Lentish

 

Hello everyone. I hope that you are well. All is well here. It stopped raining, and the sun came out this afternoon, which was unexpected. I don't know what your local weather person is like but around here they have kind of given up and just put a map up showing loads of rain, flick an arm up towards it in a sort of halfhearted gesture and say "All that rain on the map is probably a bit pessimistic but I can't guarantee one way or the other to be honest." Then off they schlepp. I can't say I blame them.

Also, around here, they still haven't cleared all the massive trees off people's roofs, so plenty of people still have no Internet. (That's not just country folks getting la-di-dah ideas about watching YouTube. Lots of places in Cornwall don't have landlines, so it's either the Internet or a red phone box. ) Plenty of people have been writing into Spotlight News to complain. There's a spot on the programme for consumer complaints called the Inbox, and it's run by Natalie Cornah. They used to call it Natalie's Inbox, but I think they got a lot of correspondence which was quite unsavoury, so they changed it. 

We left the house this week to visit the Beryl Cook exhibition at Plymouth's The Box Museum. I expect most of you are familiar with Beryl Cook. her cartoon like drawings of ordinary people are hugely popular with normal people - even if some people can be a bit snobby about her. She painted people in pubs and clubs, markets and parks, and her subjects were sailors and middle-aged people - some of whom were slightly worse for wear. She is enormously popular in Plymouth because she paints scenes that people are familiar with. I liked her stuff a lot. She was self-trained but an obviously highly skilled draughtsman. What I liked most about her paintings was how kind they were. She looked on her subjects with an enormously sympathetic eye. She certainly wasn't laughing at anyone she painted - she was one of them. 

(Photocredit - www.ourberylcook.com)

To church this morning. This was the first Sunday of Lent. So there were no flowers or other adornments in church. Things were pared back with was thoughtful. Except - I have told you before that I think Methodists are excellent, but I will never understand them. I thought Methodists would not be FOR Lent. I thought they would be very much AGAINST such frippery and keeping of Popish dates. (I can now hear my Father's voice in my head, as you may have noticed.) Never mind. 

We have a new minister starting in September, which is nice. The church has struggled to get someone for the last couple of years, apparently because Plymouth is so far away from everywhere. Really? It's Plymouth, not the North Pole. It's not exactly the spirit of Eric Liddell in a Chinese detention camp, is it? 

Other than that, there's not much to report, really. I have watched more Winter Olympics than I would have predicted before they started. I wasn't that fussed about the curling (sorry - I just thought it went on a long time. I expect it is better to play than to watch). My favourite was the ice skating - only with Robin Cousins commentating, though. I liked the way we would all be oohing and ahhing, and he would just quietly add, "I think her leg caught the ice at the end of the triple loop," and he was always right. I still have fond memories of him winning the Olympic Gold doing a funky disco dance. Those were the days.

To go back to Lent. Even if you don't "do" Lent, the Lectio 365 Lent series is excellent. I think you need the app, but it is worth it, and following on from that, this Pete Greig book that I've been dipping back into is also excellent. Mainly, I think for normals who want to learn about prayer, but encouraging people that they may see some not very normal things at all if they pray. Ignore the Twirl wrapper. I'm not proud of it.

Also, I have just seen that Robert Aramayo has just won the BAFTA for I Swear. I wrote about this earlier in the year. One of the best three films I saw last year, and he was amazing. It will probably pop up here and there now because he won, so if you get the chance, it's worth a view. (It's about Tourettes - there is a LOOOTTTT of bad language. Don't shoot the messenger.) Have a great week.