Storyteller’s World

Catch this brilliant spoof about the “new Doctor Who”.

Thanks to John Naughton for the tip.

Living Without Microsoft is back on line.

It’s fascinating to see how flickr becomes a source of pictures of amazing events, like the Buncefield oil depot fire.

The more you see of the devastation, the more you realise what an incredible miracle it was, that this explosion took place at 6 a.m. on a Sunday, rather than 9 a.m. on a Monday.

The oddest thing about Susanna Clarke’s bumper novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, is that I read it at all; considering how much I disliked it, and how many things about it annoyed and niggled.

For about a third of the book - the middle third - I found myself thinking, This is really not very interesting. I don’t like any of the characters. I don’t care what happens to them. I don’t care how it ends.

“Well, you don’t have to go on reading it, you know,” said Alison, as sensible as ever. But I did go on reading it. And towards the final quarter it revived sufficiently for me to want to find out what happened in the end, though it was pretty disappointing and inconclusive when it did. But I read it, nonetheless. All of which should persuade me that this is, in fact, a pretty remarkable book.

Weighing in at 1,006 pages, even the paperback edition is definitely a duvet-crusher. If your hands are getting old and weak, you might consider buying the more expensive three-volume edition, and thus creating even more the intended “feel” of a Victorian fiction. The story is set in the first two decades of the 19th century, during and after the Napoleonic wars. It tells of the revival of English Magic under the two eponymous (tada!) magicians, of their collaboration and rivalry, and its outcome. It is written in a consciously Austen-esque style, and in general I found this one of its more appealing features. It’s a pleasant sort of read, though I suspect the purists will have found lots of linguistic points to niggle about. Some have carped about the quirky antique spelling of words like “chuse” and “stopt”; but these didn’t distress me as much as the existence of a county called Cumbria; for even I can remember Cumberland and Westmorland. I imagine the historians of the period, both social and military, will have found lots more glaring anachronisms.

The Fairies in the story are Bad, Bad, Bad; which is accurate as to folklore, but (I know this reflects my own prejudices) I prefer my fairies to be good. (Like in John Crowley’s Little, Big.) The gentleman with thistledown hair is thoroughly nasty, possibly one of the nastiest villains in fiction. And this makes the fiction itself less palatable: shouldn’t even villains have something about them that impresses, or arouses our sympathy or envy?

I really hated the weather: the Cold and the Dark. (See this blog, passim.) It is one of Clarke’s skills that she thoroughly evoked this damp, cold, foggy, bleakness - and I hated it. Nearly stopt reading, because it chilled me, physically, too much.

I got annoyed by the magic. When it wasn’t being trivial and boring, it was just impossible - like moving the whole city of Brussels to North America, on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo. It was as if the sole point of it was to set up a joke in a footnote, about a strange European-language-speaking tribe of Indians discovered long years afterwards, the survivors of army deserters during the 24 hours that Brussels was in the Central Plains. (Don’t even get me started on the footnotes! There are lots of them, intended to give a 19th century / scholarly feel to the text, or something? But they are just hideously laid out, often running several pages ahead of the narrative, or even referring you to a footnote further on in the book, and quite often rather dull and disappointing.) I was left wondering whether the writer really has any sense of what Magic is, or what it’s for.

And then, I really felt uncomfortable with the book’s amorality. I was quite unable to discern any underlying moral framework about what was good or bad. There really wasn’t much to choose between the magicians and the fairies. The characters themselves had no moral three-dimensionality: although we were told that Jonathan Strange was a good man, charming, likeable, etc. there was little evidence of any of this in what he said or did.

It’s still a remarkable book, and any criticism of it is bound to be coloured not only by admiration but by envy of the author’s success. But you inevitably compare Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell with other books. And compared with the style and period detail of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels, the magic of Ursula Le Guin’s Wizard of Earthsea, the Napoleonic battles of War and Peace, Clarke’s novel is, sadly, not the Real Thing.

For a more promotional view of it all, though, see JonathanStrange.com

Due to a combination of mindbogglement from the Christmas shopping, and having to keep my eyes on the traffic in front, I misread the roadside sign of Erozone of Dorrington as I drove past (er, I was going to provide a link, but on second thoughts …), and thought what they were advertising was esoteric lingerie.

And when you come to think of it, this is clearly a gap in the market. No one else is manufacturing or selling anything quite like it.

