Author: Steve

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Some Sunday thoughts

It’s been an odd day today. Had two bits of news that are life-changing for the people involved. One good, one bad.

One v. good friend just had a baby – everyone concerned is well, and it’s probably the most powerful event ever in the lives of all concerned.

And at the other end of the scale, another v. good friend just found out that his mum probably has days to live. She’s been ill for a while, but it doesn’t really make the finality of such a prognosis any easier to swallow.

The two extremes of human experience – one ‘hello world’, one ‘goodbye world’.

Dave The Vicar was talking this morning about the 23rd Psalm – ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…’ etc. Focussing in on these first couple of lines, he unpacked what ‘I shall not want’ means – rather than it being a statement of overabundance, or some prosperity nonsense about having everything I might ever want, it’s a statement of completeness in God. Completeness in good times and in shit times. No promises of solutions, just the promise of presence.

For most people the absolutes in life – birth and death – are some of the most spiritual of times. Contemplating our own mortality in the light of the dimming candle of a loved one can beat the fundementalist out of the most ardent of hellfire-and-brimstone fundies and make the most hardcore athiest doubt their convictions. Death is too big for any of us to be certain about, but there’s something within the human experience that suggests there must be more. So certainty dies and we look for hope. The hope of life beyond death.

And birth kind of completes the circle – I think it was Billy Joel who sang that life is a series of hellos and goodbyes (shit, did I just quote Billy Joel on the blog? somebody shoot me), and I think the hellos can help make sense of the goodbyes. It doesn’t take the pain away, but the circle of life is complete. We’re all born, we all die, we all have a finite number of years to try and make sense of the world. If we know that a person has acheived something in their life, be it as personal as having a good relationship with their family or as huge as the Mother Theresas of this world, we can rest assured that they didn’t live in vain. They’ve done what we all seek to do – the search for meaning and significance. And as just about all funerals testify, everyone has had an impact on someone.

And at this point, the belief in a life beyond death makes the significant life and the death that follows seem just as significant for the person departing as for the ones left behind.

And it makes the process of bringing a new person into the world a little less scary – The Shepherd of the Psalm is on your side, at the begining and at the end. It doesn’t guarantee an easy ride – far from it – but it does help when drawing up the roadmap. Facing the potential for significance in a baby and knowing you’re responsible for where they go is the start of the journey. Looking back on a life well lived is the end of this part of the journey.

So I pray for both of them – giving thanks for the baby, and for wisdom for the new parents. And then for peace and consolation for the one saying goodbye.

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JKR must be doing something right…

OK, so the world has gone Harry Potter mad. New book out, very exciting. At least, it would be if I’d read any of the others. Which I haven’t.

But, hidden away in this article about the press response to the book, is evidence of the world’s brightest 10 year old kid –

“Rosie Jenkins, 10, was one of the lucky winners who got to meet Rowling at the book’s launch at Edinburgh Castle.

She said the book “immediately plunges the reader into a world that is grim, chaotic and action-packed”.

She added it was “darker and more alarming than the other’s but that makes it more interesting and impossible to put down”. “

A TEN YEAR OLD said that’? What kind of kid that age talks like that?? OK, there’s the ginger kid at St Luke’s who when he was three offered to rent a van to deliver my Traidcraft shopping to try and encourage me to spend more, but he’s a bit of a one off. Methinks Rosie Jenkins parents have been scripting things for her to say, to make them look like badass parents…

Soundtrack – Scritti Politti, ‘Cupid And Psyche 85’.

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First entry from new toy

For a while now, TSP and I have been wanting to get a laptop between us – I could use it for travelling, and TSP could use it for writing when away.

So on Thursday I nipped into the Apple Store on Regent’s Street in London, and on the advice of Photographer Steve, asked if they had any ‘refreshed’ stock – that is computers that have been bought, but then brought back within the 30 day returns period. They are fully checked, reformatted and warrantied etc. as new, just 10% cheaper than the brand new ones! Result.

So we’ve now got a 12″ bog-standard bottom of the range iBook between us, which it has to be said, kicks ass. OSX 10.4.2 is fantastic! It’s called ‘Tiger’, but I haven’t found the ‘install Seigfried and Roy theme’ button yet that makes everything orange… I’m loving some of the features in OSX – the dashboard and expose features are really cool, and the way Safari handles RSS is very cool indeed. I still have to connect to the net via an ethernet cable plugged into my pc, as we’ve not set up wireless or anything yet, but thus far, it’s much coolness.

