Up and Down You Know

 

Hello All. I hope you are well. I have had toothache and it's raining again but other than that, all is well. Good things include finding yellow-stickered chocolate eclairs in M&S this morning. I love eclairs. It's like giving a donkey strawberries (as my Uncle Ken used to say whenever he bought my Mum a Guinness. That's my real Uncle Ken by the way). Also FOW 2 and her friends have tickets for a little-known newcomer called Taylor Swift who will be singing lots of bangers about how much she hates all her exes. Apparently there are quite a few of them. Still it made FOW2 very happy so that's nice. 

Other than these lights in our darkness, it has been a pretty unedifying week really. There was the H** E****** BBC News debacle. Can we name him? I'll look it up.  I have a couple of thoughts about the whole thing. For those people not from our shores, this involves a top newsreader, photos of people in their underpants and The Sun. The Sun is one of our most hallowed newspapers who fabricated stories about Liverpool fans urinating on police officers during the Hillsborough tragedy so their word is obviously their bond.

1. Shocking as it all was, Im not sure that the most shocking thing about this was "This is the man that held our hands all through the death of the Queen." 

2. (I understand that this marks me down as a complete lightweight in matters of the heart) but what is it that makes people want to see photos of men in their underpants. H** is not the first public figure to have fallen for these sorts of dubious charms but it just makes me think of some terrible Terry and June sketch. 

People are sometimes not what we think they are I suppose. We watched the documentary on Hillsong this week. There's very little in there to bring us any comfort. The money is mind-blowing and the leadership managed to perform the almost admirable feat of admitting to multiple examples of adultery, sexual assault, child abuse and financial irregularities whilst preaching that the whole documentary was a demonic plot to bring the church down. That's an uncomfortable position you are taking there guys. I was quite losing heart apart from a couple of things. In one interview a reporter asked a question about "the church" and the investigator said "It's not a church. There are good Christians in there for sure but it's not a church." Weirdly, that made me feel better. I think that wherever there are vulnerable who want to belong and be cared for that there will always be people who see an opportunity. Equally though there are always people in the church who are sincere, empathetic and doing exactly what Jesus wants them to do. 

It's important then that we listen to the weak and the oppressed and those who have a story to tell that we may not like. Because of this, I was a bit surprised to see national Christian leaders publicly sending their support to Mike Pilavachi this week. I mean, certainly the Christian thing to do when you friend falls is to give him a call, send him your love and prayers and stand with him as he works this through. That is not the same as putting out little messages of solidarity, calling the accusers stories into doubt. Leaders - what ARE you like? I ain't naming these people. They are easy enough to find on the Internet. 

I heard a lady on the radio say that she had more or less given up on the summer now. We don't seem to be in line for the heatwave. In fact, it's blowing a huge gale here at the moment. I am finding this a bit more disturbing than usual as we have a mini cruise booked in the next couple of weeks. I've never been on a cruise before and am slightly concerned that it might be like a scene from the Poseidon  Adventure with me having to swim through a serving hatch like Shelly Winters. We are only going to Amsterdam but you can't be too careful. Have any of you been on a cruise? The idea behind this is that we see if we like it. I've been on the Cremyl Ferry a lot but it's not the same thing apparently. (See photo of HOH on the ferry above for an idea). Anyway, A couple of weeks and we shall find out. My life is one long adventure now and I am off to get an eclair and catch up on Sewing Bee. Have a good week.