Philosophy, Hypocrisy, and Public Libraries

A delightful week spent in the company of Swiss philosopher and political theorist Monika Maria Trost, with wide-ranging discussions on such diverse matters as Post-Modernism (Does it have a Future?) and the novels and plays of Friedrich Dürrenmatt, interrupted only occasionally by a tallish English baritone demanding the return of "his" kleine Philosophin.

But some tantalising questions remain. Why, for instance, does the catalogue of Lancashire County Library admit to the possession of certain books by the political theorist Hannah Arendt and then, almost in the same breath, deny it? It all looks decidedly fishy to me, and upon this matter I have two theories. First, that librarians at LCC, in their role (self-appointed) as guardians of the public morality (remember librarians and Enid Blyton? While librarians in the US were fiercely defending the right to free speech, often in court, specky do-gooders in the Uk were banning non-PC books such as the Famous Five and Noddy, aided and abetted by their colleagues-in-arms, half-educated teachers) have collectively decided that some subjects are to be kept from the eyes of the general reader lest the general reader be a pervert, and the Holocaust is top of the list. Or Second, that the new library assistant, Dulciedora, is to be given the job of weeding out the stuff that nobody reads so as to make room for pop CDs and DVDs and all the exciting books about TV shows like Big Brother, DIY welly maintenance and chick-lit novels for the lonely one-hander. And if you think Dulciedora doesn't exist, believe me, she does, and she and her tribe of clones are employed in every public library in the land, exercising their uncritical and uninformed judgment to extirpate books for which the public purse has paid probably millions of pounds, and if this is not a national scandal I don't know what is. My bookshelves are stuffed with irreplaceable and priceless books that Dulcie in one public library or another has decided are no longer needed - catalogues raisonnés of the works of Henry Moore and of Barbara Hepworth (this one printed on a selection of very fine rag papers), for example, and the long-OP first novel (1949) by Antony Burgess, A Vision of Battlements.

So it's either conspiracy theory or Dulcie "chuck it out, 'cos it's old an' borin' " Dora, and this time the application of Occam's Razor doesn't deliver the goods.

I fully expect Monika Maria Trost to invite me to be interviewed on her Sunday morning philosophy programme on Swiss TV so that I can blow the whistle on post-modernists and English public libraries. After all, she loves my cherry scones. I mean, anyone can render the Iliad into idiomatic Deutsch, but can they cook the perfect cherry scone? Hm?

It is only a matter of time...

Barry Acne - the Hidden Diaries

Friends of Barry Acne (15), Church Organist and Choirmaster by profession may like to know that Barry's secret diaries are now appearing, in tantalisingly small chunks, on Barry's own blog.

Barry's diary starts a few days after his new vicar (called Ken) gave him a task - to produce a list of all the musical instruments mentioned in the Bible, and excused him organ duties while the task was in progress.

Click and read on...

Bumbledom - 2

You will remember that I have a friend who, because of a slight mix-up in the Register Office, had a daughter who didn't officially exist, and who had to affirm that she was indeed present at the birth of said daughter, something occasioning many a smile, even guffaw, from those innocents happily unacquainted with the labyrinthine ways and byways of bureaucracy.

Well, there is a happy ending, ish. For another registrar, just after the affirmation ceremony and no doubt while a hefty bill was being prepared, suddenly remembered an interesting point, hitherto overlooked - that birth certificates are but copies, allegedly accurate copies, of the entries in the original register. "And that must be in the strongroom..."

It was. And it bore the correct date of birth (mother had remembered it quite well, being, as we don't need to be reminded, there at the time.) But betwixt and between the original entry and the certificate of birth a small error had crept in. Only a small one - the wrong day.

So happy mother, happy daughter, and happy registrar. And, best of all, no hefty bill.

But how fortunate that mother is still with us, and not regaling the angels in heaven with merry anecdotes about being a wife of the Cloth, otherwise her daughter would have had a bit of a problem when faced with implacable Bumbledom, being non-existent.

Oh, Dickens, would that thou wert alive at this hour!

Church Times - and do you remember Men Only?

I quite like Church Times. It concentrates its attentions on matters of doctrinal difference that men of the cloth debate most earnestly when they are not playing with their electric train sets. It is the voice of the Established Church-men.

But just once, could Church Times open its pages to women theologians, and not put them on Page 3? From St Teresa and Hildegaard of Bingen to Mother Theresa women have done the donkey-work of the church, looking after the flock instead of the frock, and baking cakes in case an important Bishop chanced by.

