Downhill Struggle

Disasters

2011-09-20T19:50:00.000+01:00

Manus, a friend on the web, has very kindly, and at great expense no doubt, sent me a book about a topic that interests us both – how can we square the notion of God and “natural” disasters?

The least I can do is to read it, which I have, and offer my opinions on it.

There are good and bad things about “The Doors of the Sea.” Good; the title, and the length – short, barely a hundred pages.

Bad; no index, and the small but significant fact that it signally fails to answer the question on the cover, “Where Was God in the Tsunami?”

Although there are only some 23,000 words in “Doors” if the author, David Bentley Hart, was going to dodge addressing this issue directly, he had to find some other way of filling up even a little book like this.

Here's what he does. First, he gives a reasonable account of what happened in 2004 in Indonesia. Then, he sets up a fine big straw man, the atheist who says, “The Tsunami proves that God doesn't exist.” Then kicks him over. Easy!

Then, reasonably enough, he goes on to cite Voltaire and his poem on the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755. He seems respectful of the work, although, pausing for a moment to inform us that, Voltaire's “ ...verse lacks the epigrammatic and syntactic brilliance of Pope's, of course..”

Well, of course, but what does that have to do with “Where Was God in the Tsunami?”

Then inexplicably, he produces Ivan Karamazof and his musings on the wickedness of human beings. Even Hart can see this is a stretch, for he has to tell us, “Admittedly, Ivan does not much concern himself with the randomness of natural calamity as Voltaire does, the evils Ivan recounts are not of impersonal nature but of men...”
So it's utterly beside the point. And what has any of it got to do with “Where Was God in the Tsunami?”

Nevertheless he goes on for several more pages on Ivan. Go figure. In fact, he ends the chapter thus: “Voltaire sees only the terrible truth that the history of suffering and death is not morally intelligible. Dostoyevsky sees – and this bespeaks both his moral genius and his irreducibly Christian view of morality – that it would be far more terrible if it were.” To which we can only paraphrase Tweedledum, (or was that Tweedledee?) “But it isn't, so it ain't.”

Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps Hart actually does get round to answering his own question, and I am just too dim to figure it out.
Perhaps Manus, who has doubtless read the book, can put me right. We shall see.

Anyway, that'll do for one day. “Naught but a blockhead ever wrote, but for money.”
Ain't that a fact.

Ambition

2011-06-20T06:00:00.021+01:00

It strikes Toad (that's me) that he should limit his blog ambitions. Perhaps one entry a month is within his infinitely tiny capabilities.
He sees he hasn't wrote a line since May 6th. Idle Toad.

So, an update. This is a good time to essay this, as Reb is this very day, leaving Medina de Campo with her chums on route for Toro. On a Camino, in fact. This leaves Toad alone, save for the company of the company of the animals, who are all as fit as fleas. How fit their fleas are, is harder to say.

Harry, the new dog is doing just fine. Noble, loyal, kindly. Every ten year old boy should be issued with a clone of him on that birthday. Bit sexist that - make it every ten year old child. There.

The main news item - indeed the only one - during the blog lacuna was, of course, Hugh Heffner's fiancee deciding not to marry the naughty old publisher.
Toad thinks she was wise, as he feels the age difference might well have proved too great.

Big excitement after writing the above. While walking the dogs I saw what looked like a dark green belt stretched across the trail, so I poked it with my stick. Of course it turned out to be a snake, which took off sharpish, chased by frantic dogs, who were unsuccessful. Still, a snake sighting is satisfying.

This may well do for the day. We shall see.

Laden down

2011-05-06T06:47:00.015+01:00

On September 11, 2001, a friend of mine was in the city of Cuenca in Ecuador. When images of the collapsing twin towers in Manhattan were seen on TV, an impromptu fiesta broke out. All work stopped, much strong drink was taken and each of the innumerable re-runs of mayhem was heartily cheered.
This was not because the people of Cuenca were notably pro Osama bin Laden. But they were, said my friend, clearly and notably anti-American. I do not know why this should be. No doubt they had their reasons.
The death of bin Laden reminded me of this ugly little story. What did they do in Cuenca when that news came through, I mused? Probably not what many in the United States did: Whooped, Yee-Harred, back-slapped, waved Old Glory and sang “God Bless America.”
It's all over! We've won World War Three! Everything will be all right now! All that tiresome nonsense of airport security – the taking off of shoes and the confiscation of our hair gels - can be scrapped, the dollar will resume its rightful place as the King of Currencies, and Bill Gates will resume his position as the richest man in the world. It will be a special relief to Barack Obama, to know that now there is slightly less chance of Osama being elected President instead of him by a careless miss-reading of the ballot forms.
Best of all, we no longer have to look fearfully under the bed each night!
But, sadly, it was not to be so simple. Naturally, the first reaction of the White House was to issue a pack of lies: bin Laden was armed, blazing away, and using his wife as a human shield. This was quickly replaced with a different, rather less glorious version in which the Evil One was unarmed and not cowering behind his woman.
Is the second version true? Very possibly, because it seems that that whole incident was videoed by the American troops wearing little cameras on their helmets. This led to an interesting photograph of the Obama 'team' huddled over computer screens, watching the grisly drama unfold before their very eyes. Among those present was Vice President Biden, a devout Catholic (why are only Catholics described as 'devout?' Why do we never read of a devout Jew?) who was described as clutching a string of Rosary beads. One can only speculate if watching a man murdered, presumably with his full approval, provoked any subtle moral issues between the Biden ears.
Unfortunately, had it not been for all this Watching And Recording History In The Making caper, the first pack of lies would have served perfectly nicely.
Also, the whole boiling has instantly and inevitably spawned a bucketful of conspiracy stories. One clear reason for this is the absence of any photographic evidence of Osama's body. Too unsightly, it seems. This in a nation where unretouched pictures of a 'live' Donald Trump are readily available, and can be seen by small children.
So, very likely a majority of the simple folk of Cuenca, Ecuador will form the opinion that bin Laden is not really dead.
How soon before the first sighting of the Satanic Saudi driving a New York cab, with a fake Hawaiian birth certificate on the dashboard?

Very Spanish Sunday

2011-04-11T06:08:00.023+01:00

An extraordinarily Spanish sort of day yesterday.

First, it was warm and sunny, which helps. At 11.45 to Mass as usual, accompanied by two young pilgrims who are staying with us, Rachel and Jean. Mass was enlivend by Don Santiago getting to the consecration only to find he had left the chalice in the vestuary. We all had a smile, including him.

Then to the Ayuntamiento for wine, vermouth, shrimps and strawberries (the last provided by us). The strawbs had blueberries in them - arandanos in Spanish, which puzzled the locals, who don't care much for being puzzled, but no harm was done.

Then there was a long Spanish bickering contest at the table about certain people not doing their bit as far as local politics and village life is concerned.
Reb promised to become the Mayor as soon as possible.

Then home for a nap, then back at four for chocolate cake, flan and Champagne for the April birthdays, of which there are several.

Then off at five to Sahagun to hear the Pasos, the big Passion Week floats, being auctioned off. People bid large sums of money for the right to carry them around. This odd blend of religion and lucre is intensely Spanish.
Much shouting, badinage and applause.

Reb was conducted to a front row seat by our pal the local vet, and so I strolled up to the Deportivo Bar. The Sunday bullfight was on the TV, utterly ignored by the Mus players. I watched two 'fights' (not the right word at all). The first was a shambles by a torero who was plainly too scared to do it right. I don't blame him being scared, but that being the case, he should not have gone into the ring in the first place.
Nevertheless, after poking his sword from a safe distance a couple of times roughly into the bull's neck, he managed to bleed the unfortunate and noble beast to death, for which he was given a standing ovation.
The second matador was an oaf named after 'El Cordobes,' the man generally regarded as vulgarising the Corrida almost beyond repair in the 1960's.
El Cordobes 2 was brave enough, and skillful. And, like his namesake, he was also utterly flashy and tasteless, constantly jumping up and down and flinging himself into a kneeling position. He received, not only a standing ovation, but two ears as well.
Then back in Sahagun, there was a procession of marching bands, playing the weird braying and whining music, backed by dozens of drums, that we know from the Godfather movies. Some of the uniforms resembled what one might expect a Serbian postman, in 1920, to wear, or possibly a Bosnian station master in 1890.

We are going to follow Holy Week closely this year. But no pointy hoods for us. So far.

April Foolin'

2011-04-01T08:00:00.011+01:00

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This being April the first, and the Day of Saint Crossan's sacred toenail, Toad fondly remembers this date in the year 1990. It was his first April Fool's Day in Toledo, Ohio, and he decided to treat the readers of The Blade to 'a bit of fun.'

To achieve this he called on his new friend Homer. It must have been Homer's idea - a brilliant one, naturally - to run a story saying that, in order to improve the somewhat unhappy reputation, (thanks, among others, to the late John Denver) of the city - the Movers and Shakers thereof had decided the place needed a new name. New name, new beginning.

And the the new name was to be Fallen Timbers. There are historical reasons for this, too utterly obscure and tedious to be gone into here.

So, the story asserting this was duly run, at the top of Page One, with Homer's byline on it.
Naturally, Toad, (Patrick, as he was then) saw no reason to inform the Publisher, John Block, of his actions.

The result was, very early that morning, Homer got a rather irrascible call from John, asking why he had not been appraised to this earth-shattering bit of news in advance.

Homer pointed out the last paragraph in which he had inserted a sly reference to April 1st, but John was not wholly mollified. Far from it. "You shouldn't have let him do it, he told Homer."
"But he's the managing Editor," said Homer

Patrick, as usual, escaped unscathed.

Nice meeting

2011-03-26T08:35:00.008+01:00

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Well, Toad promised he would report on the meeting of the aged near Saldaña yesterday.

Not much to report, though. Reb, myself and a lady who had lived in Barcelona virtually all her life, having left Palençia at seven, I think, and recently returned, did most of the talking, which she clearly enjoyed, sat in a row facing about seventy locals with about ninety-five walking sticks between them. Remarkable number of men, considering. Roughly half, I'd say.

The lady from Cataluña reckoned that Palençia was nice, the people here were nice, the quality of life here was nice, the tranquillity here was nice. In fact, everything here was nice. We both agreed. The audience agreed, and rattled their sticks to show it.
We all also agreed that Barcelona and London and Pittsburgh are not as nice. Unless you are under about seventy.

We both managed to handle the language reasonably well, or so the audience assured us. Probably just being nice.

This orgy of niceness took about two hours. Then Reb and I took off to Sahagun for gin and tonics, as soon as was decent.
The drinks were nice.

SPEAK UP

2011-03-24T07:30:00.008+01:00

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Yesterday, to a great barking and hysteria from the dogs, Miraglos, Leandra and a lady from the local Junta arrived.

As a result, tomorrow Reb and I are going to a village near Saldaña to give a sort of presentation, if I understand rightly, about being foreigners living in Castilla y Leon.

If I understand wrongly, it might be about almost anything - beekeeping, quantum theory or the Albigensian Heresy - things of which I at least, know nothing.
So, we will go, armed with a stout dictionary and do our best.

The trouble is, that despite living in Moratinos for four or so years now, we spend virtually all day speaking English to one another, and our Spanish does not get much of an airing. I will probably explain this to the audience, if I am capable, and maybe try to explain some of the oddities of the English language to them.
If any of them are considering learning English, which I doubt, because they will probably all be over 70, and like me, somewhat set in their ways - this will swiftly put them off the notion forever.

Anyway, there will be a further blog re this as soon as possible, as it promises to be nightmarish fun.

Interesting Times

2011-03-21T07:21:00.019+01:00

Toad is gamely trying to meet his target of a blog a day during Lent. Is already far behind of course, but plodding on.
Yesterday, Sunday, was a milestone in Moratinos life. Bruno, the Italian Hospitalero, threw a big lunch for the village. His wife, an imposing lady, was there to help. Reb and I had were aware that he was going to do this, but we thought it would be at four p.m. I had already made a tortilla for the post Mass vermouth session in the town hall, and olives and pork scratchings and all sorts were being eaten beforehand. Then we all toddled off to the new Albergue to eat a seven-course Italian feast, including two kinds of pasta and God knows what all else. It was excellent. Afterwards, stuffed like Strasbourg Geese, Reb and I went home and slept far too long.
If Bruno plans to treat the pilgs like this, he will be bankrupt in a week. Of course he will not.

But places for pilgs within a couple of miles of our house have mushroomed in the last few years. When we first came here there was an Albergue in Terradillos and one in San Nicolas. Now there are two in Terradillos, one in Moratinos, with a hotel on the way, and another one due to open soon in San Nicolas, built and to be run by our chums at the Bar Barrunta.
Toad wonders if they can all survive, let alone thrive.

We both suspect that this will be a bumper year for the number of pilgs. We also suspect that a great many of them, due to not having a job, but with plenty of time on their hands, will have little, if any, money.
From time to time we get people deliberately doing the Camino with no money. We had one recently. A nice young French Canadian, dressed in top of the line walking gear. He seemed to be doing it on charity as a sort of experiment.

It is officially Spring here now. Sun blazing, buds budding, dogs dozing, Bob warbling, more pilgs passing.

We got the big table out in the yard and oiled it. Looks good.

AIN'T EDUCATION GRAND?

2011-03-19T15:25:00.009+01:00

This is Rosie, a wonderful little girl, who is probably as smart as the other three dogs put together, and certainly the only interesting item on today's blog.

Toad is reading a book first published in 1964, called 'Essays of a Humanist.' It is by Julian Huxley, brother of Aldous, grandson of Thomas Henry. An outstanding egghead in a family of outstanding eggheads.
What strikes Toad most though, is the blatant optimism. Surely, by 1964, nobody thought things were ever going to be all right from then on?
Julian Huxley was an optimist. He thought that, as we got older, as we got to know more scientific stuff, we would evolve into being nicer, and wiser and kinder.
How wrong could he be? Oh well.
One of the chapters is called 'Education and Humanism.' In it, Huxley, quotes another egghead, Prof. Elvin, who thought that, “A tribal boy's education may be a better preparation for life in a tribal society than is our education for life in our vaunted technological society.”

Well, Doh! Stating the bleeding obvious, was, no doubt, any reader's first impulse. All education is, in some form, tribal. Nobody can dispute that. It works by carrying on traditions. Can be facts, can also be total prejudices.

And there can be problems. Toad has just emerged from a slight balls-up on the Catholic site he keeps his beady eye on. One of the contributors, (Toad 'misremembered' which one) some weeks ago, bemoaned the fact that she had - at massive expense, no doubt - decided that her son would not get his head stuffed with the usual secular, run-of-the mill, nonsense. Instead she opted for top-of-the-line Catholic nonsense, at Downside Abbey, no less - the Catholic version of Eton, if such a scary concept could exist.
To her understandable horror and chagrin, the school duly stuffed the lad's head with nonsense as ordered, but entirely the wrong kind!
They stuffed him full of atheist, nihilist, nonsense!
Infinitely more pernicious than any other kind of nonsense!
When Toad heard this originally, he was amused, but now he is sympathetic, and thinks that the lady in question has grounds for suing the venerable institution. We are entitled to the nonsense we pay for and expect!
Once a head is stuffed with any kind of nonsense, substitution is by no means an easy task. One can only wait and hope that nature will take its course and in due time the bad nonsense will work its inevitable way through the system and be evacuated, freeing up a space for more acceptable nonsense.
In the meantime, the lawyers can roll up their sleeves and start charging...

God's Little Jest

2011-03-15T05:59:00.009+01:00

"Did you feel the ground shift a bit just then, Eve? I shouldn't eat that Cox's Pippin if I were you. A snake just told me it's been genetically modified."

(The apple, that is, not the snake.)

Toad is still ruminating on the events in Japan. Who isnt?

It strikes him that God showed a keen sense of humour by adding tectonic plates to His creation and then calling it "The Firmament."

Were there earthquakes and tectonic shifts in the Garden of Eden, he wonders? If not, it all seems a bit like overkill for eating a measly little apple.

Pilgrim's progress

2011-03-14T18:39:00.005+01:00

Back in a soggy Moratinos after a brief stagger along the Camino between Astorga and Ponferrada. No more than about 34-odd miles in an afternoon, a full day and a morning. But Toad did manage to get lost up a mountain outside Molinaseca, which was exciting.
By the time he had scrambled down a virtual precipice, his little green toad legs had turned to jelly.

But most of it was a good experience. Toad decided to do this because a great friend of his was gravely ill. On the second day, more or less as Toad was musing on the eternal verities at the Cruz de Ferro, his friend died, it seems.

This got Toad brooding on souls. And it struck him that that was what Lewis Carroll was about when he has the Cheshire Cat fade away - leaving only a disembodied grin, a soul, in fact.
That's what happens to us all. We fade away. Maybe we leave a grin, maybe not.

There must be an awful lot of disembodied grins in Japan right now.

Toad did look in at Manjarin, but Tomas was not there. Not even his grin, as far as Toad could see. Probably off somewhere seeking the Grail, or beheading someone with his mystical sword.

Watching the footage from Japan in various bars, it struck Toad that it will be futile to make any more 'disaster' movies. The whole planet is a disaster movie these days. Probably always was, but now we can be sure that every act of God (and there are plenty) will be captured on video and served up piping hot within minutes.

Ain't life grand?

And Toad got to wondering if there were earthquakes in the Garden of Eden. If not, it seems a bit of an extreme reaction to eating a pokey little apple.

But, we must suppose God knows what He's doing.

Belay that!

2011-03-10T19:45:00.003+01:00

Harry the new dog. He is a caballero. That's not his breed, it's his character.

