KEV67

I have not attended any churches recently. This is in part because the URC I have been going to isn't a great place to take a toddler. I don't really want to leave Little Adrian with my mother for too long, because she has things she wants to do, and she gets exasperated with Adrian's naughtiness. However, yesterday was the first Sunday of the month, so I went to the Unitarians in the afternoon. I took Adrian to the park first. He never goes to sleep on the way out, because he is excited about the swings, but he usually goes to sleep on the way back. Worked out this time. He fell asleep in Caffè Nero, then stayed asleep through the Unitarian service, despite the loudness of the organ playing. He woke up briefly about half way through, but then went to sleep again. The theme of the service was how the Unitarians would change if they started off afresh. The pastor said a lot would stay the same. They would still ditch all the theological doctrine, but would stay committed to social justice and equity. This annoyed me a bit. If a church has no theological doctrine, why should it be prescriptive on political doctrines? I am not committed to social justice or equity myself. I do not think it is up to the government to equalise any advantages parents might strive to give to their children. I do not think the government should take the father's place to provide for his children, in theory, anyway. Similarly, I think children have a responsibility to look after their aged parents, although that is often difficult. I didn't say any of that. I stayed behind for tea and biscuits. They cooed over Adrian. I was talking to one of them. I told her how in Reading some pagan from Earth Spirit turned up. I had been surprised by that, because Unitarianism had derived from Protestant Christianity, although it is not really Christian now. She said that when she first attended a Unitarian meeting, someone introduced himself as an Atheist, which she seems to be herself. That made me wonder why she bothered turning up at all, but I have wondered that at other churches, because many do not seem very orthodox. We were told next month's theme will be rivers. One of the old ladies said she thought about the Mersey. She remembered being a young girl and her father urging her to walk along the gang plank to the ferry, which had gaps along each side. She is 80 now. I expect I might say something about the Thames. The Thames along Reading was very pretty, and I used to envy the rowers. I once spent two days swimming from the source of the Thames in an organised activity holiday.

It is odd that Anglo-Saxon England's greatest poem was set in Scandinavia. The Anglo-Saxons had great difficulty with the Danes and Vikings, and Norse people generally, so why listen to stories about them? Does the Beowulf story originally come from Scandinavia?

Not the Nine O' Clock News was great, so many great sketches. I liked the Guy the Gorilla sketch in which Mel Smith is interviewed about a gorilla he has brought back from the jungle and educated. Then there was another with Griff Rhys Jones as the racist Constable Savage, getting told off by the superintendent about a citizen of African extraction he keeps arresting. Then there is a spoof on the famous television argument about the Life of Brian, but rejigged as the Life of Monty Python. Then there was the 'Failed in Wales' advert. One of the funniest things I ever saw was an episode from Catchphrase. The way the panels were revealed made the animation obscene. Extremely funny, particularly as one of the panellists was none-too-bright and couldn't work out why people were laughing.

I wondered whether Adrian might be a bit scared of the wild things, but he does not seem to be. He likes the wild thing that sticks its head out the sea when he first gets to the island. What is strange to me is that Adrian accepts a bedroom turning into a jungle. I do not know how much of the book he understands.

There was a film called The Vanishing, which was a remake of a Dutch film, which was based on a book by Tim Krebbe. I have not actually watched the film, although I had heard how creepy it was from film review shows by Barry Norman. I was at work once, and I overheard someone describe the plot. It freaked me out just listening to it.

I have never managed to watch Alien all the way through. There was a scene in which an android, played by Ian Holm, had been attacked by the alien. Instead of blood he was squirting hydraulic fluid. Another film I could not bear watching was Tess by Roman Polanski, starring Natasja Kinski. It was well acted, but I had to stop watching after about twenty minutes, because I could see what was coming next.

I am still reading this between other things. Daniel Defoe is now writing about Yorkshire and the North Midlands. He talked about he and his party came across a woman who lived in a cave with her family. Her husband was a lead miner. He said they were poor, but not desperate. The husband earned 5d a day, while the wife earned 3d a day washing the ore, when she could work, which as she had small children was not often. They made a whipround and gave her a sum not exceeding a crown, which I think is 10 shillings. Later they met a miner who appeared out of a hole in the ground. They couldn't understand what he said, but they had a local as an interpreter, who said he worked so many fathoms under the ground. I am not sure how far a fathom is, but Defoe reckoned it was as deep as St Paul’s Cathedral is high. They gave him a couple of shillings, with which he made off to the pub, but Defoe and his party got there first. They bought him some beer and made him promise to take his money home to his family. I found this quite interesting. This all happened three centuries ago. Who would imagine that you meet someone on an average, mundane day, and people still read about it centuries later.

