Danskcolin: Sunday December 17th 2023

Cakes are generally good news aren't they!

Although not in every case. Remember when the CEO of the "Mrs Fields" baked-goods conglomerate attracted some perhaps not-very-fair criticism after laying off a thousand employees by means of a message on one of their cakes?

BROOMFIELD, CO—In a move that many have criticized as rash and insensitive, inside sources confirmed Thursday that CEO Tim Casey of the baked goods conglomerate Mrs. Fields was under fire for laying off more than 1,000 employees via an oversized frosted cookie cake.

“If you’ve been invited to take a bite of this delicious 12-inch chocolate chip cookie, then you are unfortunately part of the group that is being laid off today,” said Casey, who urged the outgoing staff members to help themselves to a piece before it was all gone, explaining that the cursive words rendered in gourmet buttercream frosting constituted legal notice of their immediate termination.

“As CEO, I believe it is my responsibility to invite you to the break room and serve you this sweet treat myself. I hope learning of your dismissal in such a tasty manner makes the news easier to bear. Regardless, this cookie cake represents the entirety of your severance package.”

At press time, Casey had reportedly succumbed to outside pressure to smooth the transition for departing employees by providing workers and their families with a complimentary three-month subscription to the Mrs. Fields Cookie Club.

In retrospect, perhaps the lay-offs could have been handled more sensitively, I'm not sure. What do YOU think? Let me know!

10:30 And cakes are very much in our minds this morning, as Lois packs our lunches in two old plastic ice-cream tubs, ready for our trip to her church's Sunday Morning Meeting at Ashchurch Village Hall, near Tewkesbury. Apparently there'll be chocolate and coffee cakes aplenty today, baked by church-member Lucy.

11:15 We leave our daughter Sarah and her 10-year-old twins in the house - they're staying with us for the weekend. And I drive Lois over to Ashchurch for the meeting.

flashback to August 2021: we make our first visit to Ashchurch Village Hall

where the church's local services are held

We arrive in the lunch break between the Bible Hour and the Communion Service. After taking our seats we start to demolish the packed lunches. And as promised, Lucy brings out large pieces of home-made chocolate and coffee cakes for Lois and me to gorge ourselves on - yum yum!

the lunch-break scene in the village hall, as Lois and I

tiptoe inside and take our seats unobtrusively, and

church-members saunter in and out of the kitchen behind the screen

12:30 The meeting begins. Jamie, this week's visiting preacher, knows his Bible backwards, no doubt about that. And I think that for people who like studying, then ancient texts are the perfect challenge: they're often obscure, being from such a distant time, and they need work to interpret. And the Bible is a long book, to put it mildly.

For fundamentalists, who believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, it's not just the challenge of interpreting the texts. There's also the extra challenge of reconciling texts which seem to contradict each other: contradictions aren't allowed, and have to be reconciled. And as all the Bible prophecies are judged to be divinely inspired, there's also the challenge of matching these prophecies to historical events past, present or future.

Jamie, this week's visiting preacher (seated in front of the big screen),

seen here in the lunch-break, chatting with Chief Elder Andy (right)

On the other hand, you don't have to be a fundamentalist to be fascinated by the Bible. And for students and scholars who take a rationalistic approach, it must be equally fascinating to be able to make use of contemporary cultural or historical evidence from non-biblical sources, or from archaeology, in order to interpret or date biblical texts, to substantiate biblical events or otherwise, and to bring into play the motives of the religious leaders, priests and prophets of the time, whose job it was to select what was to be included in the books of sacred writings, and what was to be left out.

deciding what to include in your sacred texts,

and what to leave out, was an important job in those far-off days

I think all "histories" written in ancient times, including Greek and Roman histories for sure, were written mainly so that people could draw lessons from past events. And in the case of religious writings, the message was that the prophets could indeed see into the future, and also that if you did the right thing by your priest, then good things would happen to you (and the reverse if you disregarded your priest's advice).

