Tag Archives: life

Except you become as students …

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I hadn’t realised how old I’m getting until I realised how long it’s been since I had a decently silly theological conversation.

I had made the offer of transferring my collection of Dr Who videos to Middle Godson’s family. Middle Godson’s father and I were at uni together. At one point the discussion of the terms of the transfer, conducted devant une des enfants but phrased to avoid arousing excitement until a conclusion was reached, lapsed into New Testament Greek. The years just fell away.

MG’s vicar father has also developed the Christingle concept for other festivals where the quotient of unchurched punters on pews might be higher than usual: Eastingle (chocolate eggs instead of oranges) and Harvestingle. This is an idea that could run and run. The higher forms of church could pick it up too. I propose Annuncitingle. Children could all clutch a parthenogenetically grown fruit on which they have drawn a very surprised face. Stick a cross in it, hold it upside down and you’ve got a ♀ .

I wonder if the student Richard Dawkins and his friends ever lapsed deliberately into really bad science just for the fun of it?

Got wood

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This chappie is 190cm high and 234cm across, which give or take about 0.5cm is the exact width of the living room wall behind it. Like God, Gaul and the Saturn V it divides into three parts, but the largest of those is 142 x 191cm, which also give or take about 0.5cm is the space available halfway up our stairs where two quickly successive 90 degree turns must be negotiated. But we managed, with the help of Best Man, summoned at an hour’s notice (and after one failed attempt by just three of us to negotiate the 180 degree bend) under Emergency Friendship Protocols that allow this kind of thing.
Ex Mother in Law in Law is having a clearout and it would have been a shame to let this one go when we have so much junk that needs storing a wall so perfectly suited to taking it.
Should we move house, we either get removal men in or dismantle the house, whichever may be cheaper.

Book disposal part 2

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This was my core science fiction collection as of 26 June 2006. Exercising ruthlessly stringent criteria I had whittled it down to these four simple shelves. Since then various of its components have come and gone but the quantity has remained the same.

Until last night, when it got whittled down by a further two shelves worth. We are inheriting a big kind of dresser-thingy which will take up most of one wall and comes up to the level of the second shelf: ergo, at least two shelves had to go. I was as ruthless as the first time round, with similar criteria honed after a further 3.5 years of life-changing events: am I really likely to read this again? And could anyone else benefit more from its ownership?

That second one was actually quite easy to answer, as Senior Godson has turned into quite the SF fan. About one shelf’s worth went to him, the rest to a jumble sale for Haiti. I like to think my selection criteria made sense. Not too light? Not too heavy? Too much sex and violence? Not enough? Is this a classic that a developing young mind should read? And so on. I gave him all the Asimovs but kept all the Clarkes: getting rid of those would be tearing out a piece of my soul.

But. Two shelves down, about 10 titles in from the right, red text on a yellow spine – that would be my copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics (and here’s how I came by it). Not really the kind of thing a godfather should give his godson, and not really the kind of thing I feel should be unleashed on the unwitting public via a jumble sale, even for a good cause. So I’ve hung on to it. Ironic that Senior Godson’s father works for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority: now I begin to understand the dilemmas faced by other purveyors of toxic waste.