All in the best possible taste

I was a little bemused, while looking for the latest news of Fopp's closure, to come across the following advert in the sponsor's section of Yahoo's search page:

Looking for Music Zone or Fopp?
It's closed down. But why not visit HMV for all your Music and DVDs?
http://www.hmv.co.uk/


This advert was displayed alongside the news that HMV had just bought six of Fopp's stores, and were planning on adopting the brand. Now there's a way to rub salt in the wound.

Hi Ho

It's amazing how much of a difference a good job can make. I've just finished my second day, and am already marvelling at the joy that comes with being able to look forward to going into work. I am now drawing my first salaried wage, my new workplace is warm, the work is good, my colleagues are friendly, it takes twenty minutes to walk there through at least three routes (so it doesn't get boring), i get an hour's lunchbreak and a nice window view of the tops of trees. But, best of all, I get a desk drawer that looks like this.

It's been a whole month since I last posted something. How did that happen? I know Facebook is partly to blame. Otherwise, it seems that the more you do with your life, the less time you have to record it.

So, to recap, I quit my job, got a new one, quit that and got an even better one. I've been to Alton Towers, the Hay Festival, a wedding, a leaving party and a birthday party, stayed in the Plaza hotel, and I've done the washing up....once.

I should probably write about it.

(Not the washing up, the other stuff.)

Die Hard!

Thanks, Rich.

When A Single Word Will Suffice

According to Philip Yancey, it was Jesus who is most likely to have coined the term "hypocrite" in it's modern sense, that of someone who claims to be one thing when they are another. Coming from the name of a Greek actor from around 500 BC, it's such a perfect encapsulation of a term that it's hard to find a synonym of equal weight and succinctness.
In the novel 1984, George Orwell places a high importance on the use and existence of words as a means of self-identification. If we had no word for freedom, he argues, would we really fully understand that we were not free? And even if someone were to grasp that concept, how would they communicate themselves to others? In this way, by eradicating words and restricting their meaning, the government are able to control a nation.
So I was thinking, if Jesus was indeed the first person to use the word hypocrite to mean someone with double-standards, what implications does this have? To have God himself invent a term may mean that the notion of hypocrisy was such an important one that he himself introduced the term. Should the words introduced by God have more weight, more significance, than others?
I think there may be a novel in this. Or at least a small cult following.

Compelling Quotes ( I )

We are all beings of our age and time. We are all a consequence of the depth or limitation of our understanding of the world around us, sometimes faulted in that development by the kind of commitment we make to that world, the people who share it with us, and the historical events that touch our lives.

Brian Keenan, An Evil Cradling.

Mack presentation - Solomon (Feb 2007)

NOTE - This is a subjective piece, and thus I don't want to hear about the disputable authorship of Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes. No, really, I don't care.

When I was asked about my favourite Bible character, I almost immediately thought of Solomon. I’ve spent most of my time since trying to pinpoint exactly why. Peter offered to help me, but his suggestion was, "Solomon’s my favourite person in the Bible because he was rich, had as many women as he wanted, and still got to go to heaven". So after I hit him for saying that bit about the women, I decided to go with what I had written.

So, why Solomon? It’s not as though there’s a lot I can identify with in Solomon’s life. Immeasurably rich, king of his country, with his famous entourage of wives and concubines - it’s nothing that really strikes a chord in the life of a young, British girl with just the one husband.
What drew me to Solomon was my love of ideas. I’ve always been an enthusiastic reader, and my favourite authors have always been those who really empathise with their characters, and explore human nature by exploring the human soul - writers like Sebastian Faulks, Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Heller. My sister was always of the opinion that I lived inside my own head most of the time, and the writings of Solomon spoke to the philosopher in me. I knew very little of the king who lived, ruler of a desert kingdom, born into a troubled family full of both love and bitter enmity, where those closest to the king were also among his most vicious rivals. It wasn’t until later that I learned of the man, his history, his wisdom and his wives.

