Readers of Kelvin’s blog at www.thurible.net will have had further updates on the chaos. I got my suitcase back last night – amazing! A second member of our family is on the sleeper tonight – Simon needing to get back from a wedding in Exeter to work in Edinburgh tomorrow. Having read Simon Calder in the Independent today, I wonder if all of this will ultimately do anything to dent our love affair with air travel.
Meanwhile, here is this morning’s Thought for the Day
We thought that getting home was all going to be simple. But of course flew straight into the chaos of Heathrow last night. Why do they let transfer passengers fly in – and not try and divert them by another route before they reach London. People and staff were doing their best but, as usual, people on the internet outside the airport had more information than those of us inside. Like the population of Russia in the old days, we joined queues without quite knowing what they were for. We went as instructed to the back of Costa Coffee and lifted the yellow phone – attempting to get our bags back. But it was completely hopeless. Do they have no contingency plans whatsoever? I expect to get my bag back some time after Christmas.
So we decided just to get out of it – friend on the internet booked the sleeper train to Glasgow – train to Edinburgh – bus back to Edinburgh Airport. And then my old friend, the long-stay car park lived up to its name. The ticket machine took my payment but didn’t give me my ticket back. And I couldn’t understand the Exit sign for the umpteenth time and ended up in a cul de sac. But the nice man in the Office opened the gate and pointed me towards the promised land.
Snowing this evening here in Sweden. Fascinating place – not that I have seen much of it – about as much as if I had flown into Edinburgh and gone to a conference in Cramond. It reminds me that most of us have a mental map which is orientated southwards – it was always ‘turn right at Stranraer and head south from Calais.’ Scandanavia is both cold and expensive so not good for camping with small children. But there are all these people up here – living in what feels like a most stable and prosperous society – moving around between Sweden, Norway, Iceland and the Baltic Republics – all speaking perfect English in addition to their mother tongue. I must find an excuse to come back and have a look around.
So we got the TV cameras out of the Close at Blogstead … By the way, I met a nice lady on Sunday morning who knows her Anthony Trollope. But for those who aren’t so sure, Plumstead Episcopi was the parish of Archdeacon Grantley in his book ‘The Warden’ . So I just sort of borrowed it and turned it into Blogstead Episcopi. I’m sure Trollope wouldn’t have minded. He worked in the Post Office and wrote [in longhand of course] each day when he came home from work. Had he been alive today, he would probably have been a blogger.
Fortunately I realised at midnight that this morning’s flight was 7 am and not 8 am. So I am now in Sigtuna, just outside Stockholm, in a very opulent Conference Centre owned by the Swedish Church. Because they are funded by tax revenues, they have more money than the SEC could dream of! Anyway, this is a Colloquium for churches of the Porvoo Communion on Same Sex Relationships. I doubt if there is much new that can be said about the theological arguments. But I am interested in the leadership issues – how keenly-felt the divisions are in each church; how the leadership is managing the issue and helping the church to live with diversity. One aspect of the nature of conflict always interests me – which is that the opposing passions tend not to match. So – to express it a bit crudely – what is an issue of scripture and its authority for one side – is an issue of justice and discrimination for the other. So it’s two conflicts, not one. And that’s only the beginning.
Well – Blogstead Episcopi has returned to its accustomed tranquillity after the latest of our social outings for clergy last night. The sound of community hymn singing has died away. The mistletoe hangs exhausted and neglected. The servants have restored the house to order and decency as befits a centre of ecclesiastical power.
Meanwhile you may be interested to know that Spice [Norfolk Terrier] returned last night and immediately presented his visiting card to Poppy [Brown Burmese]. She was definitely not at home.
Up in Aberdeen, today’s Episcopal Synod failed to elect a new bishop in succession to Bruce. It’s a sad moment for everybody involved – particularly for the candidates who have given all that they have and more to the process.
Tomorrow’s a nice ordinary day. Visit to our congregation in Coupar Angus in the morning and then some family things in Edinburgh. Then it’s an 8 am flight on Monday morning for a Colloqium in Stockholm on Same-sex Relationships. Maybe I’ll get to meet Santa Claus?
I wrote this piece ‘Crowded Stables’ for the Scotsman – about growing church-attendance figures at Christmas and other times. It was to appear today but maybe there was no room at the inn and it will appear later this week
A CROWDED STABLE Scotsman 12.06.doc
It seems that even the tabloid papers are prepared to take Lord Stevens’ report as a sign that it is time to let the Diana conspiracy theories rest. I suppose there is part of most of us which will wonder whether it really was an accident – as people still question the official report on the assassination of John F Kennedy. On that level, it is surely a healthy part of a functioning democracy that we should not unquestioningly believe what we are told. Healthy scepticism isn’t a bad thing. The real conspiracy theorists, of course, will never let it rest. They move through questioning doubt to the wacky to the obsessive. Back in Northern Ireland, I used to meet anxious people like that quite often. All events – however much they appear to be based on chance – are part of a bigger picture only part of which we can see. Nobody’s motives for their actions are what they say they are. Everything is leading towards a single ultimate end. People like me are blind to the obvious and are relaxed when we should be on guard.
I never found out how to deal with that.
I was asked by a journalist today for a quote about the legalisation of prostitution. What an impossibly difficult issue. But here is what I offered him:
‘As we learn more about the risks to which the girls in the red light district of Ipswich are exposed, the arguments in favour of the legalisation of prostitution become compelling and compassionate. The girls should be able to have physical protection, proper medical care and the kind of support which might help them to move on to other ways of supporting themselves and their families. But that ‘oldest profession in the world’ way of thinking seems to me to invite us to be blind to the degrading reality of this trade. Unhappy men are buying the services of desperate women, many of whom are selling not by free choice but to feed a drug habit. Legalisation may provide a degree of protection but I cannot feel that in a free society it is ultimately right to protect something which is akin to slavery.’
This is the time of year when my days would have been filled with Primary School Nativity Plays and Senior Citizens’ Christmas Dinners. But of course there’s none of that – it’s a bit sad really, although I complained enough when I had to do it! I suppose I do miss the endless procession of children wearing tea towels – mainly because they were getting involved in the Christmas story for the first time. Out at Blogstead, we’re gearing up for the second lap of our social whirl with clergy. We’re looking forward to that – slight adjustments needed in our instructions to staff in the light of experience – but there is great interest in the new Bishop’s House. I suspect that it’s a clergy ‘thing’. We feel we learn so much about people from seeing how their houses are! Must tidy the study again.
I found myself passing the BMW garage today. It’s crammed with new cars – they must expect to sell lots over the next few weeks. But who has the money – even in this solidly prosperous area? After all, the truly rich around here change their cars about as often as they buy new tweeds. On the other side of Perth, the vast new block at the prison takes shape. It will be a big improvement. But it will be filled, like all prisons, with young people, drug users, products of broken family relationships … all the things the Conservatives have been trying to talk about. And then there is the horror of the young prostitutes being murdered in Ipswich. For myself, I suspect that broken family relationships are as likely to be symptom of a dysfunctional society as cause of it. And, as I drove around Perth today, I was looking at a society which is not so much dysfunctional as just lacking in any significant connections at all.
