‘Rev’ on TV - Don’t get me started…

Hey you script commissioners at the BBC! Why didn’t you say you were looking for a new series about the clergy? TRW has lots of ideas. Here’s one - it’s called Luther. Okay he’s a plain clothes monk and his schtick is that he’s got a bit of a temper on him, shouting and the like. To be fair, he is single handedly tackling the corrupt members of the mediaeval Catholic Church and principally the Pope, no wonder he gets grumpy give him a break. How about this plot device; he’s a cop, she’s a priest. Together they patrol the rough streets of (anywhere really, South Shields, Barrow in Furness etc), fighting crime and attending Deanery Synod……. together they are ‘Dempsey and Maythepeacebewithyou’. I think it might have legs as they say in the writing business. Or you can use this, an outdoor site, say Centre Parcs, gather lots of different clergy type people to perform outrageous and disgusting challenges (nothing to do with their private lives obviously!) Call it, oh I don’t know, “I’m a Celebrant get me out of here.” Any one of those would stand up to scrutiny especially the one about the police ‘n priests as that really happened to The Rector but that’s another story. All that originality and we’re stuck with Rev. the new sitcom about a vicar. Rev. is to the church what Footballers Wives was to football, yes I know, that bad. Badder maybe. I knew it wouldn’t be much good just from its description, (it almost had the title ‘Handle with Prayer’) and I know these things. I guessed the entire plot of the movie “Have you heard about the Hendersons” just by scrutinising the poster. So I’m good, I make no apologies and I knew this one would be as predictable as Norman Wisdom approaching a swimming pool. And it is.

It’s the reverse of the Vicar of Dibley in formula. Single female vicar / married male. Urban parish / inner city, coterie of lovable oddballs/ er… It all feels a bit paper thin on character. The vicar Adam is a nice chap but a bit of a smoker and drinker; subtext he’s got some sort of faith but not a God botherer like some eh, I mean come on, he has to have a life!. The archdeacon is modelled on either Dracula or Peter Mandelson or both. He’s vicious and waspish and sometimes wears strangler’s gloves. As a series it belongs somewhere in the genre of Mind your Language or ‘Allo ‘Allo for clichéd stereotyping of people and situations. And because most of the plot lines and characters are outrageously exaggerated to panto level TRW wonders to whom is this programme supposed to appeal? Christians won’t waste their time on it and for anyone else it will just amplify uninformed opinions already held about clergy/believers. Please, I’m begging you writer whoever you are, please don’t tell us that these programmes are holding a gnats worth of truth in them, that somehow this is some sort of mirror for us to behold ourselves in? That really would be hilarious if that was the aim.

Nah, course it’s not. In the end it is just lazy writing. Situations that have caused much anxiety and real soul searching amongst Christians are reduced to a couple of clumsy sentences. It’s like seeing a patchwork hacked to pieces then cobbled together with staples. My feeling is if you are going to relentlessly stereotype and deconstruct, well you’ve got a long way to go. That kind of writing was done way better ages ago with The Comic Strip Presents. Think of the genius observations of ‘Strike’ or ‘The Yob’ or ‘Five go mad in Dorset’, any one of which could have been a series in its own right. Or ‘Father Ted’. Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews ruthlessly hung their hapless clergy out to dry week after week but it was genuinely funny because they knew their subject matter inside out and it came from a place of exasperated affection. Rev. seems to be written by someone who attended clergy boot camp for a week and will settle for cheap laughs.

The only genuine bit was when Adam and his wife were attempting to ignite their dwindling love life. There was something honest and humorous and a bit racy in those scenes that I think probably connected with many of their audience. Something about those scenes rang true as though the writer understood something of the inherent problems of middle aged relationships badly needing to be remanticesed. That’s romance being reinvested in: TRW has just invented a word and already is wondering what the Scrabble score value might be!

Two thoughts before I never have to think about this again and can get back to Holby, what with Greys Anatomy finishing its current season.

‘Rev’s’ producer is the same one who produced the Jonathan Ross show, need I say more. The other is that I read somewhere that Tom Hollander who plays the Rev, (and was incidentally the odious clergyman Mr. Collins in the Pride and Prejudice movie. It’s a dog collar thing obviously), spent some time shadowing a clergyman to get the feel of the role and the details of clergy life. I have no idea what impact this had on him personally/spiritually or who it was he spent time with. However if someone came to St. Matthews to get an idea of what it’s all about I’d like to think they would leave with an undeniable sense of the nuances and subtleties and incremental movement of the Holy Spirit who is the wave that pounds and shapes and moulds we stubborn rocks into the finest material he can use. Taking an age or changing us in a second of revelation. To know the extraordinary and mind blowing experience of feeling the breath of God upon you and ultimately meeting with the undeniable and irresistible person of the risen Lord Jesus who changes lives forever. Yeh, now I’d like to see that in a programme about clergy. So stop writing toe-curlingly bad dialogue and do better. Or I might have to write it myself

Nice day for a white wedding.

