This summer we spent our holiday in London, where I realised, yet again, how heavily our high streets are dominated by franchises... especially food and drink ones. I think that within central London, apart from in the parks, it must be impossible to go more than 100 yards without a Mega-Bucks, Cafe Nero and/or Pret hoving into view... and often you can see one Starbucks from the doorway of another... As such it's a bit like churches in Belfast... Not only are there more pew places in Belfast than could conceivably be filled by its citizens, even if there was wholesale revival and an obesity epidemic that resulted in mega-sized gluteus maximi... but they are often arranged in clumps... And not just the Christ-shaming juxtaposition of different denominational mausoleums next to each other, announcing to the wider world that these Christians really don't love one another... but the insane proximity of buildings belonging to the same denomination. Sometimes they are due ...
Dialogues, monologues, sketches, poems, rants, theological and liturgical bits and bobs and miscellaneous other verbal doodles...