songs

So I've been in a song writing mood lately. I've posted a couple to YouTube, and I thought I'd link them here as well.

Song writing is a strange thing. You get ideas, for tunes, for lyrics, for the journey of a song, and then you run with them. I've had songs which have stayed on my back-boiler for years before I've eventually finished them. And songs which have trundled out of my head virtually fully formed. I have dreamed songs; one of the best songs I ever did with the old Groove Heroes band in Oxford twenty years back was one I dreamed in the middle of the night, woke up & pounded out on my piano there and then.

These are love songs. One is about meeting someone out dancing and never quite getting the chance to make it work. One is about feeling unable to put into words the emotions that are going on inside. Of course, when I write songs there's something of my experience that goes into them. But if they were simply autobiographical I wonder if they'd work? It might be curious to hear a song about something I did, but is that what it's really about? I mean - the point is that the love songs that stay with us do so because they strike an emotional chord with us as we listen, their journey is one that we too can relate to.

And it may just be that we have never been on a ship that hit an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage. We never have fallen in love with our bodyguard. We may never have lived in Sherwood Forest.

Yet these songs work because they aren't about one time, one place, one person (two people, even).

So you tell a story, explore an emotion, work through an aspect of life and love that may have been kicked off by something that happened to you or that you read or that somebody said. And see where it leads, hoping it wasn't just you after all.



That was a story song; and this - this is about an emotion.



The very observant amongst you will have noticed one was a guitar song and the other a piano song. Honestly, that's just how I wrote them. I think the feeling of them dictated where I started, what instrument I went to as I was working on them. But I can't say for sure. I may have started the Dancing song at the piano, actually, but I quickly realised that wasn't working. Whereas, when I try the Tongue-Tied song at the guitar, it feels wrong somehow. I don't get it there - I'm probably not good enough a guitar player to do it right. The instrument I'm playing does shape how I write a song.

Anyway - thanks for listening. And I hope you enjoyed! These are still songs in process; even with YouTube videos in place, I haven't stopped working. It will take me a while before I'm finished. I think that craft should never be quite satisfied! And as I look at the songs that (for me) really work, I think that my efforts have plenty of room for honing yet.

aftermath

I'm beginning to re-find Matt.

After he died, the shock, the pain, it robbed me of him completely. All the joy. All the love. All gone.

Of course he's still gone.

I mean, I've commented before about the tricks of grief. The noise a chair makes - a noise that exactly replicates the sound of Matt turning as he would make himself comfortable. And there's no-one there. I just look at it, and feel alone.

But now...

There's a shop where I'm buying a lot of my food. It sells ready meals, frozen, so I don't need to cook. they are home made, not like the sort of thing you'd buy in a supermarket. The guy who runs the store always chats with me. Asks how I'm doing; if I'm getting over Matt.

When Charlie died, years ago, I ate rubbish for a year. I couldn't bear to cook. So I gained a ton of weight. At least this time, similarly unable to cook, I'm doing better on the diet front.

And yet - I'm beginning to be ready to cook again.

I think of Matt and I can smile.

I see him looking at me in my mind's eye. The way he'd wait for me to be ready when he wanted to run in the park. The way he'd get excited when I'd come back from shopping and he knew I had something he loved in my bag. The way he'd be thrilled when guests were ready to leave...

He loved it when we went for a drive. Last weekend I went for a walk with a friend. I haven't been for a walk really since he died. I don't walk alone. We went to the woods just across the road - it was OK. I missed him. I haven't yet been to the park around the corner; that will have to wait.

The point is - the sharpness of the pain, the inability to understand how I could live through the next day, these things are fading. Grief moves on. When I think of Matt my eyes still fill with tears. That remains. But the range of emotions that come with the tears is growing.

So I am re-finding Matt.

Finding his fun. His stubborn-ness. His charm. His energy. His excitement. His love.

It's been four months. I miss him beyond words. When Charlie died I had photos put in frames and filled my walls with them; I still haven't yet done this for Matt. But I will. At first it was simply too hard; too searingly awful. And now, life after Matt is becoming - possible.

The after Matt. The aftermath. It doesn't get better; but you get better at dealing with it. Mostly.

essential

This is a clip of a BBC Proms performance of the Bach Double Violin Concerto, with Andrew Manze and Rachel Podger. They share the same duties on a CD of the Bach Violin Concertos which I have (permanently) in my car. The CD was a gift to me from Dan & Kirsty Jones some years ago, and probably remains one of the greatest gifts anyone has ever bought me.

