Papal infallibility...

Pope Benedict XVI, the predecessor to Pope Francis, has gone to meet his maker. It was inconvenient to have two men alive at the same time whose every utterance, while wearing a special hat, was deemed by Catholics to be infallible. When he resigned in 2013, at the age of 85, he was the first pope to hang up his mitre since the middle ages. Popes are supposed to die ‘in harness’, not resign.

Two years ago Benedict defended the requirement for clerical celibacy. “I cannot keep silent,” he wrote in a book, From the Depths of our Hearts, suggesting that priestly celibacy protected the mystery of the church. What the doctrine actually protected was the church’s reputation, and the liberty of paedophile priests, who instead of being handed over to the police, as the law demanded, were moved to distant parishes where their abuse of children could continue. 

Pic: a smiling Pope Benedict XVI recalling his days in the Hitler Youth (Creative Commons)...

Seascale and Sellafield...

Licenced today: Seascale, West Cumbria, with Sellafield nuclear power station in the distance… 

Vermeer...

Just read this article in the Guardian about Johannes Vermeer, and a forthcoming exhibition of his paintings in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. Vermeer is a rather shadowy figure, with only about 35 paintings reliably attributed to him. This beautiful picture - of Delft - is apparently his only landscape…

"One Piece at a Time"...

There’s an old Johnny Cash song - more of a novelty song, really - called One Piece at a Time, which tells the unlikely story of a man who worked for many years on a car assembly line. Since he knew he could never afford to drive one of the Cadillacs he was making, he decided to steal the car components “one piece at a time”. After 25 years, according to the last verse of the song, he ended up with this…

Well, it's a '49, '50, '51, '52, '53, '54, '55, '56
'57, '58' 59' automobile
It's a '60, '61, '62, '63, '64, '65, '66, '67
'68, '69, '70 automobile

“One piece at a time” seems to be how I wrote the big book. Bolting ill-fitting parts together is not the recommended way to build a car or write a book, and it’s certainly been a long and bumpy ride. My number one priority, in 2023, will be to find out whether it's roadworthy... 

Seeing without interpretation...

“What do you mean when you say you see something? When you hear a word, because that word has a reference, you understand that word. Or do you hear the word and translate it according to your memory? When you say, ‘I see,’ you generally mean, ‘I hear the word. I have understood because you are speaking English, and that word has a meaning to me.’ So you are looking through a word at the thing, you are not looking – the word is interfering. The word, the symbol, the idea, the memory, all that is interfering with observing and seeing. So can you look, can you listen, without interpretation, without the word, without the memory?” (Krishnamurti, from a public talk in 1966)…

Taliban...

The ‘second coming’ of the Taliban in Afghanistan initially promised a less restrictive regime, but, day by day, freedoms are being eroded, especially for women. The latest edict, issued by the administration, is to stop women working for local and foreign NGOs engaged in delivering humanitarian aid. The reason? Because some female employees had flouted the Islamic dress code.

The ban comes a few days after women were prevented from going to university, a move defended by Nida Mohammad Nadim, the Afghan minister of higher education. “We told girls to have proper hijab but they didn’t, and wore dresses like they are going to a wedding ceremony. Girls were studying agriculture and engineering, but this didn’t match Afghan culture. Girls should learn, but not in areas that go against Islam and Afghan honour.”

Having banned girls and all female staff, including teachers, from primary schools, there is now in effect a total ban on education for Afghani women. This is how men behave when they restrict their reading to the Quran, claim to know the mind of God, and have access to an arsenal of modern weaponry. The Taliban doesn’t represent a particularly extreme version of Islam. These men just take quranic injunctions literally, and are prepared to hand out punishments for any perceived infractions.

Fieldfares and redwings...

Fieldfares and redwings come to Britain for the winter, and strip the trees of berries. They were active - and noisy - this afternoon at North Cave wetlands. Pic: redwing (Creative Commons)...

Windermere frozen..

A short article in today’s Guardian contrasts the recent blast of arctic weather with the memorable winter of 1962/3, when the snow arrived on Boxing Day and stayed until mid-March. I remember building an igloo (and if the snow had stayed any longer, I might have needed retrospective planning permission for it). I remember skating - inelegantly - on Lake Windermere with mum, as Arthur Ransome had done, during the Great Frost of 1895, when he was a pupil at Old College in Bowness.

