All have sinned...

One of my barmy friends has been referring to this link for ages http://www.catholic.org/frz/examen/examen_venial.htm It is basically a list of sins, that is to say the Catholics (Catholic?) amongst you should be confessing to them. This would mean I would have to be in confession for a very long time since I am guilty of pretty much all of these. Some are quite interesting. Take for example:
"telling bad jokes about sacred persons or objects". Does this mean if the joke is good (i.e. it makes one laugh) it's ok? Also:
"listening to bad music". Define "bad music". Does it have to be encouraging evil or can it be just plain crap? And how about:
"Desecrating the day by sinful amusements, bad company, inappropriate entertainment". What is appropriate? What if I'm sinfully amused by bad company? What is bad company? Miserable people who are just damn awful to be around? Or truly bad people like I suspect (given this list) all of you bar possibly my "Tolkein Weirdo"? And what on earth is:
"Lack of custody of the eyes"? (My eyes have a mind of their own, damn them!)
And finally "Dressing somewhat immodestly"? So you can dress completely immodestly, but somewhat immodestly is going too far.
A friend of mine for example won't go to Mass unless her elbows are covered. Maybe her elbows are particularly erotic and result in people's eyes having a "lack of custody."
Well, it's something to think about.

Hope you had a nice Easter!
Px

Please sponsor Jennie!!!

Jennie Hogan is our part-time chaplain at Chelsea College (guys, this is yet another college in the vast institution where I work, except it is in the rather more pleasant syrroundings of Millbank) and a curate at St Stephen's Westminster (Chees'm, please don't stop reading because I almost mentioned church....) and she is running the London Marathon this year in aid of Whizz-kidz. She needs to raise over £1000 and would really appreciate any contributions. For more info (and indeed because it is a very cool title for a website) visit www.bmycharity.com/v2/therunningreverend
There is also a charity dinner on 14th April at Napier Hall, Hide Place, SW1P, if anyone fancies coming.
Thanks!

NEW CURE FOUND!
Now I am not a scientist, but an experiment I conducted at home recently has opened the doors to a whole new area that could revolutionise the treatment of minor illnesses (or "excuses to skive work", as they colloquially known): daytime television. The general unpleasantness following a whole night of throwing up miraculously subsided after just six hours of intensive daytime tv therapy which included exposure to the likes of "how to fuck up quite a nice living room" and "how to flog your crap house in the Midlands and get lots of money". Early indications also suggest that recipients of such therapy can become productive for a short time following treatment (hurrah! a backlog of filing! An inbox full of emails from mailing lists that are entirely irrelevent for the job!)
If you are ever stuck at home in a similar situation, try it: it's completely free and really works!

The Mariachis

Think Don McLean meets early REM meets Bonnie Tyler with maybe a pinch of Van Morrison thrown in - the Mariachis are the greatest band I've seen in a long time (and bearing in mind I live in Camden, this is no small feat.) They were playing The Borderline on Friday night, an underground Soho club whose clientele consists Americana-seeking Missed-Woddstock-First-Time-rounders (an ageing Country Joe MacDonald is billed for April 30th) with money in their pockets (a bottle of Becks is over £3 and it cost £7 just to get inside). As for the band, they consist of five twenty-somethings, with a keyboard player of which would not look out of place in The Scissor Sisters, a frontman who looks like he's fresh off the beaches of California (actually he's fresh from a roadtrip down the west coat, which is apparently where they got their inspiration from), and a too-arty lead guitarist in an obligatory random hat (tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be Oscar Wilde.) But musically they are brilliant, and have the added advantage of not sounding like Coldplay, or Keane, or Snow Patrol, that is to say they are actually not miserable (my tastes do occasionally stray from miserable music, and on the misery front there's a plethora of stuff in the charts to keep me occupied at the moment.) They manage to mix rock and country sounds with three-part harmonies (yes, folks, a band that can actually sing!) good enough that you don't need to listen to the lyrics in the hope that they make up for everything else you're hearing (actually the lyrics are fairly standard Americana rock, with the odd line here and there that suggests that the band have read a bit on the way - Kerouac et al references are there for those who look out for them) to create music that makes you want to dance (or in my case jump up and down a bit and splay my arms around, making my beer go fizzy and spill everywhere.) As an added bonus the support band didn't turn up so the Mariachis played an exhausting two sets to a growingly enthusiastic crowd.

