KEV67

I am currently reading this. The chapters are short so it is good for bedtime reading. I once knew a professor of agriculture at Reading University. He said that the problem Michael Henchard had with his wheat at the beginning of the book was the same problem he studied for his PhD thesis. I think the problem was that his wheat had started to malt because of the wet weather. The Scotman's cure was to mix the wheat with some chemical and heat it. It didn't fix it completely, but made it good enough to sell. What is this chemical? The professor did not know, but did not think it was possible.

In Oranges her mother sounds crackers, or maybe just eccentric. She was a bit more Old Testament than New.

Only another twelve pages. It is good, but I still liked the television series more. The book contains weird bits, such as a bits of Sir Perceval looking for the grail. I seem to remember from the TV series there was some sort of rapprochment between Jeanette and her mother and their church. Still seems sad Charlotte Coleman, who played the teenage Jeanette, died so young. She was also Marmalade Atkins.

Adrian has other picture books that other people have bought him. One is Peter Rabbit. Another is You Can't Throw Your Granny off a Bus. I have bought him a bible for toddlers, but I have not started reading it to him yet. I have also bought him The Scarecrows' Wedding, which I think is jolly good. I bought him another book called Don't Let an Elephant Drive a Digger. Adrian has not shown much interest in these books yet. Adrian is coming up to 19 months.

I took Adrian back to the Southgate Community Church. Adrian slept for the first hour. Then he woke up, got bored and started making a noise. I unbuckled him from his stroller, but he was still making a lot of noise and wanted to go wandering. One of the church people advised me to take him to an office where there were some toys. The service was being streamed in there. It was a pretty long service. One of the pastors said he'd been three weeks in Scotland, where it hadn't rained a drop. He thanked the Lord for the beauty of Scotland. I am not going to disagree. I once cycled from Land's End to John o' Groats, and I was impressed with Scotland's beauty too. There was a second pastor. He said he was 88. I thought he was in good shape for 88. He said he served his military conscription in Cyprus. He said there was a Cypriot Bishop or similar, whose name was something like Marikos, which means happy in Greek, only he was the most miserable looking man you'd ever see. I wondered if this was the Cypriot bishop who was behind the Cypriot independence movement that assassinated British servicemen. I will have to check. The sermon was about the Service on the Mount, or the Beatitudes. There was eight of them, so it took some time to get through them. The pastors were adamant that meek did not mean wimpy, but power under control. I am not convinced. Edit: the archbishop's name was Makarios, and he was indeed involved in terrorist activities against British rule in the 60s. So that's a gold star to me I think.

I bought two other picture books, which to me seem pretty good books for small children. Having thought about it, I think it is better to keep reading Adrian Nobot. It is the one he enjoys and seems to understand a bit. Bernard the Robot loses his bottom on the swing, and Adrian is familiar with swings. He knows a bit about bottoms too I expect.

I have got to the end of chapter 2. I think the TV series was better. I think in part this was because the acting was so good.

Jeanette Winterson wrote in the intro that it was based on her life, but somewhat fictionalised. Maybe it was an unreliable memoir. How does it compare with Why Be Happy...?

Actually, a lot of churches are very child-oriented these days, but the church I thought handled children best was a Greek Orthodox church I went to in Reading. I went to the service by mistake, because it was an Anglican church, which they hired. The priest did his thing and the children just played. Their parents were about, so they did not misbehave too badly. The problem was I could not understand any of it, because it was all in Greek. I decided it was not Latin. It did not sound like Polish. Later I decided it must have been Greek. I wrote about it on a Latin forum, because I had been trying to learn Latin, and the priest replied. He said they were hiring the church until they could build their own.

According to my son, Adrian, this is the epitome of literature. I read it to him four times this evening alone. I have had to hide it. It's about a robot called Bernard who loses his bottom in the park, hence 'Nobot'. As far as Adrian goes, the money shot is when Bernard finds his bottom again. He always laughs at that page. This is a bit odd, because he has not really started talking yet. I wonder if he understands more than he can speak. I wonder how much sense he can make of the pictures and whether he understands the word, 'bottom'.