According to this passage from his autobiography, “I had the great good fortune to be at school at Windermere, when for week after week the lake was frozen from end to end. Then indeed we were lucky in our headmaster, who liked skating and wisely decided that as we were not likely to have such an experience again (the lake freezes over only about once in every thirty-five years), we had better make the most of it. Lessons became perfunctory. After breakfast, day after day, provisions were placed on a big toboggan and we ran it down into Bowness when we tallied on to ropes astern of it to hold it back and prevent it from crashing into the hotel at the bottom.

“During those happy weeks we spent the whole day on the ice, leaving the steely lake only at dusk when fires were already burning and torches lit and our elders carried lanterns as they skated and shot about like fireflies. I saw a coach and four drive across the ice, and the roasting of an ox (I think) on Bowness Bay. I saw perch frozen in the ice, preserved as if in glass beneath my feet. Those weeks of clear ice with that background of snow-covered, sunlit, blue-shadowed hills were, forty years after, to give me a book called Winter Holiday for which I have a sort of tenderness”.

Licenced today: a street in Poundbury, Dorset, and the offices of Poundbury Wealth Management…

Luddenden valley...

Licenced today: Oats Royd Mill, in the Luddenden valley, near Halifax…

Blackwell...

Though both the sacred and secular versions of Christmas leave me unmoved, I’m not immune to the grim satisfaction of arriving at the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year… and that’s today, December 21st. 

Licenced today: the main hall in Blackwell arts and crafts house, near Bowness…

Piece Hall...

In a Sun article, published on Friday, Jeremy Clarkson wrote that he loathed Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, “on a cellular level”. He said he was “dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her”. He added that “Everyone who’s my age thinks the same way.”

It’s just Jeremy Clarkson being Jeremy Clarkson, of course, emboldened to crank up the misogyny because no one is taking enough notice of him these day. But Victoria Newton, editor of the red-top rag, must have read his column and decided, for whatever reason, to publish, when she should instead have spiked it. And her paymaster, Rupert Murdoch, is equally culpable, for giving the Cotswold-based ‘rent-a-gob’ the opportunity to vent his spleen in the first place.

Licenced today: the Christmas fair in the Piece Hall, Halifax...

Santa's sack...

I called in for breakfast this morning at the Viking pub, on the way into Goole. Father Christmas was there, preparing to bring some festive cheer to the first customers of the day, though it kinda spoiled the magic to see Santa struggling into his outfit in the public bar of a flat-roofed pub. Just in case he had some spare presents in his sack, I told Santa that I’d been a very good boy this year. Santa was unimpressed. “That’s what they all say", he harrumphed…

2-0 up in Karachi...

England are playing Pakistan in Karachi tomorrow, already 2-0 up in the three-match series, with leg-spin bowler Rehan Ahmed due to become the youngest man ever to play test cricket for England. When he runs onto the pitch he will be 18 years and 126 days old (the previous record-holder, Brian Close, was 18 years and 149 days old on his debut 73 years ago). Jimmy Anderson, who made his own test debut in May 2003, a year and three months before Ahmed was born, is being rested for the final match. Skipper Ben Stokes captured the mood of the nation when he pointed out that “you only make your debut once, you can never make it again”…

Licenced today: guys delivering barrels of beer to the Dog & Partridge pub in Wigan, Lancashire…

Cliffe Castle...

Licenced today: Cliffe Castle in Keighley...

"Pride in Islam"...

Tonight is Morocco v France, the second semi-final, to see who will play Argentina in Sunday’s grand final. I’ll be rooting for the Moroccan team (supporting the underdogs, in any sporting contest, is a trait I inherited from my dad). A short article in today’s Guardian is entitled “Morocco’s pride in Islam should inspire us all”. The writer rhapsodises, rightly, about what the occasion will mean for Morocco and the Moroccan diaspora, dispersed around the world.

So far, so good. But then he continues. “There is no World Cup of discrimination nor should there be; every minority and every ethnic group has its challenges, and the way these are overcome is with unity not rivalry. But anyone whose eyes are prepared to see knows that Muslims are persecuted in many nations. And as with many forms of prejudice, it is women who often bear the brunt”.

Hmmm… there is nothing in Islam about this kind of unity. Even before they open the Quran, or lick a finger to turn a page, Muslims know that paradise is reserved for fellow Muslims. For the rest of us - atheists, agnostics, Hindus, Christians, Jains, etc - the fires of hell are stoked. As for women “bearing the brunt" of Islamophobia, the Quran is the source - not the solution - of this kind of discrimination.