I did Jane Eyre and MacBeth for O level. Actually, I think I read some student revision books on Jane Eyre and MacBeth mostly, but I could not avoid the books entirely. At other times I remember the class reading Julius Caesar, Animal Farm, and The Time Machine.

I have started another Clive Cussler thriller, this one written by Jack du Brul. I was intrigued because it had a WW1 fighter aircraft attacking a ship. To me it looked like an Airco DH2 pusher biplane. However this is not consistent with the blurb on the back, which said it was set in 1914, and that the plane was attacking President Woodrow Wilson's yacht. The DH2 did not appear until 1916. TBF, in the book it is just described as a pusher aircraft, with no mention of a machine gun fitted. I think the front cover is misleading. It even has red, white and blue stripes on the rudder like a Royal Flying Corps aircraft. So far so good. It is quite exciting and I want to continue reading. Isaac Bell, the young agency detective, managed to shoot down the plane, and now he has just escaped the port authorities before the police had chance to detain him. I learnt something new: the Model T Ford was so called, because it was Henry Ford's 20th prototype. His investors held faith in him for that long. Another thing that interested me was that on the yacht, Woodrow Wilson had invited bankers from around the USA to head up the American reserve bank. They had not had anything like the Bank of England before then.

Little Adrian seems to have taken to this book. It can be difficult to introduce him to new books, but this one soon became a favourite, I am surprised how old it is. It was first published in 1964. Adrian is 21 months old, and he is not speaking yet. I think he understands some words. I wonder how much he understands of the story. He does not seem to have difficulty in the concept of a bedroom turning into a jungle.

Only one page left. I read the same page of Old English every day until I understand it, before moving on to the next page. Hence it has taken me over a year to read. I do not think it is an efficient way to learn a language. It was a good poem. It reminded me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What I liked about BtVS were the everyday teen issues Buffy was having. For example, her school grades suffered because she had to devote so much time to her vampire slaying. Her mother worries about unsuitable boys. She is disappointed about not making the cheerleader squad. The monsters were a huge concern, but a series just containing fight scenes with monsters would not have been as fun. In Buffy the monsters were a difficult fact of life, but they were also a sort of metaphor for something else. Similarly in Beowulf, the monsters are real, but so are all the other dangers: hostile tribes, feuds, stupid mistakes, natural calamities. One of the scenes I liked best was when the Geats shove the dead dragon off a cliff into the sea. They are going to honour their fallen leader with a funeral pyre, but the dead dragon is just a distraction that is maybe starting to smell.

It's alright, but I think a good subtitle for this book would have been, 'How I Filled My Time Since the Seventies'.

I attended the Unitarians this afternoon. There was a bit of excitement, because it looked like a relatively young couple (under 40) were going to join us, but they had obviously made a mistake. Then the service was delayed a minute while the government sent us all a practice emergency message on our phones. Once that excitement was over the service started. The theme was on the Zero Sum Game. I thought it was going to be a left wing diatribe, so I was surprised when it turned out to be a defence of classical economics, of the sort espoused by John Locke, Adam Smith and David Ricardo. It was still a little lefty, because the preacher said those who tended towards zero sum thinking tended to be afraid of something, for example, free trade and immigration. All the same I never thought I'd hear a defence of neoliberalism at a religious meeting.

These are the memoirs written by Bernie Taupin, who wrote the lyrics yo Elton John's best songs. While I was reading it I thought, 'If Pete Best was the unluckiest man in Rock n Roll, Bernie Taupin was the luckiest.' I think Bernie Taupin's lyrics are distinctive and great, and make Elton John's songs like no one else's. On the other hand, Taupin really ripped it up, had huge cred, but retained his anonymity. I was particularly taken with the chapter in which he and a chum were supposed to be writing a film script, but we're having too much of a good time to get started. In the middle of this Elton John rings him up as asks him to write some lyrics for a song. It takes Bernie Taupin 10 minutes to write the lyrics to Don't Go Breaking My Heart, which was a No 1 hit for Elton John and Kidi Dee in 1975 or 76. Taupin meets great artists, drinks a lot of booze, gets married, divorced, shags birds, moves around the globe, and generally has a good time. To be honest I wish I hadn't started this book, because there are a lot of books to read. It is interesting enough, though.

Poor Lucy Snowe. She fancies Dr Graham, but Dr Graham fancies other birds. OTOH M. Paul seems to fancy Lucy Snowe, and in his own way is as find a chap as Dr Graham. I am still only half way through this book, but my advice to Lucy Snowe is to give up Dr Graham and give M. Paul a chance.