I've just seen MM's badger passport - it's great!!

That's reminded me that I need to put a photo into Doggy-Dog's doggy-passport, with his chip number and log of vaccinations etc ... should we perhaps ever want to go on holiday to the UK together (I have a UK passport but since he was born here he has a French passport).

This is too much. Every time the Irish - North, South or Other, win anything anywhere, our dentist is unwell the next day and appointments remade. It is indeed fortunate that he is not on Res Hist when our resident Goliath comes out and daily clobbers  our Davids and Davinias. 
Also his chat  when one is in  the dental chair and unable to reply, is somewhat biased.

What is the world coming to? Can we trust nobody?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11886905/Cambridge-don-made-up-bogus-archaeological-projects-to-steal-220000.html

It's a thought though................

ferval wrote:

What is the world coming to? Can we trust nobody?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11886905/Cambridge-don-made-up-bogus-archaeological-projects-to-steal-220000.html

It's a thought though................

Perhaps he'd been watching "Lovejoy" on ITV3 - or would that be too lowbrow for a Cambridge Don?  Mind you, albeit Ian McShane is okay for looks, "Lovejoy" is a "golden mouldie" rather than a "golden oldie" as far as I'm concerned.  Jonathan Gash's Lovejoy books had a harder edge to them so I never really took to the TV series.  I only skimmed the article cited in the link, Ferval, so I don't know if it mentioned the Piltdown Man hoax from back in the day - though whether the Piltdown forger did what he did for kudos or to buck the system I don't suppose we'll ever know.  I appreciate that the "projects" in question in the case referred above were totally fake in that they didn't exist but I remember one of the last registers I transcribed when I was at the Natural History Museum listed artefacts including fakes that were believed to be "Flint Jack's" work.

ferval wrote:

What is the world coming to? Can we trust nobody?

Certainly can't trust a South African referee. I'll bet half of Scotland was singing this last night;

Whereas Priscilla's chances of a dental appointment today are now very rosy indeed

I took the grand-brat to the pictures yesterday. Popcorn was requested so I bought her the smallest size, a bag in section rather smaller than A5.  £3.99!   Dear God in Govan, I remember when the whole family could see a double feature, buy Orange Maids at the interval and still have money left for chips on the way home for half of that.

Well, that's been a fun packed couple of hours changing passwords what with TalkTalk getting hacked. I haven't bothered changing this one because a) we need all the contributors we can get, even hackers and b) Hell slap it into them if they get in, they would surely regret it!

A friend on the Talk Talk security system at the end of a long chat informed me she was going off to clean her oven. End of chat
Next morning I had a cold call at 7.30 am asking if I wanted an oven cleaner. I knew then we had been hacked - and I was also hacked off. I do not discuss  cleaning any thing in the a.m before 12 nor, come to that, not between noon and midnight either. If they get in we'll all slap together - as in sound boating style. It worked before. There have been no repeat calls.

Not a rant more of an Oh Dear. I have just been reading the most interesting  and many posts on the POV Board from our very own Anglo Norman and ferv among others on the TV Celt progs. I wish you would  ahve set up a thread here also - and put them to us here too  because they are most interesting and informative. We crave fresh ideas of historical contenet to read about from people who know - tho not everyone will have seen the progs they might in due course. In any case your take on them is most interesting.

Somebody who is not exactly a neighbour - but lives in my general area - well she's the lady who asked me in a couple of weeks ago because (I think) she felt sorry for me carrying a heavy bag.  - had a bite off a false widow spider a couple of years ago.  She made the local paper at the time and still has a scar (though it's on her leg so largely covered up).  I read that this species of spider are supposed to be on the rise this year - and indeed (I read) a young person had a nasty bite on the face.  Will definitely have to make sure I tackle spiders with the ticking stick rather than my bare hands and an ordinary duster this year, me thinks.

Yes folks, it's that time again when we're deluged with catalogues and suggestions for the perfect Christmas gift. I have just got one emailed from Historic Scotland - official guardians of our national heritage.

