Hitch...

I read very few biographies or autobiographies. There really aren’t many people in the public eye I want to know more about - certainly no-one in politics (with the possible exception of Tony Benn). I see books in charity shops by - and about - celebrities such as Russell Brand, Chris Moyles and Graham Norton… and they stay on the shelves. I don’t know much about these people, and I wish I knew even less. There’s a book by Jonathan Ross, with a rhetorical question for a title: Why do I say these things? Why? I don’t know, Jonathan, and I certainly don’t care.

On my travels, however, I’ve read a memoir by Joseph Heller about growing up in Coney Island. That’s got to be interesting, I thought, but I was wrong. It was really dull. Heller put everything into Catch 22, and I don’t think he really had anything left to say. I’ve read a book by Jo Brand, called Look back in hunger, which was so-so. A life of Krishnamurti, by Mary Lutyens, filled in a lot of detail about his early years (not that there’s any real need to know much about the man when his own words are what matters).

I recently finished Appetite for Wonder, by Richard Dawkins, which I enjoyed, and now I’m halfway through Hitch 22, by Christopher Hitchens. Knowing his way around the English language as well as he knew his way around the world’s trouble spots, he was incapable of writing a dull sentence. Zelig-like, he seems to have witnessed, at first hand, some of the most momentous events of the last half century, and he had a lot of famous friends (and enemies). As a writer he could turn his hand to any subject that required intelligence, intellectual rigour and an open mind.

He skewered the shortcomings of belief without evidence in his book, God is not Great (and is there a better, more ‘in your face’ book title than that?). Hitchens became, along with Dawkins, the ‘go-to guy’ for any debate that required a voice of reason whenever some dead-eyed cleric or self-appointed spokesman for Islam was being interviewed in the wake of a terrorist atrocity.

Hitchens put the boot into Judaism and Christianity too (savaging the more ludicrous aspects of the Catholic church, and giving the now-beatified Mother Teresa a good kicking). But it was Islam that really fired him up. The idea that the rest of the world should show respect to this barbarous faith filled Hitchens with rage. He unravelled the more tyrannical aspects of Islam, defining Muslims as “humourless, paranoid, insecure, eager to take offense, and suffering from self-righteousness, self-pity and self-hatred”. He summed up his feelings about the religion, more consisely in a video, available to watch on YouTube. Exasperated by the way the debate was going, he concluded, “Don’t waste my time. It’s bullshit”. Christopher Hitchens died too young, aged 62, in 2011.

A brief exchange yesterday with a lady in a charity shop, as I was buying a book…
She (looking at the book jacket): “What is it… fiction or non-fiction?”
Me: “Well, it’s about God, so… I’d say it’s fiction”
She (unable to find the right button to press on the computer screen): “Ah, well, it doesn’t really matter”.
Me (affronted): “I think it does!…

Misty morning by the Thames near Lechlade...

Autumn...

It felt autumnal this morning - chilly with low-lying mist - but warmer later on. Got some pix on my travels, and now I’m in Bradford-on-Avon…

Malmesbury Abbey...

Faringdon...

I find myself in Faringdon, Oxfordshire, a handsome little town, with a collection of old coaching inns clustered around a market square. Outside All Saints Church is a sign: ‘Theories keep changing, God does not. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever’. After my reading of the Koran, I’m unimpressed by anything that’s claimed never to change. Despite the blithe assurances, ‘for ever’ is a mighty long time. Change is good!

At least half a dozen people asked me what I was doing - surely a redundant question when I’m looking through the viewfinder of a camera. One of them told me there’s a bit of a cannon-ball inside the church, fired at the building by Cromwell’s troops during the Civil War. “Better be quick if you want to see it”, he said, “because the service starts in a few minutes”. Well, I did something I’ve never done - by choice - in my entire life: I sat through a church service (though I picked a pew near the door in case I needed to escape).

