Storyteller’s World

Law-abiding Oxford folk again had their lives disrupted on Saturday by a small minority of protesters, and an even smaller group of violent ones, when the latest Oxford Animal Lab protest led to violent clashes:

Protest hit by violence

It’s a mystery to me what fuels this rage. I would guess that the vast majority of people in this country support the idea of controlled, responsible, humane research using animals, to try to understand disease and seek cures. This will benefit not only human beings but also animals. The scientists who conduct this research are not sadistic lunatics; they care about their subjects, and as far as I can see give them a much better life than they would get in their natural habitat; in fact I would trust my life in their hands a lot sooner than I’d trust it to any of these protesters. But when is this majority going to get a say in the whole process? And would the “animal rights” campaigners give a damn if we did?

It’s official:

Churches packed for Christmas past | Church of England

Over the years, I’ve been known to have the odd rant about the C of E weekday lectionary we use at Morning and Evening Prayer:
More Lectionary Madness
Sexual Morality and the Lectionary
Tamar
etcetera.

But now … I hardly dare to say it; I hardly even dare to hope: it looks very much as if the weekday lectionary might have been mended at the latest revision.

I was only able to start using the new lectionary provisions at Advent, and there was a bit of hiccoughing in the transition or hand-over period, when we seemed to be repeating some sections we had only just read. But, well, it really seems to be making some kind of sense. We seem to be back to consecutive reading of books of the Bible in place of the ridiculous thematic linking which someone thought was a good idea. Even the Psalter has a “semi-continuous” option, alongside the seasonal one.

All together, it even made it possible for me to have another try at using Common Worship Daily Prayer. The biggest problem I’m having is still with the variety of OT and NT canticles, but I’m dealing with this by being fairly brutal about the concessionary rubrics (”A canticle may be said.”) and leaving out most of what’s merely optional.

So far, so good.

Philip Roderick dropped a casual remark, wondering if any of us had ever preached on Prepositions?

It reminded me of the nice little story John Humphrys tells in his grumpy book about the English language, Lost for Words. About a little boy who disliked a book about Australia, that his mother was fond of reading to him at bedtime, and finally demanded, “What have you brought that book I don’t like to be read to out of about Down Under up for?”

That’s why you have rules about not ending sentences with prepositions …

Had a good day, attending a diocesan CME (Continuing Ministerial Education) day, on Nurturing the Contemplative Dimension of Ministry. This was led by Philip Roderick, who also works with the Quiet Garden movement and Contemplative Fire.

It was one of those refreshing and renewing experiences, that makes you think: This is what it’s all supposed to be about; this is what I’m doing all the time; why amn’t I doing this all the time?

Also on prayer, I rediscovered this blog, which I had temporarily mislaid, on Jesus Prayer Spirituality.

The electrician arrived yesterday, unannounced, unnegotiated, naturally expecting that there would be someone in because it’s a vicarage, and what else happens there but someone waiting around for someone to knock on the door? to connect the electricity supply to the new garage.

Is this simple and straightforward?

Of course, not.

Because the last time any electrical work was done, either the Church or the contractors cut corners and didn’t run all the power to the garage on a circuit of its own. Which was why, when the fire tripped that fuse, it also took out all the power to the study, the boiler room and the security system. The rebuilding has got to put that right. Plus, there are now new regulations in force, about the way electrical systems have to be earthed to the gas main. (Electrical archaeologists will be able to examine this house and detect about six different generations of earthing the power supply, to higher and higher demands.)

So, on Day 1, we had all the floorboards up while the electrician attempted to run new cables, only to discover the problems that encouraged the earlier corner-cutting, whose solution necessitated drilling holes in ceilings instead and running cables down the walls - which will not be made good, as it comes under the heading of decorating.

Day 2 is all the outdoor work, running new cables and conduits from house to garage, and installing the fixtures in the garage.

Day 3 (still to come): final connection of wire through ceiling to fuse box, connection, and test.

And Bob’s your uncle, as they say in the building trade. (Or is that: Say uncle to Bob?) I wish I’d given in long ago.

The Telling Place is suspending its activities due to lack of funding.

Bad news for Christian storytelling in the UK.

More reason to watch Balderdash and Piffle on BBC2: all those beautiful shots of Oxford, from the air, or on the skyline. Makes the place look really attractive. And not a hint of the diesel smog, the congestion, the crowded pavements, that you struggle through the whole time at ground level.

