Virtual Methodist

After my trawl through my 2012 bookshelves yesterday, here's my awards for a hotchpotch of other categories: BEST FILM In terms of ratings that I gave to films this year on the Flixster site, there would be a four way tie this year, between " The Dark Knight Rises ", the final (?) part of Christopher's intelligent Batman trilogy, " Avengers Assemble " the first outing of Marvel's finest, and " Pirates: An Adventure with Scientists ", which saw Aardman at its anarchic best, and the slow-burning " Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy ". If I were to include those films I saw on video, then perhaps " Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" might be in with a shout, or even "Moneyball" , which must have been good to allow me to overcome my antipathy to Brad Pitt. But I'm going to stick to cinema releases, and if pushed I would probably say that "The Dark Knight Rises" gets my vote, as the most complete and complex f...

Ok… It’s the last day of 2011 and before I head out to perform my last clerical duties of the year, as per the tradition (ie. I did it last year…) I offer you an eclectic set of VM’s Awards of the Year… as if anyone cares… Anyway, last year kicked off with what was to be my (and many people’s) favourite film of the year – The King’s Speech , in which Colin Firth stammered his way to a p-p-plethora of awards… Still think Helena Bonham Carter was the best thing in it however… It took until the end of the year however for me to come across my favourite album of the year… it was a Christmas present to my eldest son from some discerning giver… What do you give a jazz trumpet playing teenager with pretensions at being a guitar playing rock god (when not studying for medicine or strutting the stage that is)? – why obviously Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton Play the Blues Live at the Lincoln Centre … Two genuine musical genii sharing the same stage… And as I am eventually carried out of...

As the year hurtles towards its conclusion, its the season of award shows and so I thought I would round it off with my own special VM Awards - an assortment of plaudits regarding some of the other offerings out there in the virtual world - the winners get nothing except my admiration and adulation... Favourite Methodist Blog: Given that I call this blog Virtual Methodist, I felt duty bound to include this category. In terms of Irish Methodist's there aren't too many consistent bloggers out there (they've probably all moved over to twitter now, leaving dinosaurs like me behind) although Paul Ritchie continues to write "To Whom it may Concern". But extending my view beyond these shores, it will be no surprise to those who have noted the number of links to (and lifts from) it that I would see Connexions as the most consistently interesting (and eclectic) Methodist blog out there... Richard/Kim et al are also one of the few who churn out more stuff than I do... Nev...

In a fit of injudicious housekeeping, I managed to delete my blogroll... Hence there's only a couple of entries over to the right, where previous there were the most up to date editions of around 40 different blogs, from all sorts of backgrounds. I have neither the time nor inclination to seek them all out again, and this is perhaps a serendipitous way of starting afresh... But I would appreciate your help dear reader. If you have a blog yourself, or would recommend one, please send me an appropriate link/URL. Cheers

Fathers, do not exasperate your children... Ephesians 6:4 Well… that is yet another Biblical command I have broken… This week I noticed that the number of unique hits on my blog had suddenly increased. That was unusual since I had been at conference last week and hadn’t been posting anything regularly… I will post a few reflections on the conference over the next few days, but I’ve been too busy until now… So I was a bit surprised to see so many new visitors in such a short period of time. Then last night my poor, long suffering, eldest son, Owain, informed me that someone in his class had stumbled on my blog when googling the names of other members of his class, and, having found various references to Owain, had promptly circulated them around the whole class… So, at least temporarily my average hit rate is up, but the average age of my readers is way, way down… But it made me rethink the reason I blog… There is no doubt that part of it was originally a cut-price, electronic form of ...