Oh come on – get serious.

A family breakfast turned into a religious experience when they spotted what appears to be the face of Jesus in the lid of a Marmite jar.

Look at the damn picture! It looks like what you’d expect on the lid of a jar of brown goo: some brown goo and some jar lid.

Not to mention the fact that nobody has the faintest idea what Jesus looked like anyway. ‘The face of Jesus’ of course just means some sleepy amalgam of various modern images of Jesus which are vaguely derived from earlier images of Jesus which are derived from more of the same which ultimately derived from whatever people thought Jesus ought to … Read the rest

Jeezis, what a morning. I feel almost a kind of nostalgia for the old calm placid normal-pulse days before last Friday. Ever since then things have been frantic and franticker – but yesterday and then this morning they were frantic cubed. But in a good way. You’ll see why, soon. (When I say frantic – all I mean is that I had to write something quite complicated in a very short bit of time, and that there were other items coming in at two-minute intervals, and that the picture kept changing. I don’t mean invasions or sudden bankruptcy or an army of stockholders coming to tear my liver out. Compared to CEOs of car companies my life is placidity itself.)… Read the rest

An excerpt from the Goldenbridge chapter of the Ryan report.

“All of the complainants came to Goldenbridge in harrowing circumstances. Some had lost a parent, and the surviving parent was either not able to cope or was deemed by the State to be unsuitable. Others were abandoned. Some came from desperately poor families, and others were born out of wedlock to mothers who felt that society left them with no option but to place their child in care. Some of those committed were babies; others had spent a substantial part of their childhood with their families. Most of the children were heartbroken and terrified on entering Goldenbridge. They all shared a vulnerability that made them emotionally needy.

Complainants lived in … Read the rest

Okay, never mind, you can stand down now. It’s not quite a matter of ‘Never mind, it was just a case of the fantods, we’ll be going ahead as planned, sorry to trouble you,’ but it’s almost that. Close enough. All may go according to plan after all. Sorry about the interruption.

Actually it was just a ploy to bounce people into ordering advance copies! Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Just kidding. Things did look ominous from our angle, and there is still a part of the story that is obscure, or unfinished, or changing as we speak, or something. But it may turn out all right. I’ll let you know.

Addendum. (Look, it’s earlyish in the morning and I’ve been up for hours, … Read the rest

About this non-ecumenical book that Jeremy and I wrote, that is due out at the end of this week. Yes, what about it, you’re thinking, all agog. For reasons which I will explain another day, the publisher became nervous about it last Friday. The publisher phoned us on Friday, and talked of changes, or delays, or would we like to drop a chapters. We would not like to drop a chapter, and if we had liked to drop a chapter, the time to discuss that would have been several months ago, not now, a week before the book is supposed to appear. The publisher sent the can-we-drop-it chapter to an ecumenicist to get his opinion.

The publisher sent the chapter … Read the rest