From the amount of traffic backed up along our road (a popular rat-run from the villages into north and central Oxford) I would guess that the private schools have started back today.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: There’s not much about Oxford’s rush hour traffic problems that couldn’t be solved by closing the private schools. Or at least, restoring to these deprived children the use of their legs for walking or cycling, or the ability to ride on a bus with (ugh!) the common people.

It’s all very confusing.

On the one hand, like most other people, I really like Charles Kennedy. He seems a really nice, sincere, honest, decent chap. So he’s got a drink problem? And he would be the only politician who has, or has ever had, one?

On the other hand, I struggle to take anyone seriously who pronounces his name differently from how it’s spelled. It always looks either like an upper-class trick to catch out all those who aren’t in the know (”Imagine! He actually called me ‘Menzies’!”) Or else it reminds me of the snobbery of e.g. Keeping Up Appearances with Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced ‘Bouquet’), or anyone called Cholmondeley and Featherstonehaugh and the like. Imagine if you’d been introduced to a guy called Tony Price, and found his name was really spelled Antimony Pretentious.

On the other hand again, the older I get, the more attractive an option gerontocracy appears. Not that Mingis, at 64, is much of a gerontocrat - not even in the same league as the Sharons and Pereses of this world. Those Israelis really know how to value the wisdom that comes with advancing years. But it would make a nice change from the parties that are falling over themselves to elect ever younger leaders. I still think the Tories missed an opportunity. They should have had that nice William Hague as their leader, the first time he spoke at Conference. Why, they’d probably still be in power.

… you haven’t got one of these.

I’ve never had one before.

An empty garage.

Due to one of those ridiculous combinations of changes and chances that seem to dog most of the events I am involved in, this morning’s worship took on a life of its own, entirely different from what I had planned.

The original decision (made by me) was that we would keep this day not as Epiphany (one of the possible lectionary options) but as the Baptism of Christ, AKA 1st Sunday After the Epiphany. So those were the readings that appeared on the pew sheet, and the rota for lesson readers, and which guided the choice of hymns.

However, the preacher and the person leading intercessions both consulted the parish magazine, which, for some reason I have not yet plumbed, listed the set readings for Epiphany, as today’s readings. They had therefore prepared the sermon and the prayers on that basis. The only rational solution - fortunately we discovered the mismatch before the lesson readers got to the lectern - was to change the readings so that they fitted the sermon and intercessions. End result: a hybrid act of worship in which the words fitted the theme of Epiphany, and the music the Baptism of Christ.

Actually the sermon was very good. But confusing to me, because as someone who really doesn’t believe in chance, I spent the whole of it trying to work out Why This Had Happened, and what God was trying to say to me, through all of it. I had made my initial decision about what day to observe, on the basis that I heartily disapprove of celebrating major feasts on the nearest Sunday, rather than on the proper day. It seems to me the worst kind of surrender to secularism. It’s conceding to the pressure to provide worship on the terms of people who build their lives around some other, secular timetable, rather than equipping them to build their lives around God’s holy time.

But now I wrestle with the disconcerting probable truths, that
a) if I think I’m in control, I’d better think again, and
b) God is irredeemably secular (from Latin saeculum = the spirit of the age, or the times). After all, God so loved the world… forsooth.

The possible application of these truths - what I’ve got to do about them - leaves me breathless and giddy. Perhaps from now on I won’t plan anything, I’ll just wait to see what happens. And in so far as I do plan anything, I’ll just go along with whatever latest visionary, way-out scheme I’ve read about on the Internet.

“No, honest, your Grace: God told me to do it. On January 8th, 2006. I wrote all about it in my blog.”

(Kathryn has a more sensible discussion of some of these issues at Only on Sunday?)

GILES
You are Rupert ‘Ripper’ Giles. Trained by the
Watchers’ Council after a rebellious youth, you
take the cautious approach. A great friend and
role model, you are always there to give
guidance - or clean up the mess.

Which Character from ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

My daughters didn’t like me to watch Buffy with them. It was just too distracting to them, that I was constantly asking them to explain what was going on, and why that girl was sticking spikes in boys who only wanted to get friendly.

But even I know this is an uncanny result. How do these quiz compilers know this kind of thing?

(Must be a librarian thing …)

I thought about buying Robin Lane Fox’s new big book, The Classical World, but wanted to check on the reviews first. Most of the reviews on the Web, like Peter Heather’s in the Times, and Mary Beard’s in the Independent, were hugely favourable.