I remember watching the television series in the 90s, which I enjoyed a lot. It starred Charlotte Coleman, who died far too young, and Geraldine McEwan as her eccentric mother. I have only read the first chapter. I thought it started off a little shaky, but it soon got into its stride. During my church going I have not met anyone like Jeanette's mother or the pastor, but then I am a bit of a dilletante. I have not been committed to any one church to be part of the family. All the same, I think the fire-and-brimstone preachers are thin on the ground these days.

I think the Southgate Community Church is a winner for Adrian. The United Reform Church might be alright for me, but I am not sure if there is an evening service. There's a Presbyterian Church in Bury St Edmunds. In England the Presbyterian Church united with the Congregational Church to become the United Reformed Church, so this Presbyterian church must be Scots or Northern Irish. Might mean they're hardcore. Perhaps I should check them out.

I cannot say about Scotland, but I think they have changed a lot in the thirty or forty years. Some churches are still quite traditional, but many have become very child-oriented.

I went to St Peter's Church in Bury St Edmunds this morning, which is a CofE church. I wanted to see if our state religion would comment on the assisted dying bill and the late abortions amendment. They were not mentioned in the sermon, but were in the prayers. The service was a mix. Most the congregation were elderly, although there were some children who went away part way through to do their own thing. There was no organ. Instead there were three old blokes, two of which strummed guitars. The vicar seemed to be some sort of scientist who was concerned with the environment. There was also a church leader who led the prayers. I suspect he was a retired vicar. I thought the service went on too long and I was a bit irritated with it. At one point one of the guitarists switched over to a banjo.

At least you heard of him. According to the pastor, Karl Barth said the angels laughed at him. He'd written so much on theology and the angels thought it was nonsense.

I went to a United Reform Church service in Bury St Edmunds this morning. I left Adrian at home this time, which was probably a good move, as it was a different type of service. Most the congregation was elderly. Sombre hymns, quite a long service. The most amusing part was a mix up in the schedule of hymns. The sermon was quite interesting. The pastor referred to a conversation between Richard Dawkins and a more religious person. Dawkins said any version of religion he would believe in would be complex than any theology he had read. The pastor agreed. This sounded slightly Unitarian to me. Then the pastor related a story. Someone challenged a pastor to give him straight answers to his theological questions. The pastor recommended he go out and look at the sky the next time it rained. The bloke did this, and after an hour he got soaking wet, but was none the wiser. He went back to the pastor, who said that was the point. Then the pastor referred to a theologian called Karl Bach, I think. He wrote more on theology that nearly everybody in 20th Century, according to the pastor. I thought he said Karl Marx at first. I wondered if Karl Marx wrote a lot on theology before switching to politics. Karl Marx was 19th Century, and I wondered whether the pastor was getting his centuries mixed up, because he was getting on a bit. I think it must have been Karl Bach or something similar. I might go back. Edit: not certain, but I think it was Karl Barth. Karl Barth - Wikipedia

Did I ever tell you I had a PhD? Yeah, well, I do, but I don't like to mention it. It would be like a retired military officer referring to himself as Captain or Major. My PhD was something to do with solar panels and heat pumps. During the course of my PhD, I eventually had two papers published, although in a relatively crummy journal. The first was a literature review of similar projects to the one I was working on. I think that was published in a paper entitled Sustainable Engineering. The second was about my own research, which I first tried to submit to a high impact, Elsevier journal. After writing the paper, and replying to the criticisms of the referees twice over, the editor rejected the paper as being too much like a report. After that, I submitted the paper to Sustainable Engineering. After responding to the criticisms of another two referees, which involved almost a complete re-write, the paper was accepted. Then for years nobody read it. At least nobody cited it. Then I think Sustainable Engineering included it in some sort of book or compendium. After that people seemed to read it more. I recently got an email from www.academia.edu to say 422 people had mentioned my name. The thing is there are other academics who share my name. When I first started getting emails from this site, quite a few were for papers I had not written. I went into the website to disclaim my ownership of the papers I had not written, but since then I have left it alone. To find out about my mentions, I have to pay the Academia website £1, but I am not sure I want to. Of course, my supervisor's name is also on the two papers, but I did most of the actual writing. It took me a week just to copy out some diagrams from other papers I was citing. They have to be in incredible, high resolution.