I can't decide, should I order the Mary Queen of Scots bear

                                                                                       

or a Braveheart duck?

                                                                                       

I think I will start a Worst historically related Gift thread. There's bound to be plenty of scope.

I guess I know what your grandchildren WON'T be getting for Christmas this year, Ferval.

I lost my first post - got a bit of a shock today because I looked up from my typing this afternoon and there was a geyser [not young] looking in through the window.  I went out to find out if he was legit [I have been known not to hear the postman knock when I have my headset on for audio typing] but whoever he was and whatever he was doing he had disappeared by the time I got there.  Will have to get a padlock for the side gate as the bolt obviously isn't cutting the mustard.  Apparently there have been some opportunistic thieves in the town recently.  I'm okay - as far as I can tell nothing missing though I've told the police [or their receptionist].  I'm not a frail old lady but it did make me feel a bit vulnerable.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

You should get yourself one of these;

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I got a bit of a shock today because I looked up from my typing this afternoon and there was a geyser [not young] looking in through the window...   

So it wasn't a young geezer but an old geyser  ... a bit like 'Old Faithful' perhaps:



Sorry LiR, I'm just taking the mick .... But as an audio-typist I'm sure you'll appreciate this:

Eye have a knew spell chequer,
It came with my pea sea,
It plane lea marques four my revue,
Miss steaks eye Cannes knot sea.

Eye strike a quay and type a word
And weight four it two say,
Weather eye am wrong oar write,
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long,
And eye can put the error rite
It rare lea sever wrong.

I've run this poem threw it,
I am shore your pleas two no.
Its let her perfect awl the weigh:
My chequer tolled me sew.

I thought 'geezer' and 'geyser' were interchangeable MM.  I'm not so rare and wonderful that I can't make a mistake.  The rhyme is witty.  I do know someone put 'bazaar' for 'bizarre'.  Living in the internet age an online dictionary can sometimes prove more helpful than the computer's own spell check function.  Of course one has to remember to change from US English which is the default to UK English, though I imagine most people who come here know that.  When I have made a schoolgirl howler it has usually been when I have been tired - and the error sometimes been silly - 'there' for 'their' or vice versa.

Trike, the German Shepherd is uncommon handsome - my cat's 12 though so she might be a bit old to cotton on to a dog as a housemate, though actually you are not the only person who has suggested getting a dog.

We had some software developed by a Turkish firm. The spell checker insisted on correcting "Turks" to "trucks" ever time it encountered the word (unless, like some of us, you bothered to add "Turk" etc to the custom dictionary. Needless to relate, The Management never managed that.

Gilgamesh of Uruk wrote:

We had some software developed by a Turkish firm. The spell checker insisted on correcting "Turks" to "trucks" ever time it encountered the word (unless, like some of us, you bothered to add "Turk" etc to the custom dictionary. Needless to relate, The Management never managed that.

That's rather depressing Gilgamesh.  I thought that most people had at least some form of technical competence these days.  I can remember one style of management that almost took a pride in NOT learning skills if they thought folk lower down the pecking order could run around doing things for them "Why would I have a dog and bark myself?" but I did think that attitude had gone out in the second decade of the 21st century.  I did hear - and this was from a former work colleague and not my own experience - that a secretary took to putting "verbatim" or "sic" on documents when her boss had reinstated the spelling mistakes she had edited.  He didn't like it but what else could she do - if she hadn't done something to protect her corner and the errors had been picked by someone higher ranking than her immediate boss, the secretary would almost certainly have been scapegoated.  In one place where I was a temp I corrected something - I told the chap I was doing the typing for - and his attitude was "Thank you, thank you".  He was a sales person and very good at that but said spelling never had been his strong suit.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I do know someone put 'bazaar' for 'bizarre'.  