And if it were not for women, there would be no men of the church to strut their stuff, because, dear priests and bishops and archdeacons, you were all born of a woman like the rest of us. A woman who gave you life, but whom you now deny equality to, in this church of all possible churches.

Boys, it might be a good moment to put aside your toys. The old order is changing - and thank God.

Concomitance, or Communion in Both Kinds

So Anglicans in Blackburn are, for the time being, while the world is in another of its pandemic panics, denied their right enshrined in Article 30 of the 39 Articles to take Communion in both kinds (ie the bread AND the wine).


For Article 30 clearly states:


XXX. Of both Kinds.


The Cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the Lay-people: for both the parts of the Lord's Sacrament, by Christ's ordinance and commandment, ought to be ministered to all Christian men alike.


And no doubt ardent Henry VIII-ites are even now writing to the newspapers in protest at this apparent violation of the Common Law of the Anglican church.


Now sacramental theology can differ quite markedly depending on which brand of Christianity you have been brought up in, and the answer to the question "Can the Sacrament be fully administered in only one kind?" depends entirely on whether you are an Anglican, a Roman Catholic, a Lutheran, or an Eastern Orthodox Christian - and if you are a Roman Catholic, depending also on when you ask, for the Roman Catholic church has changed its mind a few times in the last 2,100 years, according to what those whom it regarded as its enemies in the other Christian communities were up to.


Authority for all sacramental observances has to derive from Scripture, and problems arise only when Scripture is capable of being interpreted in different ways - problems compounded by the possibility that original texts might have been mistranslated.




The following seems to be quite a neat summary of the position. The words are by James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, writing in 1917.

Our Savior gave communion under both forms of bread and wine to His Apostles at the last Supper. Officiating Bishops and Priests are always required, except on Good Friday, to communicate under both kinds. But even the clergy of every rank, including the Pope, receive only of the consecrated bread unless when they celebrate Mass.

The Church teaches that Christ is contained whole and entire under each species; so that whoever communicates under the form of bread or of wine receives not a mutilated Sacrament or a divided Savior, but shares in the whole Sacrament as fully as if he participated in both forms. Hence, the layman who receives the consecrated Bread partakes as copiously of the body and blood of Christ as the officiating Priest who receives both consecrated elements.

Our Lord says: "I am the living bread which came down from Heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread which I will give is My flesh, for the life of the world. ... He that eateth Me the same also shall live by Me. He that eateth this bread shall live forever." [John vi. 51, and seq.]

From this passage it is evident that whoever partakes of the form of bread partakes of the living flesh of Jesus Christ, which is inseparable from His blood, and which, being now in a glorious state, cannot be divided; for, "Christ rising from the dead, dieth now no more." [Rom. vi. 9.] Our Lord, in His words quoted, makes no reference to the sacramental cup, but only to the Eucharistic bread, to which He ascribes all the efficacy which is attached to communion under both kinds, viz., union with Him, spiritual life, eternal salvation.

St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says: "Whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord." [I. Cor. xi. 27.] The Apostle here plainly declares that, by an unworthy participation in the Lord's Supper, under the form of either bread or wine, we profane both the body and the blood of Christ. How could this be so, unless Christ is entirely contained under each species? So forcibly, indeed, did the Apostle assert the Catholic doctrine that the Protestant translators have perverted the text by rendering it: "Whosoever shall eat this bread and drink the chalice," substituting and for or, in contradiction to the Greek original, of which the Catholic version is an exact translation.

It is also the received doctrine of the Fathers that the Eucharist is contained in all its integrity either in the consecrated bread or in the chalice. St. Augustine, who may be taken as a sample of the rest, says that "each one receives Christ the Lord entire under each particle." [Aug. De consec. dist.]

Luther himself, even after his revolt, was so clearly convinced of this truth that he was an uncompromising advocate of communion under one kind. "If any Council," he says, "should decree or permit both species, we would by no means acquiesce; but, in spite of the Council and its statute, we would use one form, or neither, and never both." [De formula Missae.]

Leibnitz, the eminent Protestant divine, observes: "It cannot be denied that Christ is received entire by virtue of concomitance, under each species; nor is His flesh separated from His blood." [Systema Theol., p. 250.]