Although Toad has promised to try to write a blog every day through Lent, he might well have problems doing so for the next few days.
One of his closest friends is not at all well and Toad is going to walk a bit of the Camino with him in mind.
It can't do his friend any harm, and the worst it can do to Toad is kill him. Or make him stronger.

He will get the train to Astorga and walk to Ponferrada if he can. It should take three days. Three days without dogs is a lot for Toad. For light relief and bedtime reading, he will take The Unquiet Grave, by Cyril Connolly.
Toad enjoys Cyril's moaning, self-flagellating and posturing, but dosn't expect anyone else to.

Giving It Up and Getting it On For Lent

2011-03-10T07:17:00.015+01:00

Still life with dogs.

Toad, for that is my pen name, has decided to give up not blogging for Lent. As he has said before, the main obstacle to his blogging, is a little-known medical condition which doctors refer to as, 'idleness.'
However, he will at least try to knuckle down, subdue his disability, and produce a few words a day between now and Easter, with the ash still fresh on his forehead.

It will be largely boring, but will be relieved by nice dog pictures from time to time.

Why 'Toad'? It is because he is a regular on a website frequented by Catholics of the old-fashioned stripe that Toad remembers from his childhood.
His comments there are often a form of revenge.

But anyway, at one time some crazed Christian declared that what I, (under my other nom de plume(!) of Moratinos), had written was 'toadspittle.' So entranced was I that I adopted it as my new 'atavar', or whatever it's called. It has now become my persona.

Toad writes in the third person, 1: To distance himself fom his own preposterous comments, and 2: To avoid using 'I' every other word.

Toad, then, hopes this has cleared the matter up. But doubts it.

Among the topics that interest him will be God, dogs, blasphemy and the Cheltenham festival. We might also touch on the Alice books, South Wind by Norman Douglas, and 'The Unquiet Grave' by Cyril Connolly (two forgotten litery gems) and the chances of Spurs winning the Champions' League... But then, we might not.

Anyroadup, as they say in Leeds apparently, your contributions, by way of comment are welcome. As is violent verbal abuse.

Nostalgia attack

2010-12-27T08:34:00.003+01:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW7T-wVETs8

2010-12-26T08:04:00.000+01:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW7T-wVETs8

OLD MASTER

2010-12-20T08:19:00.015+01:00

Nothing to do with the entry below, but a nice, artitstick bit of 'filth' is always acceptable, I find. Symbolic, too, innit?

The painting above is not the work of my best friend, Mike Molloy. If I had a picture of one of his pictures I'd put that up instead.
It would be better than Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, who committed this one, but Mike steadfastly refuses to go in for soft porn. Dedicated, these artist chaps.
This blog entry is in praise of Mike, who will be 70 years old on Wednesday.

Interesting, that. People say, "Little Timmy is six years old," and so on, but when you are 70, 'old' is not a figure of speech. In a bit more than a month, I will, assuming I survive the holiday season, also reach that milestone.

Not that Mike allows himself time to be 'old.' Apart from being a successful painter, with exhibitions in gallerys in Bond Street and all, he has also written dozens of books and screenplays, and is regularly called on by newspapers and magazines to tell folks what's wrong with the world, and what's to be done about it. A respected and sought-after commentator in fact.

All this, after a glittering career in journalism, where he rose, like some hero of H.G.Wells or Arnold Bennett, from office boy to head of a mighty press empire, dragging me some way along in the process.
On the way, he was, for some years, the Editor of The Daily Mirror, when it was a paper one was proud to work for.
And he did all this on brains and ability. Apart from the Driving Test, he has never passed an exam in his life.

This is all very remarkable, but what, for me, is even more remarkable - is that, as far as I know, Mike does not have, and never has had, an enemy in the world. Being so good at everything you put your hand to usually has a way of pissing people off. Not so with Mike. Everybody likes him,including dogs. And dogs know.

True, Jeff Bernard used to get a bit snarky when in his cups, which was just about always, but in his rare sober moments spoke nothing but good of his boss and benefactor.
Mike will, doubtless not care much for this piece, being a modest, self-effacing kind of chap apaert from everything else, but it can't be helped, the world must be told.

And I will write no more on him until his 100th birthday.

Starring Lulu and François-Marie

2010-12-03T18:03:00.016+01:00

Whenever I see Greyhounds in the snow, I think of the Middle Ages. It conjures up those sumptuous tapestries of hunting scenes, caparisoned men on horseback, archers on foot, damsels, Unicorns, etched against the white.
This is Lulu in the part of Moratinos we call The Promised Land.

Because I really should blog something new, and don't seem to have anything much to say for myself as usual, I am turning the latest 'Struggle' over to a guest - Monsieur Arouet, a noted and notorious troublemaker.
He is talking about England some 250 years ago, to be sure, but it's still happily familiar...

" This is the country of sects. An Englishman, as a free man, goes to Heaven by whatever road he pleases.

Yet, though everyone here may serve God in his own fashion, their genuine religion - the one in which people make their fortune - is the sect of Episcopalians, called the Church of England, or preeminently The Church.

No one can hold office in England or in Ireland unless he is a faithful Anglican. This argument, in itself, a convincing proof, has converted so many nonconformists that today not a twentieth of the population lives outside the lap of the established Church.

The Anglican clergy has retained many of the Catholic ceremonies, particularly that of gathering in tithes with the most scrupulous attention. They also have the pious ambition of being the Masters.

Moreover, they work up in their flocks as much hold zeal against nonconformists as possible. This zeal was lively enough under the government of the Tories in the last years of Queen Anne, but it went no further than sometimes breaking the windows of heretical chapels; for the fury of the sects was over, in England, with the civil wars, and under Queen Anne nothing was left but the restless noises of a sea still heaving a long time after the storm.

With regard to morals, the Anglican clergy are better ordered than those of France, and this is the reason: all clergymen are brought up in Oxford University, or in Cambridge far from the corruption of the capital. They are not called to high station in the Church until very late, and at an age when men have no other passion but avarice, if their ambition goes unfed.

Positions of rank are here the reward of long service in the Church just as in the army; one does not see young fellows made bishops or colonels on leaving school. Besides, the priests are almost all married; the awkwardness they pick up in the university, and the fact that, socially, Englishmen have little to do with women, result in a bishop's ordinarily being forced to content himself with his own wife.

Clergymen go to the tavern sometimes, for custom allows it; if they get drunk they do so in a serious-minded way and with perfect propriety.

That indefinable being which is neither ecclesiastical nor secular—in a word, that which is called an Abbé is a species unknown in England. Clergymen here are all reserved, by temperament, and almost all pedantic.
When they learn that in France young men, who are known for their debauchery and who have been raised to the prelacy by the plots of women, make love in public, divert themselves with the composing of sentimental songs, entertain daily with long and exquisite supper parties, and go from there to beseech the light of the Holy Spirit, and boldly to call themselves the successors of the Apostles — then the English thank God they are Protestants.

But they are nasty heretics, fit to be burned to Hell and back, as Master François Rabelais says. That's why I keep out of it.

These English gentlemen have made grave airs and severe expressions all the fashion in this country. To them is owing the sanctification of Sunday in the three kingdoms.
On that day it is forbidden to work and play, which is double the severity of the Catholic churches.

No opera, no plays, no concerts in London on Sunday; even cards are so expressly forbidden that only the aristocracy, and those we call well-bred people, play on that day.

The rest of the nation go to church, to the tavern, and to the brothel.

Although the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian are the two main sects in Great Britain, all others are welcome there and live pretty comfortably together, though most of their preachers detest one another almost as cordially as a Jansenist damns a Jesuit.

Go into the Exchange in London, that place more venerable than many a court, and you will see representatives of all the nations assembled there for the profit of mankind. There the Jew, the Moslem and the Christian deal with one another as if they were of the same religion, and reserve the name of infidel only for those who go bankrupt.

There the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist, and the Church of England man accepts the promise of the Quaker. On leaving these peaceable and free assemblies, some go to the synagogue, others in search of a drink; this man is on the way to be baptized in a great tub in the name of the Father, by the Son, to the Holy Ghost; that man is having the foreskin of his son cut off, and a Hebraic formula mumbled over the child that he himself can make nothing of; these others are going to their church to await the inspiration of God with their hats on; and all are satisfied.

If there were only one religion in England, there would be danger of tyranny; if there were two, they would cut each others throats; but there are thirty, and they live happily together in peace. "

Voltaire doesn't say it here, but he also suggested that the reason England was superior to France was that in France they have 30 kinds of cheese and only one religion, whereas in England they have 30 religions and only one kind of cheese.
A perfect country would, of course, have both.

Exit Una

2010-11-02T07:16:00.011+01:00

Well, it looks as if Una has gone. She trotted into my life one day years ago, enriched it greatly, and has now trotted out of it.

Best read Reb's blog on the right, here for the story.

I take a bit of Stoic comfort, if that is the word, from Epicurus:

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not;
remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

I always wanted a dog like her. So I was lucky.

PHOBIAS

2010-10-11T06:41:00.051+01:00

You can click on the list below here. Funny. Sort of.

Types Of Phobia

Got into an interesting discussion on a website the other day. The word, 'Homophobia' came under discussion. (Gives you some sort of idea of the blogs I subscribe to, dunnit? All 'gays' and 'filth'!)

I looked it up in my American Heritage Dictionary and got this:
1: Aversion to gay or homosexual people or their lifestyle or culture.
2: Behaviour or an act based on this aversion.

No mention of 'fear' there. This was pointed out to me by another blogger who gave me this definition:

A phobia is “a fear, aversion or hatred, esp. morbid and irrational. – ‘phobe’ in composition, one who has a (specified) phobia.” (‘Chambers 20th Century Dictionary’).

I agree this definition of 'phobia' is more accurate. And, by extension, we must add 'fear' to homophobia.

But the interesting little word here is 'esp'. It has me thinking. Are all phobias irrational and/or morbid? From the 'esp' it seems clear that that very possibly some phobias are neither. But which?

The web site at tagged the beginning here is remarkable. It lists literally hundreds of what it describes as phobias. For myself, I would have no trouble in putting 'Melophobia' in the 'irrational' camp as it is a fear of music. But, had it been a fear of being made to watch movies produced by Mr. Gibson, it would surely occupy the 'rational' slot.

Is it irrational to be frightened of spiders (Arachnophobia)? Is it rational to be afraid of simply walking (Ambulophobia)?

And, where does that leave us regarding Arachibutyrophobia, (Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.) eh?

Out of mere curiosity, I checked to see if there was a word for fear of Catholics. Naturally not - except for Catapedaphobia, (Fear of jumping from high and low places) which is quite close, as you will agree, especially the second part...

Then I found 'bufonophobia' which turns out not to be a fear of buffoons, which would be entirely rational, but a fear of toads. A totally irrational fear without a doubt. How could one hate and fear a toad? You might as well hate and fear Noel Coward!

The list is so wonderful that I will simply regale you with the last four; all Zeds (or for Americans, Zees) with special reference to the penultimate.

Zelophobia - Fear of jealousy.
Zeusophobia - Fear of God or gods.
Zemmiphobia - Fear of the great mole rat.
Zoophobia - Fear of animals.

How can it possibly be irrational to fear The Great Mole Rat?
I suspect this is a question we will each have to figure out for ourselves.
But that will be difficult if we happen to suffer from phronemophobia (Fear of thinking).

30,000 Years of Absurdity

2010-09-23T07:45:00.013+01:00

According to experts these French cave drawings are between 30.000 and 32,000 years old. Not bad for their time, are they? As we can see from here in 2010, it has taken man over 30,000 millenniums to learn how to draw like Jean-Michel Basquiat.

And it would seem from The Good Book, that men (or women) made these images some 27,000 years before Adam and Eve. Hard to believe it, (or Adam and Eve it, as Damian would say). Makes one wonder what was going on all that time.
Nothing, it seems. Just people being born, living, making art and making more people and then dying. And not paying income tax, or watching Mel Gibson movies.

An absurd world, then and now. Though possibly a little less absurd now, without Basquiat.
(But Mel is still around. Bit quiet, though, recently, is he not?)

More Unceasing Miracles - Show A Leg!

2010-09-15T15:01:00.014+01:00

Zenyatta, the miracle horse. I believe, I believe, I believe!

My last post generated some nice responses, for which I thank those guilty.

Golden Chersonnese Is worried that I might be unhappy at the paucity of Islamic miracles. No.
That deals with that. My current take on Islam is that it is even worse than Christianity and Judaism, at present, at least. Miracles or not.

Kathleen, a very nice and kindly lady, has thoughts on Fatima. Apparently, the Sun 'danced.'
I don't know quite what that would entail - bouncing about like a balloon? Well how far away from the 'epicenter' was this marvel still seen? Was the Sun dancing at 100 yards and not at 101? What happened to the Sun in Lisbon at the time? In Rome? Any pictures? No movies, I suspect. Be able to 'grab' it on our mobiles now, though! Next time, perhaps.
A more constructive thought on Fatima and Lourdes, why has God, as far as I know, never replaced a missing leg? Now, that would get my attention. Why does He specialise in the internal stuff? Any clue, anyone?

As to the Resurrection, I have looked at the four versions in the New Testament. They differ so widely that no newspaper, apart from the Supermarket tabloids in the USA, would or could run it.
And before anyone tries it, let's not go down the specious road that suggests that because the four accounts differ, means, in some weird convoluted way, that the basic story must be true. (If they were identical, it would mean collusion.) I have seen that tried. No, let's not be so silly. Is one more 'relatively' true than the others?
Relativism, The Bogey Word. The Pope ain't gonna like this...

Miracles never cease

2010-09-11T05:28:00.024+01:00

Stanley Spencer; The Raising of Lazarus. I think, no caption material.

High time for a new blog. Lazy old Toad that I am. Too much water has been passed since the last installment. The most significant item to report is that Lulu and Nabi, the Greyhound Girls, are off to Leon again next week to be 'neutered.' We took them last week but Lulu had gone into heat.
This operation will cost three hundred Euros each. We have not paid a cent to buy any of our dogs or the cat, but they have now cumulatively cost us thousands. Still, we save by not having a telly.

What has this to do with miracles?, you say. Nothing, unless, you regard everything as a miracle, including the fact that our pets have not yet managed to bankrupt us.
I think this is the general attitude of Kathleen (re miracles that is, not bankruptcy) on the famous 'Catholicism Pure & Simple' blog, to which I regularly subscribe.
Like many others, she is, I believe, of the 'every snowflake, every baby's fingernail, every day without an earthquake, is a miracle' persuasion. If I am wrong, she will swiftly, and rightly, disabuse me.
And Joyfulpapist, another chum on CP&S, is planning a piece on this very subject soon.
Good, because 'miracles' are a stumbling block for me and many others on the Road to Salvation.
So, it's time to flip open the Very Excellent 'Hello!' Magazine Sub-editors' Dictionary, and read that a miracle is defined as:

1. An effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.
2. Such an effect or event manifesting or considered as a work of God.
3. A wonder; marvel.
4. A wonderful or surpassing example of some quality: a miracle of modern acoustics.

Interesting that the word is, in my opinion, in the process of being devalued even now. "I've found the car keys! it's a miracle!"
I suppose Kathleen's point is that, as we are all here as a result, as she sees it, of a supernatural event, everything that follows is, naturally, supernatural. Well, it's one way of looking at it. But I'm old-fashioned, and think this is merely further devaluing the word.

It will be no surprise that I'm with David Hume on this. I was going to run his original text on miracles, but it's long and wordy, and I found a neat little precis on the web.
Hume provides four reasons to think that there has never been sufficient evidence in favor of a miracle to render it probable. We must note that he, like me, does not go so far as to state that miracles don't happen. He merely doubts that they happen and says that, if they DO happen, we can never be sure they were miracles in the first place.
We are getting back to Popper here. No miracle, indeed nothing metaphysical, can either be verified or falsified. So either we must accept them on faith, or ignore all claims of them.

What Hume says:

First, no miracle is supported by testimony of a sufficient number of trustworthy people to rule out the possibility of falsehood.

Second, while we should normally believe that which most closely accords itself with past experience, the sensations of surprise and wonder often lead us to unreasonable beliefs. There are countless instances of tall tales of all sorts that stem not from reasonable inquiry but from a love of wonder.

Third, Hume remarks that most reports of miraculous events occur amongst barbarous or ignorant people, who may not be sophisticated enough to disbelieve fabricated testimony.

Fourth, since every religion claims the veracity of its own miracles as against the miracles of every other religion, the evidence of all other religions opposes the evidence in favor of a miracle in any one particular religion. For instance, what a Muslim might consider a miracle would be considered a heresy by anyone of different faith.

(I find reason number four particularly compelling. And if anyone takes the slightest notice of all this, it will be a miracle.)

Ceeing, Peeing & Essing

2010-08-27T07:28:00.023+01:00

Part 2 of Waxing Nostalgic over CP&S:

Bruno. Portrait of a 'difficult' man. Clearly.

Too much water has been passed since part one of this series on 'Downhill'. And, yet again, I find myself pondering if I should quit CP&S, or not.

They are all nice people there, just like, no doubt, a lot of Republicans, Israelis or Saudi-Arabians are nice people, but they all all mired in their belief so deeply that there is little or no reasoning with them.

They ferociously defend the Church, right or wrong, doesn't matter. Criticism is not an option.

Same thing GBS said about patriotism,
"Saying, my country, right or wrong is like saying my Mother, drunk or sober."

Even Raven, among the least rabid on the blog, went to almost comical lengths to justify the obscene torture of a fellow man. And it took place four hundred years ago. Long memories here. He couldn't even bring himself to say, "Well, it was a fair bit ago, and they did things differently then." No, the man Bruno was 'difficult.' Yes, and his difficulty was that he was ahead of his time in believing something that is now accepted by every intelligent person.

He was, as Montaigne so memorably remarked,(not about Bruno himself) "Roasted over a difference of opinion."