We actually have a chain of shops here called 'Bazaar-Land', but which everyone hereabouts calls 'Bizarre-Land' ... the pun works perfectly well in French. They're a sort of pound shop but with all sorts of out of season, weird, quirky best-buys and promotions: like Easter Eggs in June and Halloween costumes in the run up to Christmas. And just generally weird "stuff" all year. Nevertheless I've got some great bargains from there, such as huge 5m long tablecloths for virtually nothing, and a cheap dinner service made from bamboo (for parties) but cheaper even than buying disposable plastic plates.

But I do have an actual rant today ... which then turns into a rave.

Rant first: I discovered a leak in my roof about three weeks ago after a few days of torrential rain and driving winds. A week or so after that bad weather I started to notice damp patches, and then within days mould appearing down the walls both on the ground floor and directly above in one of the bedrooms. When next it rained I could immediately see that the gutter was dribbling down the exterior wall rather than carrying the water away.

Bum. I thought it was probably just a blocked gutter so probably easily fixed. But how to get up there? The roof is high: the gutters are at about 12m up and the roof ridge is at about 15m up. Too high for a regular ladder. What I needed was a nacelle/a cherry picker (not sure what you call it in English but it's a lorry with a telescopic arm/platform). So I consulted pages-jaunes/yellow-pages and phoned around ... I explained the problem, I left messages ... but no-one ever got back to me to say they'd actually come. But then equally I was loath to contract a big building firm just for someone to come with a van (an immediate 60€ call out charge) and for him then to say: "Oh, what you need is as nacelle ... that'll cost you 200€ just as a hire charge, then they'll be our works on top depending on what we find ... I can quote you for replacing all the gutters, that'll be about 2000€......".

So after fretting and worrying about this for a couple of weeks, while the mould problem continued to get steadily worse and I still couldn't get anyone interested in doing the work, I eventually decided to do it myself. I used to be a keen caver and so I dug out all my old caving/climbing gear. I then bought a new climbing harness and 40m of rope.

The first problem was getting onto the roof as the only access is via a small 1 foot wide Velux window directly above the stairwell. But with a ladder - with one leg wedged on some bricks and the whole tied to the bannister - I could just about get out. The trouble is that I don't like heights: I was always a caver rather than a climber. I can quite happily abseil down a 100m vertical pothole or mine-shaft because I can't see the floor. Climbing out onto a roof 12m above ground - and onto a roof pitched steeply at 45° as well - was never my thing. You might laugh but I seriously considered going out onto the roof at night, in the dark with a head-torch, just so I couldn't see the ground!

But in the end I mustered my courage, squeezed out of the Velux window, and onto the sloping roof. Actually with a harness and secure rope I was fine, and quickly managed to find the problem: no blockage but the gutter had cracked. I got it sorted with some heavy duty epoxy mastic ... I think ... I'll only really know when next it rains hard. But at least I now know that with my new (expensive) harness and rope and stuff, I can actually access the whole roof should ever a tile slip or the gutters block or whatever.

And I really can't say how hugely releaved I was to get the problem finally sorted ... and to get back inside and off that damned high roof!

Beware!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/2011/01/calculating_the_height_of_loxley_hall.html

Meles meles,

yes houses...some weeks ago had to climb through the velux in the gutter of our house for hire, 12 m (40ft?) high to clean a zinc collector from the two neighbouring houses on a corner (before some 90 years ago it was one corner house). Said to the female neighbour, who has no access to the collectot via her roof that while it occurs every some years she would have to seek for another solution. The granddaughter said that I was risking my life, although I don't find it that way while your escapade seems to me more threatening while up to now I never did climbing...