As the same virtue is contained in the Sacrament, whether administered in one or both forms, the faithful gain nothing by receiving under both kinds, and lose nothing by receiving under one form. Consequently, we nowhere find our Savior requiring the communion to be administered to the faithful under both forms; but He has left this matter to be regulated by the wisdom and discretion of the Church, as He has done with regard to the manner of administering Baptism.

Our Redeemer, it is true, has said: "Drink ye all of this." But it should be remembered that these words were addressed not to the people at large, but only to the Apostles, who alone were also commanded, on the same occasion, to consecrate His body and blood in remembrance of Him. Now we have no more right to infer that the faithful are obliged to drink of the cup, because the Apostles were commanded to drink of it, than we have to suppose that the laity are required or allowed to consecrate the bread and wine, because the power of doing so was at the last Supper conferred on the Apostles.

It is true also that our Lord said to the people: "Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye shall not have life in you." But this command is literally fulfilled by the laity when they partake of the consecrated bread, which, as we have seen, contains Christ the Lord in all His integrity. Hence, if our Savior has said: "Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath everlasting life," He has also said, "The bread which I will give is My flesh, for the life of the world."

The swine 'flu epidemic has caused all of us to consider matters of hygiene more carefully, bishops as well as the rest of us. Indeed, the (Roman Catholic) diocese of Plymouth banned the administration of the chalice to the laity three weeks before + Blackburn, and + Chelmsford has told parishes to stop using stoups of water that has been blessed. Sensible precautions, you might think.

So just in case Bishop Nicholas starts getting flak from the red-top papers, whose general idea of news is a photograph of a lady in the buff, and who think that sinners against red-top orthodoxy should be chased from the kingdom, especially if they are paediatricians, can we remember that as Christians we are subject to the discipline of our Church, just as much as monks and nuns in their houses that are both of this world and the next are, and that there is just about as much wisdom and thought to be found in a tabloid newspaper as there is in a cream bun?

A bishop's directive is law to the diocesan clergy, and therefore it is law to the laity. It is not something that PCCs can vote on.

There are two valuable lessons to learn from all this. One: every age reinterprets matters of faith in the light of new knowledge, and Christianity has been remarkably robust in the face of challenges from the secular world following scientific and philosophical advances in understanding. And two: the laity (and the clergy!) don't get burnt at the stake any more for asking awkward questions or expressing unorthodox opinions. Phew.

What is the CofE coming to? Applause for the Organist?

A wonderful experience last Sunday, while doing a bit of guesting for Evensong in a choir a few miles away. Nothing to do with the singing (which was wonderful, for the participants, at least), but for what happened after the service. Despite the lure of biccies and Fairtrade coffee and a post-service chat, people were glued to their congregational seats - actually listening to the organist's voluntary. But the best thing was that when he finished, they, the congregation, and we, the choir bods, burst out in spontaneous applause. I have never before, in more than 50 years of church musicking, heard or seen that happen, even in a cathedral, and I dare say there were quite of few of us there whose hearts leapt for sheer joy.

I'm going to have to mention it to my friend Barry Acne - I mean, Barry, the organist warmed up with the Karg-Elert thing, and only so that he could set his pistons!

Vive la belle France, et ses sacrées Dimanches

Trés intéressant, n'est-ce-pas?

This man formidable, Sarko, desires to follow the example British and render his country a seven-day zone Shopping et Sport, and I do wish he wouldn't, as do many of his own countrymen and women, who are rising up en masse to protect the traditional French Sunday - mornings spent discharging cartridges from lethal weapons at small animals a-nibbling of the verdant meadows or at passing charabancs a-packed with English tourists a-nibbling at their butties, and then a well-earned four-hour luncheon featuring some, if not all, of the morning's targets (though luckily the Geneva Convention forbids the consumption of English tourists, en croûte or otherwise, even in France, where they would eat a brick wall if it was properly cooked and served with a sauce appropriate, but rabbits and hares and small songbirds do not, at least as far as I am aware, receive mention in said Convention), not to mention several litres of the wine home-brewed.

I blame it all on his missis, who is absolutely gorgeous and not a bad singist in the popular vein, but she is of course Italian, and in Italy anything goes.

I mean, can you imagine Carla Bruni hitting it off with Konrad Adenaur or Willy Brandt? For heaven's sake, in Germany the shops close at lunchtime on Saturday and don't open again until Monday morning, for everyone will be at prayer in their cold northern-Europeanly manner. No wonder she opted for Sarko - he's young, he's a bit of a rebel, and he is wickedly French.