At least Raven offered some sort of argument, unconvincing though I found it. It has got to the point where if I make some mild observation, the cries of 'spewing raw sewage', 'foaming at the mouth', and of being 'angry' and 'irritated' and 'hateful' are deafening.

Not that it bothers me, but it all smacks strongly of the sort of treatment people get if they are in any way critical of Jews or Muslims. And it also smacks strongly of the treatment Jews and Muslims dish out to anyone who 'offends' them. It is extreme. They are NeoCaths on CP&S. They would probably agree, and revel in it. Must ask them.

And yet, more than one person on 'Damian' and CP&S is frequently and cheerfully and viciously abusive of 'rival' fanatics. And they are spluttering mad if I 'criticise' any little Catholic foible, or Catholic polemicist.

Why, then, do I go on banging my head against the Vatican wall? I had a Catholic upbringing. I know a bit about it. And I truly believe that the CP&S mob, along with others of their kind, want to make their own brand of Heaven right here on earth for all of the rest of us.
Whether we want it or not. Just like the Muslims.
If they succeed, they will make a Hell.

I don't like the prospect, and will continue to say so.

Calmly, sanely and reasonably.
If possible.

WAXING NOSTALGIC

2010-08-22T09:33:00.006+01:00

Bing and Barry - not Going Mel's way.

(Written yesterday)

It is the feast day of Santo Tomas, patron of our church and village. A doubter. He and I have that much in common.

I am writing this between greeting passing pilgrims in the church's 'departure lounge' and stamping their credentials, if given the chance.
When not stamping, or musing on the parade of flesh of some of the French ( and Spanish) pilgrims, who are practically wearing swim suits with their mochillas, (it is hot) I brood.
“Why do you bother with the Catholicism Pure & Simple blog?” ask some folk, sadly shaking their heads.
Good question, as I have been beset by problems with religion in general for the last half century.
The idea of believing six impossible things before breakfast each morning has proved impossibly challenging since I was about 15.

What captured my attention at first was the incredible nostalgia of CP&S. For one thing, the 'bloggers' mostly seemed to have names like my aunties and the nuns that taught me when I was little - names like, Teresa, Gertrude, Kathleen, Bernadette, Clothilde. (Not sure I ever had an aunt Clothilde. Bit too classy. Still.) And, when they write, they sound like my aunties as well, albeit considerably better educated.

And as I wax nostalgic about them they, in turn, are waxing nostalgically about the Good Old Days when the Mass was safely incomprehensible in Latin, before all this nonsense about the Mass in the vernacular, priests facing the audience, 'Signs of Peace', and talk, God forbid, of women priests.
They wax fondly about the days when Irish priests with faces the colour of pig's liver, and fingers mahogany with nicotine, raved and raged interminably from the pulpit about the horrors of contraception.
Whatever happened to contraception, by the way? Scarcely gets a nod, these days. Least of several evils, I suppose thrust into the second row of grave sins by abortion.

But I must say that throughout my childhood,dominated as it was by priests and nuns, I never was aware of the slightest hint of sexual impropriety by any priest. Sadism, yes, but not sexual. Father Doyle administered his beatings on my backside with total bored, insouciance(!) – not even bothering to take the cigarette from his lips. No respect!
But again, I strongly believe that, if I had been subjected to anything like pederasty, and had told my Mother, her immediate reaction would have been horror directed at me for telling such wicked lies.

In those Good Old Days, Bing Crosby was the Mel Gibson of his day. Times change. All we can do is wax.

(As I was writing the above, horrible things happened. See Reb's blog, alongside. I may return to the original theme tomorrow. Be warned. Whole lotta waxin' goin' on!)

Church Parade

2010-08-13T05:17:00.017+01:00

We took a guest from Mexico to see some of the local sights yesterday. Couple of small towns, Astudillo and Tamara each with churches nearly as big as cathedrals.

This part of the world is chock full of virtually unknown Romanesque treasures. Then to Fromista (see The Movie!) This town happens to be on the Camino Françes, so is much better known. Restored to squeaky cleanliness it's really not a church any more and has been de-consecrated. Now it's a sort of museum famous for the carved capitals and gable ends, each one, of course, different.

Quite extraordinary to approach somewhere like Santoyo, where the massive church literally towers three or four times higher than the cluster of surrounding houses where today, only 250 people give, the lady custodian told us, putting down her intricate lace work to show us round.

Fromista boasts a beautiful 12th Century crucifix. Not gruesomely life-like as later versions, but with the simple power and dread of a Picasso. We must have seen 20 or so crucifixes during the jaunt.

The more I see and contemplate crucifixes the more I wonder if they do (or at any rate did, in the past) provoke violence. People looking at a crucifix and saying, "If God's enemies did this to him, it's all right for us to do similar things to them."

And, if so, what then?

CHECKMATE

2010-08-11T09:41:00.017+01:00

Beckett. Better at chess than Toad. Not hard, though.

Took the Gods for their morning walk and pondered the subject of Divine Intervention. Well, why not?
It seems eight Jesuits survived the Hiroshima bomb in 1945 by what can only be described as a miracle.
Apparently, they were the only survivors in the immediate blast area. God stepped in and suspended the law of physics relating to atomic blasts in their case alone. This being so, what can His reasons have been?
Were they the only Catholics in the area? Were they the only good people in the area? Were they the only deserving people in the area? We will never know for sure. But saved they were.

This seems to me rather quirky behaviour on God's part. It's as if He is playing a game of chess with Himself (well, who else could He play with?) and, finding Himself in a tricky situation, moves the Rook diagonally and checkmates.

Let's suppose an onlooker, Toad, and a dialogue.

TOAD: "You can't make that move, it's against the rules."

GOD: "No it's not. I decide the rules and in this case, moving the Rook diagonally is within the rules.

TOAD: " So I can do that from now on?"

GOD: "No, because if you do, it will be against the rules. I make the rules. They are my rules. I can break them. You can't."

TOAD: But then the game is meaningless."

GOD: "What do you care, Toad? You're an Existentialist. You think everything's meaningless anyway. What difference is there, for you, between everyday meaningless meaninglessness and Divine Intervention meaninglessness?
Anyway, nothing is 'meaningless.' If I say it's meaningful then it's meaningful. No matter how meaningless it seems to other people. Like these floods in Pakistan right now. Worst in history. Full of meaning if you know where to look."

TOAD: "How will I know where to look?"

GOD: "Sorry, can't tell you that. It's against the rules. Catholics only, Jesuits preferably. They know what it all means."

(The above foolishness reminds me that Beckett wrote a play called Endgame. More meaningful than this, no doubt.)

God is Dog spelled backwards...

2010-08-02T09:49:00.014+01:00

...and vice versa.
There was an amusing little exchange on the Catholic Pure & Simple blog the other day that got me thinking.

One person wrote that, because Dog is God spelled backwards, her Grannie took it as a clear indication that dogs are evil, and wouldn't have one in the house. But then, another commenter wrote saying that her Auntie, because God is Dog spelled backwards, saw it as an unmistakable sign awarding dogs the right to specially indulgent treatment denied to other, less well-connected, members of creation.

It must be noted that this lacuna (50 more bonus points!) only works in English, which accounts for the unique relationship we Brits have with our mutts. The fact that Perro is Orrep spelled backwards cuts little ice with the Spaniards, and may explain why their treatment of dogs often leaves something to be desired.

The real significance of the Dog/God issue is the fact that people can interpret the exact same phenomenon in utterly opposing ways.
This undeniably leads to contention and is probably the cause of more loss of life on this planet than even the motor car, the Big Mac or Coca-Cola.

The Snake Pit

2010-07-31T11:21:00.012+01:00

Snake skeleton. Seems to be laughing, doesn't it?

When I was about ten years old, I had an epiphany. I was in a museum, that of Natural History in South Kensington, I suppose, and was looking at the skeleton of a snake.
It struck me how similar it was to my own skeleton. It was, to be sure, no more
than a skull and a long ribcage, but I realised that the snake and I were quite closely related. We were 'constructed' on the same basic principles - literally brothers under the skin (or scales, in our case).
Why a snake's skeleton, rather than, say, a gorilla's should move me in that manner, I really don't know. But there we are.
It was also, I believe, the start of my skepticism about religion as I knew it.
On the face of it, there is no obvious connection, but connections are sometimes
subtle.
Later on, at the Big Boys' Catholic school, we were taught that snakes, along
with gorillas and cats and dogs and cods, would not be going to Heaven.
No, not even Major, my Granny's saintly old Moggie, who was my best pal.
Nor, for that matter, would Protestants, Hindus or Jews (Moslems simply didn't
exist for us). In fact, snakes, who had no chance at all of wriggling under the pearly gates, still had a better chance than Jews.
Jews had had their opportunity, and blown it years ago..
And those of us who persisted in doing newspaper delivery rounds on Sundays wouldn't be going either. We'd be consigned to the snake pit amid a seething and chaotic concatenation of Cobras and Calvinists and Cohens.
The notion that only humans merit eternal reward seemed to me then, and still
does, insufferable arrogance on our part.
Are we really to believe that God, over many millions of years, created untold billions of creatures, the vast majority never even set eyes upon by any puny human being, to live and die for no apparent reason?
If we humans (even the Jews) do have immortal souls that Pigs and Pythons and
Parrots lack, at what point were they inserted?
None of this idle speculation, is, of course, even remotely, an argument against
the existence of God.
But it does make one consider, if in fact He really does exist, what an odd sort of a chap he must be...

Bang - I'm dead, and you're alive!

2010-07-28T07:06:00.022+01:00

Little bit of Auden that resonates. Love that face! Want one like that when I grow up.Nothing to do with the crazy idea Big Bang idea below, though...

Only now when he has come
In walking distance of his tomb,
He at last discovers who
He had always been to whom
He so often was untrue.

CRACK-BRAINED THEORY

Had an interesting idea while walking the dogs round the neolithic burial mound this morning.
Accepting the Big Bang theory to be true - maybe it can be linked up with Deism - the notion that God set the universe in motion, then walked away and left it to its own devices.
What if the Big Bang was a sort of cataclysmic suicide note?
What if God, tired of it all, (whatever 'it all' was) decided to bring the universe into existence and then - at the exact same moment - cause himself to cease to exist?
Would explain the apparent aimlessness of stuff.
Maybe in the 'seeds' of the universe he included the possibility, even probability, of life. Maybe He hoped, or even knew, that sometime, billions of years later, his farewell note would finally be deciphered?

Don't suppose this theory appeals much to Catholics. Does seem unlikely. But then, what doesn't?

Popper

2010-07-27T10:51:00.006+01:00

Karl Popper's Birthday tomorrow. He's 108, or would have been. An intellectual giant of the last century. Hugely underrated, partly for a silly reason - his name, Popper. Sounds like a child's toy or, nowadays, a night-club drug.
If only he'd been called Wittgenstein. The Open Society should be enforced reading for everyone over the age of 16 in the world.
Yea, right.

Couple of quotes:

The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.

The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato. Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

If you have not read 'The Open Society,' and are daunted by its size, just read the last chapter, 'Has History Any Meaning?' Then, unless I am sadly mistaken, you will want to read the whole thing.

With Friends Like These...

2010-07-26T09:04:00.015+01:00

Warning: This Tord spits.

Don't know if I am still having communication problems with 'Catholicism Pure and Simple' or not. (A more maladroitly-named blog is hard to imagine.)
Each morning about 20 emails still arrive - all more or less saying the same thing in different order - and giving very little indication that my message to 'include me out' has got through.

It isn't very important, except that I will feel guilty if someone is unknowingly toiling to get my page on there straightened out, unaware that Toad has hopped off.
As you can see from this post, I am still occupied with the whole odd business.

'Cath' is a classic example of Narrowcasting - the big thing on the web. No matter how narrow your interest, there will be a handful of the like-minded out there with whom one can bond.
Generally, it is harmless - folk, say, with a shared passion for Victorian British postage stamps, or Ferret breeding, or Agatha Christie first editions. But it can also be vicious - imbeciles who link up to earnestly pray for the early death of Obama.(That last is true. Saw it on Facebook.)

'Cath' is in the first camp. It is, at times, preposterously complacent and pàtronising, but it means no real harm.

Someone tried patronising my wife on there the other day. She (figuratively) wrapped her rosary round her fist like a knuckle duster, and delivered a stinging poke to the guilty noggin.

The A-Team there was also condescending to me. Kindly and sympathetically suggesting, that as a non-believer, I was somehow not an entire human being. My senses were less acute than theirs. Not my fault, but there we are, we will pray for you.

For a while, I felt that it was my mission to gently suggest that there is another way of looking at the world, the way of the likes of Montaigne, Hume, Voltaire, Popper, Russell, etc. The way of reason.
But no. All misguided.
Voltaire was poo-pooed for bringing about the French Revolution, for example.
One might as well beat up on Beethoven for bringing about Boogie-Woogie.

Toad was amusing, but not to be taken seriously. Quite right, too. Now that I'm not watching with my beady toad eye, the gallant little gang can form a snug, smug, self-congratulatory circle of mutual, mental, masturbatory admiration. ''Loved your offering on 'the Little Flower of Luton' Cecil!'' ''Nowhere near as teary-eyed making as yours on 'The Ecstasy of Saint Winnifred the Wonderful of Wimbledon,' Claude!''

Well, I warned them I was nasty. They just smiled. 'Dear old Toad..'

MEANINGS

2010-07-25T06:07:00.013+01:00

The Deposition, by Roger Van Der Weyden, circa 1435

I've spent a long time looking at this painting in The Prado over the years. Undoubtedly one of the world's greatest, and a case could be made for being the world's most moving. All the action takes place in a sort of painted 'niche' about six feet deep, from front to back. Christ's arms echo the shape of a crossbow, because the Guild of Crossbowmen, or something similar, commissioned the work. Early 'image branding.' The little reproduction here cannot come near to doing it justice. The original is 8.5 feet wide and the figures are almost life-size.

It really has little or nothing to do with today's topic, unless you take an existential view of the world. I suppose I do.
Anyway, on Friday, I was in our little church on duty, giving pilgrims 'sellos' and keeping the place open for them. Ten minutes away from closing time, at 2pm, a woman pilgrim came in looking a bit disturbed and asked if she could go into the church. She did so.
Five minutes or so later, she came back out to me with tears streaming down her face. She had spoken to her mother, by phone, about half an hour before, for the first time in six months. The mother's news was very grim. Two operations for cancer within the last few weeks and the prospects for recovery bleak.
Bad enough. But it gets worse. The pilgrim, Elizabeth, from Budapest, told me she also has cancer, the same sort as her mother, and her chances of survival are equally low. That, she said, is why she is doing The Camino now. While she still can.I told her she should come back to our house and rest and stop for a while. She wanted to keep on walking, but I managed to persuade her to come over.
We gave her lunch and she ended up staying the night. She slept a long time and said the visit had done her good, 'thank God for sending me to your house,' etc. My wife and Kim are wise and good listeners. Pilgrims often want to talk a lot. But then, others are virtually mute.
What does it all mean? Everything and nothing, I suppose. Religious-minded people would see some significance in it all. I don't.

Getting all cross

2010-07-24T04:36:00.018+01:00

By Grunewald.

Well, it will be no surprise for many of my readers(!) that I am finished with 'Catholicism Pure and Simple.' Toad brought low by a mouse. Never mind. Better on my own blog probably. No big boys around.

I am a bit miffed because I had posted a piece yesterday about images of the Crucifixion, which seemed to me, worthy of discussion. And this morning I had a further thought on the matter. The first thought was, briefly, how do people, Catholics in particular, (naturally for it is a Catholic blog,) reconcile personal modesty (often excessive modesty, in my opinion) with the image of the near-naked Christ, that, in other circumstances, that they might well decry as more or less pornographic?

The second, (and more interesting, I think) thought is, did The Romans bother to cover up the genitals of their victims under similar circumstances? Somehow, one doubts that they would. I suppose historians would know. If Abu Ghraib is anything to go by, torturers make a point of stripping their victims naked to humiliate them, probably always have done.
If the Romans did crucify people naked, what is the justification for covering Christ up, even partially? If the idea is to show in totally realistic detail (and some Spanish dead Christs go to remarkable lengths for realism, including real hair)why not show him naked?
I suspect if such images were hung on classroom walls, there might be a bit of an outcry, even from those who advocate keeping the existing crucifixes in schools.

But, as Montaigne wisely says, what do I know?

THE SILVER SCREEN

2010-07-22T17:25:00.020+01:00

Here is a mercifully short and exquisite fillum starring myself, made in Palençia in the Bullfight Bar. A brief movie career, but glorious.

Indeed, films are the subject of today's offering. Recently my dear wife bought me sixteen movies on Cd's made by Ealing Studios. I lived many years in Ealing and knew the studios, and the pub across the road from them, The Red Lion, well.
The films involved all date from the forties to the sixties, before the BBC took over the studios.

So far, I have watched four - Nicolas Nickleby, Hue and Cry, The Ladykillers and The Lavender Hill Mob.
'Nickleby' is not bad - the others are awful. Worse than I either remembered or expected. I should have known.

Not that I don't enormously enjoy watching them - many use location shots of various parts of London, which is very nostalgic for me.

I should have known that they would be bad, because Wittgenstein, who liked to relax during the nineteen-forties by going to 'the pictures' declared - as an unassailable truth - the the British were incapable of ever making a watchable movie.
He favoured American Westerns and musical comedies. His favourite 'star' was Carmen Miranda.
Well, he was a philosopher.

Looking at these laborious, dim-witted efforts, one can see his point. Still, I have to say that during this time, David Lean and Hitchcock were making some excellent works of art.

But not in my back yard.

