes and dreams, or who you yet might be. But a name given by the king of kings and written on your heart can.

Betjeman's Bank Holiday Birthday Blog

Monday 28th August was a day for enjoying all things traditional and everything English- like seaside siestas, glorious gardens and fun-filled fairs- not to mention beer and barbecues, cars and queues. It was the last Bank Holiday of the Summer- but also the centenary of the birth one of Britain's most popular poets laureate, Sir John Betjeman.

If you're a regular reader of these blogs or know me well, you'll already be familiar with my love of word play and particularly alliteration. The appeal of successive words containing the same initial letters is one of the many fun things you can do when trying to combine twenty-six letters to make satisfying sentences- there, I did it again!

I've always enjoyed writing about the people and places I've visited, and the emotions and experiences I've had along the way. I suppose when all's said and done that's what all writing's about, whether fiction or fact. It's how we share our humanity, how we can attempt to understand our deeper feelings, trials and tribulations. Somewhere along the way, good writing also has the power to entertain as well as inform.

I love putting words together to form these blogs when - increasingly of late- other writing commitments don't get in the way, but I've never seen myself as much of a poet. With the odd exception, I'm very much a prose-smith. But I can nevertheless appreciate poetry's power to elevate the commonplace to the comment place, where literary criticism and appreciation of the use of language come to the fore.

Some sourpuss scoffers thought during his lifetime that John Betjeman couldn't be judged a proper poet at all, because he so loved rhyming couplets. But so what? The great joy of rhyme is that is memorable, and Betjeman had a gift for condensing the profound into the fuss-free device of a rhyme which everyone could appreciate. That doesn't mean his writing lost any of its power for all that: Christmas, which I paid homage to in this blog last Advent with my own poem, is a work of beauty which portrays the meaning of Christ's birth in a way none of the sugary lines of a Christmas card ever can.

John Betjeman's great contribution to English society was that he was a flawed genius- like so many of the rest of us, no doubt. Twenty-two years after his cruel death from the ravages of Parkinson's Disease, he's been remembered this month in many a television, radio and newspaper homage. At the same time, A N Wilson, his latest biographer, has stirred up controversy over claims about the authenticity of a letter about the poet's mistress.

The words of others can never do full justice to the legacy and the life of any individual. They are but a feeble attempt to explain the mysterious, complex, wonderful creation which is a human being. John Betjeman was a walking contradiction at times; considered quintessentially English in so many of his writings and causes, he was actually of immigrant stock. Always a man of faith, and yet often ill at ease with his Anglicanism. A master of words and yet at times tortured by his thoughts- particularly of death.

I love John Betjeman's poetry. I love his depiction of an England now long gone, of the suburbia I inhabit and the customs I cherish. He wrote some lovely words, worthy of celebration at this centenary time. But a man's a man for all that- as another great British poet,Robert Burns, famously declared with his homage to humility two centuries before Betjeman. Only in faith and trust, and in the love of Jesus do we really find what life's all about. Plenty of poetic words in the bible, as well as the journalistic narrative of my namesake Mark confirm that for me, as ultimately it did for Betjeman.

By blood after bird
God kept his Word
From the Ark, the dove sent
That all should repent
Becoming flesh in Palestine
Jesus came for all mankind
That love should prosper, in souls of the earth
And everyone know the joy of new birth.

Phew, All Britannia

If the Romans hadn't given us enough names already for the months of the year, we'd surely be inventing new ones by now. Two of the Caesars claimed respectively July and August, otherwise Scorchio and Vacancio might well make more appropriate names for the distinguishing marks of this time of year.

July was the hottest on record in the UK, though not quite exceeding the record high of 10th August 2003 when the Fahrenheit century (around 37 degrees Centigrade) was breached for the first time ever in the British Isles at my late mother's birthplace, Faversham in Kent. Now Midsummer has given way to High Summer as we've entered the eighth month of the year, yet already I find moments of melancholy as sunset now gets back to before 9 p.m and the shops are full of Back to School gear hardly a week after the little loves have finished the school year.

August can be a very strange month; even politicians shut their traps for a few weeks -at least in parliament during the recess. The media go all silly, but normally nobody cares as most of Britain breathes a collective sigh of relief to enjoy a few weeks of rest and relaxation and a chance to chill out- literally.