Soundtrack – Tracy Chapman, ‘Tracy Chapman’ (came across her singing ‘Thrill Is Gone’ with BB King earlier on today, and her voice sent shivers down my spine, so I borrowed the CD off TSP as I’ve only got her stuff on vinyl)

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Friends Reunited

Got an email the other day via Friends Reunited – a fun site (for the six people in the world who don’t already know what it is) where you list yourself by school/college/workplace and let all the people you chose to lose touch with get back in touch.

I’ve met up with a few chums via that, which has been fun.

Anyway, I got this email, but they don’t include a return email address, and neither did the email, and if I want to email back via the website, it’s going to cost me £7.50 to sign up again. Yes, that’s 750 whole pence to send one email! (well, I could send loads of emails, but I don’t really want to).

So, Nicola, if you’re reading this, feel free to email me again, via this site this time!

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The G8 deal falls apart before it begins…

The oh-so-clued-up Sarda just emailed me a link to a BBC news story saying that The G8 deal on debt relief is already under threat.

Here’s a chunk of the article –

“The Belgians have apparently proposed changing the terms of the deal to give lenders more leverage over poor countries than they would have if they simply wrote off 100% of their debt.

In a document that has been leaked to the activist group Jubilee Debt Campaign, Belgian official Willy Kierkens is quoted as telling the IMF executive board that “rather than giving full, irrevocable and unconditional debt relief… countries would receive grants”.

The IMF would then be able to withdraw the grants if countries failed to meet IMF conditions such as implementing the Poverty Growth Reduction Strategy which is a pre-requisite for receiving debt relief.”

Now, Belgium has a particularly hideous record in Africa, given the actions of King Leopold in The Congo.

Let’s also remember how far short of what was being asked for the debt relief on the table at the G8 fell. It already left the countries concerned mired in a web of trade reform obligations put in place by the IMF. But apparently, even those crippling undemocratic ruinous measures weren’t enough. No, they have to not only put the measures in place, but threaten to cut the debt cancellation if those measures in any way fall behind the IMF timetable.

Is is possible to be born without a heart and live? Is there some sort of selection process for heartless, emotionless amoral bastards who see it as their droid like duty to ruin the lives of the world’s poorest people? I was already depressed about the post-G8 findings. These are acts of great evil people, no ‘great justice’ has been done, it’s no victory for Africa, it’s just a smokescreen to hide the ongoing rape of an entire continent from the eyes of a worldwide audience made aware of the cause then lead to believe the G8 are the good guys by two well-meaning but misguided Irish rock stars.

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Some great news for London radio…

It’s amazing how one discovers news these days. I was just looking at the stats for this ‘ere blog, and saw in the search strings that lead people to the site ‘Jon Gaunt Leaves Radio London’.

Aha, thinks me, is this just one person’s wishful thinking, or is the ridiculous waste of airtime finally making a move?

So I google the same phrase, and find this post on the londumb.co.uk message board, saying that very thing, that the rancid bigot is finally doing the decent thing and leaving Radio London.

Let’s hope Simon Lederman or Eddie Nestor gets the mid morning phone in slot – both have sat in for scumface and done a great job before now.

So, to Gaunty – good riddance. I care not where you end up, so long as it’s not anywhere that I would normally frequent. I hope it’s daytime telly, then hopefully I’ll never have to suffer your loserdom again.

And as you’ve got kids, give ’em a hug, give ’em a kiss… and don’t forget to tell that we’re glad to see you go.

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My Global Footprint

Got this from Barky’s blog – calculate your global footprint.

If everyone lived like me, we’d need 2.6 planet earths to sustain us all – here’s the results –

_________________________________________
CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES

FOOD 0.7
MOBILITY 1.5
SHELTER 1
GOODS/SERVICES 1.4
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 4.6

IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 5.3 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 2.6 PLANETS.

________________________________________

sobering stuff.

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Finally the C of E gets its head out of its arse

well, over one issue anyway.

the general synod have voted overwhelmingly in favour of ordaining women bishops.

This is v. good news, and drags the church kicking and screaming into the mid-20th century, only 50 years late. The objections have been looking increasingly arcane and anachronistic, so I very much look forward to our first woman bishop, and hopefully, the first series of ‘The Bishop Of Dibley’ soon to follow.

Now, if only the church would get a move on with ordaining gay priests, and gay marriage, we’ll be almost up to scratch.

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blog tweaks

I’ve just tweaked the ‘individual archive’ view of each post on the site so that it now has all the links and stuff on those pages as well, not just on the front page.

The monthly archives are still in the more raw format, otherwise the pages would be just stupidly long, given the rather rabid frequency of my blog-life at the moment (it’ll slow down soon, I’m sure, worry not).

Anyway, it’s mainly cos so many people seem to be linking into individual blog posts of late, that I wanted whoever was visiting those one-off pages to get the full effect.

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