I think the Mariachis should be huge. Unfortunately they are still pretty niche as no promoter will spend the money or take the risk on a band that isn't Coldplay or Keane or an already-established Pogues or Kate Bush making a comeback. But go to www.themariachis.com and have a listen, and if you are free, go to their next gig at the Carling Academy on 26th April.

Only in Elephant...

A shoe shop was advetising "2 for the price of one" so I found some party shoes for a reuinion I'm going to and some boots. The guy tried to charge me for both pairs. I pointed out it said two for one. He said "yeah, if you buy one shoe you get the other one free." (?)
"You mean £15.00 is the price for just one shoe?"

"Yeah, but it doesn't matter because if you buy it you get the other one free anyway."

I thought about this...

"So say I bought one boot, could I get one of the other pair for free?"

He looked confused. "I don't think it works like that. You need to get the other one from the same pair."

Maybe there are lots of one legged people in Elephant who want to feel they're getting a good deal.

Things can only get better?

I have finally succeeded in seeing Elephant and Castle in the sun. It looks marginally better. Marginally.

I have been intrigued by politics this week. It seems they have been dominated by Charles "when I was at school I used to nick other kids' dinner money" Clarke and Gerry "not head of the IRA, honest" Adams. So now we live in a country where you can be arrested without being told what you've done, and while you're under house arrest David Blunkett with sleep with your wife and if you feel anyone has wronged you, it's ok because the IRA will offer to shoot them for you. Welcome to the civilised surroundings of the fourth largest economy in the Western World. Now, I can't think of any circumstance in which I might find myself voting Tory, but in the grand scheme of things I was comparatively impressed by Michael Howard's party conference speech. At least it was an improvement on the quiet man who turned up the volume shortly before someone else turned it off altogether.

So in case you haven't been paying much attention (heaven forbid) to the upcoming election, here's a quick run-down of your choices:
Labour (or "New Tories", as I like to call them, also a faction of the American Republicans and of late Opus Dei.)
Conservatives (read "10 Things I Hate" post)
Lib Dems (the political equivalent of the Church of England whose policies are restricted to "er..." and "vote for us, we're nice. Please?")
Green Party (They seem ok, and contraty to popular opinion don't all look like Swampy)
UKIP (a cross between the Daily Mail and Paul's letter to the Romans)
Veritas (the anti-European party who chose a Latin name meaning "truth". Yes, that's LATIN, the language of the greatest European colonisers that ever lived.)
The BNP (I am not even going to grace them with a comment)
The Natural Law Party (they're the guys who reckoned they could bring about world peace through yogic flying. Unfortunately they don't seem to exist any more. I wonder why not.)

This all makes Students' Union politics look quite intellectually challenging. To hell with anti-terror laws, what this country really needs is more Snakebite, an annual Freshers Ball for all new immigrants to the country, and maybe an annual leavers' ball for when UKIP gets into power and sends them all away again.

Have a good day

I must stop talking to people on public transport...

I have an invisible sign on my forehead. It says "I am friendly and naive. Nutbars please feel free to approach me."

I got on a bus on Tuesday night and bumped into someone. I apologised (what was I thinking? This is London Transport! You don't apologise to anyone on London Transport!) Maybe the bloke was taken aback at being apologised to, but he was clearly not amused and replied "So you should be, you rude child." The day before I was bemoaning the Circle Line to a harmless-looking woman who reciprocated by talking about her grandchildren. She asked me what I was studying, and what I wanted to do with it. I said I was considering going into the ministry...
"Worst thing that ever happened to the Anglican Church," she replied, with feeling. "I would never, ever take communion off a woman. Woman deacons were wonderful, but they should know their place."

Arse.

Then there was the guy who tried to buy my crucifix off me in order to "save" me. Was I "a sinner or a winner"?

I must stop talking to people on public transport...

On the up side of my life I have memorized my route from work through the underpass to the bus stop without any detours, venues for "Graffiti" are looking more hopeful, and I have finally mastered "Diamonds and Rust" on the guitar.

God? In the City?

I'm having one of those weeks. I think it comes from working in Elephant. I've now seen Elephant in all weathers, even snow, and it seems that whatever the weather's doing it still looks crap and miserable. This, compounded with the fact that I have met various people in the most awful situations this week and my head is spinning from reading various Commission for Social Responsibility texts with the aim of writing an essay on them, makes you think: what is God thinking?!

