Oh happy day – parliament have voted to ban all indoor smoking. At long last I’ll be able to go out to pubs and restauants without having my evening spoilt by second-hand smoke, and I can come home without my clothes and hair stinking of burnt tobacco.
I have the tiniest slither of sympathy for those working in the tobacco industry who are increasingly finding selling their products harder and harder, and hence have their livelihoods threatened – but then I think the tobacco industry is little more legalised drug dealing. There is a strong history of deliberate deception and ‘grooming’ in order to get people hooked younger and harder. I don’t think that anyone working in a tobacco company can truly claim to have a clean conscience (but then again, who can?).
I’d go so far as to say that I think smoking is one of the sicknesses in our society today – it burns through money, is addictive, is a pretty effective way of killing yourself and those you live/work with, and is thoroughly unpleasant for anyone who’s unfortunate enough to have to share the same office/platform/train/waiting room/bus/street….
That said, I have huge amounts of sympathy for those trying to quit. Nicotine is highy addictive, and it must be extremely unpleasant to give it up, especially when the “quick fix” is so easy to get hold off. I know it’s very easy to use all sorts of damaging habits (smoking, drinking, self-harm, sex, violent crime) as a way of dealing with stress and creating a (false, but comforting) feeling of being in control.
Of course it ultimately backfires – the fix wears out, and your worse off then before! Let’s hope this bill encourages more and more people to give it up for good!
I actually love this time of year – yes it’s rainy and cold still, but every morning it’s just a little bit brighter in the morning, and you can’t help feeling the overall thrust the weather is taking is towards warmth and sunshine once more.
This morning, as I walked to the station, I wouldn’t go so far as to say the sun had risen, but it was the lightest it’s been for months, and the sky was very definitely “day blue” rather than “dawn grey”.
Lent is rapidly drawning closer too, so thoughts have been turning for how to mark it in 2006. Both A. and I have activities we’ve been meaning to do for a while, but somehow haven’t quite got around to, and we’re thinking for this Lent we might start doing them. Anna’s is to start swimming regularly, mine is to start studying Greek again (I got stuck trying to learn the different endings of words!). Say just an hour or so a week in both cases. In my case I’m expecting to be formally studying Greek later this year, but it would be useful to get a head-start, I think.
The other nice thing about February is that it’s got St Valentine’s day in it, our wedding anniversary, and then I know that my borthday is just around the corner too. 🙂
What a very odd film this is. Still, I get to do crazy CSS in order to display the title properly – i ♥ huckabees – see!
But then it was no great surprise, this was always going to be an odd film as it follows Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman), a environmentalist who doesn’t know whether to just give it all up or to keep fighting to save the swamp. He goes to the existential detectives – Bernard (Dustin Hoffmann) and Vivian (Lily Tomlin) to try and answer his big questions, and also solve his co-incidence, involving a tall african.
Jude Law, Naomi Watts, and Mark Wahlberg pleasingly finish off the cast, and it must be said the casting was just brilliant. Namoi Watts as Dawn was particularly good, especially her existential agnst phase.
However, this was not a film without flaws – firstly the language was pretty unnecessary, the opening 2 or 3 minutes basically being a tirade of swear words going on inside Albert’s head, and pretty well set the theme in terms of language content. I also thought it was trying to be too clever by half, and failed to either raise the big questions of life or even shed any sort of insight into them. Perhaps I’m being too harsh – it is a very funny film (if you’re into existential humour). I especially like the way you are drawn into thinking that the utterly odd behaviour of the “enlightened” is understandable – normal even, until other minor characters react against it and you realise that 90% of the film is on another planet.
So while I feel that I didn’t waste my 1.99 in hiring it, I wouldn’t rush out to buy it.
I think I’ve found a good test of vocation/calling; You know you’ve found your vocation when you genuinely feel sad for people who can’t/won’t do that thing.
So, take preaching, or even lecturing. I absolutely love doing it, and I do feel really sorry for people who say “oh I’d hate it.” I feel like they’re missing out on so much – the chance to help people learn or discover new things. To challenge and help people grow. Just awesome!
On the other hand, consider going to an academic conference – I intensely dislike almost eveything about them; the whole process of submitting a paper and the peer review thing. Then the event itself, when everyone seems to be only really interested in promoting their own work, chiefly through picking holes in everyone elses! Contrast this with my friend Clare, who loves going to conferences, and gets a sparkle in her eye when she’s talking about a recent one. Or again, a work mate of mine who listed ‘the opportunty to go to conferences’ as one of the highlights of the academic career. In fact this is one of the factors that made me realise an academic career is not my calling!