DOUBTS and DIGRESSIONS

2010-07-21T17:59:00.015+01:00

Bertrand Russell. Nothing to do with the blog, just he has such a wonderful face.

Much ado, these days, about blogs and stuff.

As some of you may know, I had been 'commenting' for a month or so on a Daily Telegraph site by Damian Thompson, about Catholicism. I was often vaguely aware of all sorts of weird undercurrents there, none of which concerned me.

Anyway, a new blog was started. As of 7.05 pm today, it is called 'Catholicism Pure and Simple.' (It might well have a new name by the time I post this.)
I know, I know. I have already made the point that Catholicism is neither of those things. 'Pure' could be argued (unconvincingly) perhaps, 'Simple' never.
But I digress. They are all nice people and I wish them well.

Already, however, the new blog is riven by schisms. (Isn't that a great phrase? Worth a repeat - RIVEN BY SCHISMS - doubt if I'll ever write that again in my life. Hope not,anyway.)

Again, I digress. The thing is, a couple of their stalwarts have quit to start up at least yet one more blog. On top of that, I, and my wife (but that is another digression) have succeeded in upsetting a 'commentator' on Blog Two (CPAS) so deeply that they have quit in a huff.

In view of all this schism rivening, and bearing in mind that what I wrote seemed, to me no more than reasonable and low-key comment on a totally preposterous idea, I am wondering whether I should just stop. Go back to Damian. Or just stop it all. Take up dog walking, grooming and excrement-gathering professionally.
When I upset somebody unintentionally, it makes me unhappy. I like to upset people intentionally.

A double-length walk with the faithful canine crew tomorrow might clear the mind.
Used to work for Kant(even without dogs).

Reb has bought me 16 old Ealing Comedies. But I have digressed enough for one day. Tomorrow, perhaps...

Dogs and walls

2010-07-17T07:04:00.020+01:00

I urge you to click on this pic to enlarge it - it's wonderful!

The Greyhounds have dug a big hole in the yard and put a small toy dog in it. Not a real live toy dog, a toy toy dog - a soft toy dog. What can it all mean?
Is it a message that we must not go away for two days? Surely not. Kim looked after them just fine.
Greyhounds, unless you want to hunt hares, are utterly useless. They just look nice. Some people think they are silent. Not ours. If I'm not up at daybreak, they come and howl. And wrestle and work on making the hole deeper. Maybe they will discover a Roman villa down there. And eat it.
Anyway, we went on the train to Avila for a jolly. Very nice it was. The wall is spectacular. The city is spotless, all grey stone. Grim in the Winter, no doubt, but beautiful.
We found a wine bar that boasted a wine list literally a thick as a phone directory. Reb spent ages choosing a wine for us. We should have had a drink while we were waiting. When she finally made a selection, wrong number. ''Haven't got that one right now.'' Tried again. Another wrong number. Same thing. Finally the bar suggested one it had in stock. It was OK.

Our hotel was once a synagogue. As we were leaving it, we had to fight our way through a guided tour group that was having the building explained to them.
Saint Teresa was everywhere. I looked for her hand, only to be told it's in Ronda. There is a finger of hers there, though, still with a snazzy emerald ring on it. Avila seemed to be struggling, economically. Although this is the high season, there were few tourists to be seen, and strangely few local people either. I would go so far as to put it, like Venice or the Grand Canyon, or Vegas, or New York City, on the 'must see' list.
Despite all its wonders, seems like the place could use a hand right now. One from Ronda, perhaps.

Pillar of the Church

2010-07-01T19:03:00.012+01:00

People seem to prefer it when I write about local stuff, rather than ranting on about politics and the like. I don't blame them.

So. The church of Santo Tomas, in our village has been on my mind recently.

This Sunday, I took myself off to Mass alone, Reb being cheerfully flooded near Pamplona. (see her fine blog) As I entered, a neighbour grabbed me and said 'Go and see if you can help Don Santiago (the priest). So I did. He had a tall, scruffy old geezer in the sacristy with him, with shoulder-length whitish hair and a scraggly beard a foot long, at least. He looked very bogus to me.
'He's a priest, I think,' said Santiago.'Can you talk to him? He has no Castellano.' Well, no, I couldn't. The old fellow spoke only French. But somehow, we all agreed that he would 'co-consecrate, or whatever, the Mass.
It went OK, except, that at one point, Santiago handed him the book and he read the wrong bit very nicely and made us all smile. We suppose he was a priest. Could have been a Satanist, for all we knew. Oh, well.

It struck me that here was a good argument for saying the Mass in Latin, like when I was a boy. Except that I am greatly in favour of the Mass in the vernacular. Provided that it is in a foreign language.

On Wednesday, it was our turn to keep the church open during the day for the passing pilgrims. My task alone with Reb still away. A group of four French pilgs showed up in the morning. Perfectly polite. Wanted sellos. No Spanish of course. Alone among pilgrims of every nation, the French, when I pass them on the Camino and say 'Buenos dias,' stubbornly reply 'Bonjour.' Go figure. No good at football either.

The point is, the two men in the said party both were wearing shorts that were so brief they might have been swimming trunks. Oddly, the women were dressed OK. I must be getting older and crankier than even I suspected. I said nothing. But I thought it was near indecent. I am getting more Spanish by the day, I suppose. I even change out of my own shorts, that I wear within the sheltering walls of the house, into jeans to leave and go 300 yards to the bodega to get a bottle or two of wine.

Still, I quite enjoy the weekly stint at the church. Tim comes along and sits with me. When pilgs come in, he goes and sits by them and puts his head in their laps to be petted. They think he is a sort of holy dog, sent to greet them. But he and I know that once a pilg gave him half a sausage. Hope springs eternal in the Spaniel breast.

The Last Word

2010-06-21T11:12:00.015+01:00

Re: The previous blog...
Here is a bit of film by Kim of Max in full cry. He is with the angels now. Probably jumping on their backs and trying to tear their wings off.

MAXED OUT: Requiem for a Heavyweight

2010-06-20T12:09:00.006+01:00

Followers of Reb's blog will know that my adversary Max is now toast. The Peaceable is at peace again.

I feel bad about it, but not as bad as all that. He was literally tearing the feathers from the backs of the hens, leaving then bleeding.

I thought he was just nuts, but the neighbors tell me that is the way Gallos are. The last straw was him trying to peck Reb's trousers off the other day. God knows what would have happened if he had managed it.

In retrospect, a rooster was a bad idea, if you don't want fertilised eggs and then chicks, and we don't. Max was a decent name for him, but Benito would have suited him better. Apart from maiming the girls, he did sod all, except swagger about bawling his wattles off with his chest stuck out like the tin-pot dictator he was, and try to kick divots out of Murphy the cat.

But I will miss him - he had balls, all right. I had to take a broom into the run when fetching the eggs, to keep him at bay. Otherwise I had to kick him from one end of the run to the other, where he would pick himself up, puff out all his feathers, and wade back in for another basinful. Insanely brave. Got to admire it.

Justi, our next-door neighbour, will not miss him a bit. He didn't much care for the 5.30 am bellow of 'Cock-a-Doooooo', audible for a quarter of a mile.

Max never mastered Cock-a Doodle-Doo, but maybe his version was just the Spanish one.

So, basta con cockerels. We are thinking about some new hens. Maybe from Asturia. 'Asturiano, mal Cristiano,' they say. OK with me.

Heading Downhill

2010-06-09T20:27:00.004+01:00

I'd better write a few words, at least to celebrate the splendid new header here. The work of Kim, of course.
I liked the chicken one from before, but this one illustrates the situation better. Me with dogs on Camino.
Watch this space for the movie. Seriously.

Lots of activity at The Peaceable these days pilgrims come and go and guitarists as well. Murphy joined in the frenzy by going missing for about thirty hours, which was disturbing, what with his track record. But then he showed up again bawling instructions to be let in, fed, let out, let back in, fed more, and so on.
Tim has a crittur in his ear and we are off to the Vet tomorrow. He isn't going to care much for the treatment, I suspect.

Reb is in the USA, which is not much fun for her, and no fun at all for me. And it is raining steadily. Wet dog smell. Muddy Una
.
Joder.

MISDEAL ... NEW HANDS ALL ROUND

2010-05-13T11:11:00.006+01:00

Mixed bag of a blog today. First, my hand. Tuesday morning as arranged we went to the Hospital de Carrion to get my right hand fixed. One of the fingers had got all bent and needed surgery to straighten out. All set for the op at 3 p.m, but then an emergency by helicopter intervened. The medics started hacking away at 6.p.m. Over by 7.30. Longer than expected, said the Doc. Too late to go home now, so in a two-bed room with a clearly demented old loony who made loud noises all night through every conceivable orifice. Still, the surgery was excellent and there will be no charge directly levied on us for all this. The horrors (if one is American) of Socialised Medicine. I can dig it, as Reb says.

Not the most fun day ever, but infinitely better than it would have been if Tim had still been missing (see Reb's doggone Blog today with great pic)

And this morning Old Ma Nature dealt another weird hand.

Snow. Half way through May. When I looked out of the bedroom window, I thought, How odd, it looks like snow. Must be a trick of the light. Not so. Was snow.

Only a light dusting and gone by 11 a.m., but enough to elicit a scream of horror from Reb when she woke later, fearing for her tender little veggies in their immaculately white, icy, bed. Are they goners? Only time will tell. But the next plague, following on from volcanic ash, dog-losing and snow, is due to be a rain of frogs, then a fresh outbreak of Herod's Evil and Scrofula, followed by a Tory/LibDem Coalition.

We are doomed, I tell you doomed. Send in the frogs.

A Brief Course in Existentialism

2010-05-07T06:40:00.002+01:00

We are born. We cut our toenails occasionally. We die.

NEXT OF KIM

2010-04-29T06:48:00.011+01:00

Behind with the blog for weeks 'til now. No excuses, except for a recurring bout of an old ailment picked up centuries ago in Fleet Street, and known in medical circles as 'indolence.'

Incurable, alas.

Awful pun in the headline, but can't think of anything else.

Well, Kim, our American 'daughter' from Key West, has gone off to 'find herself' or some other mystical thing. Make a lot of money, maybe. We are deeply sorry to see her go, but it had to happen. Things can be very quiet around here. People get restless.

Mind you - after my earlier life until we moved here - things can never be quiet enough.

Now I am happy to sit out in the sun with a Wodehouse book, listening to 'tragic' music and scratching the heads of divers dogs. And, if P.G. gets too serious, there is always 'Ulysses' or Wittgenstein.

But, I digress. Kim, seen above with Tim (felicitous alliteration, there) will be missed for many reasons. Her contribution to the smooth running of The Peaceable, her patience with me, the subtle faces she drew on the hard-boiled eggs, the way all the dogs loved her, a thousand things.

But I will miss her most of all because now I will have to do A LOT MORE WORK.

And that is bad.

Kentucky Derby on Saturday. Awesome Act will carry my cash. Poor old thing. Like my brother said recently, 'I couldn't tip a bucket,' these days.

And Barça got beat last night, to the huge relief, no doubt of Real, or they would have won the Champions' league right there, in Madrid, on their deadly rivals' own turf. ¡Holin!

Deep Thoughts from a Shallow Old Fellow

2010-04-06T11:48:00.008+01:00

After repentance, comes confession. I could not resist a posting on Damian's blog this morning. There goes the resolution. Still, Lent is over.
But now the currant bun (sun) is out again in Moratinos, I am spending far less time hunched over the mighty Samsung Wurlitzer. Which is good.
Last night I watched a movie called 'What the bleep is going on?' Not bad, tried to do too much and got all muddled up.
But what I took from it was that Quantum Theory is no more than Existentialism wearing a baseball cap, rather than a beret.
I keep pondering the comment I made on line to Reb's daughter, Lib.
She said that, as far as she could see, nobody, including herself, seemed to have any clue as to what is going on (in the world, I suppose).
I replied that she should read Wittgenstein ( could have been several other philosophers, but he is my pick). After having done this, I suggested,, she still would have no clue as to what is going on, but she would have a much clearer idea of why she had no idea.
The more I think about this the truer it seems to get. Which is rare for me.

¡HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CAV !

2010-04-04T07:54:00.006+01:00

Pietro, the One-Hit-Wonder

Today being Easter Sunday, and the year being 2010, it is -in a way - the birthday of one of the world's most beloved operas, Cavalleria Rusticana (Rustic Chivalry).
The whole of the action takes place in one day - Easter Sunday, in the year 1880, in a small Sicilian village. Being an Italian opera, natch, everything ends in tragedy, wailing and lamentation - rather like trying to Shampoo our dog, Tim.
Mascagni. the composer, was a classic One-Hit Wonder. Started his career on the metaphorical high note and never did another thing worth listening to. Or so they say.
His 'Ave Maria' is beautiful, but either it is one of the tunes from Cav, -or vice versa.

OVER AND OUT on DAMIAN'S BLOG

2010-04-02T06:39:00.038+01:00

Geezer (not totally blind, though it looks that way) and three legged best friend: Burgos, March 28th, 2010

A longer, probably boring entry today. Only the very interested in Patrick personally (if any such exist, apart from wife and family) need bother reading.

Good Friday is a good day for reflection on one's sins. Too much foolish fun is a cardinal one of mine. Repentance, therefore, here and now.

For a couple of weeks now, while Reb has been Caminoing, I have been following and posting entries, on Damian Thompson's blog in the Telegraph.

I stumbled on it casually at first and was entranced. Damian, and many of his regular contributors are Conservative Catholics it is safe to say.
They yearn for the good old days - before Vatican 2 - when the mass was in Latin and purple-faced priests roared from the pulpits fulminating about the horrors of birth control to packed congregations of potato-faced Irish labourers with stony-faced wives and herds of sullen, lumpen, offspring. Bing Crosby was oiling his way through 'The Bells of Saint Marys, and 'Going My Way,' Barry Fitzgerald sidekicked as a vicious, embittered old bigot with a Heart of Gold (strangely and prophetically channeling the current Pope), typewriter mechanics were in high demand and MEN WERE MEN, not a bloody gang of pansies in tight trousers.

Damian's deranged devotees deplore, not only Vatican 2, but also the Enlightenment, and probably the Renaissance, as well.

To discover that all this was still, if not alive and kicking, at least even moribund, was interesting and more importantly, amusing to me.

So I joined in the fun, introducing a few conceits of my own. One such was that Damian, judging from his photo - was a nine-year old leprechaun that had blundered into a coven. Harmless enough, and maybe even gave the unfortunate lad a wan smile.

All this amiable idiocy might have gone on for weeks more - at least until Reb returned from Santiago and reclaimed the computer for grown-up stuff.

But Providence works, etc, etc.

A past acquaintance, and (so he tells me) veteran Damian blogger, has rejoined the fiesta. As ever, full of lamentations about the terrible state of practically everything these days. Filth and obscenity everywhere - represented on the Blog, no doubt, by me.

Dogs with insufficient legs allowed to roam Spain unmolested, Catholics all capering about the Vatican in brocade-fringed chasubles, 'desperate' sad, atheists discharging their jealous spleen at cheerful, chirpy Christians..

Well my old sparring partner is bang on, and I would thank him from the bottom of my heart if I had one.

Deboot the computer. Back to the books.
Back to Montaigne, Voltaire, Sartre, Camus, Russell, Popper, Wittgenstein, Joyce, Beckett, Flann O'Brien - and, yea even Pascal and Kierkegaard.

Goodbye to all that other god-ridden gallimaufry.

Still, my stint in Damian's humbug mine did expand my vocabulary a bit. I learned what a thurible is, (a smouldering tin handbag) and what a chasuble is, (a pope's frock) Good to know in these Vatican-voguish days.

Reb says to point out that I am not abandoning my own blog. Which will be back Sunday with 'Cav!'

PATRICK'S PROGRESS

2010-03-26T07:14:00.004+01:00

Have not heard from Reb yet. Will update later.

Kim and I are going shopping in Leon, where I will have a temper tantrum in Corte Ingles and roll about on the floor screaming and kicking my heels.

Max the rooster is getting stroppier and stroppier. A pitched battle every time I enter his domain. And he is tough. I'm thinking of taking in a whip and a chair.

SCOUT'S PROGRESS

2010-03-25T09:39:00.004+01:00

Reb left Santo Domingo de la Calzada this morning and is proceeding to Viloria de Rioja, where she will be the guest of Brazilians.

We must hope her Samba is not too rusty.

A GUIDE FOR THE GIRL

2010-03-23T08:25:00.008+01:00

Reb jogs while Patrick blogs.

Well, not really - but I'm fond of a little alliteration. (There - there's another bit.)
'Reb slogs' might do, however.

Now she is officially a Scout, she will have to do a good deed every day. Though, I suppose just staying married to me takes care of that.

Fresh details of The Long March later, I hope.

Thanks for the link, Lib.

UPDATE: Reb is on her way to Najera, in good shape. Planning a detour to San Millan, maybe.

CLOSE, BUT NO COMPOSTELA

2010-03-21T17:58:00.002+01:00

Reb is now at Viana. One of the few places on the Camino I remember because Cesare Borgia , the blueprintl for Machiavelli's naughty old Prince is buried there - right outside the church door, so you have to walk on his grave to go in. Serves him right, no doubt.
However, I do have a startling bit of news - the local Palencia newspaper has run a FULL PAGE on the pair of us. With a photo. Reb looks fine, I look half witted, so the smudger (Brit newspaper slang for photographer) got it about right. However, something has gone a bit wrong in translation, as Rebekah Scott is now Rebekah Scout. These things happen in the best regulated newspapers as we both know - so we will be laughing, not suing.
Scout's honor.

UPDATE ON REB AND ALL

2010-03-19T11:37:00.004+01:00

San Jose Day here - in the rain. Don't you just love the smell of wet dog in the morning?