For this music has become the essential music in my life.

I know, that might surprise some. You might think of me choosing some jazz piece for that honour. Or some worship music. Or (with the kind of narcissistic edge that wouldn't at all be out of character) something of any nature, as long as it was by me.

No.

I listen to the Bach Violin Concertos pretty much every week. At least once a week. Usually more than that. And it's this recording that does it for me. This recording that has become part of the stuff of life for me. I used to have an old Academy of St Martin in the Fields version (I still have it, somewhere) but the Academy of Ancient Music has replaced it.

In all honesty, whilst I know each piece pretty well by now (you'd think), as I listen to them on endless cycle and without a CD cover in sight, I still couldn't tell you "Ah, that's the D Minor" or "Oh yes, the E Major". I just love them. Deeply love them. They are for me, with their endless invention and ceaseless surprise, perfect music.

There was a time when I was not well. Some years back. And in that state, I could not cope with stress or pressure or any such thing. In those days, I listened to this music constantly. It centred me. Made life possible. Helped my troubled brain find order and peace. It sounds melodramatic, but really, it helped me live.

It's hard now even to remember that time. Yet this music still retains something of the same power - it finds in the sometimes unstructured mess of life a path, an order, a sense which brings beauty to the dullest day. And if my head is whirring too much, or I'm getting frustrated in bad traffic, or I just need to relax or stop a moment or remember what matters and find myself again - then I turn off whatever other music is playing, or abandon the news-life-sport-commentary of Radio Five Live, and go back to Bach.

I don't know if anyone else has music which has become "essential" in life. But somehow I have; and the music that found that place for me has never yet once grown tired (and I cannot say how many times I have listened to it in these last few years). That's a token of the quality of the gift right there. It is music that has brightened my mind and brought peace to my soul. Again - some gift. It is music that has accompanied me on countless journeys, so that tired and weary, I have not been alone as I have travelled. It fills the gaps. It is there at the moments that matter. Can music be a friend? It has befriended me.

Bach famously ascribed all his music to God's glory. This corner of his output, and this performance of this corner of his output, makes his words for me for an always answered prayer. And as I listen, I am always drawn with profound gratitude to hear the ever-speaking voice of God and to that deeper prayer and to that deeper music of which these notes are but an echo. A glorious, life-giving, essential echo.

So I listen again.

It doesn't come alone

I read in The Times today of a birthday that shocked me.

When I was at college, at Merton Oxford as an undergraduate, I had a tutor who was the archetype of the young academic. He was just a little bit edgy. Just sufficiently sarcastic to leave you unsure where you stood. Intense. Very very bright. I guess I thought he was in his early thirties back then, if I thought about it at all.

Already well published & well respected, he had to endure those students who didn't quite get his brilliance. He had to cajole me. He pushed me through the History of Political Thought paper. Not my finest hour. Philosophy & I were never on intimate terms, and often, in those weekly tutorials I would find that nuance was a stranger and the sledgehammer my greatest friend as I wielded my infamous prose style over Rousseau and Locke and Hobbes.

My tutorial partner was Germanic in his control of detail. I was George Bush next to him. Though with Boris Johnson's style. After a rip-roaring dash through the Social Contract, my tutor puffed out put his cheeks and said - "Well, that was a tour de force". Nuff said.

After finals, we had a historians drinks party. I had been silent about my last essay, my last throw of the dice, my final risk. But news had travelled. This particular tutor sauntered over to me, glass in hand in his particular insouciant manner and uttered one word: "Poetry?"

I smiled and demurred. My essay in rhyming couplets was already gaining its notoriety.

We were young. It was a long time ago. How long? Yesterday. I was a kid. A stick thin kid with more hair than I knew what to do with. He was hardly any older, drinking in the student bar. Age does not come alone. If he has gotten old what does that mean for me? 

I read in The Times today of a birthday that shocked me: Professor Robert Gildea, historian, 60.

Many happy returns.

best summer ever

From the torch relay that took forever, through the Diamond Jubilee (and that famous OAP boat ride), to the nearly Wimbledon & the moment Andy Murray became human - even without the weather, the summer of 2012 was always special.

And that was before Danny Boyle found our soul & celebrated it so wondrously the night the Olympics began.