In those far-off days, any history that just reported "the facts, just the facts, ma'am", like Sgt Joe Friday used to say, was thought to be a waste of time, or even dangerous, because it might send you away with the wrong message, a different one from what the priests or political leaders were saying to you.

See?

Fascinating stuff!

14:00 We drive home, dropping church member David off at his house in Upton-on-Severn on our way home. He has cadged a lift off us today - he has just had a shoulder replacement and can't drive for a few weeks - poor David !!!!!

Church member David (ringed) sits having his lunch -

later he cadges a lift home off us as he's not allowed to drive

for several weeks after a shoulder replacement.

14:30 We arrive home in time for our afternoon nap, which is nice. Our daughter Sarah and the twins are still here - and from our bed Lois and I can hear the twins downstairs, working hard on their hand-made Christmas cards and chattering and laughing away, like nobody's business, bless them!

And after Sarah and the twins leave for their home in Alcester later in the afternoon, Lois and I find the usual "ragbag" of what-I-call "objets trouvés" - all the things they've inadvertently left behind with us, like Sarah's pyjamas, and one of the twins' acrylic paint kits, plus numerous smaller items. Oh dear!!!!

just two of the collection of what-I-call "objets trouvés",

inadvertently left behind by Sarah and the twins after they drive home

What madness !!!!!

21:00 We wind down on the sofa with the second programme in Lucy Worseley's new series about Arthur Conan Doyle, writer of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

And Lois and I are delighted tonight to see that the irrepressible Ms Worsley is sporting a hat obviously inspired by one of Lois's "meeting hats", which is nice.

Another fascinating episode. Lois and I didn't know that Conan Doyle reacted so fiercely when liberal politicians came out with their scathing criticisms of the British treatment of Boer prisoners during the Boer War 1899-1902. This was the war fought by Britain against the Afrikaners in South Africa: the war which eventually brought the two British and the two Boer provinces together to form the Union of South Africa, taking the whole country into the British Empire.

Conan Doyle campaigned tirelessly against this liberal stance, even defending the "concentration camps" that Britain set up to accommodate the Boer prisoners and their families. He was eventually knighted as a result of that stance, a knighthood that had nothing to do with his Sherlock Holmes stories and all that malarkey.

Who knew?

He published a book called "The Great Boer War" before the war had even finished, he was so eager to "get his views out there". And after that, he published a pamphlet and had it translated into 20 languages, no doubt to put his case before the court of world opinion.

Conan-Doyle's pamphlet on the causes and conduct

of the war, a pamphlet he had translated into 20 languages

Conan Doyle's view was that the setting-up of concentration-camps all stemmed from the Boers' tactics of guerrilla warfare against the British. In response, the British were forced, from Conan Doyle's point of view, to retaliate with a "scorched earth policy", which in turn had the effect of displacing the Boer civilians, especially the women and children.

Oh dear. But I would imagine that many white people thought in those terms in those days. I don't suppose that Conan Doyle was at all unusual in that respect.

On the plus side, however, Conan-Doyle also achieved a great victory for legal rights in the UK. Not only that, but he did so in the course of aiding a man of mixed race.

Lois and I didn't know that in those far-off crazy days, there was no court of appeal in Britain that would hear e.g. pleas from prisoners in UK jails who believed that they had been wrongly convicted.

Conan Doyle took up the case of George Edalji, a solicitor jailed, and effectively banned from his profession, after being convicted by a jury in 1903 on a charge of maiming a pony. And Conan Doyle's campaign to investigate the alleged "crime" using Sherlock Holmes-style methods, resulted in Edalji being exonerated in 1907, and an appropriate Court of Appeal for all such cases being set up the following year.

Conan Doyle's personal popularity with the public because of his Sherlock Holmes stories had made a huge, game-changing addition to the pressure on the Government to institute reform and set up a Court of Appeal.

Why didn't we have such a Court of Appeal before 1908? Well, there's a simple explanation, it seems.