Had a call from the Little Woman hoofing it to Estrella ahora mismo. She stayed in an hotel last night and is now feeling guilty about the expense. I suggested, not only should she make a practice of staying in hotels, but only if there is no parador handy. If there is, book into that. But she won't.
I get the impression that she feels the Camino is going, or has gone, down the Swanee big time since she last trod it.

But you must hear it from her.

HOUNDED

2010-03-10T06:33:00.028+01:00

Not only am I the target of a crazed cockerel,(see previous blog) but even my doggie compamions are a source of hazard and concern. Twice now, Nabi the Greyhound has accidentally (I am sure) run into me in the middle of a field at about literally twenty miles an hour and sent me bowling.
It would seem that her accomplice, Lulu, has settled for afflicting both Reb and I mentally, by going seriously lame for a couple of days and causing us to worry and call the Vet. In fact, Nabi has already done this in the past, twice, (go lame, that is - not call the Vet) but then recovered from the problems quickly. Now Lulu appears to have done likewise. (recover quickly, that is - not call the Vet) We hope.
We are not yet used to Greyhounds. Their legs look so fragile and they run so fast on them that frequent injuries seem inevitable.
And you will have read in Reb's blog of their joint attack on a neighbor friend's very small dog which they ran down and had every intention of tearing to bits. We had to fend them off with my stick. These are the same beasts which, from day one, I have felt confident to pick up, pull mouths open, peer into ears and generally poke about - the same as I do with Una and Tim - without the slightest fear of them biting. And I still do. Very odd. However, muzzles are on the cards for walks.
They both are still very distrustful of anyone but Reb and me, and may always be a bit that way.
On top of that, the Vet hospital in Leon is quoting 450 euros EACH to have them spayed.
Greyhounds, it seems - although demanding of affection - are not cuddly dogs. Big fun so far, though.

Hen Pecked

2010-03-04T17:35:00.016+01:00

Max, our Rooster/Cockerel, is kicking up. Big time - with spurs on. The worm-catcher has suddenly turned.
I think I have written here before on what a coward Max used to be; bristling and bustling and shouting aggressively until I looked him in the eye, then strutting away pretending the bluster was all about something else, over there, on the other side of the coop.
But no longer. No more the Craven Crowboy. He has suddenly become immensely, almost suicidally, brave.
When I go out each morning to feed and water him and the harem, he waits until I am busy with the water dispenser, or whatever, then hurls himself full force into me from behind - like Berlusconi at a Miss Italy contestant.
And when I turn and challenge him, he puffs himself up all over, shouts the chicken equivalent of 'Banzai!' and wades back in for more.
It is well to go armed these days. This morning I happened to be carrying the chain saw, (blade in its cover I hasten to say) and was able to parry him with a smart blow to the wattles, which discouraged him long enough for me to collect the eggs and toe it.
Hard to know how to proceed. I must confess he amuses me hugely - now more than ever - and I would hate to make him all timid again by clouting him too hard. But sometimes, other people have to get the eggs and so forth, and should not have to go toe to beak with the Feathered Fury.
Suggestions welcomed, the more absurd, the better.

Opus Damian?

2010-02-20T07:02:00.030+01:00

Long time no blog. Sorry. One reason is that I have recently subject to recurring attacks of a lifelong, though happily unthreatening, malaise - commonly referred to in medical circles as "idleness."
But idleness is not all to blame. I have also become transfixed to the point of immobility by The Blog of Damian Thompson. It is to be found in The Daily Telegraph online, under Blogs, then go to Religion. If I knew how, I would make a link or something.
But you know me.
Anyway, when you visit said blog, you will see a photograph of Damian. It shows him to be both very young and amazingly lifelike. Due to his tender years he is still having trouble fixing his tie, but we are confident he will have it mastered within months, if not weeks. Shoelaces may take longer.
As to the blog, it must be read to be believed. Not so much for his own entries, which are for the most part anodyne enough, but for the responses he provokes.
The other day, someone was advocating a new reconquista in Europe. Where I live, they haven't go over the last one yet. Only recently have they started digging the first of the bodies up.
As a newcomer to Damian's blog, I congratulate him. It's an unalloyed masterpiece of nostalgic trivia.
The heady admixture of incense, candle wax, paranoia, suspicion, bluster and fear instantly transports me back in Proustian fashion over half a century to my Catholic 'education.'
Clearly a great many of the commenters are familiar with one another and seem to occupy their entire day in arcane and pedantic bickering over Catholic-Anglican mminutiae which would not detain any rational human for a nanosecond.
Sadly, a high proportion of them are clearly barking, and a danger to society if allowed out unsupervised, thus the blog performs a valuable social function.
It also puts one in mind of medieval greybeards debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin - but brought up to 'date' as a gang of pinheads dancing on an angel.
Having said this - which is, of course, kindly meant - I intend to avail myself regularly of its riches.
All good harmless fun, it seemed at first sight. But I can be a bit slow on the uptake. It suddenly hit me like a Blinding Flash - as we cliche-mongers say - that it might All Be The Work of Opus Dei. - (Burst of sinister chords reaching sonorous climax) - Coo, er.
So if, or more likely when, my lifeless corpse is found strangled with rosary beads, Mossad and Alastair Campbell can safely be excluded from the list of suspects.

Update

2010-02-08T10:13:00.009+01:00

In one of Anthony Powell's 'Music of Time' novels, Moreland says something to the effect that, 'It's not the awful things awful people do that upset one, we expect that - it's the awful things that nice people do that really hurt.' I am sure Powell put it more gracefully, but you get the point.
That's why I find the current behaviour and attitude of Tony Blair and Alastair Caampbell distressing. More on this later, I fear.
Now it is jolly in London, but cold. Superb lunch in Clapham yesterday in a Spanish restaurant with chums. The murder of David Kelly remains unsolved. Sorry.
Alaistair was speechless for fully fifteen seconds on TV yesterday. 'Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent,' says Ludwig. But we shouldn't regard that as an unspoken admission of murder.

WATCH THIS SPACE

2010-01-29T07:00:00.003+01:00

There may be no blog for a while. We are off the England, London and Bournemouth, to see family and friends. I will try to write, but it might be difficult. I am looking forward to meeting people but not to the journey. These days I am a rather indifferent old wine, with more than a hint of acidity, that does not travel.

Life without the furries and featheries will be unsatisfactory. But there will be compensations for sure.

And I will try to solve the murder of Dr. David Kelly. Easy.

Today Blair speaks at Chilcot. He will squirm skilfully and nothing will be resolved. He knows something. Maybe we should take a lead from his ex-brother in arms Rumsfeld and waterboard him a few dozen times.

Alastair Campbell is innocent!

2010-01-27T09:14:00.005+01:00

I was beginning to think that the idea of any news story shocking me ever again was long gone - that I had moved beyond good and evil in fact. Until I read that Lord Hutton, some sort of ex-judge, was sealing the evidence in the suspicious 2003 'suicide' of Dr. David Kelly - for the next seventy years!
An amazing bit of high-handed arrogance by anyone's standards, one would think.
Kelly was, as a biological scientist and arms inspector, deeply invoved in the continuing ruckus over the Iraq war and the famous, if fabulous, Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Given this, and in view of the current Chilcot inquiry, we can only ask ourselves: What is Hutton hiding?
Something momentous for sure. Either we can hold our collective breath for seventy years or we can speculate. So, here goes.
If Kelly's death was either suicide or an accident, there would be no need for a cover-up. It must then, be murder. And very likely brutal murder. And very likely cold-blooded. So, cold-blooded, brutal murder it is. Now we're getting somewhere.
Who done it? We have all heard the scurrilous and unfounded rumors surrounding Alastair Campbell. Utterly unfounded. Totally absurd. One only needs to visit his 'Official Website.' It is indeed a site to see. All pastel pink, rose and mauve labels - more suggestive of Women's Knitting Weekly magazine than of a cold-blooded, brutal murderer.
And there is the man himself featured in his extensive 'picture gallery' - still almost distinguished looking, despite his advanced years, like some noble old ruin.
By no means is this the face of a cold-blooded, brutal, killer - except when he is wearing his soccer cap, of course.
The clincher of his innocence was, for me, his appearance at the Chilcot inquiry. The forthright and guileless simplicity of his delivery gave the lie to those base enough to infer that he might have the cunning to commit anything as complex as murder, even the warm-blooded and gentle kind.
We must look elsewhere.
Watch this blog!

Blair and Bush - and Uncle Dick Cheney and all

2010-01-26T12:15:00.015+01:00

Horses' arses

Tony Blair is a melancholy conundrum to me. When he was elected Prime Minister, I was still working in the States but I followed his career with close and friendly interest. He, and his wife, seemed cozily familiar - the sort of people who lived nearby, that you ran into at dinner parties. Decent, reasonable, cheerful, caring, compassionate sorts. Like all of us, in fact. Nice. Liberal.Easygoing. In favour of gay marriage and a woman's right to choose. Enjoying both opera and the Stones. Not too intellectual - at least not in public. Fond of a nice glass of wine, provided it's not too costly. Don't own guns, and don't want to. We had mutual friends. Same sort of people. I wished him well.
Seems, as usual, I was dead wrong.
Seems Tony got some kind of sexy frisson from hanging around the corridors at the White House in order to catch a glimpse of boy George twirling his six-guns and pretending to be Gary Cooper. From time to time Bush would swagger out ('In Texas, we call it walkin!') of the Oval Office, pat the Prime Minister on the top of his pointy head and let him kiss his arse occasionally.
Well, horses for courses, as we Brits say. Whatever floats your boat as the Americans put it. Takes all sorts, etc.
But, Jesus Christ.
I am no snob (Oh, yes you are - says Reb) but I would far sooner be shoveling shit on the Isle of Capri than have to be in the same time zone - let alone the same room - as Bush, or Cheney or Rumsfeld, or any of that detestable, ignorant, vulgar, arrogant, squalid, unlettered, philistine bunch of neocon bastards.
But the ongoing Chilcot inquiry will, no doubt, not pursue this line of reasoning. After all, even today in Britain and America both, to consort with a bunch of hyenas and yahoos like the Bushes merits no more than scorn and disgust.
Crimes against taste and human dignity are not war crimes.
Some of the British newspapers are encouraging readers to say what questions they would like to ask Blair when he presents himself at the Chilcot inquiry.
Mine would be, 'How did you manage to sit next to that nauseating prick at luncheon and ask him to pass the salt without vomiting all over him?'
Rhetorical to be sure, but I think we should be told.

Hounds Found

2010-01-20T16:33:00.004+01:00

Haiti may have to take a back seat today, despite there being another heavy tremor. (Pray harder, folks - maybe you can head off number three)
The thing is, we were giving the dogs their usual constitutional the other morning, when Una suddenly ignored our 'commands' and ran across the local road. Two minutes later she came back, accompanied by two skeletally thin greyhound bitches. This was not a surprise to us, as there have been sightings of two stray greyhounds in the area for several days now. We managed to coax the smaller one to come near enough to get a lead round her neck, and the other tagged along close behind but making sure nobody could get a hand on her. And so we lead them home and within the comforting walls of the Peaceful compound.
The cops were called, arrived, said it was another department's problem, thanked us, and left.
So, now we have two of the thinnest, smelliest - but very beautiful - dogs you'll ever see. Both still very scared and shy. They have been out in the wilderness, living on who knows what, for at least a week. The smaller one has already performed every conceivable bodily function on the floor and the carpet. Reb and Kim are giving them names. Bad idea. They can't stay.
Reb came to bed at 2 a.m, last night and I went down and stayed with the dogs. Very pleasant with the stove kept up, dozing in the firelight. When I woke about four one of the hounds had been sick on the carpet. Dogs. As the man said, 'Truly, they are called dogs.'
But, at 8 a.m. the bigger one followed me outside and did her bodily stuff in the yard. A good development.

Endgame Extra

2010-01-19T19:30:00.005+01:00

I think I published this yesterday, but I have added a bit extra. So will re-publish.

The Haiti quake has shaken up a few preconceptions.
Earthquakes - more perhaps than any other form of natural disaster - concentrate the mind wonderfully. Why is this? Well, they invariably strike without warning. Hurricanes, and the floods in their wake, are tracked hourly and we are informed of the risk. People often are warned to flee. Whether or not they do, is their problem, we can comfort ourselves. Volcanos the same. In the past they took the locals by surprise. Not now. Tornados can still strike swiftly, but mostly folks can take some sort of cover in time.
Extreme heat and extreme cold are capable of killing, but usually only when things go wrong these days.
Mostly we cope.
There is the perception of something unearthly about an earthquake. One second you are dozing cozily in your bed, the you are next dead, buried under tons of rubble.
In fact, like it or not, an earthquake is one of the most natural things in the world. Geologists are surprised it doesn't happen more often. The paper-thin surface of the planet has been shifting and roiling for millions of years. We all know this, although I suppose the people who think the world is a few thousand years old have their own ideas.
In the quite recent past, in 1755 in fact, Christian believers - virtually everyone in the western world that was, had no doubt about earthquakes. They were the work of God - and so must be part of His plan. As they were destructive, He must be punishing the Lisbonians(?) for something. This something must be their sins - what else? When Voltaire had the nerve to question this assumption, it was decried as blasphemy.
In 2010, either these old arguments are still valid for Christians or they are not. If they are not, what are the new arguments about God, 'natural' disaster and the world? I would very much like to know.

So far no success. I am now accused of playing games.

What I would like is for somebody to say, 'No, it's not God's fault, because...'
or 'Yes, it's God's fault, but...'
Is this too much to ask?

Apparently.

I am tempted to say the hell with it, but that would be unchristian.

QUAKES AND QUACKERY

2010-01-17T09:16:00.008+01:00

The Haiti earthquake, and subsequent comments by the likes of Pat Robertson - got me, and no doubt most people, thinking about Voltaire. Well, we can't think about him often enough. I must thank Mr. Thomas S. Vernon for putting all it so elegantly.

ON NOVEMBER 1, 1755, Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, was virtually destroyed by a terrible earthquake that resulted in the deaths of many thousands of people. In statistical terms this event is by no means at the top of the list of the world's great disasters, but it made a lasting impression on the minds of literate people.
Many of us today know about the Lisbon earthquake who never heard of the more destructive events that have occurred both before and since in various parts of the civilized world. What made the Lisbon earthquake so memorable? No doubt mainly the fact that it was thought about and written about by one man, François Marie Arouet de Voltaire. The tragedy made a life-changing impression on the mind of this man, not only because of the immeasurable human suffering involved, but also because of its religious significance.

When news of the tragedy reached Voltaire he wrote to a friend as follows:

'One would have great difficulty in divining how the laws of movement operate such frightful disasters in the best of all possible worlds.... What will the preachers say, especially if the palace of the Inquisition has been left standing? I flatter myself that the reverend father inquisitors will have been crushed like the others. That should teach men not to persecute men.'

'The best of all possible worlds' is a reference to Gottfried Leibniz, the German philosopher who, in 1710, had published a work explaining that the evil and suffering we witness are necessary features of a world which otherwise would not be as perfect as it is.
This was a popular view among philosophers and theologians of the time: our limited minds cannot grasp reality as it is perceived by an infinite, benevolent, and all-powerful God who, out of an infinite number of possible worlds, has created the best that could be.
This is one way of dealing with what is known in the history of thought as the problem of evil: why do evil and suffering abound in a world created by a beneficent and all-powerful Creator?
The answer, according to Leibniz and others is that we would realize that everything is really for the best, could we but see things from God's point of view. To Voltaire such a resolution of the problem had long seemed insupportable, and the Lisbon earthquake appeared to attack and demolish once and for all a philosophy that insulted human dignity and intelligence.

The view promulgated by Leibniz and others is often characterized as "optimism." Theodore Besterman reminds us that "in this context optimism has nothing to do with one's outlook on life; it is the belief that all that is and happens is for the best." Indeed to some thinkers, including Voltaire, the Leibnizian view makes for the deepest sort of pessimism, for if we were obliged to believe that the conditions of human life we see about us are the best that is possible -- even under the management of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God then we have good reason to be discouraged, not only about this life but about the life to come as well.

Yet John Wesley, the Methodist patron saint, did not hesitate to attribute the Lisbon tragedy to "sin," to "that curse that was brought upon the earth by the original transgression of Adam and Eve." This should not surprise us, as Wesley was also an enthusiastic supporter of witch burning.

Christian opinion of the question of free will has long been divided, but there is substantial unanimity in claiming the right to exercise free will in the matter of logic!
Voltaire had also read a poem by Alexander Pope in which Pope proclaimed, "Whatever is is right"!

Some Christian apologists have tried to explain away the problem of evil by saying that what the infinite mind of God perceives as reasonable and just may not appear so to our finite intelligence. In his Philosophical Dictionary Voltaire makes short work of this kind of pettifogging sophistry:

The silly fanatic repeats to me ... that it is not for us to judge what is reasonable and just in the great Being, that His reason is not like our reason, that His justice is not like our justice. Eh! how, you mad demoniac, do you want me to judge justice and reason otherwise than by the notions I have of them? Do you want me to walk otherwise than with my feet, and to speak otherwise than with my mouth?

G

HEAVEN, HELL AND HAITI

2010-01-15T07:33:00.017+01:00

This picture of Edith Piaf has nothing to do with the piece below. But we need something to look at.

Haiti is on my mind right now. That and God, and one of his representatives on earth, Mr.(or should that be the Rev?) Rob Elder. I had a small exchange with him on facebook, during which it transpired that he is a Man of the Cloth.

A felicitous epiphany for me. Of course, with a name like that, one should have known. Mr. Elder, is indeed, an elder of some church or other - which is yet to be revealed, but I have high hopes of The Quivering Brethren. A youngish elder, maybe but an elder nonetheless. And, doubtless, the latest in a lengthy line of elders possibly stretching back to the Flood. A notable affirmation of intellectual Lamarkism. Serendipity is the word that springs to mind.

