Opus Damian?

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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.