News - there's a lot of it about at the moment, isn't there! And for us local uninformed "pundits" and "pub bores" who like to sound off with their opinions, it's getting hard to cope, to put it mildly! Like local man Brad Gifford, from East Leake - did you see the story in the local Onion News?
I'm no expert in politics, but, if pressed, I would imagine that any far-right people out there are probably feeling very frustrated and secretly angry with themselves at the moment - we've just had a General Election, in which their "Reform Party" only came away with a handful of MPs, and it's probably dawned on them that, partly due to their efforts to take votes from the Tories, we've now got a vey secure centrist Labour Government, with a massive rock-solid majority, that's going to be sitting there in Parliament for the next 5 years. And the Labour Party is a party on which the Reform Party are likely to have zero influence on, what's more - that's for sure !!!
Poor crazy far-right people !!!!
Remember this BBC interview with Reform Party leader Nigel Farage during the election campaign, when Farage got annoyed and abruptly stopped responding to questions, to the obvious amusement of his BBC interviewer?
11:00 And I think of this interview with Nigel, and also of the plight of our poor harassed new Prime Minister Keir Starmer this morning, while I'm sitting here in a local village hall just outside Tewkesbury. I've just driven my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois from our home in Malvern, so she can take part in her church's two Sunday Morning Meetings.
Lois takes me inside and "settles me down" at a nice table. Then she disappears into the kitchen to lay out the 2-course lunch food which she's prepared for the church's contingent of Iranian Christian refugees, and also for this week's visiting preacher and his wife (if any). Bless her, she volunteered to do lunch duty this Sunday, even though she's not 100%: she's on antibiotics, as well as nursing a grazed knee from a fall on our patio this week, plus we've been hosting our daughter Sarah and her twins for 2 evening meals at our house.
What a woman I married !!!!
I sit down on my own at the table Lois has selected for me, and rather nervously I check that the Parish Council has still got the portrait of our dear late Queen on the wall, and hasn't replaced it with the awful pictures of King Charles that have been produced so far - something to be grateful for, to put it mildly!
I sit rather nervously, trying to keep a low profile,
and checking that the Parish Council hasn't
yet replaced the portrait of our dear late Queen,
- phew, it's still there haha!
I'm feeling a bit vulnerable, because Lois is out of sight in the kitchen, which means that, in Lois's absence, I'm an "easy target" for church members to approach for a chat - yikes! But fair enough, they're all lovely people, and they're only being friendly, which I appreciate really, I have to say!
Church member Lucy chats with Chief Elder Andy and this week's
visiting preacher Matt, while one of the church's contingent
of Iranian Christian refugees (left) emerges from the kitchen
And yes - one member, Lucy, does indeed engage me briefly in conversation, which is nice. She tells me that our Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, is actually under the thumb of millionaires and billionaires who meet together in some high-end ski resort and plot how to "control" him.
This is a story I haven't picked up on from my cursory daily glance at the news, I have to say. Perhaps the story's "broken" on social media, which I don't really bother with - call me lazy and apathetic if you like haha!
Either way, I think I should be told!
11:15 The first meeting, the "Bible Hour" begins, with visiting preacher Matt's topic of "There's only one true religion". He reveals the astonishing fact that there are (I think he said) something like 30,000 or so denominations of Christianity, although mostly they haven't derived the true set of beliefs from the Bible, he announces.
Matt cautions against approaching a study of the Bible with any pre-conceived ideas we might have, although to be fair to Matt, I think he would say that it's important to approach the book with one preconception at least: that it's 100% true and that none of it contains anything "made up" or "guessed at".
He starts his Bible Hour talk with a joke, which is nice. The talk's title-slide "There's only one true religion" is soon superseded by a second slide, "There's only one true chicken".
Who knew that, of the many meats that taste of chicken, or which taste like chicken, rat meat comes the closest. What madness, isn't it!
And it turns out that Matt has a complete table of experimental results for these chicken-like meats, including also crocodile, snails, snake, emu, locusts, crickets and "KFC" (Kentucky Fried Chicken).
Matt's slide no.1: There is only one true religion...
...and his slide no. 2 "There is only one true chicken"
full results for the meats that most taste like chicken, with
Farsi translation for the church's Iranian Christian refugees
15:30 Poor Lois is exhausted by the time we arrive home and get into bed for a couple of hours' relaxation: she was up at 7 am to prepare the food, and then, after we arrived at the village hall, she supervised the serving of it; the two meetings went on till 2 pm with a 30-minute break to eat. However, that wasn't all, because the two regular meetings were then followed by a special additional hour-long "business meeting", for church members only, to discuss what to do about a couple of members who've been causing trouble with 'unauthorised' bible studies in their home. Eight and an half hours in total, including the drive home etc.
What madness !!!! [That's enough madness for today! - Ed]
20:00 We settle down on the couch to watch a nice, relaxing documentary, all about Britain's Most Beautiful Road, the NC500, which circles round the coastline of north Scotland.
I fall asleep from time to time during the programme, but I do remember at one point seeing a chef in a coastal hamlet using local sea-food and loch-food to prepare a meal for his restaurant's customers, and serving it up on locally produced, newly-fired ceramic plates and bowls.
Yum yum! But then the programme's voice-over narrator makes a comment that puzzles me: "This is the Highlands on a plate, 3,000 million years in the making."
Yum yum! But then the programme's voice-over narrator makes a comment that puzzles me: "This is the Highlands on a plate, 3,000 million years in the making."
Surely not! Did it really take that long to make that meal? Three thousand million years seems excessive for time taken to prepare it, delicious though it may look. What would Jamie Oliver say, with his trademark book, "Fifteen minute meals"?
I think I should be told!
Luckily, Lois is on hand to "tell" me. She explains that, while I was taking a quick nap, the programme showed the bowls being glazed in a local pottery by a potter and his assistant.
And it's the making of the glaze for the bowls that took the 3,000,000,000 years, because the glaze is made from some sort of rocks or other that were formed all that time ago.
Ah, now it makes sense!
flashback to 2102: TV chef Jamie Oliver
publishes his runaway bestseller "Jamie's 15 Minute Meals"
21:00 We go to bed seeing the second half of the first programme on the saucy British "sexploitation" films of the 1970's the programme we had to give up on, halfway through, a few days ago, because it was time for bed, ironically!
flashback to 1970: us before we were married
We're talking "big-in-the-UK" stars such as Liz Fraser, Charles Hawtrey, Fred Emney, Jon Pertwee, Willie Rushton, Christopher Biggins, Benny Hill's sidekick Henry McGee and others.
what the critics thought about this TV documentary series,
as outlined in Lois's copy of "The Week" magazine
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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