With perfect timing the two-week heatwave came to an end last weekend. Although as I write, it's still a somewhat sticky summer afternoon, the temperatures are at least below the thirty degrees celsius mark again. We Britons are just not made for extremes: we are used to a temperate climate and most of the time that reflects our expressions of our national values too. The rare, but welcome, exceptions are seen in the culture fests of this time of the year here, when Edinburgh brings its Caledonian charm to the largest international arts festival in the world, while Wales celebrates all things Cambrian with the Royal National Eisteddfod, taking place this week around the principality's second city of Swansea.

Here in England, London's Royal Albert Hall plays host to some of the most internationally-renowned orchestras and soloists as the BBC Proms season brings a wealth of music to the nation prior to the Britophile feast which is the Last Night, a tradition much imitated as an evening diversion in August across the land. I love all these events, and wish I could take part in every one in some way.

There's something about summer which is a contradiction: on the one hand, it begs you to slow the pace down to spare the body the fierce heat we are now becoming accustomed to, and yet it's a time where you long to make the most of the great outdoors visiting new places or becoming re-acquainted with ones last seen many years ago. Earlier this week, I was delighted to spend a mini break on the Sussex coast at my "other" home. We tripped through the centuries, taking in Hastings, home of a castle even in Roman times -long before William I launched the last succesful conquest of England- and the next day went to Bodiam, where everybody's idea of a fairy tale castle took me back to my first acquaintance with this heavenly location as a ten-year old.

Children and adults alike love the chance at such places to wind back the film of the imagination to an age before CGI did the imagining for us. It's enlightening and interesting to think back to the times of bold knights, wise kings and fair maidens. But the mind is tricked if it thinks that those times were really so different from the 21st century. Amidst all the chivalry, there was also great brutality, cruel and sudden death, merciless slaughter and pointless destruction of property and persons. Many children did not even live to adulthood.

Sound familiar? Sadly, it's the tale played out this summer not in imagination but in reality on the front pages and the TV screens of the world as the ever-volatile situation in the Middle East approaches a new boiling point. It might not have the outward appearance of the battles and conquests of Roman, Saxon and Medieval Europe, but the net effects are every bit as horrendous for the individual lives war always affects.

Israel is at war once again, not with a sovereign state but with a faction, Hizbullah or the "party of God", seemingly holed up in Beirut, Lebanon. Hence the land of majestic cedar trees is once again tortured by the indiscriminate explosive power of airborne weapons, and the world despairs as both sides make claims about the evil excesses of the other while innocent children and civilians are as ever the powerless victims. Just as the Lebanese capital was once again becoming an attractive holiday destination, the indelible scars of war mar more than facades. They destroy precious human bodies.

Can there ever be an end to all this wretched warfare? Is there a solution to the senseless killing which brings nothing but more tears and bitterness? Politicians will try, and Britain's PM Tony Blair is, somewhat ironically, achieving a measure of redemption amidst the enduring hatred of his part in the troubles of another part of this region, Iran. Britain had a long-standing reputation as an honest broker and peacemaker in the world's warmongering, but such policy now seems to belong to an age long gone.

Nobody can breathe any true sighs of relief while this horror remains. It's about far more than oil and land, it's about man's basic nature. Sadly, we can breathe no sighs of relief or take a holiday from "sin". All three of the religions which have fought over this part of the globe for centuries as "People of the Book", the book being the Hebrew Bible, recognise that "Sin" became an innate part of the human condition long ago. Middle East war is only the most extreme and disturbing part of that within all of us. Normally rapidly cooled down from nothing worse than a hot temper, we're nevertheless all capable of the cold-blooded murder which is the mark of extremism given the right - or wrong- spark. Like a match to parched grass, war brings uncontrollable destruction everywhere in its wake which no firefighter can control for long, it seems.

Yet still there is hope. The Hebrew Bible is an "old" testament, and so often it seems punctuated by violence and hatred. Yet it also speaks of a time when swords will be turned into plougshares- or maybe tracer missiles into tractors. When the lion shall lie down with the lamb. Or when freedom fighting becomes love liberated. There will be no more sickness, no more sadness, no more dying. It's coming, when I do not know, but surely it will. And Israelis, Lebanese, Iraqis, Afghans and all the warring tribes of the world, will lie in green pastures together. Not just all Britain, but all creation, will breathe the biggest sigh of relief ever expired, when that happens. May we see it, one day not for a season, but for all eternity.