I don't know what it is about the English and the French that makes them dislike each other so much, apart from Agincourt, of course, which was a bit unfair, the French lot being led by a dolphin, by all accounts, so what chance did they have? I mean, we English don't have to look across the Channel to find aliens who talk funny to poke fun at - for most of us Wales is a lot nearer. We profess to hate the French and the Welsh, and we tell very funny (and racist, if you want to be pompous and humourless) jokes against them, but we want to buy retirement houses there, as though they will all say "Oh, you English with your sense of humour funny, how nice that you desire to live amongst us, is it not that it is, look you?"

But if Sarko thinks he can legislate against the traditional French Sunday, he is in for a surprise. He leads the awkwardest, most stubborn nation on earth, with the most beautiful and musical language on earth, where everybody is a philosopher from birth and the only shops that open on a Sunday are the ones that sell bread unless they are a restaurant. And after all, French Sundays are so spiritually inspiring that museums and art galleries have to have Mondays off to recover.

We don't want France, or Italy, or Germany, or Austria, or Belgium, or even Poland, to lose their outrageous differences in a synthetic, amorphous grey glob of conforming Europeanism, do we? I know I don't, me.

So I do wish that the utterly delectable and probably fragrant Carla would have a word in Sarko's oreilles shell-like. I mean, she's Italian. She probably takes two hours to dress up and put the slap on in order to ride the Vespa to the shop next door for a packet of fags. The Entente Cordiale doesn't mean that France has to do the same moronic things that the English do of a Sunday, both of which begin with an f - football, and effing shopping.

Vive la France! Vive la différence! And especially vivent M. le Président et Mme Carla, phwoar.

Bumbledom, in all its glory

Not all phone calls are welcome, especially those from Mumbai, far beyond the reach of the Telephone Preference Scheme.

But I have a friend whose calls are always laconic, and being laconic, are ergo witty as well as brief, and she phoned not long after the lady from Mumbai (at 7:45 our time, actually, or 00:45 Mumbai time), and she had mirth in her voice, for she had a tale to tell of Dickens's England, so recognisable still in Knotty-End-on-Sea, and if you thought that Jardine v. Jardine was long since over, forget it. Bumbledom, it would appear, is alive and well and flourishing in 21stC England!

My friend's story was this.

Her daughter, in the course of seeking CRB clearance, was advised (by an Official, what else?) that there were incongruities in Official Records, inasmuch as her birth was registered a few days before it actually occurred. Well, registrars are only human, aren't they, and can easily mistake an 8 for a 3 (though not the one who registered my dad's death, because it inconvenienced her greatly when she had thought she could slope off early to a Christmas Party, and her nastiness and sneering superiority had my mum in tears when mum was already a bit upset anyway, having just lost her husband, and that is the only time in my life that I have come close to smacking a woman in the gob, but luckily for her my brother was holding on to both my arms. She was not human. She was a job occupant. A nine-till-fiver. The sort of official that [and markedly I do not say 'who'] makes you a) more sympathetic to anarchists and b) start reading Dostoyevsky. In the original Russian.)

Anyway, back to my friend's daughter and her Gilbertian origins.

Before said daughter's guarantee of a criminality-free life-so-far could be issued, one or two matters had to be tidied up - like, was she actually born? And if so, where and when? And could she prove it? I don't want to get onto Kafka again, but do you get the idea? How can you prove to a suspicious public official that you were actually born, when the records don't agree? If the records say you don't exist, then to Bumbledom you are invisible, whether you had an appointment or not.

And It seems that your flesh-and-blood presence is not enough -you need your mum there as well, for, believe it or not, the process of proof required my friend to affirm, to the local registrar, that she was present at the birth of her daughter.

My howls of merriment must have been audible all the way to Mumbai. Nothing I write could be as hilarious and as barmy as this. Officials who deny your existence ask you to make another appointment, with your mum there as well, so they can give you the form-of-words that will suddenly bring you to life. It reminds me of the local authority I once worked for that had all its advisory leaflets rendered into Braille, including the one on how to pass your driving test. Officials, like the Co-op horse of old, wear blinkers. They are not allowed peripheral vision. They can only see ahead, in straight lines. Their understanding of logic has not yet advanced to the stage of realisation that division by zero = nonsense.