yes houses...some month ago...four appartements for hire...the 4 toilets, an old appartementsblock, on one and the same waste pipe...when one part of the pipe is blocked and one on the higher stages let the water and the rest of the toilet poor down the toilet next under flows over...that evening when I arrived the female student of the groundfloor said that her toilet was dangerously filling up...I looked in the cellar via a checking hole in the pipe and even after trying to  remove the blocking via sucking in the toilet with a rubber cup no water came out in the checking hole. I tried via that checking hole with a flexible plastic stick but not possible to remove the blocking...in the meantime the student's toliet was overflowing in her bathroom...I opened the chesspit to poor the liquid of the toilet overthere and saw at the surface of the dung a lot of hearing sticks...that would together with the toilet paper be the cause of the blockage...in the meantime closed the water supply of the upper appartements and let the student warn the upper occupants that they couldn't let go the remaining content of their toilet water...while I couldn't remove the blockage I removed the toilet on the groundfloor and tried with the plastic flexible to perforate the blocking...even testing with the hand in the pipe of 10 centimeter (4 inch)...and then that stupid Brussels woman from above did her "visit" to the toilet and pulled the handle evacuating some ten liters water together wiht the "visit"...and it came all down in my hands on the groundfloor...the female student got nearly hysterically...Lucky that at the end I could perforate the blockage...otherwise to find some specialized firm the next day would have cost me a fortune...when I was after the happy end complaining to the Brussels lady from above the only thing she said was "désolée" I did it without thinking...

Kind regards, your companian (compagnon), Paul.

Oh yes Paul if it isn't high rooves it's blocked sewage pipes! There are some things I can do but would rather not .... but then I see how much specialist firms charge and I think, no I'll do it myself.

A couple of years ago I had a elderly couple staying here ... they were rather fussy. The first thing she did on being shown their room was run a critical finger along the headboard of the bed to check for dust. The next morning she came down saying the electric kettle in the room was dirty. I looked and there was a little bit of calcium deposit at the bottom, which I just rinsed out and gave back to her. At breakfast she complained their were crumbs in her cup ... they were last down and others had been before her ... obviously someone, helping themselves to a croissant, had accidentally dropped a morsel.

But having made their coffee I then left them to have their breakfast in peace ... as I urgently needed to deal with a blocked sewage pipe that was backing up "liquid" and overflowing into the cellar. After ten minutes or so I popped back upstairs to check they were alright, and had enough coffee, bread, croissants ... and she immediately had yet some other demand. Although I had washed my hands I had to remember to pass things to her with my left hand, rather than my right hand that had just been grovelling around in the pipe. On reflection I wonder why I bothered to be so careful!

Gil wrote:

Beware!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/2011/01/calculating_the_height_of_loxley_hall.html

Yes even Gallileo, without the benefit of calculus, had successfully worked out that  s = ½ g t ²

There's an old cavers' joke: What's the difference between falling down a shaft of 5 metres and one of 50 metres?
One you go "crash, woahhh!"   .............. the other you go "wooooaaaaaaaarrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhh!, crash"

But more seriously, with all the hoohah recently about a supposed buried train-load of Nazi gold hidden somewhere around
Ksiaz castle in Poland, the only thing I could think of in relation to the castle was, "however did they repair the roof when a tile slipped?". It's not so much the height but the steep pitch of some of the rooves.



PS: Is rooves the plural of roof? ... I feel it should be, but it looks wrong, and frankly I'm not at all confident of my English spelling anymore. So I apologise if it's not correct.

She was obviously a Harold - the boss at a firm I worked for was never satisfied until he had found a flaw in a program, so we rapidly learned to put an obvious error (US date format, badly spelled field descriptor or similar) for him to find - and whenever asked for a report including a profit figure, to program in an ability to switch from that to contribution. It kept him happy, and saved us a load of grief changing the program - we used an external input switch to run the "corrected" version a couple of hours after his "discovery" of the error.

The  last  few  days when  I've moved from Y---o  just the  website  into my emails a red  strike-through  has appeared  through the https part  of the  website  address.  I've tried to contact them  though haven't heard in reply. Want my emails  to be secure so may have to change service provider.

When Chrome displays a strike through the https portion of a URL displayed in red it is because it cannot resolve the certificate demanded of the site. This can be evidence that you have strayed into an "impersonation" site, but it is far more likely to be due to rather more mundane reasons - typical ones being that the site owners are issuing redundant certificates, time zone differentials are preventing new certificates from being verified, or maybe even just that the certificate you present from your own browser cache is now no longer the one the site wishes to see.