Then the review in the Guardian struck a contradictory note, observing that as well as the prodigious learning, there was also a deal of prejudice, old-fashionedness, and a kind of staleness instead of the author’s earlier passion, in the work. So whose review was this? Turns out it was by Tom Holland, the other high-grossing classicist of the moment, author of Rubicon and now Persian Fire, which sets out to tell the story of the Persian War (”The first world empire and the battle for the West”) in the light of the 21st century clash of civilizations.

Holland is a very different kind of storyteller of classical history. Fast-paced, engaging, exciting; but his style can also become exasperatingly cloying, with its journalistic clichés and its contemporary references often overdone.

It’s still a good read; but if he wants to slag off a colleague, it makes me think that classics needs both kinds of approach in tandem: the more reserved and thoughtful as well as the trendy and populist.

So, do I buy Robin Lane Fox, or not?

After my pre-Christmas talk of Jan Struther’s Mrs Miniver, did anyone else see the 1942 film version, that was shown on TV on December 23?

I wasn’t able to watch it “live”, so had to catch up with it on video, and in instalments, but was quite surprised to find that I really don’t remember seeing it before, in spite of its antiquity and earlier popularity.

Of course, you have to get used to the idea that it’s not very much like the book. The characters’ names are the same, as is the name of their house in the country. There are probably three episodes in common. Mrs Miniver gets off the bus to go back to the shop to buy something she really wanted; but in the book it’s an engagement book, in the film an expensive hat. Clem buys a new car. There is talk of war coming: but in the book, it’s all in the future; in the film, most of the action takes place in wartime. And so on.

There’s a lot of cringe-making stuff about class in British society, though to most of us plebs, the real difference between the “aristocracy” represented by Lady Beldon, and the upper-middle-class Minivers (whose son is at Eton and Oxford), is pretty hard to recognise. There’s some unbelievable stuff about the bellringers in the village - obviously no one in Hollywood knew how English church bells are rung, nor that during the War they were not rung, as it was going to be the agreed signal for the feared and expected German invasion. There’s the way they go on using the house and the church when both have been pretty thoroughly destroyed by enemy bombing. “It’s all right, it’s only the dining room,” they say, going upstairs to the rooms above, which simply would not be standing with the house in that condition. Likewise the church roof has been blown off, but they still meet there for Matins, and - wonder of wonders - the organ still works.

But for all the nit-picking, you can see how and why it made such an impression on morale on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s a real tear-jerker in which the young bride, rather than her flyer husband, is the one who dies: a casualty on the Home Front. Yet the indomitable nerve of the plucky British people, is not defeated. The vicar’s sermon in the final scene, about this being “the people’s war”, a war against tyranny, for freedom and civilisation, still has something about it that makes the little hairs on your neck stand on end.

So, worth watching.

Kate’s incomprehensible New Year’s Resolution cum experiment in training herself to eat cucumber, reminds me of the story I think I blogged about some time ago.

When I turned up at the first parish tea to be held after I arrived in my last parish, there was a formidable selection of delicious sandwiches on view. I joked to some of the ladies who had prepared them, “What, no cucumber sandwiches?”

At the next parish tea, sure enough, they drew my attention to a special plate set aside at one end of the table, labelled “Cucumber Sandwiches. For the Vicar.” Having to eat the whole plateful, I learned my lesson: Don’t tease the parish tea ladies!

See also: Wikipedia on Cucumber sandwich

I dragged myself down to the local Co-op to buy some food for lunch, and selected two cans of vegetarian soup, planning to let Tui choose one, and have the other myself. It was only when nearly home that I remembered that “pea and ham” only sounds vegetarian (memo to self: Read the whole label, not just the first word), and she would therefore only have the choice of Leak and Potato.

This reminds me of Alison’s story of her last visit to Italy for a conference, when it was a regular occurrence that dishes described as “meat-free” invariably contained quantities of ham or bacon. To an Italian, that’s not meat, just flavouring; while to many other omnivores, chicken certainly, and anything from a pig possibly, qualifies as an honorary vegetable. My family have never let me live down the time I bought pasta sauce, and was convinced that the absence of a comma on the list of ingredients (chicken mushrooms, etc.) indicated there was a kind of mushroom I’d never heard of, called a chicken mushroom. (It’s a natural mistake, your honour, I’m constantly finding new mushrooms in the supermarket, mostly from Japan.)

Speaking of the versatility of the pig, the word featured on this week’s Balderdash and Piffle, and for a limited time the OED are allowing free online access to all the words featured in the series.