Oh come, surely there must be an official form Mum could have filled in instead of having to write a letter? It would save so much time and public money

Something like this:

I DO HEREBY SOLEMNLY AFFIRM AND SWEAR

THAT I, [enter full name] .......................................................................,

BEING OF SOUND MIND, AND BEING ALSO THE

NATURAL MOTHER OF [enter child's name].............................

..........................................................................................................................,

WAS PRESENT AT THE BIRTH OF SAID CHILD.

SIGNED ............................................................................

DATE.................................................................................

Please return the completed form to your local Register

Office. Please do not send a copy to the Daily Mail,

Private Eye or Reader's Digest. Being a Registrar is a

very difficult job, and we're only human, well, most of us,

and we hate it when people make fun of us. Also we,

being Registrars, can make life extremely unpleasant

for your heirs, so just you jolly well remember that.

Mr Wilberforce, where are you when people need you?

If there are two things in life I can't abide, leaving aside for a moment that dreadful TV reportrix from Belfast with a whiny voice that's tailor-made for funerals and Bad News, it's buzzing bluebottles and phone calls from India . Bluebottles I can happily pursue for hours on end, and some have even likened my action with the fly-swat to that of Andy Murray with the tennis racquet, except that I always win, as the gooey splodges of ex-bluebottles that adorn the conservatory windows mournfully testify (and come and report on that, Rita, right nah-eeee), but said fly-swat isn't quite long enough to reach Mumbai and swat the wretched woman who phoned just now to ask me questions about my telephone service supplier and thereby caused the potatoes to boil over and make a filthy mess of the cooker.

But the thing is, when it's tea-time in Knotty End it's midnight in Mumbai - and if that isn't the first line of a song that Noel Coward never wrote I don't know what is - and this long-suffering lass in a call-centre in the dead of night has probably just started her shift, during most of which she will suffer verbal abuse, racist abuse, and at best, polite peremptoriness, as she did from me: "Please go away."

But I wonder whether Mumbai's call-centre staff dream of meeting at dawn on the banks of the Ulhas to sing "Shall we gather at the river?", because the world has been here before - the rich exploiting the poor, to save a bob or two back home (where more and more people are without jobs.)

Mohandas Gandhi and William Wilberforce - please come back.

Adiga, Aravind The white tiger . - London : Atlantic, 2008

Harry Graham, RIP - RIP but tee-hee-hee

There is an American publisher, Dover, which has for years been doing the world a service by putting back into print gems (literary and musical) which might otherwise in the pre-Web days have been lost for ever. I don't know whether Dover ever reprinted Don Marquis's classic poetic exchanges between Archy (a cockroach) and Mehitabel (an alley-cat), but if they have - I lent my copy to somebody years ago, chaps, and I miss it. You don't have one you don't need any more, do you?

Sirius has very kindly sent me (as he promised in that rambling conversation a couple of nights ago which will have boosted BT's profits no end) a copy of Dover's reprint of Harry Graham's masterpiece of Victorian doggerel, Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes, and not only that, but, within the same covers, the sequel, More Ruthless Rhymes, with illustrations that, according to the blurb, "perfectly capture the irreverent, curmudgeonly mood of the verse...these rare and hard-to-find examples of 19th-century black humour will delight readers with their inventive rhymes, macabre wit, and candid appeal to the heartless streak in human nature."

Most of the engagingly sadistic (and Hilariously Belloquesque) rhymes really need the accompanying illustrations, but a couple stand up (as they say) without the need for graphics, and I think I can get away with quoting them without breaching Dover's copyright, or Edward Arnold, the original publisher,'s, for that matter (and isn't punctilious punctuation catching when employed in the service of the muse of doggerel?)

TENDER-HEARTEDNESS

Billy, in one of his nice new sashes,

Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes.

Now, although the room grows chilly,

I haven't the heart to poke poor Billy.

ECONOMY

My eldest son (his name is Jim)

Came up to London and got lost;

I've had to advertise for him -

You've no idea how much it cost.

And now, as it does not appear

That I shall see my boy again,

I'm sad to think I've wasted near-

Ly £20, and all in vain!

and - oh, go on, then, just one more:

PATIENCE

When ski-ing in the Engadine

My hat blew off down a ravine.

My son, who went to fetch it back,

Slipped through an icy glacier's crack

And then got permanently stuck.

It really was infernal luck:

My hat was practically new -

I loved my little Henry too -

And I may have to wait for years

Till either of them reappears.