TRW thinks she may be using the  the expression ‘I think I’m in love’ just a bit too much these days.   I  blame the European double cheek kiss; it’s made us way too touchy feely!   It’s now been used regarding the new fridge freezer but so would you if you saw it; I’ll introduce you next time you’re round.  Then there was  the time it was applied to the newly buff Jake Gyllenhaal in the film ‘Prince of Persia’.  If you’re not agreeing with me you haven’t seen the  film.  Okay, those reasons have about as much depth as a Jeffrey Archer novel but I really can apply it in all honesty to the place we stayed at just recently.  Mike’s youngest sister Sue got married last month.  It was in Northampton, our old stomping ground, so not only were we looking forward to being at the wedding, we were hoping to catch up with old friends as well.  TRW is a terminal weather pessimist and wondered if the newly acquired summer coat needed to be upgraded to the kind of thing Ellen MacArthur favoured when sailing off Cape of Good Hope.  On the day it was so hot we were forced to shed layers revealing acres of pasty skin - if it was on a colour chart it would be English grey.

The wedding went flawlessly.  Held in the church we once attended, it was lovely to see so many familiar faces and it had that expectant atmosphere that always precedes the appearance of the bride.  Sue looked beautiful.  Actually, she looked radiant thinking about it.  She wanted all her young nephews and nieces to participate in the wedding and as a consequence she was escorted down the aisle by six bridesmaids.  Sam and his cousin Martin and Sue’s stepson-to-be all got to wear top hats with their morning suits.  The hats somehow became the motif of the wedding with many of us wearing one in a photo.  Sam wore his at a jaunty angle on the back of the head in the style of the Artful Dodger; we were at a wedding, he appeared to be auditioning for a West End show.

The evening reception was held at the hotel we were staying at.  Sue had wanted her family (and there are lots of us) to be together, to have ‘the run’ of a country house for the weekend.  Just outside Northampton in the rural countryside is The Broomhill Hotel and it was love at first sight.  It’s a Victorian manor house that has belonged to different families through the years.  All the rooms are individually designed  and furnished and because everyone in the entire place was related  we got to see what everyone else’s room was like.  Some were staying in the top of the house that must have once  been the servant’s quarters  and there were two staircases, one of which must have been ’servants only’ which just set the whole house in context.  It was ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ for real.  All the dark wood was polished to a sheen and every so often came the faint whiff of wood smoke that spoke of roaring fires keeping the occupants warm in winter.  The posh stairs swept you past reception through the drawing room and out to the garden.

TRW is no gardener, in fact if pushed would confess to an urge to slab over anything green with fronds on.  But this place with its miniature fountain and wild rabbits on the old tennis courts, felt like Brideshead Lite.  Just beyond the garden was a scene of pastoral tranquillity: a field full of sheep and lambs which are entrancing to watch and TRW swore she would never eat lamb again.  (This statement came back to haunt only a few hours later with dawning realisation that the lamb on the menu had probably been springing around the field earlier that week.  It’s rather humbling to think about and for the umpteenth time TRW had to think upon the half hearted attempts at being a veggie.)

But back to the vista from the gardens.  Beyond the sheep field the land rolls down into a valley patchworked with rapeseed and, just visible, another rather grand looking house.  All you could hear were lambs calling to mothers and birdsong.  Blissful.  TRW is convinced she’d be a nicer person if she lived there but so far has no master plan to move in!  It has become a ‘happy place’ for TRW, the place that gurus and counsellors and no doubt Woody Allen urge us to find.  The place in one’s  mind to escape to when the stresses and strains of life become too much.   The Broomhill is another little piece of heaven on earth, another place to see  that ‘the heavens (and earth) declare the glory of God’  and  to experience His peace and it’s all just a thought away.  So yes in love really, but for all the right reasons.

Hot off the press.  You can catch a flavour of this on You Tube under ‘Broomhill Reception’!