Of course it remains to be seen if it’s conferences per se that turn me off, or just computing conferences. For instance, I would imagine I might enjoy a conference on preaching, if such a thing exists. Incidentally, this conferphobia is nothing to do with an aversion to sitting and listening; after all, I’ve always enjoyed lectures, and it’s one aspect of theological college I’m really looking forward too. I’m sure there’s a proper -phobia word too!
I suppose it’s not a very discerning test, as I love driving, and feel people who can’t are probably missing out; yet there’s no way I think being a driver is my calling (although I quite like the idea of being a racing driver). Perhaps it’s a degree thing – I’m not passionate about driving, and don’t feel my life would be incomplete if I never did it again.
… and an irony has just struck me – I’m meant to be preparing a sermon right now, instead of which I’m blogging about it! 🙂
So the exciting news is that I’ve been recommended for training for ordination in the
Church of England. It is probably possible to deduce this from the last few entries, but I didn’t want to come out with it until our friends, families and work-places had been told!
If all goes to plan I’ll start vicar factory in September, train for a couple of years, and then get revved up!
I don’t take it lightly – this is a process that first niggled over 10 years ago, and that we’ve been explicitly persuing for the last 3 or 4 years, and getting that phone call was such a relief. The Christian faith is so full of paradox – I was absolutely certain of God’s calling, yet also doubted I’d got it right.
So the phone call came on route to Trinity College, Bristol, which was a fabulous place, and I’m back for an interview there at the start of March, and if that goes well we’re moving to Bristol in August/September.
So it’s all very Alanis – I’m sad but I’m happy, baby! Very sad to be leaving Yorkshire, but very happy to be starting training. Sad to be leaving all our friends, but happy to be mocing nearer to family.
Anyway, I thought I might record my thoughts and experiences of being an Anglican ordinand here…
I’m expecting an important phone call in the next 24 hours or so, but I don’t know exactly when it’s going to come. I’d forgotten what the anticipation of waiting for a phone call is like – I remember when A. and I were courting, and for about half an hour before the time we agreed to talk I’d be pacing up and down, making sure the phone was still working, all those sorts of things.
You have that sort of nagging sensation at the back of your mind that it might have rung while you were upstairs, or had to pop out, or were doing the washing-up, or whatever. So you check the Call List on the phone, perhaps do a 1471. Then you realised that while on the phone to 1471 they might have been trying to call, so you quickly hang up.
E-mail isn’t actually much better, as it is well known that e-mails can disappear without a trace, or be delayed for days and days. I don’t know how many test messages I’ve sent to myself just to give me peace of mind that e-mails are getting through. But of course it’s a partially meaningless test, as it only really shows that you are capable of sending an e-mail to yourself; it doesn’t say anything about the e-mail route from the sender on whom you are waiting.
One of the nice things about our courting period is that we had two phone-lines in our flat (we had ISDN), and as I was paying for it I snaffled the second line for myself, and the only person who had that number was the future missus. Mind you, there were one or two amusing occasions when someone had dialled a wrong number and I answered saying “hello honey. kiss kiss kiss kiss.” I suppose that’s one of the nice things about caller display, in that you know who is calling (or at least can make a reasonable guess based on the number).
One of those online quizzes has been doing the rounds at work – the ones with numbers and letters where each letter stands for a word, so you have
24 H in a D = 24 Hours in a Day
Well, you get the picture. Anyway, there’s two parts to the quiz; the first part is easier, but has a North American bias, while the second part is a lot harder, but this time just has a Western bias.
Anyway, we have finished both now – bit of a joint effort and some recourse to Wikipedia needed at the very end
I’ve been spending the last few days with some other church-y folk, and one of the things that we generally agreed upon was how important food is in the C of E. I have always found that eating together is one of the best ways to relax together and get to know people, and it’s an important scriptural principle – we see it in the Old Testament, the practice of Jesus and the disciples, and of course in our central act of worship. Certainly one of my golden rules is that if you’re holding a meeting of any significant length, it always helps to provide nibbles to some degree or another.
But I do wonder if we might be taking a bit far. For instance, the lastest report on the situation with women bishops is to recommend Transferred Episcopal Arrangements, or TEA. This in itself is not too bad, until you consider that the process by which the Church of England assesses potential future ministers is called a Bishops’ Advisory Panel on Selection, or BAPS. I’m sure with a little bit of thought we could have ended up with TEA and CAKES instead of TEA and BAPS – the ‘K’ is a bit tricky (as I don’t suppose “Kommission” would be allowed).
Oh, I know – Clergy Of the Future’s Final Episcopal Evaluation. TEA or COFFEE, anyone?