My affection for clerics is well-known in the small but select circle I inhabit. Nothing I like better than vituperating with vicars, parleying with parsons, prognosticating with priests or bickering with bishops. If you should think this is mere persiflage, ask my bishop buddy Bosco, of Pennsylvania. I would even be prepared to pontificate with the Pope. I am no snob. Indeed, at times I reflect on my wasted life and wonder if I might not have made a decent Dean myself. But I suspect I might have taken the religion business a bit too seriously.

The point is, my Christian chums are, practically without exception, exceptionally nice people. And often intelligent. Jim Basick was - hopefully still is - Chaplin to Toledo University.(Though, on reflection, I suspect this might sound as if I am damning him with faint praise.) No matter, we must press on.

The point is, (I know, we're getting there) the point is, all these good men (and the odd woman) belive in things that are not supported by any credible evidence. There is no evidence to support the belief that there is life after death, for example. The 'evidence' that Jesus rose from the dead, is sufficiently contradictory to prevent any self-respecting newspaper from running it. Fox News might, or The National Enquirer, but not The New York Times or The Toldeo Blade.

The point is, (at last) this all started with Pat Robertson saying that Haiti had only itself to blame for doing a deal with the devil. But, once the door to superstition is opened even a fraction, all kinds of lunacy comes bursting in. Why is making a pact with Satan any more crazy than praying to a god who apparently allows appalling things to happen to us all on a daily basis? Maybe he hates Haiti. Maybe he loves the USA. If that is so, it doesn't seem fair to me. And we English like fairness, in principle anyway.

An honest god is the noblest work of man, they say. (I do, anyway) We need to do more work on this one, he's looking a bit shabby.

And we havent even mentioned Sara Palin. That should count for something.

RETURN OF THE STRANGER

2010-01-12T08:31:00.006+01:00

Just a couple of days ago, I remarked that it was time for another look at Camus. The next day, a full page in El Pais headlined, 'Will 2010 be the year of Camus?' Well, merde alors, as they say. The writer, one Jean Daniel, founder of the Nouvelle Observateur, a fearfully intellectual frog mag, believes that, 'More than ever, our world needs the lucid discipline, the abomination of the absolute, the cultivation of doubt and the restrained heroism that characterised the author of 'The first man.' And he may be right.
Much of the Camus fever is due to it being the fiftieth anniversary of his untimely death in a car crash aged 47. As youngsters, we took a keen interest in French culture - called ourselves existentialists and wore black roll-neck sweaters, listened to Juliette Greco records, watched Goddard and Truffault films and pretended to read Being and Nothingness and agreed that life was absurd. In my dotage, I realise we were right to do those things at that time. Not all that bad to do some of them now, especially the last.
Apart from Sartre, (whose novels I liked) I found reading Camus a more rewarding experience, and learned much of value from The Stranger, The Rebel and The Plague. Camus himself denied being an existentialist, claiming to be a simple pagan. When I look at the effects of organised religion today, a bit more paganism might be a blessing.

Camus has some good quotes

Don't wait for the last judgement, it take place every day.

Freedom is nothing more than a chance to be better.

In order to understand the world, one must turn away from it on occasion.

It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all.

LUDWIG

2010-01-11T06:49:00.003+01:00

''in the metropolitan civilization the spirit can only huddle in some corner.''

- Ludwig Wittgenstein.

THE OLD ROUTINE

2010-01-10T08:37:00.014+01:00

In response to the countless millions out there in blogosphere - Deb particularly -a rundown on the mundane in Morations.

Up this morning, Sunday Jan 10th, at 7.30 in the dark. But it is often as early as 6.

Mutual greetings with dogs, cat. Clean out Murphy's shit from the potted palm and sweep up the soil from around.
Put on the coffee.

Then arrancar ( fire up -good word, I think) the computer to catch up on the latest follies and inanities in Britain and the US.
My horse of yesterday, Tar Heel Mom, came third in a photo at Gulfstream. So, not bad. Made 3 euros. But am having trouble watching the races live these days, which I could do here at one time. Some computer devil at work.

Cold here these days, but not as bad as Britain, which is '...Paralysed by Winter's icy grip,' and so on, as the Guardian or Telegraph will have it. Ooo, er.

Then take the cover off Bob and give him his seed and a sliver of fruit, normally apple, which gets him singing. Give Una her pills in a lump of cream cheese. This is since she had her leg off. Can't actually remember what the pills are for now. Reb does.
Make the chickens' breakfast of left-over bread, pasta, veg, etc. Rice a big favourite.

We have a back window sill about a yard deep, where the chicks like to cluster, clucking and pecking at the glass and watching us inside. When I go out with their breakfast, the all run back with me to their house, all getting under my feet and shouting. It is funny when chickens run. They are dinosaurs. These cold mornings, I have considered taking them each a cup of cocoa, but Reb thinks it is going a bit too far. I look at Max sometimes and wonder if he would taste as good as he looks. But I could no more eat him than I could Tim.

Then clean out the wood stove. There was a piece moaning about wood stoves in the Guardian recently. The writer, who hates them, made the point that they can be time consuming, expensive nuisances. He is right in a way. It depends on your 'lifestyle.'
If I was going off to a full day's work at the humbug mines, as in the past - a wood stove would not do. Like animals and children they need constant attention. They need to be fed wood every hour or so and a thorough clean out every morning, emptying the ash box, polishing the glass panel. Takes time, all of it, and is messy. And I have to spend an hour or so every few days, chopping up kindling and chain-sawing the logs. But, for me, this is not unenjoyable.

By now it is 9am and Reb is stirring. In an hour or so, it will be time to take a walk along the Camino to San Nicolas del Real Camino - a village whose name is longer than the main street - to have a coffee in the bar Barrunta with the neighbors.
Then back for church, which will be chilly.

Must start thinking about lunch. Something with meat as we have no vegetarian pilgrims on the premises for once. Rabbit, maybe.

A NEW LEAF

2010-01-08T09:10:00.030+01:00

MAX. The rooster. Big,handsome and cowardly. So we have at least one thing in common.

Too many months since my last blog. Not sure why - have not done all that much. True, Murphy the bent pussy cat and Una the triped dog have taken up some time, but that is just an excuse. Still, now as you see - I have an elegant new label which I can fail to live up to.

Meanwhile Reb's blog sails effortlessly along - with its growing flotilla of readers.

What - as Face Book puts it - is On My Mind right now, is our visit to England in two weeks or so. I anxiously scan weather channels each day. Snow and ice and dead sheep and dead frozen dart fans and cold and cancelled trains and planes. As I head into my dotage, I find I have less tolerance of the prospect of our journey. It will not be an adventure. I want the trip there and back to be nice and dull and warm.

Quite brisk here today. I have just had to take an axe to the frozen water bowl for Max and the hen girls - a good inch thick, it was.

And we have a new year, for which I do not hold out a whole lot of hope. That things don't get much worse would be good enough for me.

BOOKS. Last year I read 'the Rest Is Noise' and I urge you to do so - it is a fascinating and gossipy history of music during the 20th Century. I also read 'La Noche de los Tiempos' which is also highly recommended, but I must warn that it is in Spanish and 1000 pages long, so most of you are excused.

This year I intend to re-read Camus and Koestler, who are in the papers recently with anniversaries and biographies, and also Orwell on Cataluyna.
Camus thought life was absurd and Koestler thought it was insane. Both, I think, were right.
Probably time to re-examine George Bernard Shaw as well. He just thought life was ridiculous. He was right as well.

MUSIC. I bought some Berg, Sibelius and Schoenberg - as a result of the Noise book. Schoenberg is interesting, but I don't know if I will warm to him or Berg. Sibelius is enjoyable and I will get more. He does not sound like the world's worst composer to me. Some apparently think him so.

NEWS. Lorca is not buried where he was supposed to be. And it seems he may never now be found. Maybe this is not so bad a thing. It adds a new layer of mystery and irresolution. But the prospect of him possibly being in the Valle de los Caidos is not a happy one.

RACING. Three truly great horses in one year- Sea the Stars, Rachel Alexander and Zenatta. But how the last two, fillies - failed to meet head to head was a huge let down. That would really have been the Race of the Century, no matter what is still to come.

DOUBLE CHRIS-CROSSED

2009-10-20T14:07:00.031+01:00

Once in a while, this blog is about the Camino. This one is, so be warned.
While Reb was away, two German pilgrims showed up. One was called Christian, and was healthy, one was called Christopher and was unwell. Very unwell, in fact. Both aged twenty, long-haired, bearded, like the European visual versions of Jesus.
Christopher was diagnosed with probable multiple sclerosis seven years ago, which may - or may not - have something to do with what happened.
These two kids, along with four others originally, who had quit one by one, set out from Cologne to walk the Camino with no money apart from a small sum set aside for emergencies. They started out August 1st and had clearly used some wheeled transport to get themselves as far as Moratinos by October 17th.
Their original plan was to be self-sufficient - that is to live off wild fruits, weeds, vegetables, nuts and berries and any wild animals they might happen to get, I suppose. The latter was not likely, as they were not armed or carrying traps and road kill is frugal round here. So, fruits, berries and nuts it was. As they had so little money they slept out most of the time so as not to pay for albergues - usually about 5 euros a night.
'Self sufficiency' became to mean - as far as one could follow - scrounging, begging stale bread from bakeries, dumpster diving behind supermarkets and a bit of light stealing from orchards and vegetable gardens.
The nights grew colder. Christopher developed such a swelling in his throat and tongue that he could not eat anything solid at all and had trouble even swallowing water.
And he was running a feverish temperature 38c, 104f.
Finally, at our house, Christopher went to bed and stayed there for 24 hours or so until Reb got home. We tried to feed him in the meantime, but it was no use.
So, Rebekah's first task on getting home was to drive him to the medical center in Sahagun, some six miles away. He was given a shot of something and we were told he should go immediately to the big hospital in Leon, 45 miles away. This we duly did, on Sunday afternoon. Reb had already driven some 100 miles from the other side of Burgos in the morning. My driving days are done. Minces muy malo.
The hospital services are so good around here (this is not irony) that the emergency staff there admitted him, examined him, took several blood samples for analysis, and came up with instructions for further treatment all in the space of two hours.
Christopher was told to report the following morning (today, Sunday 20th) to have an abscess in his mouth drained. (As of now, Sunday evening, we have heard nothing, and I will be mildly surtprized if we ever do. We took him to the albergue in Leon, explained the circumstances, said Hasta luego, Buen Camino, breathed a sigh of relief and went for a bite at our favorite pizza joint, La Competençia. Thin crust. Tip top.
At first, when it was all over, I felt that I ought to be all bent out of shape by the amazing presumption of these kids. Their 'self sufficiency' probably cost us about 50 euros in hard cash.
But, then, I think that - if I had heard of the Camino at age 20 - maybe 17 in my case - I might have done exactly the same dopey thing. Too old to be dopey in that fashion now, at 68. Dopey in different ways.
A pilgrim from Cuba has just shown up, so I will continue manaña.

EVIDENCE OF INSANITY

2009-10-13T07:41:00.037+01:00

Leather from unique cows.

'This world is so insane that to be sane is simply another kind of madness,' said Pascal two or three hundred years ago. He was right then and here is clear evidence that he is still right.

Flipping through The New Yorker of October 5th, 2009. On page 21 a full-page ad for Range Rovers. The headline reads: ONE OF THE MOST CIVILIZED PLACES ON EARTH. The picture showed the driving seat of the car. In 1998 - the only year for which I could find the statistics I needed - 1,170,694 people on Earth were killed in traffic-related accidents. 38,848,625 were injured. Things are almost certainly a heck of a lot worse by now.
I did find some figures full of optimistic cheer from the U.S. for 2008. It seems that only 31,600 Americans got whacked. (About 10 times more than 9-11, you will note.) This, proclaimed the article, is a great improvement on 1972, when 54,000 bit the asphalt. Our roads are getting safer, exulted some suited buffoon. No, they are just getting less awful.
What the ad ought to say is, ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACES ON EARTH.
And that's not all. The smaller text of the ad reads thus:
The Range Rover Autobiography (the name of the beast, it seems) is all that is luxurious. Redesigned for you, by you. From the interior employing unique leather hides, trim and premium woods, these uniquely personalized Range Rovers take you wherever, whenever with a heightened ride quality and unprecedented performance. Finding the time to get far away just got a little easier.

To dissect such imbecile fatuity is, I agree, a waste of whatever brains we still possess. But.. unique leather hides? You mean each one only comes off one cow?

'Uniquely personalized' speaks for itself.

God knows what 'heightened ride quality' is. Sounds nice, though. Maybe we get killed in luxurious comfort.

To be sure, car advertising is often highly dubious. Pontiac used to promise 'DRIVING EXCITEMENT' when "driving excitement" is surely the last thing any sane person would want.
Which brings us back to Pascal. Time to unbuckle the safety belt and clamber out of the 'Autobiography' faintly relieved to still be in one piece.

NOTE: The Range Rover 'Autobiography' costs from $145,000 amd does 15 miles to the gallon.

RE. REB'S BLOG

2009-10-08T06:27:00.015+01:00

A quick update on Big Fun before Rebekah can file the real thing.

1: The rains have come. Good thing for farmers, bad thing for putting chimneys on bodegas.

2: Blodwyn is well again. Pecker back up. Olive oil, administered by eye dropper did the trick again, I think.

3: Reb exaggerates about me. And the racing is over until The Breeders Cup in November, now Sea The Stars has won the Arc. But the masajista in Sahagun could do nothing for me, but suggest some cream which cost 20 euros. So, we will maybe try a curandero - a magic man, or woman. Magic. So low am I sunk.
If that fails there is nothing left but Lourdes. Superstition.

On a more melancholy note, Irving Penn is dead. Age 92, though. One of his pix above. Nice.

ONLY CONNECTING

2009-09-20T01:45:00.036+01:00

This shot of Amedeo Modigliani has nothing to do with the following, but I like to put a picture on the blog. There should be something interesting to look at, at least.

Of late, I have been involved in a friendly discussion with an old friend, Jeff, supposedly about the Middle East. It is really about Israel.
Jeff is - or was - I think, paid to put that troubled country in as good a light as possible. Or perhaps he really does see it as the promised land. Both, I expect. Fair enough. It takes all sorts, etc.
As our chat has been to-ing and fro-ing, I have also been reading a book called 'The Rest Is Noise,' by Alex Ross. I cannot recommend the book highly enough. It is more or less a history of 'serious' music during the previous century. Don't be put off by this. The book is a compendium of gossip and scandal replete with jealousy and hate, as the song goes.

On the face of it, there is no real link between the two subjects, but, as Forster put it somewhere, 'Only connect.'
Two quotes from 'Noise' struck me as relevant. One is from a French poet, Charles Peguy in 1910 (of whom I am afraid I know nothing).

'Everything begins in mystique and ends in politics.'

The second is from Leonard Bernstein:

'It is only after fifty, sixty, seventy years of world holocausts, of the simultaneous advance of democracy with our increasing inability to stop making war, with the simultaneous magnification of national pieties with the intensification of our active resistance to social equality - only after we have experienced all this through the smoking ovens of Auschwitz, the frantically bombed jungles of Vietnam, through Hungary, Suez, the Bay of Pigs, the farce-trial of Sinavsky and Daniel, the refueling of the Nazi machine, the murder in Dallas, the arrogance of South Africa, the Hiss-Chambers travesty, the Trotskyite purges, Black Power, Red Guards, the Arab encirclement of Israel, the plague of McCarthyism, the Tweedledum armaments race, - only, after all this can we finally listen to Mahler's music and understand that it foretold all. And that in the foretelling it showered a rain of beauty on this world that has not been equalled since.'

A truly splendid rant, no question, and no more than Mahler deserves. If Bernstein were to write it today, he might omit maybe South Africa, but add several later horrors - 9-11, Bosnia, Chechnya, Ethopia, Iraq, Guantanamo, Gaza, Abu Grahib, Afghanistan. It would seem things are not improving much.

Peguy's quote struck me as particularly apt for Israel. Of course, it could just as well apply to almost everything.

Of Bernstein, as a liberal myself, I am in agreement with him on virtually all - Mahler especially.

To talk of 'the Arab encirclement of Israel,' though, strikes me as odd. Surely when the first Israelis arrived, they must have known that they were surrounded by Arab states? How could they fail to be encircled? Maybe they thought the Arabs would not mind their arrival. The Arabs minded very much from day one.
It seems as if Bernstein was trying to shoehorn Israel's predicament into a list where it did not comfortably fit.

Still on the ceaseless hunt for knowledge - in Moratinos, we never sleep - I looked up what countries constitute the Middle East. Here is the list I found:

Bahrain
Gaza Strip
Iran
Iraq
Israel
Jordan
Kuwait
Lebanon
Oman
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Syria
United Arab Emirates
West Bank
Yemen

No Egypt? Surely an oversight. Even so, a pretty shabby bunch, I reckon. Even shabbier including Egypt. Afghanistan would fit right in as well.
It's a bit late to start asking what Israel is doing rubbing shoulders with such company - but I do. In Spain (or is it Russia?) we have a saying: Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. Can anyone have thought that any good could come of all this? Or is it that people feel they have no choice? Gotta do what they gotta do? The result may well be the end of civilisation as we know it. If global warming does't get us, racial hatred and aggressive nationalism can pick up the slack.
Might not be so bad a thing, though. After all, Mahler is nice, but not necessary.
Maybe the cockroaches will can a better job of it.