From the Archives - April 2009

I recently went on a weekend organised by New Wine.  It’s specifically for clergy wives; that great army of often overlooked ‘jackies- of- all -trades’.  Apart from all the other things we do we occasionally have to do the youth work at a moment’s notice, provide hospitality for total strangers and be cheer-leader for our sometimes beleaguered husbands.  So before we start knocking back the communion wine with our cornflakes, an annual retreat is provided to soothe our frazzled nerves and restore some equilibrium.  Four of us travelled up from Hastings to the Holiday Inn, Aylesbury where the event was hosted.

It’s not exactly Lee Abbey.  You can almost feel the spectral tread of Meg Mortimer along the miles of motel corridors and what made it more surreal was that regular guests were resident also.  It could not have escaped anyone’s notice that something unusual was going down, especially as 300 of us regularly sang  a lot of worship songs in one of their events rooms.  Eventually one of the guests asked my friend what all us women were doing there.  When my friend told her we were all clergy wives, she ran screaming down the corridor.  Must have been an atheist!

The weekend contained many things I was expecting: times of worship, times of teaching, praying for one another and waiting for the Holy Spirit to work in power amongst us.  There was an opportunity to be honest with one another about the many blessings and struggles we encounter in our unique type of ministry.

The one thing that floored me was quite a simple task.  During the first evening our leader asked us to find someone we didn’t know, tell them our name and say one surprising/interesting thing about ourselves.  My mind went blank.  The pressure!  Go on, try it - you have one minute to think.  Surprising/interesting can so easily spill into something else.  For example boasting:  ’Well we used to have Bono come regularly to our 6:30 services’ or momentous: ‘Before Eric went for ordination I was head of recruitment at MI5′,  or confessional: ‘I used to be a man!’

What exactly constitutes surprising or interesting about oneself and especially to a stranger?  It’s more likely to be a surprise to someone we have known for a while that we once had to be freed from a traffic cone by the fire department after one drunken night out, and no, it didn’t happen to me and I can’t believe you lot thought it might have!

So what did I say?  Something pretty mundane in the end as my brain couldn’t dredge anything up.  Mike said I should have told her that in my friend’s phone book my phone number is stored next to Charles Dance*.  Now that is pure style, terribly interesting and not a bit like showing off!

Love in Jesus,

Lisa

* Yes him, the one off the telly!

Italy 2010

I know that I promised you articles from the recent past and they will make an appearance but had to let you know about our après-Easter-pre-volcanic-ash incident to Florence. I know it seems like TRW only ever sits around watching ‘Holby City’ or listening to the Archers and of course there is some truth in that. But occasionally we manage to leave the premises and this was a trip planned around our fifteen year wedding anniversary and a programme presented by Kevin McCloud who stayed in Florence for a year for research purposes, to which I can only say next time can I save my portion of the license fee and go there myself?

So to Florence which was rather like staying on a film set, so extravagant and extraordinary the sights. Florence is built upon the banks of the Arno and the city is connected by a series of bridges. We stayed in a modest but comfortable hotel just off the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge lined by a series of fabulous jewellery shops. Yes, they are the prices you’re looking at - not the number of the security codes. Strangely I found myself quickly hustled across by The Rector each time we had to cross it. Or maybe I imagined that?

The city is a visual feast in as much as everywhere you look there will be drama carved in stone or built in brickwork. Take the Palazzo Vecchio which looks like a slab of castle with its castellations and coat of arms but it’s actually the town hall. The cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiori is home to the colossal domed ceiling which is still a marvel of architecture. From the outside it looks like it has been made from royal icing: a wedding cake of a building streaked with pink white and green marble.

Of course you can’t visit Florence without taking a trip to the art galleries and we visited the Uffizi which must house one of the biggest collections of canvases of the holy family in the world ever. Many of these were painted hundreds of years ago and as a result they are highly stylised. But far from producing contemplation I found them to be strangely devoid of emotion, passive and almost impossible to connect to. Was this how the medieval artists comprehended their Christ; remote and cold and alien? As a result these works of art more often than not had Mary front and centre portrayed as the queen of heaven and Jesus as an accessory looking like a bit of an afterthought.

