Categories
Entirely True

Radio Goo Goo

It was when she turned two months old that Anwen started picking up old medium wave radio transmissions at night.

At first, it seemed like the normal hisses and clicks that you’d expect from a sleeping baby but after a couple of nights, indistinct and crackly voices could be heard burbling out of her mouth, no louder than the crystal radio set I built as a child. I didn’t tell Ros at first – I hadn’t been well and it seemed like a symptom too far – but instead, experimented once she was asleep too.

I found that by changing the orientation of the Moses basket I could clear up the reception quality although it was still very quiet.

Strangely, she seemed to be a very BBC orientated baby.

At two months, she was receiving Radio 2 transmissions – swing jazz, music my dad used to listen to, and, for some reason, out of schedule, Ken Bruce’s Pop Master quiz would play at every long-term, post-bottle-feed slumbering instance.

At three months, we heard obscure classical and avant-garde cultural shenanigans on Radio 3.

At four, politics, comedy and the shipping forecast.

Then, sports and listener-chat.

At six months, we had a few brief snatches of cutting edge live music and then transmission silence. Nothing. It was kind of a relief, and we dug out the digital radio we’d been given for the wedding.

We haven’t heard anything since.

Categories
Entirely True

Messed up dream from days of the broken arm and its aftermath

My subconscious knows me well and has a twisted sense of humour.

Take the dream I just had, for example.

I was helping a hairy madman pipe chocolate shapes onto grease-proof paper, on a metal tray. The dream-voice-over revealed that it was “There Will be Blood” director, PT Anderson, who was working on the last ever “chocolate animated movie” (which sounds awesome, by the way).

The cleaner, bustling about, decided to remove the grease-proof paper and when they were asked to stop, turned and knocked the tray onto floor, scattering chocolate figures everywhere.

It fell with a loud “Clang!” – usually the kind of thing I wake up from as my alarm is starting to ring (I’ve looped the bells from he start of Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls“). This time, I remained dreaming and all the characters stood around, glaring angrily at each other, for a good few seconds (an awkward eternity in the dream world).

My subconscious knows me well and has a twisted sense of humour.

But its sense of timing, must have been thrown by the pain meds: the tray hit the floor, and it took a good five seconds before the alarm went off…

Categories
Church Link

Link – December 2018:

On social media, I am often invited to take part in “top ten challenges”. These involve having to choose ten examples of a subject (e.g., ten films that left an impression on me (at time of writing: The Terminator; Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey; Naked Gun: from the Files of Police Squad; Hellboy; Withnail & I; Monthy Python & the Holy Grail; Army of Darkness; Jason and the Argonauts; Star Wars; The Princess Bride)), posting one of these on a daily basis, and then nominating a friend to have a go themselves.

So, without further ado, my Top Ten Bible Bits – if you find yourself nominated, I’d love to hear your top ten.

1. John 3:16
Advertised on a thousand sports placards when I was growing up, this verse tells us a vital truth about God, his view of the world (hang on, aren’t we meant to struggle against the world?) and, more importantly of us – that we don’t need to perish: the offer of eternal life starting now is a wonderful thing.
I nominate: anybody who wishes that Newcastle would score a few more goals now and then.

2. Daniel 14:1-22
Found in the Apocrypha, if at all, in most non-Catholic Bibles, this little story is a very early example of a locked-room mystery with some almost-rationalist supernatural-debunking “my lord, whose footprints are these?!” It’s told with verve and humour. I’ve included it here because finding it surprised me, it’s good fun, and it adds weight to the “Bible as a library containing many different genres” position.
I nominate: anybody with a soft spot for golden age detection.

3. Genesis 1-3
God made a good world and we screwed it up, with disastrous consequences. In later years, phrases like “in our image”, “become like us”, added to the mystery – a royal we, one god among many, trinitarian thinking? Even later, the buck-passing, excuse making seemed very contemporary indeed.
I nominate: anybody who could do with the reminder, “…and it was very good.”

4. Jonah
Possibly my favourite book of the Bible. It packs an awful lot into four short chapters, and the title character is a proper misery-guts from start to finish. I love the reminder it provides that God is far more interested in mercy than judgement (those Ninevites, really deserved some high level fire and brimstone judging). I also take comfort in Jonah being utterly unfit for purpose and still getting used to sow the seeds of the Kingdom.
I nominate: anybody who feels God is calling them to unpleasantness.

5. John 3:17
Clarification of the point made in the previous verse, and a very welcome reassurance to a boy who feared the coming judgement. This verse set me on the long road to realising that the gospel was one primarily of love, not judgement (some concepts took a little longer than they should to take root) and is the first example I can remember of thinking that sometimes we separate verses that really should be kept together.
I nominate: anybody worried about what God *really* thinks of them.


This article originally appeared in the December edition of Newcastle Diocese’s Link Newspaper. Part Two will follow in February.