The whole nation learned to smile as one, to celebrate, to love dancing horses & achievement with endeavour, and valour was valued once more.

Well, now it is fading. The September night closes the Paralympics which themselves close this amazing season. It has been the most beautiful dream. And I know that (in those words which Sir Ken intoned back in July) when I wake, I will cry to dream again.

(Postscript)

Of course, when I woke, it was like a dream: Andy Murray - US Open Champion! A Brit winning a tennis grand slam for the first time in 76 years. This feeling will last for ever...

Or until England drew 1-1 with Ukraine. Now is the glorious summer of sport become our autumn of discontent...

twelve

Matt would've been twelve today.

I meant to get up early. As it turned out, I couldn't quite face the morning. My alarm rang out; I lay still and waited. It took a while.

Eventually I braved the day. Washed. Breakfasted. Readied myself for work & headed out the door into the fresh September sunshine. As I walked down the path from the house to the street, I saw a guy who has just started to go to the village church. We greeted each other. He was heading down to church to read a book John the (now retired) vicar had given him. I told him I was heading that way too, so we chatted and parted at the churchyard gates - him to the church, me to the yard.

It was a beautiful autumnal morning. I'm sure the temperature will warm up later, but the first chill in the air told the story that the summer has left us, and the year is turning. When Matt died the summer was young, but that was three months ago. They say it gets easier; they're being kind, but of course they know full well it doesn't. Matt still doesn't greet me with that enormous smile of his, those eyes that speak love, that embrace that warms me on the coldest day.

I walked down to his grave. And, standing with the fields behind me & the Calverley angel before me, I spoke stories of my days to the earth that covers his remains, and then covered those with tears.

There are moments when I feel him close by. The other day I was home, in my front room, and the chair next to me made the noise it made when he would turn on it as he sat there. I stared at it. Empty, of course. There are nights when I would swear his weight rests on my legs. The tricks of grief. The arrows that open up a wounded heart to check it yet may bleed a little more.

Back to my car. Back to work. And as I drove, I thought of that passage in the Old Testament, in 2 Samuel 12, where King David loses a son. Before the boy dies, as his life slips away, he begs, pleads, prays the boy might live. When he is lost, David washes himself, dresses, goes to temple and worships. He is questioned about this and his reply is basically - what else should I do? What else indeed. So I switched on my iPod. Chose some music. And worshipped.

I'll praise Him for all that is past, and trust Him for all that's to come.

O my beautiful Matt. Happy birthday lovely boy.

crushing bore

You know that magical moment in the movies when the two protagonists catch sight of each other for the first time across a crowded room, sparks fly, and though their journey will have its ups and downs (and someone-else-will-inevitably-get-in-the-way TMJane Austen) you know everything will end perfectly?

It's rubbish.

I mean, fun, and I love it, of course. But it's rubbish.

Well - to be fair, it's rubbish if you are me. Because if you are me, there's a problem: I just seize up.

Whenever I'm on the verge of opening up emotionally at a really crucial moment, something in me simply stops working. Some of us are made that way.

Confession time: I met someone. Ah there's nice. Of course, yes. Quite right. And it was pretty much a glance across a room & a bolt from the blue thing. I'm not usually that person either, but that's what happened. And we actually got talking, which is pretty amazing. My heart did a thing. No, really. There were smiles.

So far so good.

And then I blew it.

All my fear stuff (I keep it for special occasions you see) just kicked in. So I turned & started talking to other people. Dancing with other people. Hoping we'd reconnect. It didn't really happen. It was probably never there in the first place. It was just a boring crush; to push myself forward would be to be a crushing bore. One sided. You know.

Hopeless. I deflated. Not breathing well, but wanting to speak, I froze. Cold, and on the wrong side of the room, I walked away.

Classic me.

Classic.

Except, though I spent days convincing myself it was pure folly & entirely in my head, and the result of the wrong kind of wine, that spark moment -

The movies do it for a reason. And when it hits, it hits. If it was one way (I'm sure it was one way; of course it was;) it was glorious. So the spark refused to die quite as fast as it should. The eye, the heart, the quickening, the momentary loss of the senses...

I did have a phone number. I left it a couple of days. I risked it.

I called.

Are you excited? Don't be.

There was still a problem. This script still involves me.

And I need some strong kind of magic to get me over the misery of the mess I made of those six awful telephonal minutes. Perhaps that's a knock at my door right now -

Perhaps not.