So here is my business proposal:

Esoteric lingerie. Obtainable in High Street stores, and at all branches of the Emperor’s New Clothes Emporium. The beauty of esoteric lingerie is that it exists in a parallel dimension (therefore needs no washing), while its uplift, support, and allure, are accessible in this dimension to all illuminati. For the non-initiate, it simply has no effect, appearing in fact to be non-existent. This should, then, be of interest to all classes of person.

At his enthronement, Archbishop John Sentamu quoted one of his predecessors, Michael Ramsey, who said at a Mission to the Universities in 1960: “I should love to think of a black Archbishop of York holding a mission here and telling a future generation of the scandal and glory of the Church.” The prolonged applause that greeted this, clearly expressed the love people felt for John Sentamu personally, and their enthusiasm at his election as the first black British archbishop.

What Ramsey had also intended to prophesy, was a day when the spiritual maturity of the African Church, and its evangelistic zeal, would be such that they would be sending missionaries to Britain to re-convert the nation, and bring us back to Christ from materialism and unbelief.

In the days of Peter Akinola, and the “interventions” that he and his cronies are meditating, and already carrying out, in Britain and the United States, I wonder how many contemporary British Christians would share Ramsey’s enthusiasm for this aspect of his prophecy? Is the Gospel that we might get from Africa, full of its denunciations of homosexuality, and of any non-literalist way of interpreting scripture, really Good News at all? Is it going to convince anyone but the most insecure and closed-minded of people?

I ask the same thing about the evangelist Richard Coekin, the former Anglican priest (whose licence has now been withdrawn by his bishop) who invited a so-called bishop from a South African sect to “ordain” some men in one of his congregations in South London. Amidst the furious debate about whether these “ordinations” were irregular, and whether you supported them anyway, Graham Kings, theological secretary of the Evangelical group Fulcrum said of Coekin:

Richard Coekin is a gifted evangelist and organizer, with a great concern for sharing the good news of Christ and starting new churches. The Church of England urgently needs evangelists who can reach people right outside the confines of the Church and lead them on to discipleship and maturity in Christ and his Church.

But again, what’s the value of any of that, if the “Gospel” he believes is so exclusive, and the God he preaches so judgemental and particularist? What, exactly, are people being made disciples of? Surely of Richard Coekin - for it doesn’t look a lot like the Jesus I know?

Evangelistic zeal is not enough. And just calling what you preach “the Gospel” isn’t enough either. It’s got to be based on a true theology, which describes God as he really is, and the world that actually exists, rather than the one some Christians might like it to be. And it’s got to actually be good news for all people.

Now, attentive readers of this blog will remember that, whenever I have the opportunity, I am a passionate and enthusiastic meat-eater. But since I am married to one (liberal) vegetarian, and am father to another (fundie) one, I do have a lot of sympathy with their position. Especially along the lines that it takes far more of the world’s resources and energy to produce a pound of beef, than it does to produce a pound of grain or beans. Sometimes I even prefer, and choose, the vegetarian option.

But what I hear from Alison, who generally declares herself as vegetarian when attending conferences, etc., is that the vegetarian option is often extremely dull, boring, unimaginative, even at quite expensive hotels and conference centres. She has been to two of these events recently, in Oxford and London, where alongside interesting omnivore menus, the ‘vegetarian option’ has been vegetable lasagne.

“Why don’t you complain about it?” I ask. “If you don’t make a fuss, they’ll never change.”

But of course, the absence of red-meat protein makes them passive and non-aggressive. But come on, vegetarians! Stand up for what you believe in! There must be more exciting vegetarian dishes than lasagne!? What about spicy bean hotpots? What about - well, I don’t know - curries, risottos, compotes of roast vegetables, nut roasts, stuffed peppers, ratatouilles? Some of the chefs at these establishments are just being lazy, I reckon, and need a good kick up the aubergine.

So, vegetarians: what are your worst ‘vegetarian option’ stories? And what would you like to see on the menu at these events?

Not dispatches exactly - and not everyone would boast about this, perhaps - but this old blog got a mention in the Daily Telegraph today.

Pity the poor journalist, then, who has to spend many of her waking hours trawling through the murky reaches of the Web, trying to come up with something to write about. (Oh, I know the horrors of the Deadline, in fact, I’m facing one tomorrow with little or no idea of what I’m going to write.) And so it was for Georgia Cameron-Clarke, who somehow, in setting out to write something about the new Civil Partnerships legislation, came upon my posting about the new terminology for entries in the marriage registers.