The writer swoons. "To see Moroccan players paying homage to Allah before applying Allah’s teaching to pay homage to their mothers - who were wearing hijab! At the game! On global television! - was not only beautiful, moving and uplifting, but important".

This match is the first occasion that an African country has reached the semi-final of the World Cup. That’s something worth celebrating. But the “unity” and inclusiveness of Islam? Not so much. And instead of the "beauty" of the hijab, I see coercion, oppression and control...

5,000 gods...

The summer game...

Licenced today: a game in progress at Headingley Cricket Ground…

Kings Lynn...

Licenced today: the Maid's Head pub in Kings Lynn, Norfolk… 

Crickhowell...

I wandered across the road last night, to watch the football at the pub, rather than at home on my laptop. Against all expectations, I detected no obvious racism. I heard locals calling Bukayo Saka a “fucking useless cunt” - rather than a “fucking useless black cunt” - which represents an improvement of sorts. England came second to France. I tried to reassure my neighbours that during the Olympics this would represent a silver medal, but they were not in the mood to be consoled.

Another street scene, licenced last week: Crickhowell in Powys…

Alton...

Licenced today: Main Street in Alton, Hampshire…

Goole as a tourist...

Goole has no tourist office, nor any obvious need for one. The only tourist brochure I can find directs visitors back to the railway station, on the reasonable assumption that they must have got out at the wrong stop. So it made a change to wander round Goole yesterday, with my old chum Howard, and pretend that the town and docks were worth visiting. The pic shows the old Tom pudding hoist, silhouetted against the winter sky…

Keswick at twilight...

Licenced today: Keswick looking festive… 

Trinity House...

Licenced today: Trinity House, in Hull… 

Knowledge & experience...

"It is strange how we worship knowledge. Knowledge implies the past. Knowing is always in the present and knowledge is always in the past. Experiencing is in the present and experience is always in the past. To us, the past has extraordinary significance, the past which is knowledge. Knowledge is necessary at the technical, mechanical level. The more you have knowledge, the better to go to the moon, to build a house, to beautify a garden or enrich the earth, but knowledge becomes an impediment to deep discovery because most of our lives are lived in the past. All that we know is the past" (Krishnamurti, 1961).

Licenced today: the reedbeds at RSPB Minsmere in Suffolk…

The morning after...

It's just another working day for the guy whose job it is to retrieve crashed cars from East Riding fields. He did the job on his own, using a winch to reel the car in, before delivering it to the knacker's yard...

St Ives...

Spotted in the Guardian today: twilight in St Ives, Cornwall…

Red Lion...

Another pub facade licenced today: the Red Lion in Leek, Staffordshire…

Zennor...

Why are so many high-profile billionaires intent on sabotaging their careers, trashing their own reputations and running their companies into the ground? Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, and immediately admitted what everyone else already knew: that he had grossly overpaid for the platform. He sacked half the workforce and, a month later, the talk is of Twitter going bust.

Kanye West, now wanting to be known as Ye, appeared on InfoWars, a show hosted by far-right conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, known for pushing lies around events such as the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012. Ye said: “I see good things about Hitler. Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler”. Even Alex Jones looked uncomfortable. “The Nazis were thugs”, he said. Ye continued “But they did good things too. We gotta stop dissing the Nazis all the time. I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis.” Jones gave Ye an opportunity to back down, but he wouldn’t quit: “There’s a lot of things that I love about Hitler. A lot of things”. Today Ye has been suspended from Twitter - again - after he tweeted an image of a swastika incorporated inside a star of David.

Licenced today: the village of Zennor, in Cornwall...

Breaking records...

The Germans have been eliminated from the Human Rights World Cup, at the group stage, for the second tournament in a row. It was the Germans who coined the word that best describes the emotion that the football world is feeling: schadenfreude.

England, meanwhile, have broken one of cricket’s longest-standing records by scoring 500 runs on day one of the first test in Pakistan. Four batsmen got centuries - Crawley, Duckett, Pope and Brook - and, with only four wickets down, tomorrow might be equally fascinating. Alexa will wake me at 5am, so I can follow day two, under the duvet, with commentary from the Test Match Special team. At 9am I’ll have breakfast at a local pub, and watch the rest of the day’s play on the big screen. 

Licenced today: the Stiperstones, a national nature reserve in Shropshire… 

Religious affiliation...

According to the 2021 census, nearly 40% of the population of England and Wales say they have no religious affiliation...

Windermere view...