One hymn I already knew. Technology helped with the others, in the form of a screen which displayed each verse in turn. There were prayers, some ‘call and response’ routines and a couple of Bible readings. The vicar took the second reading - about Jesus healing lepers - as the theme for his blessedly short sermon. I guess the days are gone when the vicar could terrify his congregation with a few home truths - leaving women weeping, men ashen-faced, children traumatised and damp.

The vicar sounded (a bit) like the Rev Lovejoy in the Simpsons (and that’s not a favourable comparison). He put in a bit of a performance, hand gestures and all; it just didn’t sound totally sincere. I wondered if he really believed everything he was saying. Those ten lepers went from ‘unclean’ to ‘cured’ with a few words from Jesus, though only one of them came back to thank Jesus for what he’d done. He was a leper and a Samaritan and, therefore, in the eyes of his Jewish neighbours, an outcast twice over. Cue some timely thoughts from the vicar about our need to give thanks for God’s bounty.

The sermon provided the only original ideas (though, who knows, there may be some online service which, for a fee, provides busy churchmen with sermons ‘by the yard’). Everything else was either chanted by heart - the Lord’s prayer, for example - or printed in the order of service. I wondered about the fate of all the other lepers living at the time of Jesus who were unable to hail him as he walked along the road to Jerusalem. If he could heal one, or ten, then why not all lepers? In fact, why have leprosy at all? The answer, when these questions get difficult, is to say “Well, God has a plan. We just don’t know what it is”, which is just a religious version of the ‘Get out of jail free’ card in a game of Monopoly.

A few people shook my hand (but not just mine) at the end of the service, and suggested I might like to stay for a cup of coffee. I didn’t want to push my luck, and say something I might regret, so I shook a few more hands… and left.

As someone who usually see churches only when they’re empty, I was impressed by the size of the congregation. There must have been more than 130 people in the church, plus organists, a choir and a small group: piano, guitar, cello and voices. Everyone was ‘miked up’, and the service went like clockwork. If the object of the exercise is to get ‘bums on seats’ I can only applaud the team who puts on the show every Sunday. If the object is to discover what’s true - and it is - then the service represented 75 minutes of well-choreographed self-delusion… 

Trump...

I haven’t been following the American hustings very closely. The process to find a new president goes on much too long (especially since both candidates are older than me: Clinton 68, Trump 70. I admire their stamina, if not much else).

Despite the stupid things that Trump keeps on saying, his approval rating hasn’t plummeted to zero. I hope his latest indiscretion (a tape of him, as a newly married, “famous” man, describing how he felt entitled to grope women) proves to be the point of no return for this obnoxious bully. Even some of his fellow Republicans, who, until now, have held their noses, are saying “That’s enough…

Cotswolds...

Said goodbye to son Chas this morning, and headed off towards the Cotswolds. The house is ‘coming along’; next time I see him, in November, the renovations should be complete. I look forward to watching Chas cook one of his ‘signature dishes’ in his new kitchen and enjoying a leisurely meal - with a decent bottle of wine - at his dining table, while some inoffensive, easy listening music plays in the background.

I now have two weeks to take pix, so I’m hoping the spell of good weather continues. It’s certainly warm for October…

Milk and honey...

Chas and I have finished painting the kitchen extension: ‘fluffy robe’ for the ceiling and ‘milk and honey’ (most people would call it ‘magnolia’) for the walls. It requires a lot of imagination to name all the new paint colours, rather than just giving each one a number. Some names bear some slight relationship to the colours they represent: liquid jade, rich cantaloupe and caramel suede, for example. Others are baffling and oblique: kernel of truth, over the moon, basket of bobbins, float like a butterfly and dance of the godesses. Anyway, the room looks good…

Melton Mowbray...

Coventry...

In Coventry now, ready to don my oldest clothes and help to transform a half-finished extension into a big kitchen: the heart of son Chas’s house…

Old and new bridges, spanning the River Aire at Ferrybridge...