No, it was his own writings that led me to understand him. As Philip Yancey said, or words to that effect, it’s through writing that you really get inside a person’s head. And of all the people in the Bible who speaks to us directly, it wasn’t King David’s lyricism, or the eloquent theology of Paul that I connected with as wholeheartedly as the poetry of Solomon.
At the age of sixteen, I sat down one evening at a summer camp and read through the whole of Ecclesiastes. My melancholy teenage soul in search of angst - when there was in my life, to be truthful, little angst to be found - found expression in the utterance, "Everything is meaningless...all is smoke...there is nothing new under the sun." And yet there are also phrases of breathtaking beauty and remarkable clarity. Something in me always stirs when I hear the phrase, "He has…set eternity in the hearts of men." I could talk for a long time about the nature of desire and the longing of mankind, based on that single sentence. But I won’t.
Again, when I was a bit older, and had stopped giggling at the images portrayed of cavorting stags and ripe fruit, I was struck by those words about the power of love, "its jealousy unyielding as the grave", and by the timeless warning, learnt by me the hard way, "not to arouse or awaken love until it so desires." His words, written so long ago, seem proof to me of the unchanging nature of mankind.

It’s not just the writings of Solomon, though, that appealed to me. It has to be that he was the wisest man who ever lived, and yet he still messed up.
Why is it that our favourite traits in Biblical characters is sually the fact that they did something unutterably stupid? The greatest, godliest men in history, and what do we love about them? Moses - killed a man. Peter? Denied Christ. And David, the man after God’s own heart? We love David the most, because when he fell, he went for the triple. Deceit, adultery AND murder.
But, I have to admit, part of the appeal of Solomon for me is the warning that he poses. As a student, and especially in teh culture today, when the focus is on everything that's palpable, proveable and logical - even as a Bible student - there seems to be the assumption that knowledge is everything. And Solomon - reputedly the wisest man in history - proved in his life that knowledge means nothing unless you apply what you know. How many of us have been told what we must do, and we know we must do it, yet we still disregard it? As Terry Pratchett points out, there are certain things like the opposite of urban myths, that we all know are true, and we still ignore them - wise phrases like, "Money can’t buy happiness," and "It wont get better if you keep scratching it."

More than that, Solomon’s story shows that as important as knowledge is, it comes second to obedience to God. As Jesus remarks, to see the Kingdom of God requires the faith of a child. Children aren't stupid, and they always ask questions. To become like a child is not a case of following blindly, but it is a matter of trust. Not to mention the clarity which comes with innocence, and strikes fear in the hearts of all children's entertainers - so that you’re not playing along with intellectual games and modes of thinking, but so you can see past the magician’s tricks and declare that he’s got "something funny up his sleeve." Wise as serpents, innocent as doves.

And of course, you need devotion. In short, both the highs and lows of Solomon’s career, and there were real highs, show that wise thinking amounts to little unless your heart belongs to God. Unless I have love, I am nothing. And for someone who has a tendency to live inside my own head and rely upon my own reserves,someone who tends to withdraw from the world when things get difficult, and someone who has to constantly, reluctantly, pray the prayer for God to break my heart for the things that break his, it’s a lesson that I’m constantly having to learn.

Day of Relaxation

I love Sundays. They're the best day of my week. Last night I met a guy from Hungary, who was visiting for a few weeks. A lovely guy, and very brave. Not only did he sit through a church service in English, but he also came to the pub afterwards, and gamely struggled through conversations that included Doctor Who, breakfast in China and the merits of Paris. I was very impressed, more than I was by my own shocking attempts to speak German.

In other news, I've really been enjoying the recent rain. Proper summer rain, not this drizzle malarkey. It makes the trees look happier, don't you think?

Why Watching Scrubs All Day Isn't Always A Plus

Hopefully not a long post today. I just came back from house group, which has just started a study based around John Ortberg's book, 'Everybody's Normal Until You Get To Know Them', a book I picked up several years ago because I liked the title, read two pages of, and then, as I usually do with even the best non-fiction books, got bored of because it didn't have a story in it. It's a good book, though, and covers the two themes that have been bugging me recently, those of personal vulnerability and proper community.

More of that tomorrow. On another positive note, I have noticed a marked improvement in two areas of my life. Firstly, I am learning to put towels back on the peg in the bathroom, and not anywhere I happen to take them off. My last attempt made it to the radiator, and I was even congratulated by PeterBell, who said the execution was a bit sloppy (being scrunched up on top of another towel that was already on there) but that it was a marked improvement on the last one, which I left on a pillow.
The other positive is that when jobhunting, having a rubbish job is far more of an incentive than being jobless.

