Nadolig Llawen

With friends like that.....

7.48 HF on Thought for the Day. All is clear

8.10 a most unhelpful interview. All is obfuscated.

8.45 Poly Toynbee and Christina Odone, hand bags at dawn. All is hysterical.

Cheers.

PS The HF did us a great service 1) by saying what he did and 2) because The Guardian got Dawkins to listen to it. Ha ha. I'd link to the article, but it's too gross to inflict on people on Christmas Eve.

The elixir of Christmas

not a long lost opera by Donizetti, but ready roll marzipan.

Rolling the stuff out on a work top, lightly dusted with icing sugar, is my idea of sticky kitchen disaster zone.

Ushaw

Rubbish that it is being shut and so soon. This is Northumbria for goodness sake, land of St Cuthbert etc. Have some pride. Once these places are sold and gone they ain't never coming back.

I was a student at Durham a long while back, ('89-'92, so there,)and one of my friends, who was studying Theology, was friendly with a couple of Ushaw students. I knew them in a round about kinda way and they came to her wedding a few years after we graduated.

Anyway, a post on Seraphic Singles reminded me of something that my 19 year old self baulked at all those years ago. This was quite a common experience for me because it seems that I was unknowingly living through strange times where quite a lot of things were not as they should have been.

It came up in conversation that students up to a certain year were allowed to have girlfriends. I should say that that neither of my friend's friends did. This jarred on lots of fronts. Very very bad for the seminarian and what the hell does that say about how you regard woman or how seriously you take marriage? So, if that sums up what was going on, no wonder it's closing.

A visitation

from St Nicholas, complete with red coat, hat and clogs and a prezzie.

Whatever next?

(via the front door, not the chimney - gas fire 'n' all...)

Sonically Challenged

by Morning Service on R4. The standards being exhibited right now suggest any parish, sorry, 'worshipping community,' in the country could make the mark musically. Someone's just swithtched the organ on and suddenly they are not singing flat anymore, well not quite as flat anyway.

Not all bad

because I got to sing The Snowman with Year 6. That's after I peeled them off the ceiling.

Year 11 are finishing their coursework with such witty titles as Coursework 2 - the musical. I'm not sure the moderator will go for that in quite the same way. They think it's funny that Sibelius has 'atonal key' as an option under key signatures. 'Shall we use the atonal key, Miss?'

Year 13 and I scribbled frantically as one of the English teachers basically gave us a lecture on Purcell, music at the time of the restoration and how if it hadn't been for ex-pat English composers in the 16thC JS Bach would not have happened. I think that's to overstate Dowland et al. But what would I, a Celtic hybrid, know of such things? The bell went at 4 and he exited stage left. Worth listening to just for his command of English.

Route planning

This week I have mostly been thinking along the lines of

walk train walk, unless no trains

in which case

bus bus tube walk

Tonight I did

walk train tube DLR train walk, due to adverse weather conditions and clocked up a personal best longest time of 2 hours 45 minutes to get home.

The train must have been extra long because we got off on a bit of the platform with virgin snow. That or there hadn't been too many people through during the day.

Two men were standing in front of me and one said to the other, 'You can go first.' The snow was up to the floor of the train. First bloke jumped and I was able to jump into his foot prints. Chivalry lives on in London commuters.

That said after three days of extreme communting, I'm tired of spending 2+ hours getting home. A few more inches and the service is suspended tomorrow?

Even Taliban Catholics get tired.