With concentration poor I spent the morning in Goole library - in the very centre of town, where six roads converge on the old clocktower - hoping that a change of scene might recharge my creative batteries. I took a seat by the window, so I could watch council workmen using a cherry-picker to put up the Christmas lights. From the far corner of the library some kids were singing The Wheels on the Bus. I had three hours of focused and uninterrupted writing in pleasantly warm surroundings. I’ll be back.

Licenced today - five walkers stop to admire the view of Lake Windermere from Loughrigg Fell, near Ambleside - for the best price so far this year…

Islamic values...

Hassan Al-Thawadi, the head of Qatar’s World Cup organising committee, has accused teams who wanted to wear the OneLove armband of sending a “very divisive message” to the Islamic and Arab world. He said he had an “issue” with the armband because he saw it as a protest against Islamic values and an Islamic country hosting such a major event. Well, yes… and yes. From my perspective, I have no problem with the “Arab world”. My misgivings are focused, instead, on some of the more problematic “values” of Islam. Why? Because they date from the 7th century CE, and it’s high time they were brought up to date.

The cry of “Islamophobia” is heard so often that we may fail to notice that there is no obvious mechanism for Muslims to review the tenets of their religion (and that Muslims are not actively looking for one). When was the last time a Muslim spokesman said “You know, you may be right: we need to take a long, hard look at some of the more problematic aspects of Islam”? No, I can’t remember either.

Licenced today: the marketplace in Thirsk...

Skipton...

Licenced today: the Black Horse pub in Skipton…

Bellway homes...

"We have invented God. If God did exist and if he created us, he must be a pretty poor God. We have created him; the image that exists all over the world is the result of thought. Thought is not sacred; it is born of experience, knowledge and memory. There is nothing sacred in that; it is a material proces" (J Krishnamurti).

Licenced today: Imperial Gardens, a new housing estate from Bellway homes, in Howden…

Home delivery...

Licenced today: an Ocado van doing the rounds...

Another mass shooting...

Another week, another mass shooting: this time at a Walmart store in Virginia. Senators and governors trot out the usual platitudes about “thoughts and prayers”, but it’s the Onion headline which really hits the spot. “No Way To Prevent This”, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.

Licenced today: a snowy lane near Storiths in Wharfedale…

Windermere...

Licenced today: a train at Windermere railway station…

Islam unreformed...

We - Britain, Europe or ‘the west’ - have made many mistakes over recent centuries; our own record on human rights is, at best, chequered. Two hundred years ago we were still profiting from the slave trade. But times change, and we no longer buy and sell people like farm equipment. In Britain, until 1861, homosexuality was a crime which could be punishable by the death penalty. It was still a crime - though no longer a capital crime - a century later. Now it's a source of rainbow-hued "pride".

Qatar, as a Muslim country, does not have the same opportunities to instigate societal change. Because there is no tradition, in Islam, of subjecting the tenets of their faith to a critical review, the morals and mores of 7th century Arabia have been imported, unreformed, into the 21st. Muslim attitudes towards women and homosexuals are embedded as securely and non-negotiably into their holy book as the ten commandments in the Bible. These attitudes aren’t going to change any time soon. Why? Because under a theocracy, God’s law is paramount, not man’s. And, by dictating every single word in the Quran, God has already spoken. This is what it means to embrace the “last” religion and to own the “perfect” book… 

"Feeling gay"...

In a rambling and tone-deaf speech this morning, Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, tried to stifle criticism of his Qatari pay-masters. “Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arabic. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel [like] a migrant worker. Of course I am not Qatari, I am not an Arab, I am not African, I am not gay, I am not disabled. But I feel like it, because I know what it means to be discriminated [against], to be bullied, as a foreigner in a foreign country. As a child I was bullied, because I had red hair and freckles, plus I was Italian, so imagine. What do you do then? You try to engage, make friends. Don’t start accusing, fighting, insulting, you start engaging. And this is what we should be doing.”

Well, Infantino is obviously not one of the 6,500 migrant workers, because he’s still alive. Truly identifying with migrant workers might require him to work a gruelling 12-hour shift, in torrid heat, for about £1 an hour… and then do the same again tomorrow. He had to be reminded to include women - that’s half the world, right there - in the list of people with whom he found it so easy to identify. Someone will have to tell him that the consequences of having “red hair and freckles” are in no sense comparable to being gay in a country like Qatar. This World Cup is fascinating, rivetting… for all the wrong reasons.

Licenced today… for a fee that wouldn’t buy a set of L-plates…

Worst World Cup...