If you delete your cookies and cache in the browser and try again this sometimes clears the issue. On the other hand if you are satisfied the site is genuinely the one you are trying to access then you can either carry on and use it (nearly always safe) or wait a day or so before trying again in case it was a simple synchronisation issue.

Thanks for the explanation, Nordmann.  In the early days of computers in offices - the early desktops not mainframes - 30 years give or take a bit I could cotton on to computers at work reasonably easily (just as well as I was a "temp" and there were loads of different computers nearly all having a different word processing system, though admittedly most of them ran on DOS.  Nowadays although many computers run Microsoft Office on the Windows system I envy the younger generation who seem to imbibe computer savviness with their mothers' milk.

Dare I mention this here?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/22/cinema-chains-ban-advert-featuring-lords-prayer


Sort of Church of England meets Don Draper and it all goes terribly wrong.

Temperance wrote:

Dare I mention this here?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/22/cinema-chains-ban-advert-featuring-lords-prayer


Sort of Church of England meets Don Draper and it all goes terribly wrong.

Richard Dawkins commented, "My immediate response was to tweet that it was a violation of freedom of speech. But I deleted it when respondents convinced me that it was a matter of commercial judgment on the part of the cinemas, not so much a free speech issue. I still strongly object to suppressing the ads on the grounds that they might ‘offend’ people. If anybody is ‘offended’ by something so trivial as a prayer, they deserve to be offended."

At at the end of the day it's a commercial decision by the cinema chains who have a stated company policy not to allow religious or political advertising. Their company, their screens, their premises, and their rules. Simple as that. Mind you the whole brouhaha has given the Church of England loads of advertising ... for free!

What should have bewildered the CoE was why the company who must have charged them loads of dosh to produce the ad either didn't check the cinema's policies regarding religious content in advertising first or if they did, just went ahead anyway.
Naughty Don!

ferval wrote:

What should have bewildered the CoE was why the company who must have charged them loads of dosh to produce the ad either didn't check the cinema's policies regarding religious content in advertising first or if they did, just went ahead anyway.
Naughty Don!

.... especially seeing that religious advertising is already banned by law from TV and, though not specifically banned, has never been accepted in UK cinemas for many decades. So you'd have thought the C of E might have checked the terms and conditions or maybe got something in writing. ...

Or were they, yet again, always aiming to play the the poor-victimised-christian approach ... whilst similtaneously trying to claim that as a religion they should be an exception and outside of the law? Because that's actually what the C of E are trying now.

Meles meles wrote:

Richard Dawkins commented, "My immediate response was to tweet that it was a violation of freedom of speech. But I deleted it when respondents convinced me that it was a matter of commercial judgment on the part of the cinemas, not so much a free speech issue. I still strongly object to suppressing the ads on the grounds that they might ‘offend’ people. If anybody is ‘offended’ by something so trivial as a prayer, they deserve to be offended!."

Dear Richard - just as one thinks he's actually being quite nice, one then realises that there is always a witty little sting in his tail which leaves one spluttering with impotent rage.
Reminds me of someone else I know around here.

But to be serious...

MM wrote:

Or were they, yet again, always aiming to play the the poor-victimised-christian approach ... whilst similtaneously trying to claim that as a religion they should be an exception and outside of the law? Because that's actually what the C of E are trying now.

When I first read that I thought it was nonsense, but on reflection I must admit you could have a point. This whole débacle could actually be a cunning marketing ploy by the people who are now gradually taking over the Church of England - the Holy Trinity Brompton crowd of ardent young evangelists.The HTB approach has been hugely successful in the capital and is now spreading to the provinces. The folk from this branch of the C of E (the present Archbishop of Canterbury used to be one of their number) are without doubt very sincere, but it seems to be true that many of them are young professionals - savvy, successful and well-heeled - ambitious young people who know all about the mysteries of advertising, marketing and the corporate world generally. The film for the ad is extremely clever and well-made - rather nice, actually - and, since all the publicity surrounding the ban, has been viewed by several million viewers now. Could all this actually have been a very, very clever strategy that has actually achieved its objectives?