Some Things I Should Have Thought About Sooner.

I'm geting a little fed up of my blog already, for several reasons.

Firstly, it takes too long.

Secondly, it's hard to get the tone right. After my first couple of posts (couple meaning anything between two and four in this case) I considered changing the title to "Conversations I wish I'd had". It's dawning on me that the reason that I write these things and don't discuss them is that they're either too flippant or too indulgent for anyone to put up with for too long.

Thirdly, it's hard to get the depth right. Unless your sole purpose is to be entertaining, then keeping a blog requires a certain level of honesty, which is hard to attain when you always have at the back of your mind the knowledge that anyone could be reading your blog. And it's not the idea of strangers reading it that bothers me.

This evidently requires some more thought. But not today. It's stopped raining now.

There Can Only Be One!

I watched Highlander last night. It's a great film. Nowhere else could you get away with a Scotsman with a french accent meet an Egyptian who's working for the King of Spain and sporting a broad Scottish accent. The moment when Sean Connery uttered the words, "What's a Haggis?" brought tears to my eyes. There's some dodgy wire-work, and I have no idea why a woman would agree to have dinner with the only suspect in a violent murder spree, but who cares, it's fun, there's big swordfights, and Christopher Lambert has a wink worthy of a young Mel Gibson.

Worth watching, no matter how you feel about Queen.

Ode to Seagulls

I love seagulls. I went to Flatholme island courtesy of my husband. It's a conservation island given mainly over to seagulls. They're actually an endangered species. It seems strange to think so, when you can't seem to move for seagulls nowadays, and gone are the times when you'd only see them on beaches, but they traditionally migrate for several years until they're adults, and the recent growth of litter in the cities means that they'd much rather hang about and eat junk food than do all that wing-work. So they hang around, and eat lots of nasties, and get botulism. Seagulls eat a lot of nasties, including each other. I can't decribe to you the feeling of horror you get when you're walking along, and the grass gets a little, crunchy, and you find that you just trod on a bird skull. With bits of flesh still on it.

Anyway, I digress. The main reason I love seagulls is because they look so angry all the time. They have this expression of pure annoyance, like the little old lady who's just come out to yell at the children for trampling all over her begonias. And you can see it all building up til it gets too much for them, and they just throw their heads back, open up their throats, and let out this long, gutteral screech. They put their whole heart into that screech. And then they fly off to bully some pigeons.

The best characterisation of a seagull has be Kehaar from Watership Down, a book that far too few people have read. Here's an extract.

The creature in the hollow was a bird - a big bird, nearly a foot long...The white part of its back, which they had glimpsed through the grass, was in fact only the shoulders and the neck. The lower back was light grey and so were the wings, which tapered to long, black-tipped primaries folded together over the tail. The head was very dark brown - almost black - in such sharp contrast to the white neck that the bird looked as though it were wearing a kind of hood. The one dark-red leg that they could see ended in a webbed foot and three powerful, taloned toes. The beak, hooked lightly downwards at the end, was strong and sharp. As they stared it opened, disclosing a red mouth and throat. The bird hissed savagely and tried to strike, but still did not move.
As they squatted, looking at the bird...it suddenly burst into loud, raucous cries - 'Yark! Yark! Yark' - a tremendous sound at close quarters - that split the morning and carried far across the down...

"You hurt? You no fly?"
The answer was a harsh gabbling which they all felt immediately to be exotic. Wherever the bird came from, it was somewhere far away. The accent was strange and gutteral, the speech distorted. They could only catch a word here and there.
"Come keel - kah! kah! - you come keel - yark! - t'ink me finish - me no finish - 'urt you dam' plenty."

"You hurt?" said Hazel.
The bird looked crafty. "No hurt. Plenty fight. Stay small time, den go."
"You stay there you finish, " said hazel. "Bad place. Come homba, come kestrel."
"Dam de lot. Fight plenty."
"I bet it would, too," said Bigwig, looking with admiration at the two-inch beak and thick neck.
"We no want you finish," said Hazel. "You stay here you finish. We help you maybe."
"Piss off."