Oh, if only I had had something witty or original to write about it! Or even a comment, instead of a bare report of what was happening! Reader, gentle fellow-blogger: you never know when a journalist from the Daily Telegraph or indeed some even more prestigious journal, is reading your hastily-set-down thoughts. Does this reflection make you want to take more care over what you commit to the Web? Does it make you want to give up altogether? Or (which I suspect should be the case) say, Well, I’m doing this chiefly to please myself anyway, like all true writers; so I don’t give a damn who reads it or what they think.

Still, it is nice to be noticed. Even by the Daily Telegraph.

It’s a shame that reading texts on screen is such a pain, because I keep finding things that are freely available in digital form. Today I came across sites where you can get hold of texts by

Jan Struther, writer of hymns including ‘Lord of all hopefulness’ and ‘When a knight won his spurs’, and also the novel Mrs Miniver, which allegedly brought the USA into WW2 earlier than might have been, and which Winston Churchill claimed had done more for the Allies than a flotilla of battleships.

and Mary Webb, Shropshire writer, some of whose works (including some out of print) are available on the Shropshire County Council website.

Here’s Br Tobias S. Haller BSG On the Plainness of Scripture and what to do with it.

Thanks to John for the link.

Just watched the amazing documentary about the Boxing Day Tsunami, on BBC1.

It was the Onge people of the Little Andaman Island who all survived the tsunami, while thousands of others perished. They believe that the world stands on a great tree which from time to time is shaken by evil spirits, and this produces earthquakes, and a continual struggle between sea and land, to establish the boundary between them. When they saw the sea rushing out, they knew another round of this struggle was in progress, and all ran inland, where they were safe.

Is there a moral to draw from that? Perhaps, that we must preserve and believe our traditional stories, because they are True? Or is it, that the most primitive cosmology turns out to be the most serviceable, when push comes to shove?

I wonder what that says about the Creation debate?

“Ah,” say friends and neighbours, “I see your garage is rising from the ashes.” (They can’t help themselves, I know, it’s just too irresistible, it would be like Basil Fawlty trying not to mention the War.) Naturally we are not so happy to be reminded. And we know the garage is proving not much of a phoenix anyway.

You see, I know for a fact (’cause Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was on TV last night) that phoenixes (phoenices? No, you can only have one at a time can’t you? so,) a phoenix, rises from the ashes in a few seconds. Whereas it has taken our builders four weeks to get to this stage, and that’s only because they had three instead of two bricklayers for the last three days.

Our next door neighbours say, “We had a garage built thirty years ago: it took them two days.” Ah yes, but you see our garage had to be re-built, so naturally it’s taking much longer.

Tagged for this by John. A Sei Shonagon-like list of seven lists of seven things:

1. Seven things to do before I die
2. Seven things I cannot do
3. Seven things that attract me to my spouse
4. Seven things I say most often
5. Seven books (or series) I love
6. Seven movies I watch over and over again (or would watch over and over if I had the time)
7. Seven people I want to join in, too

So ….

Seven things to do before I die

1. Live the examined life
2. Get to know my children’s children.
3. Visit China. Maybe live there for 20 years, learn Chinese, become a Christian Taoist priest.
4. Read Proust. Or maybe not. At least, read or re-read all the great books I want to.
5. Spend each winter, from November to February, on a Greek island. Possibly Ithaka.
6. Fly my space shuttle into the sun on my 105th birthday.
7. Learn to fly a space shuttle

Seven things I cannot do

1. Play a musical instrument
2. Sit through a whole episode of Neighbours, Casualty, Eastenders, etc.
3. Vote Conservative
4. Listen to what one of the significant women in my life is saying, while the TV or radio is on.
5. Play the academic game
6. Lie convincingly
7. Keep a straight face

Seven things that attract me to Alison

1. Her intelligence
2. Her love of word play
3. Her perseverance in achieving her aims
4. Her curly hair
5. Her laughter
6. Our shared values, especially faith
7. She’s the mother of my children and I see her in each of them

Seven things I say most often

(This is the one I found most difficult as I never listen to myself talking; so I cheated, and some of them are things I would like to say most often - guess which? Friends and family are entitled to make corrections or suggestions. Gently, please.)

1. D’oh! (Or other more un-vicarly alternatives, like Sugar, Bulgaria, or Fungus.)
2. I feel …
3. Let me think about that …
4. I don’t know.
5. Yes.
6. I love you
7. God bless

Seven books (or series) I love

1. Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels
2. The Simpsons
3. ER
4. Odyssey
5. Huckleberry Finn
6. John Crowley’s Little, Big
7. Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. (Sorry, it’s my age.)

