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Category Archives: It’s a laugh!
The Mystery of the Turin shroud- solved!
Ornithology meets Les Dawson
All along the banks of our part of the Clyde there are clusters of these shy ducks around this time of the year. The females in particular will group together almost like gossiping schoolgirls out for a trip to the shops…
They also have this other endearing trait. As you walk along the sea shore, they tend to make this noise that always reminds me of the late great Sir Les Dawson. It goes something like this (imagine a rising and lowering pitch);
ooooOOOOoooooo!
These sounds often make me chuckle, as the sound can imbue any thought, or any sentence with a kind of camp gravitas that lifts the spirits… particularly if the ducks get their comic timing right.
It occurs to me that many of you will never have heard of Les Dawson. He was a kind of Yorkshire comedian-laureate, who had many different comedic skills- such as playing the piano brilliantly badly, or the inevitable mother-in-law jokes. In fact he managed to survive long enough in the business for his mother-in-law jokes to be ironic nods at a past genre, but still funny.
But it was one particular character he did that always remind me of the eider ducks and their oooing- it is this one. Enjoy.
Procrastination
A bit more Dave Walker
My Emerging Church credentials » The Cartoon Blog by Dave Walker
This emerging church stuff- it has a whiff of pretentiousness don’t you think? Sub groups who get all arty and creative in the privacy of their borrowed crypts- then blog about it. Perhaps we are in danger of disappearing up our own bums.
What we need then, is someone to prick our bombastic bubbles.
Step forward Dave Walker, cartoonist and fighter for a free internet.
But for the record- I do not own a Apple Mac.
Perhaps I too am an interloper.
Let me in…
Please!
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Tags: Emergingchurch
Stop press…Williams outlawed in Edinburgh
As you can see, the good people of Edinburgh have finally taken necessary steps to combat the threat to decent well ordered society posed by those most awful of creatures, the Williams.
Here is my own boy, cheeky grin in place, shrugging off the disquiet that impending persecution must have brought upon him…
Squirrel revival…
It’s always nice to know that Americans have a sense of humour!
Brave comic statement or blasphemous heresy? You decide.
Here’s a pic of a street entertainer at the Edinburgh festival.
Making a religious political statement of a sort…
Confessions of a bored choirboy
I have a confession to make. I suspect I will regret it, but here goes anyway…
As a boy I was in an Anglican Church choir (the photo above is not me, but I suppose my mother aspired to me looking like this!) I had to sit through many evensong services, complete with voices happening somewhere in the distance that sounded totally unintelligible. I still remember the extreme boredom, and the suffocating religious atmosphere. (It is very strange to me how moving I have found some liturgical Anglican services recently- I must be getting old!)
I found that I had to do all sorts of things to cope with the extreme boredom. I was an imaginative little boy, so fortunately it was not a terminal experience, neither for myself, nor ultimately, my faith.
When counting the panes in stained glass windows and feathers in old ladies hats had been exhausted, I would fall back on another trick. We all wore cassocks and starched cotton chalices, and I found that if you put your head into your chalice, you could enter another world! The light in there was lovely, and you could imagine the shapes and sounds that penetrated your secret space where the wild animals or soldiers outside your tent in deepest darkest Africa or the Arctic or Mansfield, or wherever.
I always imagined that no-one knew about my little game, as no-one ever commented or clipped my ear, but given that I was sat in full view of the congregation, people must have seen what I was doing.
After a while (and after a lot more droning), the tent game too became boring, and I had to think of something else. But again, being a resourceful lad, I used what was available to me, so still with my head inside the tent, I hit upon this other game.
The weave of the starched cotton had imperfections that showed up as darker patches. I discovered that if you took careful aim, you could try to hit one of these spots with a little blob of spit.
This usually passed the time quite agreeably…
It amused me now to think of what the good congregation of St Thomas’ Kirkby in Ashfield made of this choir boy with only white-blond hair showing above the cassock, and strange stains appearing on sparkling white chalice!
It makes a useful metaphor don’t you think?
Question- how was the service today dear?
Answer- Lots of spitting at spots…
The pain of public performance
Few years ago I did some worship leading in the USA, and ended up leading worship on TV from a big Baptist church in Washington DC.
I have never been able to watch or listen to myself speak or sing- it makes my toes curl. As the great Victoria Wood used to say, “I was so embarrassed that I had to get my buttocks surgically unclenched.”
So I offer you this piece of video, not as a laugh against the unfortunate Mr Daker, but rather in empathy with him…
(Thanks to http://ship-of-fools.com for the link!)
this fragile tent 