Why parks in cities make me sad.

I just got back from a hen party in Dartmoor. It was lovely, and I'll write about it as soon as I get some photographs worthy of the event. But, as we were wandering o'er hill and dale, I was trying to explain to someone why I hate walking in city parks. And it's because they remind me of what I'm missing. I grew up in the countryside, and there were fields, meadows, stretches of trees, and those scents which merge to create the atmosphere of something very, well , natural going on. You could walk for hours without seeing a single person, catch glimpses of foxes and sometimes deer, and witness nature just getting on with it. In Cardiff, it's hard to find a stretch of park or lake without coming across someone who thought of it before you, and it's hard to feel the sheer exuberance and fertility of spring when the scene is fenced in, the borders patrolled by the muted sound of traffic. Don't get me wrong, I would rather have the parks there than not - I would love to fill the city with as much greenery as it could contain. But my appreciation is marred by a certain amount of underlying envy. To walk through a park in a city is to catch a poor reflection of something very wonderful that is going on somewhere else, and I'm missing it.

Save the cheerleader. Save the world.

On friendship (a post-pub meditation)

I'm going through a bit of a transitional period at the moment, what with changing cities, changing jobs, and adjusting to the idea of sharing a life with someone, even when they eat the last of the chorizo. What with hen parties, weddings and a general nostalgia that's been creeping over me, and prompting me to search out old acquaintances, I've been struck by friendships, how they change and grow.
I've heard people express the opinion before, and I heard it again in conversation tonight, that when you lose touch with people you once considered a friend, it's usually with good reason, and you should consider them a friend lost. Now I'm appalling when it comes to keeping in touch with people when I have no occasion to prompt me to contact them. A lot of it is sheer apathy on my part, and for that I have no defense. But I don't consider for a moment that, having lost contact with them, that it's an indicator of a friendship not worth continuing.
I think that friendships, like any relationship, find their fulfilment when you consider another as important, not just because of the feeling that they bring or how the other person relates to you. It comes when you recognise that this person is important simply because they are. Even if you were to cease to exist tomorrow, then this person would continue to be important. Once you realise this, a friendship becomes more than the sum of its two parts.
Friendship is not only something to be established, it also needs to be maintained. It more resembles a growing tree than a static sculpture.It takes time and effort to ensure that a relationship succeeds, and it's no wonder that many fade and some fail. And in many cases, that transition is necessary - there is not enough room in our lives to contain all the worthwhile friendships that we have encountered, and continue them at the same pitch of intensity, especially when we move away from each other. We may be guilty of neglecting our relationships, but we musn't draw the line there, and make the mistake of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's not too late to restore that bond. Not always as it was, but in some form. And when you approach it with the perspective that each of these people who you once encountered is important in their own right, then each contact re-established becomes a new joy, an unearthed treasure - a person rediscovered.

I realised something else during my pub chat. Sometimes you come across friendships that are like yew trees. The yew tree is a cunning evergreen, capable of reaching extraordinary ages, with the ability to grow at varying rates, depending on when the right nutrients are available. They can even remain dormant for hundreds of years, and then continue to grow at a steady pace when the conditions become favourable.I remember reading an account of a man who had met a colleague at a weekend convention, and they became instant friends. Twenty years later, they met up for a second time, both married and with families in tow, and it was as though their conversation took off right where they had left it, twenty years before. To be part of such a friendship is a reassuring thing.

WildWake & I'M AXed

For those of you who wanted a copy of it, below is the poem I wrote to mark the closure of the best bits of At-Bristol. Shame on you if you never went, you missed out on Tom Cruise the Diver, and poison arrow frogs.


So, the day has arrived, and all too soon,
We've taken our very last Walk On The Moon,
And since we're all gathered, the last to the first,
It seems fitting to mark the occasion with verse;
But I'm quite new at this, so forgive me my....skurple
For failing to find a good rhyme here for "purple".
It's time now for tears, but please don't despair,
No matter what we do next, or where -
Save the world, turn to crime, get a proper career,
Or stay on in Explore (as a volunteer) -
Remember At-Bristol, engrave in your hearts
All the quirks and the values that set it apart.
The friendships, the fun, the odd party (or two),
Bosses that made it their job to serve you,
The passion for nature, and science, and art,
And treating each guest as a person apart.
These make up for those things, against which some may rage,
Like the working weekends and the minimum wage.
So, if your next job seems that little bit grey,
Remember that you needn't be that way.
Be yourself, change the rules. It'll work! No, it will!
(Failing that we can always meet up in King Bill).
So good luck to you all, and remember this - wurple;
Whatever you do in life, do it in purple.