Seven movies I watch over and over again (or would watch over and over if I had the time)

1. Fever Pitch
2. Galaxy Quest
3. Leon
4. Witness
5. Chariots of Fire
6. Alien Quadrilogy
7. Shakespeare in Love

Seven people I want to join in, too (Only if they want to, haven’t already done it, etc.)

1. Jo
2. Kate
3. Ali
4. Milan
5. Sharon
6. Martha
7. Tom

(If you have already done it: just send a comment with a link to your own post.)

Two letters arrive, marked URGENT on the envelope. Naturally I open them immediately in the expectation that they will contain cheques for several thousand pounds. This is not the case. One is a letter to the Vicar of Marston (me); the other an identical letter to the Vicar of Elsfield (me too). They are from the General Register Office, about the implications of the Civil Partnership Act 2004, which comes into effect on Monday.

Because civil partnership will be a lawful impediment to marriage, and vice versa, it will now be necessary to include civil partnership status as well as marital status in the description of a person’s “condition” in the marriage register. So “bachelor” and “spinster” will not suffice, because they do not describe those who have never formed a civil partnership.*

There follows a discussion about some of the alternatives that could be used **, the ideal one being “No previous marriage or civil partnership”, which they admit is cumbersome. *** So what we are going to have to write is “Single” for all these categories.

The civil partnership equivalents for “Widow” and “Previous marriage dissolved” are “Surviving civil partner” and “Previous civil partnership dissolved” or “Previous civil partnership annulled” (as the case may be, it says).

This is what passes for high excitement in the Marriage Registration World. As I file it under Weddings: Legal Stuff, I utter a heartfelt prayer that I will remember all this, when I next have to register a marriage.

* I’m not sure this makes logical sense, to me.

** No, “Other” will not be acceptable.

*** In any case, the box in the register isn’t big enough.

What Christian book would you recommend, to someone who was just beginning to explore the Christian faith, and take it seriously for themselves?

On this day, 35 years ago, my diary records: “Bought and read The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis.” It was a book I had known before, during my Saturday library job days, but not read. It just hit the spot for me, with its description of the Christian life in terms of an appeal to the imagination, an adventure, a struggle, a spiritual conflict fought in the midst of whatever ordinary everyday life you are living. It’s also funny, perceptive, and entertaining. It made me want to live this life, and showed me some ways how.

Is there anything more contemporary, or less Oxford-and-bookish, that might appeal to a young inquirer today? Or does Screwtape still rule?

BBC NEWS | Education | Primary reading set for overhaul

Some things in life are so predictable that you can set your watch by them. Like, that grouse will die on August 12, and that Christmas on the High Street will start earlier each year. And that whenever there is any hot education news, the BBC Today programme will dig up Chris Woodenhead, a former chief inspector of schools, to criticise or find fault with it.

Here is a man who, as far as I can see, has no experience of primary education, yet did more during the 1990s to undermine and demoralise teachers than anything else. It was my first major disillusionment with the Blair Government, that they didn’t sack him on May 2nd 1997, but kept him on for several more damaging years.

Mr Woodhead has about two tunes, that get played every time he appears. One is, This would all have got better years ago, if the Government had listened to me back then. The other is, This is still crap because the Government didn’t listen / hasn’t listened / isn’t listening to me. There is also a kind of leitmotif about trendy teachers messing up children’s education by following fashionable teaching methods that have been long exploded by genuine research (a lot of it done by people who don’t know much about teaching), and being ideologically resistant to reforms of the kind proposed by Woodhead and his henchmen.

So now we have him singing the praises of a kind of phonics, which has been part of primary teaching of reading for ever, just about. But rather than admit that, he now gives us a variant of, It’s got to be the only method they use, and if something’s not working, it’s because they’re not using it exclusively enough.

At one point Mr Woodhead said something like, “There’s nothing magic or mysterious about it: teachers just have to use these techniques.”

Doesn’t this give the game away a bit? A man who thinks teaching and learning are mechanical, rather than one of the most magical, most mysterious phenomena in the universe? Just think how every child learns to talk within a couple of years of being born. Anyone who thinks this isn’t miraculous, but can be made to happen just by pushing the right buttons, doesn’t know enough to talk about children, let alone slag off the teaching profession.

If teaching and learning to read were as easy as that, we’d have 100% literacy. As it is, ’synthetic phonics’ isn’t likely to make much more than an illusion of improvement.

It’s not rocket science, Mr Woodhead. It’s much more difficult than that.