A LYNCHING, 2009 STYLE

2009-09-18T17:59:00.006+01:00

The following is a cut-down version of an AP story today. Clark has not been charged with anything yet. He might just be innocent. Imagine. But he is being lynched as surely as many innocent blacks were in the last century..

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — Staffers in white coats reported to work Friday at the end of an extraordinary week at Yale as police considered whether a graduate student's grisly death might have stemmed from a dispute with an animal research technician described as an overbearing "control freak."
A law enforcement official said police are looking into the possibility that Raymond Clark III's attitude led to a deadly workplace confrontation with 24-year-old Annie Le. She vanished Sept. 8, and her body was found in a utility compartment in a Yale medical school building five days later, on what was to be her wedding day.
Police charged Clark, 24, with murder on Thursday, arresting him at a motel a day after taking hair, fingernail and saliva samples to compare with evidence from the crime scene.
Bond was set at $3 million for Clark, who kept his head down and said "Yes, your honor," when asked whether he understood his rights. He did not enter a plea.
The official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing and many details remain sealed, said Yale workers told police that Clark was a "control freak" who clashed with scientists and their proteges in the lab where they both worked at the Ivy League school.
Investigators haven't decided whether the theory will ultimately lead to a motive but don't believe they'll need to establish one when Clark goes to trial because they have an abundance of strong forensic evidence, the official said.
Authorities are offering few details about the crime. They would not discuss a motive, largely because Clark will not talk to police, and would not disclose the DNA test results or how they connected Clark to the slaying.
Yale students are relieved that a suspect is in custody, yet shaken that the crime happened there.
"It's important to the community to know that something's been done and that somebody's actually being brought to justice," Juliana Biondo said Thursday.
But that doesn't comfort Doug Lindsay.
"Despite the fact that they found somebody ... it was still, to me, kind of scary," he said.
Two friends of Clark's since childhood, appearing on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Thursday night, said they were stunned by the murder allegations and could not reconcile them with the young man they've known for years.
"That's not the Raymond Clark I've talked to my whole entire life," Bobby Heslin said.
"I just can't picture him doing something like this," Maurice Perry said.
The New York Times reported that Clark at times grew angry if lab workers did not wear shoe covers. "He would make a big deal of it, instead of just requesting that they wear them," said a researcher who asked not to be identified.

If your newspaper is running this kind of story, I advise canceling, right now.

P.S.
I put the fifth paragraph in bold for obvious reasons. The fact that 'the investigation is ongoing and many details remain sealed,' will be of small consolation to Clark. His name was not one of the sealed details.

FUN FACEBOOK QUIZ

2009-09-17T07:19:00.000+01:00

WHICH DISNEY DWARF - no, let's no do that one again - how about..

Which of these countries will decide to get its nuclear retaliation in first?
A: India, B: Pakistan, C: Israel, D: Iran
Answers on a flameproof postcard please. Happy Facebooking!

More Oh, God

2009-09-10T07:03:00.005+01:00

MEXICO CITY – A Bolivian religious fanatic briefly hijacked a jetliner from the beach resort of Cancun as it landed in Mexico City on Wednesday, police said. All passengers and the crew were released unharmed.
The Bible-carrying hijacker used a juice can he said was a bomb to hold the 103 passengers and crew on the tarmac for more than an hour.
Masked police stormed the aircraft with guns drawn and escorted several handcuffed men away without firing a shot. Police later said there was only one hijacker, and the other men aboard were detained because the suspect had told a flight attendant he had three accomplices. The others were quickly released.
Jose Flores, 44, later told police his three companions were "the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."
Flores hijacked Aeromexico Flight 576 after a divine revelation, according to Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna. Flores said Wednesday's date — 9-9-09 — is the satanic number 666 turned upside down.

Well, that's all right then. Until I read the last sentence, I thought Senor Flores must be some kind of nut.
But has God nothing better to do than go around hijacking planes?

Oh, God

2009-09-08T07:29:00.014+01:00

There is a very interesting and thought-provoking article in The New Yorker of 31 August, called God In The Quad. It is based partly on a review of a book by Terry Eagleton who is apparently a Marxist Catholic. The book is a repudiation of the 'new atheism' of Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins among others. I have not read either the Eagleton book or the Dawkins book, The God Delusion, and will not - Eagleton because I won't agree with it, thanks to the New Yorker article, and Dawkins because I already agree with it.
So, no need.
I shall read 'Notes from the Underground,' which has just arrived, instead.
In fact there is no point in writing any any more about this topic. I would have to go on for thousands of words and nothing would be solved and people would either get bored or angry.
But, do try to read the article. I agree with most of it.

ALSO
This, says the site, is my 150th blog. An intoxicating - or sobering - thought. One or the other.

THE BRIGHT SIDE

2009-08-31T07:51:00.008+01:00

Having just read Reb's latest, rather downbeat, blog, I feel I must reverse roles and be cheerful for once.
Yesterday we took the dogs for a ride in the car to some nearby woods.
Tim was Tim, as ever, but Una was so like her old self when we were back in Pennsylvania - racing around, so full of the joys of Summer it was a treat to watch. Whether or not the surgery will save her, we still can't know. But even if it doesn't, it was worth it for yesterday morning alone.
She is a lesson to all of us, but me in particular.
Reb found a Mark Twain quote - something to the effect that, 'We humans get to Heaven by favor. It it went by merit, dogs would go there and we would not.'
While I am on half-remembered remarks, Montaigne said something like, 'If stupid people really are happier than the rest of us, the sooner the rest of us start taking stupid lessons the better.'

And, on an (almost) entirely different topic, the lauding of Ted Kennedy is getting stupid. Sure, he was a cheerful old pol and a good liberal, but he was also a buffoon with very little credibility after Chappaquiddick. 'Nobody can take his place,' the pundits solemnly intone. No, and thank God for that. John Kerry, for example, is already twice the man Ted ever was.

Maxims Man

2009-08-20T07:35:00.007+01:00

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There are some who never would have loved if they never had heard
it spoken of.

However deceitful hope may be, yet she carries us on pleasantly to
the end of life.

The desire to appear clever often prevents our being so.

When our vices leave us we flatter ourselves with the idea we have
left them.

Just four of the many maxims of La Rochefoucauld. The French have long seemed to have a more sensible - if cynical - view of life than anyone else. It runs from Montaigne up to - and past - Camus.

Caminology

2009-08-19T06:09:00.022+01:00

I have been getting into debates about the Camino on a website called Santiagobis (no, I don't know why, either) devoted to that topic recently, so the business of pilgrimage is on my mind.
So far, 2009 has been the year of Italians and cyclists. Last year it was Germans, because a comedian there wrote a best-seller about his journey.
In his book, called in English, 'I'm Off Now' he suggested that people who could afford to stay in hotels should do so and not take up bed spaces in albergues. I'm inclined to agree, and more or less said so.
This sparked a firestorm of response, mostly missing the point and saying how nice albergues were, and what lovely people one meets in them, etc.
The debate is still raging on, but I will cut the Kerkeling (for that is the author's name) now.
Why there are so many Italians this year is mysterious. I have asked several, but none had any real answer. I did think they might be doing penance on behalf of Berlusconi, but it was laughingly denied.
The rise in the number of cyclists is another thing. In general, it is unwelcome to me, because I think they are often bloody pests.
They wear outfits that insult the eye, seldom let walkers know of their approach, and zoom past with nary a warning, let alone a greeting. They seem to take little interest in the countryside they hurtle through and often are wearing headphones, so don't hear anything either. Yesterday I saw one bombing along, oblivious to everything - and shouting into his mobile phone. They are mostly Spanish and young and I also suspect them of doing most of the littering on the trail, though I have no direct evidence for this.
A curious thing is that of the many discarded cigarette packets we pick up, all, without exception, are Lucky Strike or Marlboro. Either nobody now smokes anything else, or smokers of other brands (whatever happened to Ducados and Gaulois?) are less environment-insensitive.

TODAY'S THOUGHT
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
H. L. Mencken

In Praise of Common Sense

2009-08-13T17:05:00.009+01:00

This picture has nothing to do with common sense. I think.

Common sense. Great stuff. There's nothing like it, is there? Common sense tells us the world is flat -course it is - particularly if you have ever lived in Toledo, Ohio. Flat as a pancake.
And common sense tells us that the sun travels round the earth. Course it does, it's obvious - especially here in Spain - where you can usually actually SEE the big yellow felow coming up and going down.
I think I have told this story before, but it fits in here. One of Wittgenstein's students once said to him,
'You can see why people used to think that the sun went round the earth.'
'Why?' said Wittgenstein.
'Because it looks that way.' said the student.
'Well, how would it look if the earth went round the sun?' said the great man.
And common sense tells us that life must have had a designer. Course it must. Someone, or something, must have dreamed up giraffes - they can't have just evolved, can they? Poor old Darwin - no common sense.

A Pilgrim's Problems

2009-08-07T11:00:00.036+01:00

Whoops, sorry Ali. Trigger seems to have stepped on your head.

It has been a while between entries. Sorry to the fan, but I have been involved in several adventures, none of them all that nice. Also, somehow, I seem have blundered into a website called Santiagobis (no, neither do I). But it seems to feature a lot of rather solemn questions about the Camino - what sort of gourd do you recommend - stuff like that. I tried to help in one case, but only succeeded in ruffling a feather or two.
Anyway,I was going to post the following on Santiagobis, but what the hey? I'd only make it worse.
So it'll make a blog.

ADVICE NEEDED

Feeling in need of a blinding headache - and to purge my soul of the Grave Sin of Irony - I am thinking of lugging my tired old frame along the Camino Frances to Santiago.

However...

I DON'T WANT to get blisters.
I DON'T WANT it to be too hot.
I DON'T WANT it to be too cold.
I DON'T WANT it to be too wet.
I DON'T WANT to be unsure where I am sleeping tonight.
I DON'T WANT to be unsure where I will be the following night.
I DON'T WANT to be blown up by ETA.
I DON'T WANT to be kidnapped and beheaded by fanatical moslems.
I DON'T WANT representatives of The Quivering Brethren to try to convert me as I walk.
I DON'T WANT someone snoring in the next bed in the albergue.
I DON'T WANT someone farting in the next bed in the albergue.
I DON'T WANT someone sniveling softly to themselves all night in the next bed.
I DON'T WANT someone snoring and farting in the next bed, then getting up at 5.30 a.m. and rustling a lot of plastic bags and chatting to his chums as they leave noisily.
I DON'T WANT to be barked at by fierce dogs.
I DON'T WANT to get into arguments about evolution with creationist crackpots.
I DON'T WANT to get stuck in the middle of a herd of sheep.
I DON'T WANT little midgey things dancing in front of my face and flying into my mouth.
I DON'T WANT hideously Spandex-clad bikey-boys hurtling past me at 40 kilometers an hour without a word of warning and making me jump.
I DON'T WANT to see any more Mel Gibson Movies starring Jesus (What's that got to do with it- Rebekah) (Nothing, I just don't want to.)
I DON'T WANT to hear any more pilgs saying, 'Is this albergue a donativo, or do we have to pay?'
I DON'T WANT any pilgrim meals that include french fries.
I DON'T WANT any hospitaleros who don't understand English.
I DON'T WANT to say 'Buenos dias,' to French pilgs, only be answered with, 'Bonjour.'
I DON'T WANT to have to see elderly, grossly fat Germans swaggering around the refugio wearing only tiny underpants.

In view of all this, I am thinking of fashioning a stout, wooden, soundproof box and having myself Fed-xed to Santiago in it.
What do fellow-pilgrims out there suggest?

Really?
If you're going to be that snitty about it, I think I'll just stay home.

Alone in the Peaceable, except for 16 beasts

2009-07-18T07:02:00.021+01:00

Here is a real blog, for a change. Reb is in Paris, France, as opposed to Texas, so I am in charge. Naturally, things have got out of hand and dog Una and cat Murphy both shared my bed last night. Hope Reb doesn't read this.
Yesterday, Esteban brought round a handsome young rooster, or cockerel as a gift. His name may be Max. Time will tell. He seems to have settled down with his harem of 11 chicken girls. I will put his picture on the blog as soon as I find the camera.

On an entirely unrelated topic, I don't understand Facebook - how it works, and what it is supposed to be for - and probably never will. But I have just signed off from an entertaining chat with a lady on it. How many other people have read our exchanges, I have no idea.
The lady in question is, as she says, a proudly patriotic American. She is also clearly a thoroughly decent person. Reading between the lines, and from comments her husband made, I get the idea that they belong to a class of Americans that are regularly handed the shitty end of the stick. I encountered many such in Toledo, Ohio, and Jeannette Pa. Her husband was a soldier, including in Iraq, and is now a cop. Lucky to be still alive, no doubt. So it falls to him and his like to enforce the laws that are specifically designed to keep him and his family firmly in the state of what Thoreau described as 'quiet desperation.' For instance, to protect all the bankers and swindlers and con men that are not actually in jail from being hanged from lamp posts, as they deserve.
All well and good, but what is ironic is that the couple in question (her,at least) are patriotic in the best sense of the word. They truly believe America can do no wrong, despite what they experience daily. They cheerfully feed the hand that bites them.
The Bernie Maddoff´s and Kenneth Lays of that country no doubt laugh at the idea of pride in their country. Remember Leona Helmsley? 'Only the little people pay taxes.'
It is the task of the Army and the Police to keep the oppressors safe from the oppressed.
I am not saying that other countries, like Spain and England for two, don't also cynically exploit the goodwill of many of their citizens. But I strongly suspect that the citizens involved know very well that they are being fed on garbage and don't choke it down cheerfully.
As one of my friends once remarked, 'It´s not that the government wants us to eat dog turds that bothers me. We have come to expect that. No, what´s off-pissing is that the bastards want us to call it chocolate.'

What the heck is this O'Gara guy on about? He sounds like a Commie to me.

None of this probably makes sense to anybody else. But that's what blogs are for.

Clueless

2009-07-17T18:05:00.008+01:00

Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Friday, July 17, 2009 -- 8:19 AM ET

Citigroup Reports $4.3 Billion Earned in Second Quarter

Citigroup posted a second-quarter profit of $4.3 billion on
Friday, beating analysts' forecasts.

I now get breaking news alerts from the NYT on my email. It strikes me that now I am so baffled by financial stuff I don´t know whether I should be apoplectic with rage at this particular bit of information, or delighted.

I doubt that I am alone in this.

¡Joder!

2009-07-13T15:33:00.006+01:00

This just in, from the web.

Swearing Makes Pain More Tolerable

That muttered curse word that reflexively comes out when you stub your toe could actually make it easier to bear the throbbing pain, a new study suggests.
Swearing is a common response to pain, but no previous research has connected the uttering of an expletive to the actual physical experience of pain.
"Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon," said Richard Stephens of Keele University in England and one of the authors of the new study.
Stephens and his fellow Keele researchers John Atkins and Andrew Kingston sought to test how swearing would affect an individual's tolerance to pain. Because swearing often has an exaggerating effect that can overstate the severity of pain, the team thought that swearing would lessen a person's tolerance.
As it turned out, the opposite seems to be true.
The researchers enlisted 64 undergraduate volunteers and had them submerge their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as possible while repeating a swear word of their choice. The experiment was then repeated with the volunteer repeating a more common word that they would use to describe a table.
Contrary to what the researcher expected, the volunteers kept their hands submerged longer while repeating the swear word.
The researchers think that the increase in pain tolerance occurs because swearing triggers the body's natural "fight-or-flight" response. Stephens and his colleagues suggest that swearing may increase aggression (seen in accelerated heart rates), which downplays weakness to appear stronger or more macho.

Well, blow me down, if you will excuse the language.

Sperm Count

2009-07-08T10:29:00.012+01:00

Whoops.

Human sperm created from stem cells in world first, claims British university
British scientists have created human sperm using stem cells in a medical first that could revolutionise fertility treatment, they claim.

Headlines from Wednesday's Daily Telegraph.
I would have thought that there was enough of the stuff around already.

Nailin' Palin

2009-07-08T07:12:00.012+01:00

My blogging colega, Lura, asks me what I think about Sara Palin. To paraphrase The Incomparable Max, (Beerbohm, that is, not T J) to give an honest and accurate account of the woman would require a far lesser pen than mine.
However, I note that a friend on Facebook suggests that she is giving up politics to make a more lucrative living as a Tina Fey impersonator.
I also note that her name is an anagram of NAILS A RAP, but don't know what to make of this.
Is is all very odd.

TODAY'S THOUGHT
Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.
Blaise Pascal

Jam session

2009-07-07T16:33:00.004+01:00

LOS ANGELES – A motorcade from the home of Michael Jackson's parents has reached a cemetery in the Hollywood Hills for a private service in advance of a star-studded memorial in downtown Los Angeles.
Numerous vehicles under California Highway Patrol escort headed out from the parents' home shortly before 8 a.m. Tuesday and reached Forest Lawn Memorial Park Hollywood Hills about 15 minutes later.
A California Highway Patrol escort shut down sections of freeways during the height of Los Angeles' morning rush hour to allow the motorcade to pass.

Which, no doubt, leaves many thousands of Los Angeles motorists wishing that The Peter Pan of Pop had never grown up, let alone died.

Local Treasure and Personal Idol

2009-06-21T06:00:00.023+01:00

This beautiful figure is from a local church, sadly not Moratinos. Still, to realise that such things are within a stone´s throw is pleasing.
It was made in the twelfth century, said the nice lady who showed us around. The expression on the face of Mary is wonderfully enigmatic. Jesus has the the look of somebody who has already seen it all.
Rebekah´s current blog about Jewel Boxes will make it all clear.

During the last couple of weeks, I have been too busy visiting friends and then winning and losing vast sums of money on Royal Ascot to do my blog. Sorry to my fan, Laura.
As a result, she - and no doubt several million others - have been asking themselves why Patrick ignored the centenary of the birth of Isiah Berlin on June 6th. One of the great minds of the last century of course, and a hero to those of independent mind.