Though it was nice to discover there's life in the old dog yet, some of us end up single for a reason. It's safer for everyone else that way. And I can laugh at myself even as I torment myself. I've had plenty of practice. And don't doubt I'll get more.

After all, there's always hope. Now there's a thought to make a man despair.

who?

So - spoiler alert - I've seen the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who, and I'm going to talk about it: questions, answers, jokes, tears, and lots of class.

First: the surprise. We got to see the new assistant. Or did we? We got to see the new actress. And she was excellent. Her character clearly has something to do with what is to come... though perhaps some timey-wimey thing will rescue Oswin, & somehow I think we will not see a Dalek travelling around the Universe in the TARDIS.

Next: Rory & Amy. I have always enjoyed the Ponds. Rory in particular has grown & grown through his character arc for me. The tender scene as they fought and understood and communicated better than clearly they had done for some time worked its magic well on me. I'm a sucker for a good bit of romance, and in all the humour, action & make-believe of this show, romance matters. The best episodes often carry some kind of fairy-tale element (Matt Smith's first episode; or the Girl in the Fireplace in David Tennant's tenure) and romance is vital in a fairy-tale.

Matt Smith has confidence and class oozing out of him as he eases into this third season. He does a wonderful thing where he carries his youth without it being an issue, and at the same time acts old without it being a caricature. The result - I find him wonderfully ageless. Which is what I want to see in the Doctor. I don't want a callow youth. But actually I don't want to think of "Matt Smith" either - and to be fair that's not my reaction as I watch. I just enjoy watching the Doctor.

And thanks to a great memory swiping ruse, we have the first question now asked, and safely unanswered, in its original context. Daleks, destruction, confusion, inbound attack, and a legend (re-)born. Nice touch!

Doctor who? Can't wait to find out.

ethics boy

My team at Leeds have accused me in the past of being a bit "definite"on my views regarding the ethics of fundraising. Well, I have a problem. It's not simply my former career. It's my academic training. Unlike most fundraisers (straw poll in a room of fundraisers this morning - not many had any ethics training per se) ethics was very much part of my academic background. It was a fairly major part of my second go at Oxford.

And it wasn't the theory or history or philosophy of ethics that I was any good at. It was the logic, the sense and the dynamism of ethics that fired me. 'If you do 'A' then 'B' will apply. Given that, what should your response be?'

Fundraisers are simply not ethics professionals. Very few possess the ability to think with any kind of ethical complexity. Why should they? That's like saying they aren't veterinary professionals, and can't operate on horses. Except, of course, that the occasions when fundraisers are expected to operate on horses with any degree of success are (in my limited experience) unusual. The occasions when fundraisers are expected to operate with ethical understanding are daily.

So I was interested in the session this morning at CEAC2012 on the ethics of fundraising. It was a very serious and considered review of a terrible situation faced by LSE and a discussion of what happened afterwards.

In that terrible situation, a furore happened because not quite good enough questions were asked which meant that the fundraisers were crucified due to the mistakes of others. Now, on the other side of all the fuss, the fundraisers won't be caught out so easily; there are better firewalls.

I simplify, and that's unfair, but honestly the last thing that seemed to have happened was that anyone was educated ethically. Maybe I missed that bit. What did happen was that processes were set in place so that when people did their job (i.e. get donations from rich people) it clearly wasn't their fault if some of the rich people turned out to be dodgy. Others were given the responsibility for making that call.

I'm being harsh - but I'm being harsh with a purpose.

A question was asked at this conference, right at the start in the fundraising  plenary. If there were qualifications for fundraisers, what would you put in there as essential?

Ethics. I'd make teaching ethics essential.

Here's a basic issue: I wonder how many institutions make first contact with potential donors to their universities by talking about "involvement" and never mention giving? Just how ethical is that?

There's a simpler way of asking that question:

How honest is that? Or try this: How transparent is that?

I'm not going to rehearse arguments here. Please feel free to disagree. Please be offended by me. But be offended by me because you have a well thought out ethical understanding that has a good response to the things I have questioned. And if you do - as a fundraiser I am going to posit that you are in a minority. Which is a shame. A shame on our profession.

I was naughty in the session I attended, and I didn't get the opportunity to apologise to the speaker, who did a great job at talking us through what had clearly been a terrible time for her & her team. I was naughty because I asked a question which cheaply pointed out that there was ethical work still to be done.