New Balls, please

Midsummer in Britain, late June and early July, always means but one thing to much of our nation of armchair sports fans- Wimbledon! It's over now, for another year, and there's a certain sadness at its absence.
2006 brought the usual mixture of hopeless hype followed by inevitable disappointment for our own top players, although Andy Murray looks a force to be reckoned with in future years and he's just nineteen now. But for anyone with an eye for good sportsmanship, the thrill of the contest- and a taste for strawberries and cream- Wimbledon is a delight. Even for the many millions who will never queue for hours to get a seat on the hallowed Centre Court of the All England Lawn Tennis Club (the croquet seems to have vanished from their official title) in London, SW19, it's the perfect way to enjoy the great outdoors, late into the balmy, sunny evenings, of which we've already had a great quota this year.

What a contrast, though, between the fair play of the tennis court and the dirty doings which so often characterise soccer these days. No sooner had we finished watching Roger Federer, the invincible Swiss, roll right over exciting young Spaniard Rafael Nadal, than the TV camera's attention switched to the Olympiastadion in Berlin for the biggest sporting contest of them all, the FIFA World Cup final.
If you've read my posting of 15th June, even if you didn't follow the tournament, you might not be surprised to know that England's national side later left Germany in typically disappointing fashion to the dreaded penalty shoot-out against Portugal. Ironic then that the world-beaters who made it all the way through to the final duel with a ball on the pitch last Sunday night also had their respective fates decided by the one-on-one method rather than the best of teamwork.
In the end of course, Italy emerged Die Weltmeister for the next four years, after France failed to show the flare that had brought them to the goal de triomphe eight years ago. It could though have been a very different story, were it not for the astounding antics of the incredible Zinedine Zidane who ended his professional career in "the beautiful game" with a sending off for the most obvious example of a foul ever witnessed, by head-butting Italy's Marco Materazzi. It later emerged, at least according to Zidane and a legion of Italian lip-readers who suddenly found themselves more precious than the gleaming golden trophy, that France's fading star had been provoked when Materazzi apparently made foul-mouthed taunts about Zidane's ill mother and his sister.

Nevertheless, idolised by so many and recognised as a footballing genius by all, Zidane later apologised for his actions because of the bad example it would have set to the many millions of children watching. At least in part, he redeemed himself and still went on to win the "golden ball" award as player of the championship. Perhaps, maybe and ultimately, all these pri-Maradonna players can recapture something of another very English attitude to sport: it's NOT the winning, it's the taking part- unfashionable though it may be to say it.

Sport at its best is about human beings stretching their God-given bodies to the limit in physical activity and mental dedication to their game. Somebody has to win, yes, by the very nature of competition, but this need not lessen the contribution of the losing opponent. Indeed, at Wimbledon the runners-up still take away a very handsome sum not to be sniffed at, but what's more creditable is the off-court admiration and affection that tennis players so often have for each other.

Perhaps this is closer to the spirit in which Christians "play the game". These days, we might not have to compete against killer lions but believers face every day the fatal attitudes of a secular society where it seems to have become so often every man for himself. Yet St Paul urged the early Christians on despite all provocation to run the race, for the prize which was theirs to be earned at the end. The only victory that really matters to Jesus' followers is that of love over hate. That is even strong enough to defeat death itself. The ball-whacking may have stopped for now, but making a whacking good effort to outlove the other man is a task of a lifetime. Love- All.

Back after the Break

Yes, I know, it's been a long time since my last posting to Anyway...- just over a month in fact. My apologies to regular readers but it's been a hot and hectic time- not that I'm complaining, much. Following are some of the thoughts I'd been meaning to share during these 31 days and I hope you enjoy reading them. Please don't feel shy about adding your own comments on these or any other postings; my site meter lets me know where you are (though does not give full internet addresses) but tells me nothing about what your own thoughts are on some of the subjects I've raised here. I'd love to hear from you.

During my absence, though, I've not been entirely idle at the keyboard: on the links section on the right you'll notice The Interface, an excellent Methodist Church website which features many thought-provoking articles though modesty prevents me plugging my own contributions.

Brian Draper has also recently updated his excellent blogspot which always includes an inspiring photograph alongside Brian's well-chosen words.

