| A bit of the weekend, a bit of religion, a bit of this, a bit of that... |
[07 Jul 2008|01:34pm] |
We had a very nice weekend - Pauline came over for dinner on Friday and it was good to see her (and any opportunity for home-made chicken pie should always be taken!).
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On Saturday, I got the signature sheets from Stuart Young for “We Fade To Grey”, which was a great thrill. I’ve only ever signed plates for the novel and that was just me - signing alongside Paul Finch, Mark Morris, Simon Bestwick, Gary McMahon and the aforementioned Mr Young was incredible. In the interests of documenting my creative life, there are some pics below:
( Signing the sig sheets )
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On Sunday, Dude & I went out for a walk with Mum & Dad and ended up walking through the gully, which runs just above the folly. They haven’t read “The Mill”, my story for “We Fade To Grey”, because I haven’t given it to them - principally because it deals, a lot, with my feelings over my sisters death. Anyway, they know of the story (I can’t keep quiet that long!) and I was explaining to them how I used the folly and the mound in the gully in the tale. Which I think found interesting - neither of them nodded off, at least.
( The gully’s )
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Last night, we watched the BBC news. Talk about doom and gloom! First off, we have those unfortunate French students who, for whatever reason, suffered an episode the like of which I can only barely contemplate. An awful situation and just reading about what happened to them makes me feel ill.
Then we had a bit about Zimbabwe, of Mugabe’s treatment of pretty much everybody and how the UN wants to impose sanctions.
“Hey, I’ve got a great idea that’ll sort this mess out, let’s impose sanctions.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes, if we combine those with banning Zimbabwe from the cricket, Mugabe will see the error of his ways.”
“Hold on, mate, you do realise that he doesn’t give a shit about his people, don’t you?”
“Exactement! That’s why we introduce sanctions.”
“Right, so the man who doesn’t care about his people and lives in relative luxury with his coterie of assistants, hangers-on and goodness knows who else, is going to change his ways because we in the West decide to cut off supplies to and from his country.”
“Yes. I’m getting excited just thinking about it.”
“So if we stop food and vital supplies from going in, who’s actually going to suffer? Mugabe and his coterie or the poor sods who didn’t even get a chance at a proper democratic vote?”
“Yes, but these are sanctions!”
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And then we had the Anglican Church. Now I should point out here, for the balance of argument, that I am not an overly religious man but hey, you know, every man for himself. I do believe in something, but it’s not organised religion - though I have been christened and confirmed and my son was christened. I was brought up by a proud, intelligent and loving mother, I had two sisters, I am married to a great woman - I like women, I’ve never really had any problems with them (and the one I did have a lot of trouble with was a boss of mine, but the reasons had absolutely nothing to do with either of our genders) and I think they are perfectly equal to men (apart from, obviously, the gift of childbirth, which they can keep as their own). So to sit there - having just heard about two young Frenchmen who were stabbed in a frenzied attack and then set on fire and then about a stupid dictator who is essentially killing off his own population - and listen to some incredibly out-of-touch-with-the-real-world people witter on about how this was going to divide the church was enough to turn me off any kind of rational argument they might have. And what argument was it?
Some vicar was sitting outside of the conference hall and he said “it’s my duty to preach the word of God.”
“And what if the church decides to ordain female bishops.”
“Then I suppose I’ll have to leave the church and we’ll form a different arm. Hopefully, it can work in conjunction.”
In fairness, the female vicars who were protesting got on my wick in the few seconds they were on screen, bouncing around like some bizarre breed of hippies who’d taken too much of the good stuff, so they didn’t really do their case any good to me either - hey, everybody loses!
I have absolutely no idea what the religious arguments are for-or-against women bishops and I don’t care, really. We live in a world of recession, of massive violence against individuals and groups that are quite breathtaking in scale, we have world leaders who treat us like idiots and what does our wonderful organised religion do? Yes, it gets itself in a state about whether women should run a diocese and wear an oddly shaped hat. Even worse, one of the so-called ‘compromises’ is that we could have ‘men-only’ diocese. I wonder if they’ll give out the 80s mens magazine of the same name at those meetings? My friend, Gary Greenwood, discusses the situation here, in his own inimitable style.
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There’s also a G8 summit going on. Last time, Bono was all over them, we were going to reduce world debt and turn Africa around, we were - quite literally - going to change the world. What now (where are you Bono)? Well, the American and Japanese contingents are worried about rising oil and food prices and want to see them reduced. And the British Prime Minister (and I, in no way, shape or form, voted for this clown to get into power) has advised that us Brits should not throw out as much food as we do.
Now I’m just a simple layman, so I can appreciate there’s a lot of stuff I don’t understand and I’d lump politics in there in general. I know enough about economics to understand how a recession starts and then begins to feed on itself but, surely, I - and most normal thinking folks - also know the solution. Fuel and food prices are rising - oil companies and the supermarkets (certainly here in the UK) are making more money than they ever have in history. And the UK government, for one, heavily taxes fuel. Now I know this is naïve but, if the oil companies could afford not to make half a billion pounds a quarter and supermarkets didn’t want to make millions and millions and millions (none of which is passed to the producers, of course - so even buying the BOGOFs only helps the supermarket, not the farmer or food manufacturer who supplies it), surely that would help? And if the UK government dropped, say, 5p off the duty (they could probably stretch to much, much more but let’s keep things grounded, eh, what do you say?), they’d make as much as they’d budgeted and we’d all be a lot happier.
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on Saturday night, a “Speirig Brothers film”, which I picked up because it was from New Zealand and was in the ‘style’ of Peter Jackson’s early efforts. Well, it was from NZ, certainly and some of the acting was obviously amateur but this had a certain slickness to it (especially some of the exceptional visual effects, though the milk-in-a-tank cloud stuff got wearing) that seemed to push it towards higher expectations. Which is when the story itself shot it in the foot - the zombies weren’t really, the aliens weren’t what you expected and the whole film seemed to veer from one thing to another with no real reason for any of it. It was enjoyable enough and well made, but it kept throwing me and I don’t think I’d bother with it again.![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}