The next afternoon we had tickets to go the Academia and were slightly reluctant to go for more of the same. But what a reward. As you step through the first room, there at the end of the gallery bathed in light from the domed roof is Michelangelo’s the David. By this time I’d seen a few copies of this iconic statue in the city but this was the original and it is extraordinary. It stands over 20ft high and you wonder, how on earth did Michelangelo carve flesh and blood from a block of marble? It seems open to interpretation whether the statue is contemplating Goliath before or after the fatal sling shot but either way, the gaze at the unseen Goliath is unflinching. One hand holds the unused stones and amazingly the hand has veins carved upon it such is the detail You get to do a 360 degrees round the base of the statue. As I do I realise that behind one leg just below the knee is what looks to be a small sawn off branch growing out of the ground. I’m puzzled. This colossus of a statue hardly needs propping up like a wobbly coffee table so this was purposely worked in. Then it came to mind; it was a tree stump. It was the stump from Isaiah 11:1 ‘A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse from his roots a Branch will bear fruit….’ The kingdom of Judah was bought to an end by Babylonian exile but the Messiah will grow as a shoot from that stump of David’s dynasty.

I can’t tell you how excited I was by my discovery; way more excited than when I realised what the lyrics to ‘China in your Hand’ were about *(and that was pretty exciting). Michelangelo must have known his scripture and as a result had created his David the great hero pointing with visual clues to Jesus the greatest hero. Jesus who stands at the very centre of creation, not remote but living in us by his spirit! With my faith in Renaissance art restored, we went for a very expensive espresso.

*Feel free to ask me if you haven’t worked it out, you won’t be disappointed with the answer!

From the archives

Apologies from TRW.  I know its been a while since we’ve spent any time together but all of a sudden life seems to have become rather busy! It’s not all cucumber sandwich making in the rectory (I know that’s what you think I do!)  As a result the blog has become rather sadly unattended.   Then The Rector had a genius idea (it’s his mind I married him for readers) and suggested I add some of the articles I’ve written for my old church magazine in Cornwall. I’ve written for about four years now chronicling the ups and downs of life, the universe but mostly me trying to make sense of anything!  Hope you enjoy.

September 2007
So we’ve been back from our holiday nearly a month now and it already feels like something I imagined or dreamt.  However, I’m going to relive for the space of 400 or so words what a great time we had when we went to the States this year.  We caught up with family in Baltimore and friends in Detroit which is so far north I could wave across the border to Canada which is much cheaper than actually going.

We crammed in three wonderful days in New York; if you ever get the chance go!  It’s exactly like you see in the movies or on television; noisy, busy,sensory overload. Fire trucks flew by with worrying frequency, horns sounding, the stars and stripes streaming from the back of the engine.  We took the tourist bus down town where we drove past Broadway, Times Square, Macey’s, Bloomingdales, Empire State.  And everywhere one is dwarfed by the canyons of buildings.

A short walk from the Statton island ferry (this is a must if you want to see the Statue of Liberty) is the business district and it’s here the World Trade towers once stood.  I realised that I felt apprehensive the nearer we got.  The last time I saw these streets it was on that dreadful day shot on wobbly hand held cameras.  They were full of smoke and choking dust. But of course that’s all gone now, along with the wall of photos of the missing many of whom were already dead.  Suddenly you are standing in a concourse filled with midday sun and office workers eating sandwiches and musicians busking and you are actually there looking at what seems an unbelievably narrow gap where the towers used to stand.  You can’t see much from street level, the area is blocked by sheets of hardboard and inside a construction site of some sort is under way.  I believe the plan is to build upon the site but to incorporate a memorial to those who lost their lives.

I know I expected to get a sense of that terrible event.  Something of that magnitude must have left its mark in the very dust. What I did become aware of was an absence, not a presence.  A sense of peace if you will. For those left behind life has painfully and slowly moved on.  It’s a tribute to those who died and the courage of their loved ones that this place, the target of hatred, is once again thriving and full of life. I’m reminded of the verse from Genesis when Joseph tells his brothers ‘This thing you meant for evil but God meant for good.’  Not an end but a beginning and God will always have the last word.

In Jesus’ hands eternal life overcomes death and acts of atrocity are consumed in the blaze of his outrageous love and grace.  To know that is more than a comfort.  I say a prayer for them in that place then we make our way slowly back to the bus.