I thought it was too good to be true. The upgrade to WordPress 2.0 looked pretty flawless, but I suddenly spotted that it was making comments disappear. They were there all right, but the post entry kept saying No Comments.

A quick search of the forums showed that it wasn’t just me having problems; that it was something to do with the excellent Spam Karma; that I needed to upgrade Spam Karma too, to the latest SK 2.1 beta (don’t like using betas, but needs must, sometimes). As soon as I did this, and ran the comments that weren’t showing up through all available plugins, it all seemed cured.

I don’t know how I’d cope with all this, if other clever people didn’t find the glitches first, and usually the solutions too.

The Morning News - Lone Star Statements, by Matthew Baldwin

Thanks to Tom for this.

Today is the first day I’m supposed to be fully back at work and firing on all cylinders.

Naturally I’m feeling grotty, with the sore throat and cough that (according to someone) is going around.

Just before Christmas my Favourite Shop in the Universe

was decorated with posters in store proclaiming “A Book is a Gift That Lasts A Lifetime”.

I applaud the sentiment; but it just ain’t true. A lot of the books I bought or was given 30 or more years ago (sometimes much less) have by now become unreadable. The pages are yellowed and smelly, the spines break as soon as you try to open them, and generally the experience is so unpleasant you would rather not read the book unless you can buy a new copy. And then, what’s the point of trying to build a library, and find space for it, and have all the hassle of packing and unpacking it every time you move?

It would be true to say: Some books are gifts that last a lifetime, but generally, they have to be hardbacks, and well-made ones at that. Over the years, I’ve tried to fight the ravages of life and time, by buying hardback copies, when possible, of books I really would like to last a lifetime. It’s a bit hit or miss, because it’s not possible to find hardback editions of all the ones I’d really like.

But here’s my list (in no particular order) of some of the

Titles I bought in hardback, after having read them in paperback

• Tom Paine, The Rights of Man
• Thoreau, Walden
• Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
• Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
• Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  
• T.H.White, The Once and Future King
• James Joyce, Ulysses
• M.R.James, Casting the Runes, and other ghost stories
• Cervantes, Don Quixote
• Umberto Eco, Name of the Rose
• Homer, Odyssey and Iliad (but I still prefer the translations I’ve only got in paperback)
• Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

There’s another list, of books I bought in hardback first time around, and of authors I tend to buy in hardback. But I’ll come back to that later.

And, to try and sweeten the bitter pill of the changed URIs for permalinks, I have edited the “404 template”, so that instead of getting the blunt “Page Not Found” message, you get what I hope is a friendlier, more humane explanation of why, and a suggestion of what to do to find the item that’s gone missing.

In the WordPress community, there’s been some debate about upgrading to the new version, 2.0. Why not stay with 1.5? It wasn’t broke, so why fix it?

I’m not that much of a geek, I’m certainly not a developer, I don’t use that many plugins, I’m just a kind of average joe of a user: so why did I want to upgrade? (Apart from, because I could?)

Principally, because keeping up to date and using the latest code means you can use new improvements, new themes, new plugins, as and when they come onstream. It makes upgrading easier when you do have to do it (e.g. the instructions for upgrading to version 2.0 from anything earlier than 1.5 begin “First upgrade to 1.5″.) If the code has been improved so that it runs faster, more efficiently and more securely, that’s got to be something I want: and it looks as if it does all of those things. And some of the admin interfaces and screens look a lot more attractive and business-like (though, like lots of others, I’ve turned off the WYSIWYG post editor because it’s slow and awkward, and I’ve got used to being able to see the HTML tags.)

There are one or two changes that I regret a leetle bit. Reverting to the default Kubrick theme, from nice-looking Regulus, was one of those. For some reason I don’t entirely understand, Regulus functioned a bit like a plugin, and having it as the installed theme messed up the upgrade procedure: in the same way as you have to disable all plugins before upgrading, I had to revert to the earlier version entirely (I had, Prudently, backed it up) and change the theme to something more prosaic, before re-uploading the 2.0 files. I might try Regulus again some time, but maybe not just yet.

Another little change, is the way URIs for permalinks and archived posts are expressed. Under my version of 1.5, they were numeric. I’ve changed these to a form based on the date and title of the post, which the rubric says “can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links”. What it didn’t mention is that anyone who clicks on a link to the old URI will now get an error message. But since I’ve also now successfully imported all my old Blogger posts - so that it looks as if this blog started on July 1, 2004 - the change in permalink structure is probably irreversible.

So, that’s my upgrade experience.