We are only two days away from the start of what the Guardian calls “the least anticipated World Cup in history”. Qatar has spent about £200bn on building stadia and other infrastructure in a country which, despite its wealth, has next to no sporting history or tradition (compared to the £10bn that Russia spent to host the last World Cup in 2018). The games will take place in eight stadia, seven of them brand new, built with the blood of migrant workers. Talk of Qatar 2022 being “sustainable” is so meaningless as to make the head spin. There is nothing “sustainable” about working young men so hard that they die of heat and exhaustion, and there is no obvious use for these expensive stadia after the closing ceremony has taken place on December 18.

Licenced today: another view of Oundle Mill, Northamptonshire…

Solar power...

 Licenced today: new homes in Kendal, with all houses pre-installed with solar panels…

Cragg Vale...

Licenced today: the gloomy old church in Cragg Vale, Calderdale. While researching (ie Googling) captions for this pic, I discovered a web-page which linked the church with Jimmy Savile. Apparently, “he preached a sermon at the church, dressed in a lurid yellow and acid green hooded gown with a pom-pom brocade trim”. And, according to the Catholic Herald, he presented the BBC programme Songs of Praise, twice, from here. Yes, Jimmy Savile touched people in so many different ways...

Human wrongs...

The Taliban’s supreme leader in Afghanistan, Haibatullah Akhundzada, has ordered judges to enforce every aspect of Islamic law - sharia - which includes public executions, stonings, floggings and the amputation of limbs for thieves. In the past week, the Taliban has also banned women from entering parks, funfairs, gyms and public baths. Despite his hardline stance, Haibatullah Akhundzada looks like a man with a robust sense of humour, who enjoys a good joke…

Human rights...

We will soon discover whether it’s possible to play football with a clouded conscience. Qatar is a country where many basic human rights - as itemised in the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights - are denied. It’s illegal to be gay in Quatar, where the punishments for same-sex attraction are severe (and even if the morality police fail to act, a gay person’s family may decide to take the law into their own hands). Qatari women live under the oppressive custody of male guardians; in many areas of life they are not free to make their own choices.

The migrant workers who built the eye-catching stadia are mostly impoverished young men from Asia and Africa. They worked in blistering heat, for minimum wage, and, having had their passports confiscated, they were not free to negotiate better pay and conditions, or even to return home. Since the World Cup was awarded to Qatar, ten years ago, approximately 6,500 of these construction workers have died.

Human rights are abused, to some extent, in every country on the planet. Islam, however, is one of the few organisations which attempts to justify these abuses. FIFA and Qatar should fund a compensation scheme for these migrant workers and their families. Though that won’t ensure a clear conscience for players and spectators at the World Cup, it will at least be a start.

Licenced today: Glass Works Square in Barnsley, South Yorkshire… 

Happy birthday...

 Licenced last week: 18th birthday wishes on the door of number 18...

Springtime in Beccles...

Licenced today: boats moored on the River Waveney in Beccles, Suffolk…

Rural food bank...

Licenced today: a food bank sign at a nearby farm…

KFC? WTF!...

It’s hard to imagine a more misjudged promotion, with the fast food franchise KFC encouraging their German customers to “treat themselves” on the anniversary of Kristallnacht - the Night of Broken Glass - in 1938, when Nazi mobs torched and ransacked synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses across Germany. “Commemoration of Kristallnacht", the message read. "Treat yourself to more soft cheese and crispy chicken. Now at KFCheese!”.

Dark skies at North Cave Wetlands yesterday...

Traffic...

Licenced today: a lorry negotiates the narrow, cobbled street through the village of Dent in Cumbria…

Stillness in company...

Against all expectations, the village pub is still open. However, unless you want to know the price of red diesel, or the turning circle of a touring caravan, it’s perhaps better to drink elsewhere.

Licenced today: a Quaker meeting at Swarthmoor Meeting House in Cumbria, the only meeting house donated to the movement by George Fox…

Broadway...

 Licenced today: old stone cottages in the Cotswold village of Broadway…

Lyveden New Bield...

Licenced last week: Lyveden New Bield, near Oundle, Northamptonshire. Not a house in ruins, but an Elizabethan summer house built for Sir Thomas Tresham, a fervent Roman Catholic, and left unfinished when he died in 1605. The house, in plan, is strictly symmetrical, based on a Greek cross, featuring many religious symbols…

Oulton Broad...

Licenced today: springtime blossom at Oulton Broad, Norfolk…