(and thanks, Eric)

Caveat emptor - 4

You may recall, with a barely stifled yawn, from previous postings that one is suffering the lack of attentions of two outfits - that branch of National Car Parks which also runs a sort of mini-hospital service on the profits known as the NHS, and the online retailer computerwebsnore which just likes keep all the profits to itself - profits which must be enormous because it doesn't actually send you any goods in return for your money.

But let us take them in turn, for today has been, shall we say curious? no, let's tell it as it is, Kafkaesque.

I have been a bit deaf lately, and inclined to fall over a lot, which I put down to my ears making me top-heavy, being full of waxy substances. I thought if I got the aforementioneds syringed all might be well, and suggested as much to a GP in our local "health" centre, which really ought to display a sign saying "PATIENTS WILL NOT TOLERATE ABUSE FROM RECEPTIONISTS". But people whose ear'oles are full of wax are neither interesting nor remunerative in these more enlightened times, when practices earn rather large sums if they can prove that they have punctured enough people to meet their targets for people-puncturing, so, to make life more interesting, he sent me to a very important specialist in case I might have had a stroke. Causing my lug'oles to be syringed there and then didn't occur to him. The practice no longer does it, for it is not Profitable. Well, I didn't think I'd had a stroke (or a Tia Maria as they call it nowadays so you don't get frightened when your legs stop working and you acquire a lopsided grin and dribble a lot), and the stroke specialist certainly didn't. In fact we were having a very interesting conversation about Renaissance polyphony when I was suddenly and unceremoniously thrown out by the bouncers ("Your parking ticket has expired.")

Move to NCP walk-in centre, Blackpool, last Sunday evening ("brakes - exhausts - MOTs - ear syringing"). Bored nurse inserts hosepipe in lug'oles and turns tap on. T-shirt gets soaked. Ears go stone deaf. Nurse holds up sign saying "Treatment complete. Now go away."

I remembered this when I turned up for Act III at Fleetwood Hospital this morning. They couldn't give me a hearing test there and then because my ears were bunged up with wax (o yes they were...) , so they had to find somebody with a hosepipe and access to a tap, which took an hour (though the BBC's gardening magazine for June 2008 had a very interesting article about onions, which I took the opportunity to memorise).

In due course the lug'oles were hosed out again, and again I went deaf, and then it was time for the hearing test, upon which all depends.

Now when my dear wife had a hearing test a couple of years ago, her experience of modern NCP practices (which basically start with the letter B and end with "ungling") left her with a perforated eardrum, so when I got home she wrote me an anxious little note asking if the hearing test was conducted in a soundproofed room. "Well, no, actually", I wrote back (we were in the kitchen at the time). "I couldn't hear the test for the sound of the tester rattling away on the computer and the two ladies in the corridor discussing what they were going to have for their tea, not to mention the noise of the air-conditioning."

And the verdict? Suitably Kafkaesque. "Come back in three months and we'll do the tests again."

I think the problem is that I don't have horizontal giddiness, but vertical. The room doesn't spin when I turn over in bed, but if I look up I am likely to fall over, and I have innumerable bumps and contusions on my forehead from tying up my shoelaces. I'm obviously not textbook. They wanted me to say the room did indeed spin when I turned over in bed, but it didn't. They pushed a red-hot poker up my bottom and asked me if the room did spin, as all the all the authorities on the matter say it ought, and I have a feeling that they wanted me to say yes, indeed, spin is what it did do, but I couldn't, for it didn't, and eventually they gave in, and looked puzzled. There is apparently nothing in the literature, you see, about people who look up into their plum tree and fall flat on their backs in consequence.

Next, that other non-service outfit that we pour our hard-earneds into, computerwebgroansnorecaymanislandsgotcher.com. They promised today to refund £117 and 56p "in due course."

Nothing, of course, to do with my local Trading Standards Authority, who have all the correspondence. Pure coincidence, it must be. And how dare a mere customer pour scorn on a highly reputable company (they must be - their web-site says so) that simply slipped up and accidentally failed to keep their side of the contract? Or any stock records?

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It's been a good day for Kafka. A friend's daughter went to the dentist's to repair a crown that had come loose, but it came off and she swallowed it, all £200-worth of it.

And blow me! We did a civic service for this bloke who's on the front page of the local rag only a fortnight ago. Obviously a case of mistaken identity, and sub judice and all that, so one must not comment, but what with dodgy lords in the same postcode area we are starting to wonder round here whether all those people who moved to Marbella haven't decided that it's a lot cheaper to live in Knotty End.