Now I know the resounding answer you lot who read this blog will come out with: "well, take the hint and stop wasting your time on Him then!". I can picture the comments now (which is nice since people don't often leave comments on this blog!) But I am beginning to feel that many Christians are a sanctimonious bunch who revel in their own saved-ness and balls to the rest of you. I have a friend who insists that you cannot call yourself a Christian if you don't go to church, which is fine, but I also don't think you can call yourself a Christian just because you DO go to church, even if you go every week, or every day. What's the point, if ultimately you don't give a damn about the people around you? One day, a guy wandered in in the middle of the sermon shouting. He was clearly upset and either ill, drunk or on drugs. Exasperated when we all turned round, our vicar demanded "Are we listening to the sermon or are we listening to the man at the back?" (It's fair to say we were listening to the man at the back.) When he got rid of the choir, because he felt we had too much of a role in how we worshipped, I left. Is it any wonder that only 2% of people in "Urban Priority Areas" go to church?

I am being a little unfair, and in fact, most of my Christian friends are very socially minded: one has today seemingly disapeared off the face of the earth and is running a Fair Trade stall at her college, others are working for a pittance in parishes and for charities doing all sorts of nice things that help to cushion the blow for those leading generally awful lives. I am of course just suffering from "I'm useless and it's friday" syndrome. I've just invented it, and it's rather like when you go to the library and work solidly for five hours and come out with nothing written down and unable to tell anyone what you've been reading about, thinking to yourself "so what have I just achieved"? So this week I have achieved very little. I have made one or two people's lives seem less shit than they were an hour before they met me, but I haven't made a positive impact, just lessened the negativity a bit. In the process I find I hate the government, the Church, bureaucracy and, hey, just people in general.

So I do feel a little two-faced going to church at the moment and saying how much I love everyone and how I am prepared to turn the other cheek etc, when at this precise moment I want out of a system that, in public at least (NB split in the Anglican church) seems to spend more time bickering and carefully following rules and regs and traditions (bow here, incense there, cross yourself during this prayer, kneel here, God Save the Queen, still praying for Iraq...) at the expense of the people who are here, crying out for help, day in, day out, without anybody ever seeming to hear them or take the blindest bit of notice.

Happy Friday, everyone!

PS I apologise to all those of you who have read "Grafitti", who will already be familiar with my socialist rants.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth...well, Battersea

"Look out for a low-rise" she said, then reconsidering, "actually it's kind of a medium-rise."

A medium-rise? In South London? Are you kidding? It's hardly going to stand out, is it? And this is made worse by the fact that Battersea appears to be completely inaccessible from just about everywhere.

I can't even get out of Elephant. I have to dodge two students who seem to be pretending to beat the crap out of each other with wooden poles (I presume it's Art), then as usual I get lost in the underpass. (I'm convinced the Elephant and Castle underpass is like the staircases in Harry Potter: the tunnels move when I'm not looking.)

I finally get there via some bizarre bus route that seems to meander through several industrial estates, then I realise that I am in fact in Battersea. Battersea is basically just that: a big industrial estate with a dogs home and a park (what more could one want?) and rows of those lovely mews houses I can never afford.

As it turns out her "medium-rise" isn't hard to find at all: as I approach I can see cartoons of milk on the window sills and a traffic cone and shopping trolley in the garden: this place can only be inhabited by students. From here things are esay. I meet the person I was meant to meet, and within half an hour I have been shown "student room with metal bed and grafitti" ("art"), "student common room with pool table with no balls" and "student dining room with unidentifiable meat dish that will be curry tomorrow." They are selling the hall next year. Shame. It's just what a hall should be.

But going home is even more fun. I get the number 19 bus (I am obsessed with the number 19 bus. Don't ask me why, I don't really know myself) which goes to Finsbury Park via London's most expensive areas. I always feel this must be a bit of kick in the teeth for passengers who live in Finsbury Park, going down the King's Road on an old Routemaster knowing the most exclusive shop where you live is the Tesco Metro. I have a friend who lives off the King's Road. I once told someone she lived ON the King's road and she got very indignant. Apparently living OFF the King's road is important, presumably as it separates the unspeakably rich from those simply not on the same planet as the rest of us.

So anyway, if you have a spare couple of hours, take the number 19 bus to Battersea, realise just how poor you really are.

Take care
Px