It remains.

For the head of that department to put a slide up at a conference with a recommendation that we should 'use the ethics thing to embed our work deeper into our institutions' demonstrated that there is a lot of work to be done to help fundraising professionals truly understand ethical issues. I say that again not to belittle a situation but to demonstrate that process is not understanding. That department in that university went through hell; their process in dealing with the same situation is now much better. The ethical understanding of individuals is - well, I have no idea. But at no point were we told - everyone was sent on a professional ethics course. Everyone was educated. Everyone understands more.

The university where I'm employed is doing enormous work on professional ethics. CASE Europe might well turn to the guys at Leeds and ask for some input. It's not just bankers and geneticists who need that help.

What can I say? I'll get off my soap box.

Those of you who know me well know that at heart I'll always be an ethics boy.

awkward friends

I'm here at the CASE2012 conference in Birmingham - a gathering of over a thousand people involved in fundraising in higher education and its related concerns.

I came last year, when I'd just started at Leeds, and when I felt like I had no idea what I was doing in my new career. Now that I'm fairly confident I can fool some of the people all of the time, it's great to be back - to listen, to learn, to meet others involved in the trade.

The conference kicked off with a plenary session at which Mark Damazer, former head of Radio 4 and now Master of St Peter's Oxford, spoke. His main theme was the necessity for creativity in what we do, a creativity which can appear messy but which produces vital results.

However, during his address he said something which has been rattling around my mind all afternoon & through the evening. I've been listening to others, chatting with people, consuming wine & sociably munching nibbles - and this has been churning away within me.

Mark made a point about how the value of an academic subject was not simply economic. There is still a point to studying the purely esoteric - for example mediaeval history - even if it doesn't add to UK plc's bottom line.

His example is what has made my mind whir away all day.

My undergraduate college at Oxford was Merton. But for my mediaeval history, I was tutored at - you've guessed it - St Peter's. I'm pretty sure my old tutor Henry Mayr-Harting still haunts the corridors there.

And I would want to suggest in the strongest terms that mediaeval history - any history - is not an esoteric pleasure to be indulged in by academic Byronists, but is as necessary to the effective running of UK plc as any more obviously mechanical subject that one might care to mention. Listen, this is what happens when there is no history taught:

Someone makes it up.

Throughout history, tyrants in need of quick legitimacy have simply resorted to burning the past, sacking the history teachers, and employing new creatives to re-write something more palatable instead. Long dead Persians, popes and protestant Tudors, as well as proper evil men of the political left and right in the all too recent past - all of them knew that if no-one really knows what actually happened, propaganda wins.

Propaganda should never win. Historians are the awkward friends of freedom.

History is not an esoteric subject that is allowed to remain in the syllabus out of nostalgia; it is a social necessity. Unless freedom, perspective, honesty, understanding, morality, and careful restraint on those who would condemn us to cheap future slaveries are all things we hold lightly, things for which UK plc  has now no nor ever will possess any need.

Memory, and the nuance it gives to society, has a very real economic value. And a very much greater societal worth. Without it, you might teach all the physics you like but the physicists with any creativity get locked up. You can teach all the maths you like - except you won't, for fear that someone will eventually realise that when the state teaches that 2+2=7, there is a basic logical flaw.

It's not Mark's argument with which I disagree. Good argument. Badly made. Mediaeval history - any history - is at the core of the wellbeing of a free state. Without it, the loudest voice gets to set the framework for all of our lives. With it, truth quietly wins.

That's not esoteric. It's essential.

rattle and hum

I read this review of a new recording by Sir Simon Rattle & the Berlin Philharmonic of Bizet's Carmen the other day; with a weekend of driving ahead of me, and noticing that it was available on iTunes at the bargain price of £10, I downloaded it to my Mac & then onto my iPhone ready for the journey.

(I was travelling to the wedding of good friends - what could be better than a cautionary tale of falling for the wrong woman, betrayal, lust & murder, all set to some of the best tunes known to humanity?)