Love in Jesus,
Lisa

The White Stuff

If you think after all the acres of print I’m going to say something about the snow, well you’d be absolutely right.  Come on, we don’t get enough of it to be blasé, let the inner child rise to the surface as you hurl snowballs at hapless passers by or build wonky snowmen wearing West Ham hats.* Yes I know shopping has gone a bit Soviet what with a shortage of bread and milk.  But I look at it like this; here at Fort St. Matthews we still have half a tin of Roses chocolates and a box of Thorntons plus a few bottles of wine from Christmas, what’s the problem?  The unusual weather has thrown up some interesting sartorial problems,  mostly for teenage boys.  Me, I wear anything that keeps me warm no matter what it looks like.  My one ‘must have’ was a fabulous fur hat I saw  Kirstie Allsopp wearing when she presented  ‘Kirstie’s  Homemade Christmas.’  I’m still slightly reeling from that programme actually as I wonder just who it was aimed at.  The creative stuff she produced looked luscious from Christmas crackers to truffles all starting from scratch.  Maybe that’s the bit that flummoxed me.  Who has time to do these things?  Pre-Christmas a time related frenzy grips most of us.  Not enough time to browse for ideal presents it can become the token gift or just wildly inappropriate (my mum was just baffled by the Gun’s and Roses T-shirt; maybe she’d have preferred the Prodigy?).  No time to bedeck or bedazzle in the Coe house, just a mad dash to get stuff sent in the mail.  And don’t even get me started on the ’stand and deliver’ policy that the post office is operating under these days.  Anyhoo, that hat Kirstie was wearing.  It was a gorgeous Cossack style fur hat and if Primark ever make a copy I will purchase it.

The teen tribes, as tough as a Geordie on a hen night refused point blank to wear anything as sissy as a coat.  They shivered in their school sweatshirts which is why schools decided to shut otherwise a flu epidemic would be inevitable.  Finally a truce was called between frantic parents and frozen moody kids.  It was okay to wear a jacket but the hat of choice was a ’sock’ hat.  Kind of funky but keeps reminding me of Mr. Smee from ‘Peter Pan.’  And guess who had to go and buy the hat.  I should have knitted it myself and created a whole new look.  Personally I’m sorry that leg warmers didn’t make a come back. I used to wear a pair in the 70’s.  The were really long and a sort of fair isle pattern in pink.  Seriously they were rocking, Bananarama meets  Fame.  Young people don’t know how to dress that’s the problem.

But come on.  Snow!!  Didn’t yer love it?  Think of the benefits, the unexpected day off to watch ‘Loose women’, the wonderful excuse not to go to work when quite frankly you have been ordered to stay at home by a BBC presenter.  And don’t you think it has bought out the nicer qualities in people?  I have a theory that one of the English characteristics is not to function very well in the heat.  Law and order break down, not to mention the deodorants that only work up till midday.  No, give us something Spartan to get our teeth into and we’ll clear paths, push cars and get shopping and other essential items for the housebound.

And I think we here in Hastings, when we finally got it, made the most of it.  There’s something to be said for sitting looking out the window at the gentle endless veil of falling snowflakes.  Have you seen a magnified snowflake? Simply put it’s water vapour in clouds condensed into ice but they are phenomenally beautiful and complex, built upon the shape of a hexagon.  Millions of them fall and they say no two are the same yet these objects of beauty are crunched underfoot and then simply melt away.  If you asked God why He designed something of such beauty that can’t be seen by the naked eye and just disappears I think He’d say He does it because He can.  How cool is that.

One more thing.  The next time you see an unblemished stretch of snow, dazzling and pristine just think about the verse from Isaiah.  The Lord says ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow…’.  Even more amazing than a snowflake.

*obviously nothing to do with me.

Love at first bite.

You may not be aware of this but the world at present is falling into two categories; those who know and those who are about to find out.  I’ll just print the word ‘Twilight’.  What follows is mostly for those who think it’s the time between day and night.

A few years ago an American writer, Stephanie Meyers, produced a series of books about vampires.  Not just any old cape wearing, hair meeting in pointy oil slick ‘v’ on forehead vampire.  These were a different calibre altogether, these were PMT’s : Pretty Moody Teenage vampires.   With issues.  Can you believe it?  As if acne and exams aren’t enough, dental and dietary problems take it to a whole new dimension.  The books were phenomenally successful.  But why stop a cash cow there?    Subsequently there has been ‘Twilight the Movie’ and recently ‘New Moon’ which went straight to the top of the box office.  TRW has it on good authority (well Grazia magazine) that the first film made $229 million.  That’s a lot of serious wonga. Vampires: who’d have thought.  However you don’t have to be Einstein to deconstruct some of its apparent mass appeal.  It’s  seriously a girl thing and we vote with our devotion but more importantly our money.

Any televisual adaptation of ‘Wuthering Heights’ suffers because no matter who they choose to act the part he just never lives up to the Heathcliff of one’s imagination.  Maybe it’s something to do with the sublimely superior writing of Emily Bronte, but that hasn’t been the fate of the anti hero of the story, Edward Cullen.  He now has the very public face of the actor Robert Pattinson (for those who remember,  he played Cedric Diggory in ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’).  He’s grown up a bit since then and has a whole new adoring fan base of young women proving once and for all that women don’t go for the steroid abuse look on the whole.