Also joining the links this week will be my fellow British DX Club member Stephen Howie, who has a wide selection of enjoyable and informative photos, words and music on his Myspace area.

Now, carry on reading, carry on surfing- and God Bless.

The Faintest Show on Turf?

Well, after all the hype and the hope, the might- or should that be plight- of England was finally joined with the tiny nation of Trinidad and Tobago in Nurenberg, Germany, this evening as the Battle of Rooney's Foot finally saw the star striker hit the ground running, and leaving it with his metatarsals intact in England's second match of the FIFA World Cup group stages.

Ironically though for a game supposedly called football, it was the header of lanky Liverpool player Peter Crouch which finally gave England just cause to chant and puff The Great Escape.

Truly it was such a redemption from ignominious defeat, with a final burst of footpower from that star of the FA Cup final, Steven Gerrard. His goal in the closing minutes finished the match off and at the same time rescued it from being a lackadaisical kickabout to deliver something which gives at least a passable hope of success in the second round, which the England side now passes on to regardless of the outcome of next Tuesday's match against Sweden.
It was a pity there wasn't a bit more effective passing on the pitch, mind, but hey we got there, even if by a somewhat circuitous route.

What a contrast tonight's game of soccer was to the astounding precision, team work and sheer entertainment value of the ceremony of Beating Retreat. No, not the hasty exit to the nearest airport which England might have faced if they failed tonight, but the spectacle which was taking place on Horse Guards Parade, London at exactly the same time- and drawing to its conclusion around the same time as the match.

Tonight's ceremony was in honour of HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh's 85th birthday, which occurred last Saturday. However, while the salute to their Captain General by the massed bands of the Royal Marines will undoubtedly have pleased His Royal Highness, he is rather as always basking in the shadow of his wife this rather strange flaming June week, where the mood of the nation has been as mixed as the extremes of the weather: London reached 32 degrees Celsius (over 90 degrees Fahrenheit) on Monday on the hottest June day since 1898.

Nurenberg too has been hot and sultry, and I'm bound to ask why on earth the World Cup has to be held in Midsummer rather than the more comfortable conditions of autumn or spring. But life for a football team as much as an army regiment, marine band or even the sovereign herself -and for all of us- can never be a stream of warm, sunny, relaxed days and there will always be the moments of drama and excitement, tension and worry when the heat is on- as well as days of sheer tedium like those demonstrated for much of the ninety minutes of today's socca warriors against the three lions of England.

The "official" celebrations of Queen Elizabeth II's eightieth birthday have gone into their second half now. Saturday sees this celebrated with the annual Trooping the Colour ceremony on the same London "pitch" as tonight's performance by the Marines, which my brother and I witnessed in all its astounding pageantry and precision movements at it's first performance, a dress rehearsal almost, last night. If only that kind of skill and commitment was carried on to the field of play!

When all's said and done though, soccer's only a game, despite what Liverpool's almost monarchical manager Bill Shankly famously once said about it being far more important than life and death. Whatever happens to our side between now and 9th July, they'll live to fight another day, and many more millions will have been poured into the bank balances of teams and sponsors when the plaudits and praise for Gerrard and Crouch, Rooney et al have died away to a faint echo.

Whereas the praises of the saviour of all mankind ring from heavenly terraces even as I type. The part of the church's year celebrating the events of Jesus's life and the birth of the church have now passed. Easter, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday have come and gone for another year, but today- the feast of Corpus Christi- we are reminded that Jesus gave far more than a healed torn muscle to contribute to the victory that matters over all others. He gave up his whole body and his very life blood, remembered in the elements of Holy Communion, only to find God keeping his promises and raising him from death on a cross (not, it has to be said, a netted crossbar. That's far more exciting than rescue from the jaws of defeat by eleven "Trinibagian" warriors. It's the defeat of everyman's greatest enemy, Sin

Fly the red cross of St George, by all means, but it's the holy cross of Calvary which really brings victory. I'll sing Jesus's praises for evermore, for I know that only he can really save us, just as God's mercy has saved our gracious queen to enjoy eight decades of life and service. Enjoy the footie- not forgetting the cricket and tennis, of course- this summer, but above all, remember the one who offers us all not just a moment of glory after ninety minutes, but life eternal through his hands after the most important substitution ever made.
and his feet-