Points To Note

Ed Balls is on Strictly - Hurrah! Love Ed Balls. Am trying to ignore that one of the finest minds in politics (whatever your political persuasion - this is a true thing) is spending Saturday nights putting his considerable brain to use in remembering steps to the Argentine Tango. I mean, I love a bit of dumbing down as much as the next person but really.

FOW2 returns to Exeter University tomorrow. Bit early but as she has a weekend job selling expensive face cream to Chinese students who seem to have money to burn - she is going back to make that easier. (Last week, I spent an idle thirty seconds waiting for zebra crossing lights to change, counting the designer labels on a young, beautiful Chinese student standing next to me. I got to seven before the little green man flashed.) 

For those of you feeling sorry for me because we are sprog free (or jealous, depending on how you feel about these things) do not worry for FOW1 is returning to the fold in a couple of weeks. Doing a Masters has taken it out of him and he feels some time in the bosom of his family - having his meals cooked and forgetting how to close drawers after himself, is just what the doctor ordered. 

I am possibly the only person in the United Kingdom who isn't that keen on Sunday Night Telly. Although Poldark certainly has its charms and I am sure Victoria is ably filling Downton sized holes, they just don't do it for me. I apologise - I am sure it is my fault. I am not sure why. Anyway HOH has claimed telly to watch Beck on catch up. I saw the first charred body and retired to the kitchen.

Am loving Bake Off. There is just something so lovely about it. All that smiling through gritted teeth and laughing when you want to cry as your gingerbread London skyline falls over. It is truly a great programme. Can I ask - would anyone ever really want a gingerbread structure commemorating a great event in your life? Not me I don't think. I'd just rather have that raspberry cake thing that Selasi made last week. I reckon I could get all that in my mouth in one go. 

Went to Woody Allen film Cafe Society as promised. I always expect to get heckled as I go in to Woody Allen films for obvious and perfectly understandable reasons. However, I liked the film as usual - even though, these days, you often feel you have seen him make this film twenty times before, it still makes me laugh. 

Anyway, Monday tomorrow. The leaves are falling, it's dark in the morning, HOH has his Autumn cold and Cardworld has Christmas cards in. I don't get my cards from Cardworld because I feel a bit guilty about sending cards that are so cheap that you can see through them. Also, I don't send cards. Not really. 

I leave you with Aged Parent's damming conclusion about her friend who as just had an upsetting diagnosis. It is both anatomically uncertain and upsetting in its finality but that's old people for you.

"He has three cancers - one in his prostrate, one in his lung and one in a very dodgy place indeed. So that's it if you ask me."

Childish

I am in the middle of a cinema fallow period. We go to the flicks a lot but there hasn't been a lot to see this summer - not the stuff I like anyway. HOH has been to see the Bourne movie and liked it very much. FOW1 has enjoyed seeing a bikini clad Blake Lively, on a rock in the sea being terrorised by a shark I have no idea if the main attraction was Blake Lively in a swimsuit or the actual film. Probably a bit of both. As FOW 2 is a film student she has not been too bothered about leaving alone for a while. I wanted to go to the pictures so I dragged various people to two children's films. There is a lot of creativity (and money) going in this direction.

First up was The BFG. Steven Spielberg's version of the beloved Roald Dahl book. And it really is beloved - in this house as well as loads of others, so the film-makers are up against that before they even start. We had a cassette tape that we used to play in the car that miraculously turned trips where children were in danger of being abandoned at motorway service stations to journeys where everyone was giggling hysterically. A real gift. Spielberg's version is very good, beautifully produced and written. Everyone is great in it and if you have no emotional attachment to the book - it is perfectly fine. For me - it wasn't my BFG so it wasn't quite the same. 

The next thing I went to see was Finding Dory - The Pixar cartoon. This was equally lovely. The tiny baby Dory is almost worth the ticket price alone. There is a very clever piece where Dory - who has short term memory loss - gets lost and her panic and bewilderment are supposedly based on the feelings of people with dementia. It was very moving. Also moving and I think a bit pinched from stories I have read about God's grace - is a bit where Dory fears her parents have forgotten her and finds out that they really REALLY haven't. It's lovely. 