There are a fair number of great recordings of Carmen around. Three things sell this one: at £10 on iTunes it's a budget price for a brand new recording with star performers. The EMI acoustic is what you'd expect - lots of 'bloom', but also some real detail, and actually I found it worked especially well in the car (better than on my home system, strangely). Second, Jonas Kaufmann is simply superb. His baritonal tenor at times feels deeper than you know the part actually is, and then he reaches up and thrills you with some glorious top register notes. Fantastic, grin-inducing singing. I've never seen Kaufmann 'live'; clearly I've missed out. I love the Alagna recording (always at his best in French), but Kaufmann is right up there with him. Finally, and this is the real winner, Rattle & the Berlin Philharmonic are stunning. I'm not always a fan of symphony orchestras pretending to be pit bands. They usually have the wrong sound for opera. But this works. Big time. From start to finish - perhaps especially the finish; Act Four is wonderful.

I enjoyed the current Lady Rattle as Carmen. Some of the reviews are a bit sniffy; different people want different things I guess. For me, Carmen will always sound in my mind's ear like Julia Migenes, and I guess we all come expecting certain moments to sound in certain ways. It's that kind of opera. Magdalena Kozena for me didn't always maintain the passion level - though much of the time I was totally sold. The Micaela of Genia Kuehmeier is constantly beautiful, and again I see why some of the reviews particularly pick her out for praise.  

Driving from Leeds to Kendal, and then back, I had a great time following the tragedy as it unfolded. I thoroughly commend this recording to you. There are other great recordings of this work out there, but this should disappoint very few. The CD is more expensive than the download. But if you don't own a Carmen - this is not a bad place to start.

(And as for the wedding I attended - it went very well, and unlike the Opera, there was lots of dancing but no-one was murdered as far as I could see!)

Just a final note: as I downloaded it onto the Mac first, when it copied onto the iPhone, it made a mess of it & didn't separate into different CDs, so the track listings got confused & mixed the Acts up. This is not good for an opera recording. Or any classical recording. I sorted this by creating playlists from my Mac. If there's another way of avoiding this, I'd be happy to receive tips!

home coming

The problem with going away is coming home.

I used to have a rush of Springer Spaniel love hit me as I entered the door. Smiles & wags & sheer joy to greet me wherever I had been, however long my absence. As Matt grew older, he didn't always hear me come in. Sometimes I could get in, get my coat off, sort myself out & creep upstairs to find him still asleep on the bed. But then he'd wake. And the pleasure would hit, and the joy take root, and I'd truly be home.

A couple of weeks ago I caught myself looking for him as I came home. I realised I was actually searching for him. It's been more than two months since he died.

Without question last week I had three great days at the Olympics; and then I came home. I think the Friday evening at the Olympic stadium will stay in my mind as one of the greatest things I have ever done. The warmth of the evening air, the occasional breeze, the noise of the crowd, the excitement of the races, the disappointment of Team GB's relay squad being disqualified, the sight of the pole vaulters defying gravity.

And then the home coming. Silence. Emptiness.

When I am home, I miss Matt. But sometimes I am beginning to get used to how life now is. And then there are moments when the sadness, the grief simply bites hard. Opening that door and stepping in alone is one of them.

I am grateful for the gift of having had Matt. I guess the play of emotion through these days will just roll on. I miss him. Moments magnify that. My dear friend, my shadow, my companion, my beloved dog. My heart.  

public service broadcasting

I'm hardly alone in making this comment, but still I want to make it: The BBC's coverage of the Olympics was astounding.

I watched their coverage on my iPhone, on my Mac, on my works PC, on my TV, and I listened on various radios analogue & digital too. I read reports & followed the medals table on their website.

Astounding.

They promised that we wouldn't miss a moment. And with BBC 1 and BBC 3 exclusively devoted to the Olympics for the duratuion, and with twenty four HD channels broadcasting live from every venue, they kept their promise. Red button access, or specific channels on Sky, meant that everything was easy. It's claimed that 90% of the UK population watched something. Over 50% of us were watching regularly.

Did commercial TV bother broadcasting during the last two weeks? I didn't notice. I'm not sure anybody did.

Clive James in the Telegraph was a little sniffy at the use of language employed by some of the BBC's TV presenters. Almost a fair point; in the context of the technical brilliance we were being shown, I will forgive pretty much anything.

This is how digital broadcasting works. And add to it social media commenting on everything, with everyone joining in - this was a quiet and quietly thorough revolution.