In Memoriam

I sometimes think about death, it being one of those things that you can't really avoid. Not for long, anyway. I hate the idea of a wasted death. I'm not entirely sure what I mean by that, but it has something to do wih being pointless and futile. Not necessarily the death itself, because by the time I die I won't care how it happened. It's funny, but the thing that worries me is how my death wil be received by the people who knew me. I suppose my big fear in death is that of life - firstly, that I'll be myself, and secondly, that people won't misunderstand that. Like CS Lewis remarked on the death of his wife - people get their own impression of who you were once you're dead, and you're not around to correct them.

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind pointless death of a humorous kind. It would be quite funny to see people trying to relate the sad news while stifling giggles. My favourite so far is geting hit by a giant cheese. I mentioned it to Neil once. I think he might have made some arrangements.

A Philosophy on Life (and sandwiches)

This is actually my third attempt at keeping a blog (although the second attempt was only created because I wanted to leave a comment with someone else. And the first attempt was started in Spain, and how can you be expected to slave away behind a hot computer screen when there's so much free tapas to be had?). As usual, the decision came with impeccble timing, as it also came on the eve of my starting a new job, marking the end of my nocturnal lifestyle.

It all started with philosohy. I was sat in Mack, enjoying a post-service lunch. It was the day after Chris and Angela's wedding, possibly the most joyful event I've been to (including my own wedding, but then I think your own wedding is designed to be something that you worry through, and then look back on fondly.) And the day after was just as joyous - there was food, drink, friends and visitors, and everything was basking in a kind of contented glow. I was enjoying some light intellectual dinner conversation at a table of people which included the Williamson brothers and Peter. We talked of art, and muic, and the first CDs we ever bought. I was just engaging Andrew on the subject of the best way to eat cheese, when Dave intervened by sticking something down his back.

Our conversation may have been short-lived, but it reminded me of a philosophy that I once developed, probably on one of my early morning commutes. I was disappointed not to share such an enlightening piece with my friends, especially as it could possibly have changed their lives. This thought so saddened me that I threw aside my earlier apathy and reluctance to start a blog, and devoted myself to hours of meditative reflection and internet research. What does it matter that I forego the washing up, that I abandon the sweeping of floors, if in doing so I contribute to the betterment of mankind? And what better way to share that news than by creating a blog and making all my friends read it? So here it is, dear reader.

A "Crusts First" Philosophy of Life.
Deceptively simple. When faced with any plate of food, you have a choice - you can either go for the food you like most, or the food you like least.(1) Now, it may seem like a simple choice - who wants to fill up on the less desirable food? Yet there is another way.
My approach springs from that most common of foods: the sandwich. Now if you follow wholesome youngs boys in bread adverts, then the best way to eat a sandwich is to grab it in both hands and take a sizeable bite out of the middle. This is fine for the first bite, but then you're still hungry, and all you're left with is a semicircle of crust with a few soft bits of bread. You suffer through the rest of the sandwich, for the sake of a cheap thrill in the preliminary bite. Now if you were to eat the crusts first, you fill up on the less desirable bits which are, however, mitigated by the satisfaction of having curbed your hunger. You can then settle back, and finish by eating the choicest morsel of food. Because the most desired parts of a meal are usually the smallest, it is easy to avoid the one risk you run with this philosophy - that of being full up before you reach your favourite part.
You can apply it to eating pizza, Sunday lunch, or any other meal. It even applies to those whose preferences vary - simply reverse it if you are yourself quite partial to crusts. It can even stretch to non-culinary activities. Ca fait tout.

(1) There is a Third Way, but it's not talked about.

Title

Why that title? I'd be quite interested in finding out what people think. First correct answer gets a free gift.

NB. Husbands of the organiser are excluded from entering this competition.