Dinner table conversations in our family are increasingly odd.  The dogs lurked beneath the table in the hope of scraps.  (Pavlovian theory suggest that by now the dogs should have realized that their efforts are pointless; that squeezing between the chairs does not bring any reward other than causing them discomfort.  Either Pavlov was wrong, or someone feeds them under the table).

“Your  coat is lovely and silken, Bella.”

“Wasn’t there someone called Silken Thomas?”

“Wasn’t he around in Cromwell’s time?”

“Or was it during the English Civil War?”

(Wrong…

Dean Mosson is looking particularly glum this evening; he was to have travelled to Dublin tomorrow for restoration work, but was too big to fit into the car that called for him.

He hung for years on the deanery stairway wall with passers by assuming him to be Jonathan Swift. Only when the portrait was removed to protect it during renovation work did his true identity emerge; notes attached to the back of the canvas, which had not been seen  through the frame being screwed to the wall, identified him…

If the universe is held together by gravity, then there must be something out there that we cannot see, because there is not sufficient mass in what of the universe we we can see to hold things together. The velocity at which some galaxies turn should cause stars and planets to go shooting off into space, if the only gravity holding them together is matter that can be seen. For our theories of the universe to work, something more must be present in galaxies, something that we cannot see must…

Turning off the radio, “I could have produced that programme”, I thought: a piece with two voices interspersed with interview clips with third parties.  I used to produce radio pieces for an independent station, editing them in the studios of an independent Christian group in Belfast.  Once, I made a whole programme, a 27 minute item called “A Summer with a Marching Band”; I went out with a local accordion band and talked with them about their traditions and their thoughts.

The radio work had to be abandoned when a…

Had things turned out differently, it would have been the 29th wedding anniversary of Charles and Diana today.  Google her name, and she is still providing news stories almost thirteen years after her death.

The Net still abounds with stories that her death was the result of a conspiracy.  Motivations advanced for such a conspiracy include suggestions that Diana intended to marry Dodi Al-Fayed, that she intended to convert to Islam, that she was pregnant, and that she was to visit the holy land. Organizations which conspiracy theorists suggest are…

Driving the road between Johnstown and Freshford between eleven and midnight, flicking through the radio channels to avoid the talk between the music, there were two songs from the end of the1960s.  Maybe they were played by different stations; maybe they were both on one station; maybe the station search had gone right through the FM band and finished where it started.

The Beatles’ enigmatic ‘While my guitar gently weeps’ was followed by ‘Woodstock’ from Matthews Southern Comfort.  It was a felicitous juxtaposition, as a clerical colleague would put it;…

Today’s Irish Times editorial on women bishops prompted thoughts about the absurdity of the institutional church, particularly the Church of Ireland.

A friend who belongs to the Masonic Order once complained that attendance at his Lodge meeting had been so thin that he had played a number of roles to allow the evening’s proceedings to take place, at one point this meant answering his own question. I laughed at the thought of it. He is someone who is always on the edge of a joke or a story and…

A Hyacinth Bucket character encounters a distasteful scene

Really, it wasn’t nice. It wasn’t nice at all.

I was just saying to Leonard, my husband, that it wasn’t nice. Leonard has just retired as an important civil servant and he knows about things. He agreed with me, “Not at all pleasant,” he said to me. “Not the sort of thing that decent people like ourselves should have to see”.

You’d think the Government would do something about it, wouldn’t you? I mean to say, if this sort of thing started…

From ‘Hurt for Haiti’:

Hey Folks!

On Sunday, 21st February, we are holding a massive event in aid of our brothers and sisters in Haiti who are in such despair.

We have a huge day planned with some top entertainment on hand. The venue is The Bentleys Complex- all the upstairs and downstairs rooms AND The Brazen Head next door. It’s going to be a great day out and for a great cause.

We’re gonna kick off around 3 in the courtyard with Jon Kenny and Mike Finn on hand…