There are certainly worse ways to spend a couple of hours. Me, I am on alert now for the new Woody Allen - due on Friday. I know, I know. I just love the films. What can I say?

T'Internet Thinking

If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

1 Corinthians 13

I have, as you may have noticed been a bit taken aback by the Internet. Ah, the Internet. Where would we be without the Internet? There is a compelling argument that we would be doing very nicely thank you very much but we can’t deny that life is very different under the influence of the Internet. I love the Internet for lots of things – I love watching the telly at night and as I grope though my failing faculties and find I really can’t remember where I have seen that actress before, it really is great to be able to just slam her name into a search engine and get my sanity back. I love Social Media (mostly) I have friends and family all over the place and being able to see what they are up to is a great blessing for the vast majority of the time. (Sometimes I would rather not know to be honest but that is probably as a result of my own extensive capacity to worry and I need to get over it.)

Do you know what I hate on the Internet? All the pontificating. Do you know what I hate even more on the Internet? Christian Pontificating. Nothing makes my heart sink faster than someone I have never heard of, asking to follow me or popping up in my Inbox, and then reading on their bio “Amy/ Adam is a modern day prophet who speaks wisdom into YOUR life” Oh Good. Looking forward to it. Why are they picking on me? The Internet is full of people who have at last found the platform they were waiting for. They have a place at last to tell everyone how they think it should be done and they are going to do it. Now there is a place for wisdom and sharing of that wisdom. There is a place for those who have studied and developed their thinking to share that what they have found with us. In the olden days that used to be called preaching. I also know that some of the great minds have sat together and reasoned and come away with deep insights into the Word of God that they have passed on and these have cooled our struggling souls. That used to be called writing a book.

I can get very intimidated by the opinion formers and the wise (these are not necessarily the same people). They shout loudly, they obviously know stuff, they certainly know more than me, although that’s a low bar to be honest. Some of these people though define themselves by the fact that they can teach us. They find their security in their superiority. They forget sometimes to remind us that it isn’t about that camp or this camp. You don’t always need to choose a banner to march under. There are people out there that need someone to love them and ask questions afterwards.

As my old mother would say ...

I am an old person now, I will not try to deny it. But have you ever looked at something and thought "What is that?" Katie Hopkins' Tweet about the young men who lost their lives on Camber Sands has probably had too much publicity already but I just can't make it compute in my head. What was it meant to achieve? Clicks? Notoriety? There are five families and many more friends grieving for sons who won't come home after a day trip to the beach. This is a real thing - not an Internet thing, not an opinion piece. I assume Katie Price loves her children. I would have thought she would have some empathy for these people. What on earth is behind it? Then I thought about it and a phrase my often bewildered Aged Parent uses "What is it all coming to? It's wicked isn't it?" Wicked - "evil or morally bad in principle or practice". It's not a word I use very often, but here it seems to fit well. "Wicked" - wicked to poke fun at the grieving and wicked to use their sorrow to advance your own faintly dubious career. It's a strong word but it fits I think.

A Day and a Life

You never know with a book do you? If anyone had told me how much I would mourn the passing of a series if books about a 15th century monastery and the people who live in and around it, I would have struggled to believe it. Yet here it is - the last in the Hawk and the Dove series by Pen Wilcock and I for one will certainly miss it. 
The monks are not there as an excuse to talk about ideas. They are presented as fully rounded human beings - with all the faults and lovely things that humans have, examined in equal measure. Father Peregrine - initially misunderstood but eventually adored is a personal favourite.  First and foremost, these are great stories where lots of things happen to people you really care about. Then you start to see how life has shaped these people and continues to do so. Their faith in God is often tested but God is also is their bedrock. 
In this final instalment, a novice goes missing. His absence affects everyone as they worry and pray for him. However, life goes on and the various members of the monastery continue to fulfil their very necessary responsibilities in the group.
In some ways this quite a courageous way to finish a series. An awful lot of stuff happens in the previous books. In this - not so much. You get to read about disciplines and individuals and their place in the community. If you are interested in these books, I would suggest that you don't start here. (Why would you? It's the last one in the series!) I would start with the first one (unsurprisingly) and I really do recommend the life affirming people of St Alcuin to you.