Maybe, maybe not - but I remain very uneasy about the whole thing: should any religion, especially Christianity, need to advertise? I suppose you could argue that this is in the tradition of the early evangelists, very successful and clever men who managed to turn an obscure Jewish cult into a hugely successful religion that spread throughout the Roman Empire. But was that what was originally intended by its obscure, very poor, actually rather unsuccessful, Jewish founder?

I don't know - and here I am wittering on about religion again. But I really am uncomfortable with this whole approach: we'll be having a "Selling a Religon" task on The Apprentice next. I wonder who would have got fired in the old days - that poor old Saint James, I suppose, whose little epistle (tucked away in the NT after all the Saint Paul stuff) Martin Luther hated so much. Saint Paul himself wasn't keen on James, either. James was the brother of Jesus of Nazareth, but his opinions didn't count for much, apparently, in the first century or later.

But then I'm just an old fuddy-duddy - I do know that - and I also know I belong to a dying breed: the Church of England of Cranmer, the King James's Bible scholars and dear old John Betjeman is very nearly gone now - if, indeed, it ever existed except in my imagination. I'm reminded of the Greek actor at the beginning of I, Claudius, who, speaking of the Greek theatre, told Augustus:  "The Greek theatre never was what it used to be, you know."

That last line was just me being cynical ... as I really couldn't believe they had gone ahead and made the ad without getting full written agreement from the cinema company ... combined with Welbly, when the ad' was declined, bleating on about how the poor hard done by C of E should be a special case. Actually the particular advert business may be a bit more involved as it now  seems that the 'terms & conditions' have only recently been posted on-line. I suspect the question had never previously come up in earnest and so they'd never actually formailsed their terms until the C of E ad' hoved into view. Either way as I understand it nothing was formally agreed between the cinema comp, and the advertising agency or C of E. But I doubt anyone's head will roll.

I must admit that I too can't see why any church would advertise ... advertise to say that they exist and be contacted if needed certainly, but advertising to try and get more bums on pews seems a bit distastful. Ultimately it would seem that the cinemas do not want a fairly turgid religious advert spoiling their great popcorn-advertising opportunities, principally as they actually sell popcorn and want to boost these sales, rather than having people nipping out for a quick prayer.

PS: The Holy Trinity Brompton crowd ... wasn't Tony Blair one of their lot?

Meles meles wrote:

PS: The Holy Trinity Brompton crowd ... wasn't Tony Blair one of their lot?

Blair's a Catholic - but were he C of E, I'm sure the HTB would be right up his street. I am trying very hard not to be cynical.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/nov/10/justin-welby-archbishop-canterbury-holy-trinity-brompton

I like Richard Coles's understated irony in the following quotation from the Guardian article.

HTB has successfully used business language and describes its approach to belief as 'task-orientated'. And that is how it sidelines anything it sees as getting in the way of promoting the core Christian message. So while most of us assume that it's on the conservative side on questions such as women bishops and homosexuality, it has never really declared itself in these debates because it regards them as sidelines.

There is another aspect of the HTB approach that may hamper it when applied on a more diverse canvas. Though it has spread out from this particular church in one of the swankiest postcodes in London to parishes in more deprived boroughs, the impression remains that it is best suited to the young and well-heeled. "They are very nice, and very warm," says Coles, "and very much young gentlemen and ladies. This is for the officer class, somewhere they can meet. If you aren't a chino-wearing executive, you may not quite cut the mustard."

I've got to be honest - some of the details in the article make me cringe. I met a large group of HTB young folk recently - they had come up from London for a wedding here in Devon. They are very ardent, very sincere - and utterly sure of themselves. Their utter certainty about everything terrifies me. But the future belongs to them.