Why, I hear you asking, why TRW are you  interested?  After all there is more than something of the night connected with this lot.   Actually TRW would never have come across Moody Teenage vampires were it not for one of my work friends who is young enough to be my daughter and is really into the whole Twilight mother-lode.  She’s read all the books and seen the movies.  Vampires seem to thrive in people’s imagination where other things that go bump in the night don’t.  No one remembers this and I think only TRW and daughter’s boyfriend of the time saw it but in the late 90’s there was an excellent programme called ‘Ultraviolet’ about an agency that ‘disposed’ of modern day vampires.  Very underrated, should re-run and nothing to do with Jack Davenport being in it!

TRW thinks Ms. Meyers has been quite extraordinarily clever with the crafting of her books, focusing the action around teenagers. Teenagers go through such intense phases and the vampires in question seem to be a metaphor about identity, about wanting to be like everyone else, about wanting to fit in but inside feeling very different, isolated or lonely.  Teenagers believe themselves to be magnificently misunderstood and therefore it takes another outsider to know what it feels like; even if they are the undead.

There’s the  ‘do or die’ mentality.  Bella (heroine and human girlfriend of Edward which produces the tension at the heart of the matter) narrates her story saying after all of fifteen minutes she’s fallen in love with him ‘irrevocably.’  You long to clip her round the ear so she comes to her senses.  And let’s not forget you are dealing with  well,  immortality: no need to fear The Reaper.  TRW can barely remember actual details of teenage hood but can recall thinking that anyone in their twenties was ancient and the idea of growing old and infirm or actually dying really was unthinkable, literally.  If there’s ever a time one feels capable enough, energetic enough, positively fizzing with life enough to conquer the world or at least St. Leonards, it’s about eighteen.  After that reality sinks in along with your first wrinkle.

But Edward really will live forever as a seventeen year old, and a highly unsuitable one at that.  Just think how effective all those teenage health education ads would be if there was the slightest possibility they might end up on the menu.  It’s the ultimate hands off policy but still dangerously attractive.  Ah, it’s the old moth to a flame business isn’t it?  Forbidden fruit and all that.  It’s proving very hard for the heroine to get into context - after all, it’s irrevocable as far as she’s concerned.

Of course it might just be  about a skinny lad with a concave chest and pointy teeth, a pretty girl and an industry worth millions.  What do I know?

The movie (sky) was full of clunky dialogue and lots of earnest scowling.  But one line caught my interest.  Edward tries to put distance between them for her safety by telling her he is meant to look this good to draw her in.  Everything about him is designed to lull her into a false sense of security,  disguising his true nature and intent.  Great line.  It put TRW to thinking isn’t that what sin looks like?  The thing that separates us from God.   It’s designed to draw us in, we think we need to have it or can’t live without it, whatever it is. It looks great, or it looks harmless but it will hurt you in ways you can’t imagine.

Have you seen  the ‘Nosferatu’ film? A silent black and white vampire film that truly disquiets.  Without doubt the Nosferatu character is hideous to look at: you’d run a mile if you saw that coming at you talons first.  Maybe we should think of that next time we’re about to give in to temptation.  It’s not  so good-looking on the inside, it’s just disguised to fool you.

Good night.  And don’t have nightmares!

As seen on screen

TRW has already confessed to lowbrow proclivity so it will come as no surprise to you that she spent a good deal of last weekend watching television.  ‘Groundhog Day’ (brilliant) and  a documentary on Fleetwood Mac.  Confess, you own a copy of ‘Rumours’.  Despite their volatile mix  they feel de-toxed enough/ broke enough/ bored enough for a reunion tour.  Yes really!  The Supergroup who habitually let each other know what was going on in their private lives through the medium of platinum selling discs.  The only other people who can match them for sheer drama are the cast of EastEnders.  I was fascinated to see what Stevie Nicks looked like after all this time.  She was the fantasy girlfriend of the 70’s, the hip West Coast Princess of Whimsy.  Years before Kate Bush and her mimes and twirls and and crazy flights of fancy there was Stevie.   Well, ten years of class A drugs should  take its toll but she looked  eerily smooth of face and immobile of expression. What could possibly cause that do you think?   Disconcertingly, she looked like she had borrowed one of Dolly’s wigs.  I kept waiting to catch a glimpse of the gypsy that she was,  but instead she looked  as though she’s been channelled through ‘Dynasty.’  Baffling.