To redeem myself belatedly, here are a few of his observations. They repay careful consideration.

All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate.

Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated.

Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance - these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.

Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs.

Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.

Philosophers are adults who persist in asking childish questions.

The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds.

The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others. The rest is extension of this sense, or else metaphor.

The very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past.

To understand is to perceive patterns.

BE MY BFF, OR EFF OFF

2009-06-02T22:14:00.019+01:00

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Celebrity heiress Paris Hilton is bringing her reality show search for a new best friend to Dubai, where her hard-partying style will be reined in a notch to accommodate Middle East sensibilities, the production company behind the series said on Tuesday.
Production on the latest version of "Paris Hilton's My New BFF" will begin later this month in Dubai and take 17 days, Ish Entertainment said.
As in the U.S. and British versions of the program, the show will revolve around a group of contestants trying to win Hilton's affection and the title of her "best friend forever," or "BFF" to use text-messaging lingo.
"We're very aware we are not making the same show we would make in Los Angeles," said Ish co-founder Michael Hirschorn.
Despite the high alcohol content often found in similar reality shows, Hirschorn said that to respect the local mores of Dubai, alcohol may be nixed from the program.
He added that the idea for the show intrigued him.
"I was excited about the sheer, 'Oh my God, what's going to happen' factor," Hirschorn said.

And who, among us, can put his or her hand on his or her heart and reproach the honest Hirschorn? I myself reproduced the above article because I was excited about the sheer, 'Oh my God, what's the world coming to?' factor.

Chortling, doctoring, slaughtering, adventuring

2009-06-02T08:01:00.024+01:00

It´s been a while since the last blog. Thank God for that, I hear you mutter.
Still, here is a mixed bag of stuff.

First my old chum Ted Simon arrived, stayed a day or so and has now gone. See pic above. He was looking for something to read while loafing, so I introduced him to "South Wind" by Norman Douglas. Hard to describe this book, first published in 1917, but it certainly should never be out of print, which it currently is.
As he read it, Ted chortled.
It is good to see a grown man chortle.

Second, Blodwyn, our favourite hen, has been unwell for some days now. We believe she has "Impacted Crop." However, we have been waterboarding her with olive oil as instructed by the CIA (Chicken Information Advisory) and see hopeful signs of recovery.

Third, after mass on Sunday, I reminded Esteban that he promised me he would take me to the local slaughterhouse to buy a lamb. Within hours, yesterday in fact, we got news that he had a lamb for us at his house in Sahagun.
What he did not say was that it was a live lamb. Obvious to some, I suppose. Any, it is now a dead lamb and headed for our big freezer. For the gory details, see Reb´s blog on the right here.

Fourth, we are off on Thursday in an adventure to the South of France to see other, even longer-time friends, mainly Mike and Sandy Molloy. Mike is extraordinarily talented - a successful writer of novels and an equally skillful painter. When he was a journalist he was at the top of that tree, too.
We go to see an exhibition of his paintings. Why France should be the beneficiary, rather than England, I do not know. I wil find out.

Watch this space.

Hang the bastard. Whoops, too late, we already have. In print.

2009-05-22T11:35:00.015+01:00

LONDON (AFP) – Investigators probing the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal have identified a paedophile as a possible suspect, press reports and a spokesman for the girl's parents have said.
Raymond Hewlett, a 64-year-old Briton, was reportedly living near the resort of Praia da Luz when three-year-old Madeleine went missing in May 2007, The Daily Mail said.
A spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann, who launched a global media search for their daughter, confirmed in a statement that Hewlett was "of interest" to investigators working for the couple.
"We are aware of Raymond Hewlett and the claims that have been made about him in some newspapers," spokesman Clarence Mitchell said.
"The investigators searching for Madeleine are currently looking into the circumstances surrounding these claims.
"Mr Hewlett is an individual of interest to the Madeleine investigation but I would stress it is just one line of inquiry. Beyond that I can't really go into any further operational detail."

Yes, but just suppose this man - incredibly - is innocent? Well, he´s a paedophile anyway, it says so here on Yahoo and in The Daily Mail, so it must be true. I´ll hold him down while we all kick him to death.
And I have had the nerve to moan about the way Americans treat "suspected" people.

For new readers, this blog contains traces of irony that might be difficult to detect. Check with a qualified skeptic before ingesting if you have concerns.

LOONY THUNE

2009-05-20T17:59:00.034+01:00

Cast your eye over the next three paragraphs.

WASHINGTON – In a major rebuke to President Barack Obama, the Senate voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to block the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States and denied the administration the millions it sought to close the prison.

In recent weeks, Republicans have called for keeping Guantanamo open, saying abuses at the facility are a thing of the past and describing it as a state-of-the-art prison that's nicer than some U.S. prisons. And they warn that terrorists who can't be convicted might be set free in the United States.

"The American people don't want these men walking the streets of America's neighborhoods," Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said Wednesday. "The American people don't want these detainees held at a military base or federal prison in their backyard, either."

You might think that this hits rock bottom when it comes to brainless imbecility. If so, don´t hold your breath. This is America, and tomorrow is another day.

There is really no point in elaborating on The Thoughts of Loony Thune, but I will do so anyway.

Just what sort of murderer or terrorist does this dolt think the American People does want "walking their streets," or being "held in a prison in their backyard."?

Apparently patriotic American terrorists and murderers are perfectly fine with Thune. Can´t have enough of them. Splendid chaps (or women, of course). Let them wander the streets at will, murderising and terrorising when their time is up. But Arabs are a different matter. They should be "walking the streets" of Cuba, presumably.

And, while we are on the subject and come to that, does Thune actually have a military base or federal prison in HIS backyard?

I think we should be told. For myself, I suspect he doesn´t. Not a lot of us do.

But, if he does possess such an undesirable piece of real estate, he may have a point.

As with the previous blog, here is a snap of The Twit Thune for reference. And the previous suggestions as to greeting him apply. Double.

Stupid Kit

2009-05-16T06:01:00.011+01:00

Nancy Pelosi is complaining because, she says, the CIA lied to her about torturing prisoners in Guantanamo and other places. It is probably true, but that is another story.

Below is the measured response from a "senior" Republican, an elected official, a presumably responsible member of the American Government.

"I think her accusations against our terror-fighters are irresponsible," said Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "It's outrageous that a member of Congress would call our terror-fighters liars."

The CIA torturers have magically transformed into "our terror fighters." Even George Orwell would have been a little taken aback, I suspect.

Remember, enough people actually went and voted for this prick in sufficient numbers to get him elected.

That it was in Missouri may be the reason, but is not an excuse.

I have put on a picture of "Kit", in case you happen to cross his path and get a chance to throw your shoes at him. If you do so, don´t bother taking them off first.

AN EXAMPLE TO, WELL, SOME OF US

2009-05-05T12:33:00.018+01:00

Portrait of a Man Who Has Gone Too Far. Several times. And lived.

For no discernible reason, apart from the obvious, Keith Richards reminds me of a couple of people I have known who are now in a Better Place - that is to say Oblivion. One is Jeff Bernard, the other is Keith Moon. Both served an invaluable function in my life: They set the parameters for behavior. Only for bad behavior, of course. Who needs anyone to indicate how close to the limit one can go in the direction of virtue?
I remember one of my wives (it could have been almost any of them) giving me the old, "You make me sick. This time you have gone too far," routine - and all I could come up with was, "Well, you must admit I´m not as bad as Jeff."

At which point a cock crowed thrice.

TODAY´S THOUGHT
Never try to impress a woman, because if you do she'll expect you to keep up the standard for the rest of your life.
W. C. Fields

An Honesty Lesson From Homer

2009-05-04T07:05:00.024+01:00

The John Edwards saga has resurfaced.
Now he is facing a Federal inquiry over money he gave to his girlfriend.
It is not that anyone, apart from his wife, cares two fucks (or however many) what the oily little rascal gets up to in his leisure hours. No, it is the hypocrisy that amuses us. For this we must thank him. He made our lives lighter, cheerier, less care-worn with his absurd sniveling excuses.
Edwards´ only plausible defence was the Homer Simpson Gambit.
When Marge confronts Homer saying, "How could you do such a dreadful thing?" Homer replies, hand on heart, "I swear to God, Marge, I never thought you´d find out!"
If Edwards had had the honesty to declare that from the get-go, he would be heading a Senate Committee on Ethical Decency and Morality this very day.

TODAY´S THOUGHT
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Lucky Old Iraq

2009-04-30T16:19:00.007+01:00

From Today´s Guardian:

(British Prime Minister) Brown, who supported predecessor Tony Blair's decision to join the invasion, defended Britain's military mission, saying it had helped to bring new opportunities for Iraq's people.
"Today Iraq is a success story. We owe much of that to the efforts of British troops. Our mission has not always been an easy one, many have said that we would fail," he told reporters.

Many were right, of course. By what possible yardstick can Iraq be considered a success? Yes, it has brought new opportunities for Iraq´s people - opportunities to kill one another by the thousand, to flee the country in vast numbers, to live without water and electricity in holes in the ground.
Oh yes, and the opportunity to be tortured and killed by the Americans and British - also by the thousand.
Lucky old Iraqis!

STRAIGHT FROM THE HORSES´MOUTHS

2009-04-27T14:21:00.009+01:00

A couple of ponies I met in Oviedo last week. They say to get on Pioneer of the Nile in the Kentucky Derby this Saturday. But what do they know?

TODAY´S THOUGHT
An artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind theirs.
Edgard Varese

Doublethink, Newspeak, both alive and well

2009-04-22T07:48:00.007+01:00

No doubt I am preaching to the converted here, but the stuff that is emerging about torture under the Bush regime needs some comment.
First, the categorical statement by George Bush himself, while still in the job: "The United States does not torture."
So, what is happening cannot be torture. It may look like torture, it may smell like torture, and I am bloody sure it feels like torture.
But it cannot be torture, because the United States does not torture.
It must, therefore, be something else, like "Aggressive interrogation." So that´s all right, then.
Another, very different, George - Orwell - would not have been at all surprised. It is a perfect example of totalitarian reasoning. Make the word forbidden, but go on doing the thing. Open a Ministry of Fear and call it the Ministry of Love. Stuff like that.
Now the unspeakable Cheney is whining that we should all tolerate whatever it is we choose to call it - I suggest torture, myself - because, he says, it works.
Apparently it doesn´t even do that. It emerges that the CIA were ordered to extract confessions from Guantanamo prisoners that Al Queda was directly linked to Sadam Hussein. Even waterboarding people dozens of times failed to provide the "evidence" demanded by Head Office.
I could go on, but what´s the bleeding point.
The sun is shining and I will be better off taking the dogs out.

TERROR DOG

2009-04-16T08:37:00.011+01:00

I normally extract a few paragraphs from news stories to make a point or two. The story below is entire. As an example of the utter, fucking fatuity of Republicans it stands alone.
It clearly needs no comment from me. It will get some none the less.

WASHINGTON – Republicans on Wednesday said a Homeland Security Department intelligence assessment unfairly characterizes military veterans as right-wing extremists. House Republican leader John Boehner described the report as offensive and called on the agency to apologize to veterans.
The agency's intelligence assessment, sent to law enforcement officials last week, warns that right-wing extremists could use the bad state of the U.S. economy and the election of the country's first black president to recruit members.
The assessment also said that returning military veterans who have difficulties assimilating back into their home communities could be susceptible to extremist recruiters or might engage in lone acts of violence.
"To characterize men and women returning home after defending our country as potential terrorists is offensive and unacceptable," said Boehner, R-Ohio.
The commander of the veterans group the American Legion, David Rehbein, wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano expressing concern with the assessment, which made its way into the mainstream press after conservative bloggers got wind of the analysis.
Rehbein called the assessment incomplete and said it lacked statistical evidence. He said the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by military veteran Timothy McVeigh was one instance of a veteran becoming a domestic terrorist.
"To continue to use McVeigh as an example of the stereotypical 'disgruntled military veteran' is as unfair as using Osama bin Laden as the sole example of Islam," Rehbein said in the April 13 letter.
Napolitano defended the assessment and others issued by the agency.
"Let me be very clear — we monitor the risks of violent extremism taking root here in the United States," Napolitano said in a statement. "We don't have the luxury of focusing our efforts on one group; we must protect the country from terrorism whether foreign or homegrown, and regardless of the ideology that motivates its violence."
Napolitano said the department respects and honors veterans and that she intends to meet with Rehbein next week after she returns from a tour of the U.S.-Mexico border and meetings in Mexico City.
The agency describes these assessments as part of a series published "to facilitate a greater understanding of the phenomenon of violent radicalization in the United States."
In February, the department issued a report to law enforcement that said left-wing extremist groups were likely to use cyber attacks more often in the next 10 years to further their cause.
In September, the agency highlighted how right-wing extremists over the past five years have used the immigration debate as a recruiting tool.
Between September 2008 and Feb. 5, the agency issued at least four reports, obtained by The Associated Press, on individual extremist groups such as the Moors, Vinlanders Social Club, Volksfront and Hammerskin Nation.
But the references to military veterans in the recent report angered conservatives.
"The department is engaging in political and ideological profiling of people who fought to keep our country safe from terrorism, uphold our nation's immigration laws, and protect our constitutional right to keep and bear arms," said Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla.,
Texas Rep. Lamar Smith accused the department of painting "law-abiding Americans, including war veterans, as 'extremists.'"
Indiana Rep. Steve Buyer, the ranking Republican on the House Veterans' Affairs committee, said it was "inconceivable" that the administration would consider military veterans a potential terrorist threat.

On second thoughts, if readers can´t see the mindless vicious idiocy of the remarks by this bunch of pricks for themselves, I might as well turn it in.

So on to Obama´s latest slap in the face for Decent White America. He has deliberately bought a dog, more black than white, and a FOREIGN dog at that. Portugese, no less. What do we know of this dog´s past? How did he get through Immigration? Is it "inconceivable" that Bo might not be a suicide dog? Trained to kill by his foreign taskmasters? The Portugese are not generally recognised as fanatical Muslims, but many are undoubtedly swarthy.
Reach for your AK-47´s, patriotic Americans!
___

Fear and Loathing in Pittsburgh

2009-04-07T15:39:00.008+01:00

Re my previous day´s blog, "Paradox".

PITTSBURGH - Internet rantings found on a white supremacist Web site indicate Poplawski was preoccupied with the idea that President Barack Obama was going to overturn the Second Amendment and that Jews were secretly running the country.
He posted a shirtless picture of himself showing off a large tattoo of a spread-winged eagle below his collarbone.
Postings made by others on the extremist Web site after the Pittsburgh shooting encourage people to buy assault rifles because they suspect the arms will be banned after a string of mass shootings in the past month, including one in Oakland, Calif., where four officers were killed and another in Binghamton, N.Y., on Friday when a gunman killed 13 people before killing himself.

I didn´t know any of this for sure when I wrote yesterday´s entry. It is little comfort to be proved right.

Paradox

2009-04-06T08:55:00.024+01:00

PITTSBURGH – A 911 call that brought two police officers to a home where they were ambushed, and where a third was also later killed during a four-hour siege, was precipitated by a fight between the gunman and his mother over a dog urinating in the house.
When officers Paul Sciullo II and Stephen Mayhle arrived, Margaret Poplawski opened the door and told them to come in and take her 23-year-old son, apparently unaware he was standing behind her with a rifle, the affidavit said. Hearing gunshots, she spun around to see her son with the gun and ran to the basement.
"What the hell have you done?" she shouted.
The mother told police her son had been stockpiling guns and ammunition "because he believed that as a result of economic collapse, the police were no longer able to protect society."

This story seems to me to be a perfect allegory of the American Nightmare.
Not the shootings themselves - they are two a penny - but the reasoning (if that is the mot juste) of the perp.
I believe the killer´s fears were that Obama and his fellow Commies were going to grab his beloved stockpile of guns, and that the police, so enervated by arresting Bernie Madoff, would no longer have the energy to keep gangs of black crack dealers from murdering decent white Pittsburghers in their beds.
The deed of Poplawski (it would be crass to make jokes about his name) is an example of that scary bogeyman beloved of religious fundamentalists - the self-fulfilling prophecy. You predict something - like the End Of The World - then set about making sure it Comes To Pass.
And Poplawski was proved right. The police, would not have been able to protect society from a determined maniac - in this case himself - and could not even protect themselves.
One of the oddest justifications for mass murder ever purported. Try as I might, I cannot get my head around the paradox.
It would be nice to think the other part of Poplawski´s prophecy will also come true - that Obama will seize the citizenry´s guns.
Dream on.

Guns and Horses

2009-04-05T06:59:00.012+01:00

The following couple of paragraphs from the story of the Pittsburgh police shootings caught my eye.
The idea of killing other people because you are worried that the government might take your guns away is curious, to say the least - even in America.
And, why should one expect such happenings in California and not Pittsburgh? Sunnier weather?

Police Chief Nate Harper said the motive for the shooting isn't clear, but friends said the gunman recently had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.
......
The shooting occurred just two weeks after four police officers were fatally shot in Oakland, Calif., in the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since Sept. 11, 2001. The officers were the first Pittsburgh city officers to die in the line of duty in 18 years.
"This is a solemn day and it's a very sad day in the city of Pittsburgh," Harper said. "We've seen this kind of violence happen in California. We never would think this kind of violence would happen in the city of Pittsburgh."

The Grand National. I would have lost money betting on it as a 100-1 shot won. But the online betting site was so clogged up with mugs trying to get on that I saved my money. For another day.
Good picture from The Guardian.

P.S. Kathy, I read your note. Many thanks. I am thinking about it now.