Astounding. And all without an advert or a sponsor coming anywhere near it. Why do we pay a universal TV license fee in this country? So we can show the world how to do this kind of thing, and so we can lead the way. Our US friends could only dream of having what we have just seen. They could only dream of it. I'm not sure that, on reading this, they can even begin to imagine what we have just enjoyed. And in our own context - it just knocked Sky Sports out of the park. They have great multi-platform opportunities, but for limited audiences and with pay-walls and advertising. This far surpassed their limitations. 

Hats off. And please - more sport on the BBC, and done like this. Bring back Grandstand! And FIFA, this is why you give a major competition to a major country. Everyone owns it. A World Cup in Qatar? Really? After this?

a walk in the park

So I went for a walk in the park. The 2012 Olympics Park.

My perseverance finally paid off & I got my athletics tickets; one for this morning's session; one for Friday night. I headed off on the early train & arrived in London in time for breakfast.

I am so impressed by the whole deal. The park is wonderful. The organisation perfect. Travelling across to the site was flawless. Everyone was helpful and everything was easy.

The park is amazing. People from all over the world - but mostly, overwhelming Team GB support. Even at lunchtime, when the park was fullest, there was good humour and ease of movement, and the whole place was fantastic. And huge.

This morning was a series of heats; Phillis Idowu was the big hope in the triple jump, but he was off form, and it seems he needs an operation. He jumped right in front of where I was sitting. He was never quite at the games. 

Which was not the case with Usain Bolt (he's sitting on the number 5 in the photo). I watched him in the 200m heat and knew I had seen an Olympian. He is a giant amongst men. Literally - he stands so much taller than the other sprinters. And when he ran, he loped into the lead and then ambled to victory. It was incredible. 20 of the most exciting seconds I have ever seen. 

I was there. I have been to the Olympics. I sat at London 2012 in Olympic park, in the stadium. I saw Usain Bolt. 

And then, as I left, there was a sudden flurry & a crowd, and someone shouted, "Boris!" And there was the Mayor of London. There was a cameraman, a reporter, and he was wandering through the crowds on his way in. Not a security person in sight. I wandered into his path, took a photo & shook his hand. 

It was a walk in the park. It was a pleasure. It was a dream. It was the Olympics. It was fantastic.

the greatest show on earth

The greatest show on earth.

It is summer in Britain at last, and the weather is even joining in - pretty much. When it rains now, it rains gold. Perfect strangers smile at each other. Slogans sound like wisdom - and they aren't advertising anything, they are inspiring a generation.

Andy Murray has beaten Federer in a final at Wimbledon. Ben Ainslie is the greatest sailor in Olympic history. Jess Ennis is not just the face of the Olympics, she is its heart. And Bradley Wiggins lounged on a throne at Hampton Court having won everything he could.

British gymnasts have won medals.

British people have discovered the opposite of cynicism.


The Royal Triumvirate has been everywhere; William, Kate & Harry have clearly been the reason why so many have struggled to get tickets... But it has been sensational to see their wide-eyed and enthusiastic support mirroring our own from the sofa.

There's a saying that we do well at sports where we sit down - rowing, sailing, cycling. Swimming kind of counts, because basically they are lying down in water. But what about tennis? The heptathlon? The 10,000 metres? The long jump?

Or the organisation of a phenomenal international event?

If Lord Coe could be given some kind of new honour, it should be delivered post-haste, wrapped up in gold paper, with all of us carrying it after we've all signed the thank-you note.

Congrats to all. Congrats to every participant. Every winner. Everybody who has helped and volunteered and simply been there. I've been at one Team GB football match so far. I have tickets for the athletics at the Olympic Stadium twice this week, and at Wembley for the football final. Once in a lifetime. Transforming and defining a nation.

The greatest show on earth.

Isles of Wonder: God, Great Britain and Glory

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I wak'd,
I cried to dream again. 

How to encapsulate a nation? What to choose, what to omit? 

I was certainly ready to be thrilled as I sat down with friends on Friday. Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire is one of my all time favourite films, and I had no doubt his Olympic opening ceremony would challenge, entertain and amaze. I had no idea that he would provide a near-perfect reflection to the nation in which we live. He wouldn't show everything; but in his choices, he would find what matters.

The pre-ceremony show ended with Nimrod, the crowd providing the ocean around the central island, a protective blanket around an emotional paradise. And then...

