Virtual Methodist

Being a sports fan is an up and down business… more down than up if you’re an Arsenal fan at the moment… but I won’t rub salt into the gaping wound there… It's even more complicated if you participate in the myriad "fantasy" competitions out there, where you can end up wanting your team to win but not by too much, incase any of your fantasy players incur too many points against them. I'm currently registered with 6 different fantasy leagues - four football (that is real football for all you American readers out there... you know, the sort played with your feet!) and 2 World Cup Rugby ones. However, things have been so busy lately I haven't had time to look next nor near them, except to register the fact that I was effectively bottom in all of them. However, until Sunday it was a good weekend, for me… Ulster won convincingly against Cardiff in the rain on Friday night… Then Saturday morning Ireland put all their fans through the wringer as they won a close encou...

STOP THE FRONT PAGE: DAVID CAMPTON GOT ON HIS FEET TO APPLAUD A SHOW IN BELFAST! It really does take a lot to get me out of my seat to give a play a standing ovation, yet it seems to be expected here these days. I’ve discussed this a number of times online and in person with fellow thespian curmudgeon Trevor Gill, so I suspect he was surprised, to say the least, when yesterday afternoon he saw me lifting my backside off the pew in the Sanctuary Theatre and loudly applauding Bright Umbrella's “Stuck in the Middle with You”, the play written by Sam Robinson and Trevor himself, who also directed the show… Actually it was an even bigger surprise to me, because after sitting on those pews for 2 hours I wasn’t entirely sure that my legs would work! I had agreed to chair a Q&A for the audience afterwards, which is always a dangerous thing to promise without seeing the show first… an actress friend of mine says that when I meet her after one of her shows, despite my background as an a...

Well, professional (?) football on a Sunday has at last come to Northern Ireland . And it is a little ironic that the first game would be in the heartland of Protestant East Belfast, with a match between Glentoran and Bangor at the Oval. Now, I'm a little ambivalent about strict sabbatarianism. Certainly the increased commercialism on Sundays has resulted in pressures on shopworkers to work on Sundays when they would rather be at church or at home with their families. The increasing number of amateur sports clubs running sessions on Sunday mornings has taken a toll on family attendance at church. And if Sunday football exacerbated any of that I would be deeply opposed to it. But I confess (and I appreciate that in some circles this is a serious confession as a minister of the gospel... tho' since I am Methodist, some wouldn't expect anything better of me...) I enjoy watching a game of football or rugby or many other inds of sport on TV on a Sunday afternoon. But Sunday saw...