Virtual Methodist

I literally woke up this morning with an upset stomach in the wake of news stories of the knife attack in Southport, followed by shameful rioting, the consistently escalating conflict between Israel and its neighbours, with attacks that in recent days have resulted in the deaths of young people at school and play, sniping in social media over the national identity of 2 gold medal winners in a single day from Northern Ireland, and the continuing controversy and over-reaction to an ill-judged small segment of an over-long Olympic opening pageant.  But at least I'm not a triathlete who may end up with a more significantly upset stomach from swimming in the Seine today, for reasons similar to those that affected the Boat Race in London recently. There are times that I despair of humanity and our willingness to work together to address not only our differences but also the existential threats that we all face... The title is drawn from the ancient Greek tradition of a truce or "lay...

A couple of times this week I've come across this site offering "26 Moments that restore your Faith in Humanity this Year."  Once a fortnight... that's not a bad average... Check it out, it might brighten your day... This year has been a real stinker for me and my family, what with multiple major injuries to Owain, necessitating him having to miss his AS levels and go back a year at school, another football injury to myself which had major complications, DFCI having to wind up because of the lack of funding, resulting in Sally losing her job, never mind the whole stress of the school transfer system for Ciaran... and a few work-related "complications". It will be a real pity if the Mayans were right and the world ends next week, because it wouldn't be a great one to finish on... But against the background of that let me offer 12 glimpses of grace that have helped us through the bumps and grinds of this year... averaging once a month... 1) Th...

I've just finished reading the Hunger Games Trilogy of books, and, if you are interested you can read my views on them over at Goodreads, ( here , here and here ). There is a slight case of the law of diminishing returns with them... but I was so impressed with the first one that the second and third instalments had an extremely hard act to follow. Some reviewers have been a little condescending about the central premise of the first book, which has the children of conquered districts of a post-apocalyptic America (or Panem) taking part in what is effectively televised gladiatorial combat. This is not a novel idea... But it well textured and well told, especially given that it is essentially a piece of teen fiction, with appropriate parallels to contemporary TV "talent/reality" shows as well as to ancient Rome. It may be centred around the violence of the eponymous "Hunger Games" but nowhere does it buy into the myth of redemptive violence that is so all-perv...

Well today the Beijing Olympics came to an end… And while the closing ceremony was not quite so over the top as the opening ceremony, it was still astounding, especially in terms of the lack of expense spared and the sheer numbers involved moving with split-second sychronicity. The Olympic motto is "Citius, Altius, Fortius." "Swifter, Higher, Stronger." And that has been fulfilled in these games… This has been an Olympics of superlatives. The performances of Usain Bolt on land and Michael Phelps in water… And the British athletes exceeding all expectations with their best performance in a century, the best performance by any cycling or sailing teams ever, and a medal haul which, in proportion to the size of population is 12 times as successful as China’s and over twice as successful as the Americans. The only problem is… How can Britain top that when the show comes to London? We cannot hope to match the scale of the opening ceremony. We will be very fortunate to mat...

And another thing... While on the subject of the American coverage of the Olympics, if I hear one more moan here about this being the last time that Softball or Baseball will feature I will scream. This probably hasn't been a major feature of British coverage, but it was mentioned every 5 minutes here last night (OK maybe slight exageration there...) For the attention of all Americans: NO-ONE except yourselves, Canada, Japan and Cuba play these sports to any great extent... Well, we do, but only in primary school and we call it "rounders." That is why your laughably titled "World Series" never feature any teams that are not North American. If the Olympics is to reflect sports played across the world, then these two essentially American pastimes are less deserving of a place than cricket is... And God forbid that it should ever be reinstated... Tho' perhaps they will try to introduce 20-20 cricket (or cricket for those who have more important things to do wit...

After another day of serious fun (which I will post about anon) we all collapsed in front of the Olympic opening ceremony last night, getting an American-eyed view of the whole thing. We couldn't find any channel showing it live yesterday morning... and last night everything proceeded on the fiction that the whole event was live on American primetime... And that just about summed up the whole experience... that everything revolved around America... Particularly when it came to the parade of nations, which as ever, was even more interminable than Eurovision voting. And because we were pretending that the whole thing was live, NBC didn't even take the opportunity to edit it. And when we had to go away from the developing excitement for the inevitable ad break (Don't get me started on US TV advertising) they had a recap of who we had missed... As if we cared... Apart from a few trivia tit-bits (which were generally of the "aren't these foreigners strange!?" type)...