Category: Blog Entry

We managed a concert with Nigel Kennedy last night at Sydney Opera House.  I’d always known he was different – the grunge look, Aston Villa shirts, extraordinary language with words like ‘geezer’ more reminiscent of Alf Garnet’s era than anything spoken in England today.  One wonders whether this is a huge ego drawing attention to itself – or, more likely, a rather shy and vulnerable person putting up a smokescreen … and maybe it all gets in the way of the music ..

And then he plays.  And the magic is, as always, in the quiet passages and the silences.  I watched him hold 2000 people absolutely spellbound.  The programme offered about 75 minutes of Mozart and Beethoven.  The concert was actually a catholic experience which began with unaccompanied Bach, ended with Jimmy Hendrix and lasted nearly three hours.  He plays the notes on the page and then improvises as well.  He simply breaks apart the traditional and stuffy approach to music-making and refashions it in a way which allows him space to create moments of musical and spiritual intensity which are just extraordinary.

Things we might learn from?

He who has ears to hear …

Hello from a very wet Sydney.  We’ll look forward to finding out over the next few days whether it really deserves the ‘frappachino heaven’ accolade which Bill Bryson awarded to it.

We left Thailand behind with real regret.  Part of the fascination lay in the realisation that it was very Irish.  Smiling, charming, eager to please and totally confusing.  Particularly it was the desire to respond to all questions not with the appropriate answer but by working out what they thought you wanted to hear.  Wasan of Rainbow House described it as ‘Mai pen rai’ – meaning ‘No Problem’. 

This in turn meant that there was a constant need for simultaneous translation. 

‘Do you know where the restaurant is?’    Answer: ‘Yes of course.  I was born in the next street’   Translation: ‘Haven’t a clue.  But we’ll set out anyway.’

Sydney looks much more ‘straight up and down’ – indeed rather more Californian.  But time will tell.

One reason for going to Bangkok was to visit Rainbow House – part of CCD [Christian Care for Disabled Children] where our Mark worked as a volunteer for three months in 2006.  A number of families with whom Alison has worked have adopted children through the same organisation. 

Bangkok is amazing.  We have now learnt that all taxis and Tuk Tuks immediately declare themselves lost – and then default to bringing you to the Bangkok equivalent of the House of Bruar or to the driver’s uncle’s Liposuction Clinic.

I have also been reading Nick Thorpe’s ‘Adrift in Caledonia’ – a really charming book about his attempt to hitch hike on various boats around the coast of Scotland.  Although he failed to get a lift on a nuclear submarine, he did get a conducted tour.  He then had a think about how the mindset required to believe that nuclear submarines are relevant in the modern world might be similar to that of the rather scary fundamentalist Christians with whom he rowed to Iona.  A similar sort of narrowing and, indeed, suspension of disbelief!   His tour became a sort of pilgrimage in which he attempted to recapture the religious feelings of his youth – but with maturity and integrity.  Interesting.

Ah – the mind-stretching benefits of travel.  We visited the Jim Thompson House in Bangkok today – American architect who came to Bangkok and built a house in 1959 using traditional Thai materials and art.  He developed an entire industry in the craft of Thai hand-woven silk.  Sadly he took a walk in Malaysia in 1967 and was never seen again.  So I listened to the charming Thai guide – how can they be as delightful as that? – and found myself transported back to Glebe House in Donegal listening to a guide every bit as charming talking about the painter Derek Hill.  He was a noted portrait painter who came to Donegal and stimulated an entire school of primitive artists on ToryIsland.  How often it takes the outsider to appreciate and encourage what is precious.

My watch declared a holiday as I stepped off the plane.  I have replaced it with a fake, fake Casio.  I am now looking for the Bangkok branch of McMahons of Portadown.  I know it’s here somewhere.

Another couple of Thoughts for the Day for my old friends in the BBC in Belfast last week – about my ‘out of this world’ experiences in Mosque, Monastery and elsewhere.  You will have discovered by now that my thinking processes function only in 2 minute/325 word spasms.

Meanwhile a bit of a blogiday, I think, with sporadic antipodean surfacings.

Now into the next stage of pre-departure – where people behave as if one has already gone.  ‘You still here?’ they say – with a slightly disappointed air.  Meanwhile the diary simply skips across the space and we’re into April and May.

Haven’t decided yet whether to blog from Blogstead Downunder – although it would be tempting to give an ‘ouch by ouch’ description of swimming with jellyfish in a stinger suit.  Not a pretty sight, I would think.

I’m about to go on holiday for a while.  So the indispensability sub-stratum of my control-freakery kicks in.  Clearly I need to arrange everything which will happen in my absence, second-guess all problems and provide solutions and generally behave as if my presence is essential for the sustaining of our friendly but slightly frayed ecclesiastical institution.  However the light in the eyes of those around me suggests that I am not the only one looking forward to a break.  And I am not going to be able to do everything before I leave … and maybe I could offload this or that onto somebody who might actually put it out of its misery …

Don’t quite know what to make of this juxtaposition of the Conversion of St Paul with Burns Night.  But we made good use of it with the congregations of Holy Trinity, Stirling, St Saviour’s, Bridge of Allan and St Mary’s, Dunblane.  A good Burns Night had by all – with our friends from the Diocese of Meath and Kildare in the Church of Ireland.  Bishop Richard tells me that we have known each other for 39 years so it is hardly a voyage of discovery.  But our groups sat in a circle and talked today – and explored how much one can learn from a place with is like yet unlike.

It’s bishops to right and left at Blogstead this coming weekend.  We are welcoming a group from our link diocese in Ireland with Bishop Richard tomorrow .. followed closely by Bishop Daniel from Kerala in India on Sunday.  And in the middle a Burns Night in Stirling and the opening of the new Parish Room in Kinross.  So what do you do ….