Doh! Yes course I forgot the Blairs are catholics ... actually I was getting confused as I think their children went to the Brompton Oratory school (which is RC). My very high camp, high Anglican cousin occasionally indulges himself in a bit of catholic mass at the Brompton Oratory as he says they do all the dressing up and smells and bells so much better than the new C of E. I'm not sure he'd fit in with the HTB crowd if they're all so terribly earnest and evangelical ... he likes his cantata's and thuribles too much. He also likes his fine wines and five course meals which is why he always spends Christmas at some or other monastic retreat. I don't think he's very evangelical ... probably too afraid of others muscling in on the fine dining to be had at the abbot's table.

Meles meles wrote:

My very high camp, high Anglican cousin occasionally indulges himself in a bit of catholic mass at the Brompton Oratory as he says they do all the dressing up and smells and bells so much better than the new C of E. I'm not sure he'd fit in with the HTB crowd if they're all so terribly earnest and evangelical ... he likes his cantata's and thuribles too much. He also likes his fine wines and five course meals which is why he always spends Christmas at some or other monastic retreat. I don't think he's very evangelical ... probably too afraid of others muscling in on the fine dining to be had at the abbot's table.

I have a very high camp, high Anglican friend whom I love dearly because of all his foibles including his thuribles and such. He also likes fine wines and good food. But he's a good man and very kind and he has a great sense of humour which includes laughing at himself and his own nonsense. He is also very learned, but 'umble about his scholarship. If he wasn't gay, I'd marry him.

We are all hypocrites in our own way - I do realise that, MM. I suppose I shouldn't really criticise the HTB lot. But they never laugh at themselves and they believe that they and the Bible are inerrant. That bugs me. But no more! That way madness and Res Hissy discord lies! I see there are some new Moggy posts. Will take a look there and shut up about religion. (Déjà vu, anyone - or should that be déjà entendu?)

Whist I was slightly mocking my cousin he is frankly a lot easier to get on with than someone from the HTB crowd who might continually be trying to evangelise me, talking about giving my faith "an MOT", or wanting to "put the fun" into fundamental etc. Franky he never speaks about his religion other than  to mention what he's doing for Christmas or how good the choir was at such and such cathedral. He likes the liturgy, the ritual, the music, the old buildings ... who am I to criticise as, bar the belief bit, I like them too. Hypocrite? Moi?

Meles meles wrote:

My very high camp, high Anglican cousin occasionally indulges himself in a bit of catholic mass at the Brompton Oratory as he says they do all the dressing up and smells and bells so much better than the new C of E.

Funnily enough that seems to be an exact reversal of the situation a few decades back. Back in the 1970s or 80s there was a British television documentary visiting a (Roman) catholic monastery in England. While talking to one of the older priests, the television presenter said that he (the presenter) often found it difficult when visiting certain parish churches to tell whether the service taking place was (Anglo) catholic or (Roman) catholic.

"No difficulty at all!" replied the priest "You can always tell the difference". And then with a sigh added "The high Anglicans do things properly".

And now the government has got involved.

Baroness Williams said the Government wholeheartedly supported faith institutions in this country.

She added: “The Government greatly values the vital role religious individuals and organisations have in our society and the part they play in national life and public service.

“We also value the vital role of the Church of England, indeed many Christian organisations and individual Christians have in our society and the part that they play national life inspiring a great number of people to get involved in public service and providing help to those in need.”  
http://www.newsunited.com/wmndavidwells-published-cinema-news/19927381/

The old saying is that the CoE is the Tory party at prayer and that HTB crowd sound exactly like the modern manifestation of that. There emanates from the description that gloss of privilege and aura of entitlement that surrounds the current bunch; I'm sure Dave and George, were they to see any electoral benefit to them, would be along there with the rest of them.

It's all so very 'London', the Episcopal Church in Scotland seem a decent group, socially very liberal, and I have a lot of time for Richard Holloway probably the only
modern Scottish Episcopalian to impinge to any extent on public consciousness. largely because of his scepticism/agnosticism.