What a relief to see Lindsey Buckingham looking his age but in a good way.  Having apparently ridden a Tsunami of emotions most of his life, he’s finally free of his demons.  He married someone outside the group and now has three young children.  It seems to have calmed the wild striving of his younger years, the desperate search for something.  At fifty nine he finally seems to have discovered what it means to be happy.

I swear I’m never going to watch another wild life programme.  I’ve wept buckets over  ‘The Elephant Diaries’ (orphaned baby elephants).  I cried over Gizmo the ring tailed lemur ( it makes it ten times worse when they name them!)   Ailing and with a broken leg, Gizmo trailed hopelessly after his group until all he could do was lay down  too exhausted to go on, waiting to die.  I’m feeling tearful just writing this.  And now ‘Bearwalker of the Northwoods’.  During five heart rending minutes a cub, obviously ill, unable to travel with her family, eventually curled up under a tree hollow and died in her sleep.  Lynn Rogers the biologist who practically lives with them tenderly picked her up to try and discover why she died.  Queue the waterworks.

Nature, according to Charles Darwin, is the ultimate fighting machine.  Shaped by evolution and requirement it’s prime motive is survival.  It’s a gunfighter, fingers twitching over its six shooters: if you’re weak it will stare you down the barrel of its gun and it will show no mercy. Darwin states, Divine Intervention is not necessary to this process, it’s self propelling.  So can I just untidy things by asking, if it’s all about survival of the best specimen, why do we care so much for the weak and ailing?  Shouldn’t we see their demise as ‘more for us’, the survivors?  But we don’t.   We don’t neglect infants born before their time though nature would dictate they are too weak to be useful and survive. When my dad was suffering with a heart condition, far from being  seen as  too elderly to bother with  he was treated with care and medication and his life was prolonged for some years because of it.

Haven’t you shouted at the  cold eye of the camera filming a dying animal to put the camera down and GO AND SAVE IT!  Where does the impulse to care come from?   To want to save the lives of people and animals sometimes at great personal cost; for me this is an anomaly of Darwin’s theory.  Nature is unsentimental, it just goes on at all costs.  Yet the orphaned elephants grieved for their lost parents in an identifiable way and even Magpies have rituals for their dead.  Why?  Isn’t that nature taking it’s course?

You have to ask yourself, in the midst of this Unstoppable Machine, where does compassion come from?  Why do we intervene?   Why are we outraged at injustice?  Where does our morality come from?
The Bible tells us, that in the beginning God created everything.  We are made in the image of God which is where these characteristics originate.  Is it any wonder the children reflect the nature of the Father and that creation bears the imprint of Him who made all things?

Animal Magic?

The Rector’s Wife makes no apology for the fact that she doesn’t raise the cultural bar very high.  She mused upon this irrefutable fact during a recent perusal of the family DVDs.  There was the WW2 epic, ‘Band of Brothers’ that The Rector wanted one Christmas alongside ‘The Goodies’ box set that TRW had asked for. FYI,  Kitten Kong is still one of the best pre-CGI effects ever!  TRW however is capable of  Deep Thought* when required and would like to share some with the St. Matt’s on-line community.

With absolutely nothing on  TV recently, (not even Cash in the Attic or Come Dine with Me), TRW came across a programme about Darwin presented by David Attenborough.  And oh boy, is David a fan or rather a FAN!  It’s Darwin’s bicentenary so we got the full treatment on how he came to write ‘The Origin of the Species by Natural Selection’,  the book that set out Darwin’s theories on evolution.  To say that this juggernaut of a book upset most of the religious folk of the western hemisphere is like saying the ordination of women caused a bit of a kerfuffle.  In fact he delayed publication for years as he knew it wouldn’t be well received.  But for many it heralded what they believed to be a new way of understanding the physical world past, present and future.  However, it caused deep theological and intellectual divisions that exist to this day.

