Personal Posts
Posts, mostly older, that are about me or express my views on a variety of topics that are of interest to me personally. They have nothing to do with our apartment in Carcassonne.
-
The Road to Hell?
Almost a month since my last post. Obviously, blogging every day, or even every week, wasn’t one of my resolutions at the New Year. Not that I would have kept it anyway, for I have been very busy with my work for The Salvation Army. Two weeks ago the island of Haiti suffered the latest and, some might argue, the worst catastrophe in its disaster-ravaged history. The Salvation Army has been active in Haiti for sixty years as a church and social services agency, running hospitals and clinics, residences and orphanages, and a large number of schools. Most of the nine million or so Haitians are Roman Catholic, but 700…
-
The Lost Symbol
I read The Lost Symbol over a couple of evenings shortly after it came out in September. I found myself wondering the same thing as I did after reading each of Dan Brown’s other books: Why did I get sucked in? Why spend money on a book I knew would be disappointing? If I am asking these questions then many thousands of others must be, too, for at its launch it became the fastest selling adult book of all time, with sales of over half a million in the U.K. alone (Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol breaks records for first week sales in the UK | Books | guardian.co.uk). (Harry…
-
One Flu Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
A few days of my life have been stolen by the new flu. At least, the doctor thinks it was H1N1 although we have to wait ten days for the provincial labs to return the test results, by which time it will all be irrelevant. A week ago Monday, I got the feeling I might be coming down with a cold. You know, scratchy throat, bit of a headache and generally under the weather. Then, Tuesday afternoon, WHAM! Sirens blaring, heavy boots clumping up the stairs, firemen and EMS people bundling me off to hospital as quickly as possible.
-
Remembrance
One might say, at a stretch, that I am a survivor of WWII, as a piece of shrapnel penetrated our Anderson shelter during an air-raid in the first week of my life and parted my mother’s hair as she held me in her arms. Even though I don’t remember that or anything else that happened to me as a baby during the Second World War, I remember vividly the war’s aftermath. I grew up in the poor part of town, where the rubble of the last war wasn’t fully cleared until I was at university in the early sixties.
-
New Look — Old Issue
Yesterday, I dyed my hair. It’s not as dramatic an opening sentence as «Hier, maman est morte», Yesterday, Mommy died, from Camus’ L’Etranger, but it’ll serve to let you know my frame of mind. Anyway, the new look has a lot to do with the ‘old’ issue. By that I mean the issue of growing old. Check the photo on the right. See the light brown hair? If you had only the top of the head to go on, you might think me younger than I am. Sadly, the rest of the body gives the game away — but I’m working on that, too. On its package the hair treatment…
-
Doing the Rite Thing?
Anglican Communion News Service: Joint Statement by The Archbishop of Westminster and The Archbishop of Canterbury. Vatican makes it easier for Anglicans to convert; creates new provision within Catholic Church. When the disciples were enjoined to be fishers of men, was the body of water specified? It must have been, for Cardinal Walter Kasper of the Vatican (and therefore an obedient follower of the fisherman, Peter) has said: “We are not fishing in the Anglican pond”.