I think you, Temp, might agree with one of his less controversial statements;

“My problem was not so much with God,” he writes, “as with increasing disbelief in religion’s claim to possess precise information about his opinions, including his sexual and gender preferences.”

https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/2795/the-passion-of-the-bishop

When it mentioned 'Baroness Williams' there ferv, I at first thought that it referred to Shirley. But then remembered that the ConDem coalition is no more. Apparently it refers to Susan Williams who is under-secretary for local government. She was born in County Cork and grew up in Yorkshire so doesn't really seem to fit with the 'London' tag.

ferval wrote:

I think you, Temp, might agree with one of 11.26.2015 controversial statements;

“My problem was not so much with God,” he writes, “as with increasing disbelief in religion’s claim to possess precise information about his opinions, including his sexual and gender preferences.”

Oh, I do indeed agree with that! The man sounds like a thoroughly good (Scottish) egg to me.

Vizzer wrote:

 And then with a sigh added: "The high Anglicans do things properly".

Very true - although some of them have been caught ironing the altar linen the wrong way and then compounding their error by laughing about it.   

Seriously, ferval -thank you for that link. I like the sound of Holloway very much and I shall get his book.

Holloway, at times, seems as doubtful of the claims of religion and as critical of the doctrines of Anglicanism as a Dawkins, but still, he insists, he’s not an atheist. He rejects the certainty the word implies, and instead calls himself a “Christian Agnostic”.

That's me, too - I'm glad I'm not the only one. You do get some funny looks though if you admit to being such an odd thing; and poor old Holloway obviously got more than funny looks for being so honest. Fancy being "denounced from the pulpit by the Archbishop of Canterbury himself". How exciting.

I've only been denounced publically by the Ladies' Knitting/Bible Study Circle - and I can live with that.


Holloway, a working-class boy from a small town in the west of Scotland called, incongruously, Alexandria, came to religion not through the conventional path of familial indoctrination – his father was not a believer, his mother joined the church when he did – but through a willed act of romantic affiliation. He was, he tells me over the phone from Edinburgh, a boy with romantic yearnings, and twin obsessions: hill walking in the beautiful Vale of Leven and the movies, with their “great heroic figures on a quest to liberate the oppressed or find meaning. I think the combination of these things had me searching for something which was in a sense always disappearing round the corner ahead of me,” he says. Stumbling upon an Anglo-Catholic church on the edge of town, “somehow the passions coalesced in that place, I fell in love with the aesthetic of religion, the light, the incense, the mystery of it.” With the intervening years providing perspective he can see that it was always this ineffable something, the elusive God, with which he was infatuated. “The God idea itself is the ultimate lure for the romantic, because you never get it satisfied, it is a permanent unsatisfiable quest” – a quest for which religion itself is but a substitute: “the methadone of the divine addict”.

Oh, heck -  could be worse, I suppose: "the methadone of the divine addict"?  

I'm so pleased to have introduced you the ex-bish, he turns up quite a lot on TV and radio programmes and lectures etc up here and talks a lot of sense.
I wonder if he did really 'chuck his mitre in the Thames'? I do hope so.

Dammit! I put two date loaves in the oven and now I've realised I didn't put in the eggs. Ah well, I'll have two very large date scones.

You have my sympathy as that's the sort of thing I do, along with puttting a casserole in the oven to be cooked long and slow, nodding off, and then seven hours later finding that my carbonade is carbonised.

Well, that's turned out very oddly indeed, like a date and walnut soda bread but with butter and water instead of buttermilk and cooked at too low a temperature so really crispy outside and damp inside. Later I will sample a slice slabbered in butter and see what it tastes like. If it's vile, the birds will get a feast.

Airline we are using  in Spring allows 40kg of baggage weight each there and 30kg return. ?

Solution : Book a return trip FROM there.

The return flight may be a smaller plane. Happened to me last time I went down to Oz, smaller plane going that required a fuel stop in Bangkok. But a far larger plane coming back that flew the 14hr Sydney/Dubai hike straight. I can't remember if the baggage allowance was extra though.

Or perhaps, P, your destination is known for its fine cuisine, and so the airlines expect that visitors will have piled on a few pounds during their stay ... leaving less space/weight for their luggage.