Darwin was troubled by God in the way that you or I don’t know how to deal with the maddening ‘left over’ bit in a tile puzzle.  He just didn’t know what to do with Him.  He detected no sense of the Creator in the natural world.  His theories led him to understand that we all evolved from simple single cell organisms, we all come from the same building blocks of life and become more complex as ‘nature’ dictates.  Therefore man has no centrality in the scheme of things and is not the ‘crown’ of God’s creation; apparently we are all just animals.  The Creation Story therefore was a myth that could be ignored.  He went as far as stating that it could all happen without divine intervention.  It just seems extraordinary to me that Darwin and David could go into paroxysms of delight over the natural world in all its dazzling wonder and still not see God’s hand in it!  Yet Darwin effectively erased God from the picture.  For him, and for others, a choice was made and that was to dismiss God from Life, the Universe and Everything.*

Personally I have no problem with evolution; the evidence weighs overwhelmingly in its favour.  Besides, I’ve never thought the Creation Story was really about  how and when we were literally made.  It’s much more about why our relationship with God went wrong.  Can you imagine the manual called ‘Creating the World and All That’s In It’?  Have you ever tried following an IKEA leaflet for a flat pack wardrobe?  We can barely understand the offside rule; anything more challenging might bust vital brain cells.  For me it’s enough to know that ‘In the beginning, God….’  It’s all entirely His however He bought it into being.

*Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Douglas Adams

Next instalment includes:  Why nature isn’t like a box of Ferrero Rocher and more like a Spaghetti Western!

Final Curtain Call

What was it about that week?  In one week alone we lost some incredibly talented, gifted people from the entertainment world.  Somewhere a celestial timer went off which acts as an uncomfortable reminder to all of us that time is short: don’t waste a minute!  So a sad farewell to:

Frank Deasey.  I know you might be scratching your head over him but you are probably familiar with some of his work.  A gifted playwright, he penned the award winning finale for Prime Suspect amongst many other things.  Some of you will know him if you watched The Passion, first screened on channel four and last year on BBC.  Filmed in five half hour slots, it depicts Jesus’ last week as he  sets his face towards Calvary.  Frank wrote it while having to deal with his first bout of cancer four and a half years ago.  He said ‘I poured myself into The Passion identifying with its themes of suffering and redemption’.  He died aged forty nine of liver cancer.

Though sadly he hadn’t been on our TV’s for a while,  who could forget Keith Floyd?  Bow tie, glass of wine in hand, one for the dish, half a dozen for the road.  He really seemed like an old fashioned roué with an eye for the girls, chatting up the French housewife whose kitchen he would be cooking in even though she looked like Dame Edna.  The programme would end with her clearly not quite hating the English as much as when it started.  He made cooking fun and really had a thing about fish which is always a challenge for most of us cooks if we’re being honest.  Will you ever be able to hear The Stranglers again without thinking of him?  He died aged sixty five.

Predator* one of my all time favourite films came out in 1987.  It’s a winning combination, Arnie and a camouflaged alien in a jungle!  Anyway the point is as a result I missed the advent of  Dirty Dancing, a movie that has spawned an industry so vast including a TV series, a stage production and a computer game, I wonder that governments don’t actually invite script writers to run the country.  Without doubt it was the making of Patrick Swayze as Johnny Castle the dance instructor.  Ghost nailed him as the funny, charming yet vulnerable leading man though he was nearly upstaged by Demi Moore’s funky haircut.  He died aged forty seven.

Lots of us I’m afraid are old enough to remember the songs, If I had a hammer, Where have all the flowers gone?  Leaving on a jet plane and the inimitable, rumour laden Puff the magic dragon. Peter Paul and Mary, two blokes with beards and a beautiful blonde, were launched as a super folk group in a coffee house in Greenwich Village in 1961.  Their songs and voices became intrinsically linked  with the anti war and civil rights movements of the sixties.  There were reunions and other songs and albums along the way but they were probably best know and loved for the enduring anthems of their early days.  The beautiful blonde, Mary Travers died aged seventy two.

Way before The Sweeney there was Z Cars.  It might seem a bit black and white and lacking in forensics and stab vests but back then it was radical.  Up till 1962 our perceived image of the British bobby was George Dixon;  kindly, fatherly, more inclined to clip you round the ear than aim a Taser gun at you.  Then along came Troy Kennedy Martin who wrote fast paced scripts with believable situations and proper regional accents, a first for the BBC and mighty successful it was.  He wrote The Italian job which will be remembered forever for putting Noel Coward and Benny Hill in a film together but more importantly for the immortal line, You were only meant to blow the ****** doors off!  Later came the BAFTA winning eco- thriller Edge of Darkness in1985 that explored the nuclear industry and secret intelligence, the kind of thing Dan Brown wishes he could write.  I implore you if you’ve never seen it, get the box set.  It still has the power to haunt after all these years later.   Troy Kennedy Martin died aged seventy seven.

Yet for all their impressive legacy I’m still reminded that ultimately, the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of God stands forever.  All the clever words fall away eventually except the genius words of God, the legacy that matters most to us in this world and the next one.

*  The other one is Predator vs Aliens