I took my son Adrian to the Southgate Community Church in Bury St Edmunds this morning. I thought I was 10 minutes early, but the service started at 10.30, so I was late. The service was very child-oriented. At one point 11 children got onto the stage behind a screen, and they put on a sock puppet show, with 23 sock puppets. They were singing some sort of Country & Western spiritual song. So not very heavy on doctrine or ritual. Adrian slept through the first bit and woke up for the second bit. At another point the pastor asked everyone to talk to someone next to them about the best or worst party they went to. This was after the reading, which was about the woman who bathed Jesus's feet with expensive perfume, which some of the Apostles complained was an inappropriate use of money. This was just before Judas decided to betray Jesus. So, I suppose that party sucked. I am not much of a party person, but eventually my mind went back to a work Christmas party. We were bussed off somewhere and given some fake dollar bills to play in the casino. Later on the manager of Project Engineering was seen lying on his back on the dance floor, trying to push some fake dollar bills into the stocking of a woman from Sales and Marketing, which was pretty funny. The church warders, or whatever their positions, were kind and welcoming. They asked questions about me and Adrian and soon ascertained I was a single parent, relocating into the area. This must have raised other questions, which I am grateful they did not ask. Adrian is actually quite a friendly, little person, who likes meeting people. So, he didn't want to leave.

I honestly do not know how so many of these churches keep carrying on. I has a friend who was religious, and he gave 10% of his earnings to the church, but surely not many people do that. In Reading there were more churches than pubs. Drinkers generally go to the pub more than once a week. St Mary's, Church of England (continuing) only had about half a dozen regular members, but it was a big building they had to maintain. The Unitarian Church I go to once a month has about a dozen attendees. It is quite a nice, old building. I assume it can be hired out, but I still don't know how these churches keep going.

Almost in June and I am still reading it. Beowulf is in battle with the dragon. He has struck him in the head with his sword, but the blade has shattered. He is not fighting alone, however. One of his kinsmen has come to help him. His kinsman was at a disadvantage, because only Beowulf had a metal shield. His kinsman has had to come shelter behind Beowulf's shield, because his own has burnt away to the boss. It must be like fighting a cross between a Churchill tank equipped with the Crocodile flame-thrower equipment and a military helicopter. I was going to write a Black Apache helicopter, but in fairness the dragon does not any missiles. All Beowulf has is iron weaponry and armour, not even proper steel. He is still in the fight, which is not bad considering he is an old man of 70.

I went back to the Unitarians. Otherwise, I haven't. I might try the United Reform church close by, or some sort of independent church down the road. I expect the independent church has a band and is somewhat child oriented.

Daniel Defoe was a man of letters and no mistake. I started reading this. It was first published in 1724-6. I thought it would be like The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett, but it is not. It is much more factual. Humphry Clinker was about the doings of the horrible Squire Bramble. This is more like reportage. I am not very far in. Defoe is reporting on East Anglia. So far, the most shocking bit was that there was an area of lowland Essex where disease was rife. The farmers who had grown up there were immune to the diseases, but the wives they kept marrying were not. Why didn't they marry women who had grown up in the area? Anyway, Defoe has got to Ipswich. At one point of time, Ipswich was renowned for building collier ships.

Dear Souls is a bit jumpy, or at least the second volume is. Parts of the text are missing and the books stops unexpectedly. It is still quite good. You get a sense of life in 19th Century provincial Russia.

Depends who you read. Leo Tolstoy does not write about poverty much. Most the characters in his books are royalty or aristocracy.

I have not read any Chekhov either, but he was a playwright, wasn't he?