A lone chorister (Carols from King's, anyone?) began Blake's Jerusalem. It's easy to be sniffy about Jerusalem. Pure nationalistic bombast. Religiously questionable. Yet here was a single voice, echoing one of our greatest annual Christian occasions offering words which with sweet melancholy question the idyll set before us - was such a scene ever real? We dream of such days, but were they ever so? And we found ourselves not in the theatre, but in liturgy, public worship in an open air cathedral. 

Hello world. This is Britain. We look at our glorious past and feel some loss. The past we so often proclaim might ever really have been what we thought it was. And the only way we can make sense of such a thing is to worship. We may not be the most Christian country. Yet we come back to this place.

The British don't go to church; but every census says we believe. From the earliest age, it's different and the same wherever we come from - as we saw in the children's choirs singing around the country, before the choir in the stadium pulled us back with Jerusalem's second verse. Whatever the past, whatever the mess of today - we will strive to do better, and this striving makes most sense in God's presence.

And then it falls apart. The hopeful dream is split apart by the greed and the marvel of invention. A classless society (which never was) becomes split by masters and slaves. Protest is born. Beijing stamped down on protest - it was invisible. London celebrated protest. It is our voice. 

It is human, it is divine to protest the breaking of the world. It is human, it is divine to celebrate the mending of the world. 

Redemption is the healing of past hurts. 


So the industrialisation that spoiled the fields led to the creation of new hopes - the five rings showering down light, bringing people together. Brunel invented the steamships that crossed the Atlantic; we had the Windrush come back, bringing people home from the other side of the Empire which Brunel's work helped establish. Ultimately, technology was turned into a gift not to separate but to unify, with Tim Berners-Lee and the Web and "This is for everyone" lighting up the arena. But healing hurts is also for everyone - so kindness and health and imagination and the NHS and children were all brought together with amazing energy. The fear of brokenness starts young; the celebration of healing that, and the determination to get there never ends. 

All of this was never allowed to feel preachy - because like the best sermons, it was filled with a delicious self-depricating humour. Rowan Atkinson pricked the balloon of "Chariots de feu". Bradley Wiggins was simply Bradley Wiggins. Paul McCartney was out of time on a song he's only had forty years to get right. And, in the greatest TV moment ever, the Queen turned around from her desk at Buckingham Palace and said, "Good evening, Mr Bond," before apparently jumping out of a helicopter. 

Welcome to Britain. We have a past. We have a present. They are not perfect. We'll laugh at ourselves along the way, because we deserve it. We'll protest, and do it in our leaders' faces (the Sex Pistols being played in HMQ's presence? Twice? Two Jubilees ago they were banned!) and do it together so that past hurts get healed and everyone gets to play.

And first and last, we do this as a nation that holds its seminal moments in the presence of God. 

At the start, a lone chorister. At the end Emeli Sande hymning those who have gone before. A beautiful dance group. And Henry Francis Lyte's Abide with Me, written three weeks before he died, sung in its entirety, pointing us to the skies. 

There are questions. There are uncertainties. But there are essential British values that fire through us along the way. And we celebrate who we are with passion, with thousands of ordinary people, with boundless creativity, with stunning music, with a smile and a tear, with pride and humility, with Christian faith suffusing the whole thing on and under the surface.

This is the Britain I love. 


Then we welcomed the world, marching behind their flags. And seven anonymous children received torches from seven stars and the flames of the nations united to become a fire of peace. Our nation is for everyone; society that at its best builds on the shoulders of giants and cherishes children.


O yes, I cried to dream again.      

a little night music

Last night saw Calverley Church packed to the walls with people eagerly anticipating the launch gig of Jonny Walker's EP CD, This Is Not Me.

Jonny is a terrific singer/songwriter, with influences ranging from Leonard Cohen to the Beatles, visiting Bob Dylan and Don Francisco on the way. His lyrics are evocative, and his wistful style endlessly melodic in a way that belies his roots in and love of busking and live street music.

Jonny asked me to provide a support act set to start the evening off, and to play piano alongside him during his set. It was a pleasure to take part in the event - and a challenge to think of material that would work alongside someone so different to my usual work!

I opted for half a dozen love songs.

A psalm, a song I wrote for a wedding (in the year John my bass player was born), a song of loss, a Welsh hymn of love (in Welsh), and two songs loving life in different ways - If I ruled the world (melted down into a gentle jazz waltz and allowed to be the prettiest of tunes), and Charlie Chaplin's Smile, all jazz solos before exploding into melody.

Free, expansive, fun, relaxed. I had the most response on the night to the song of loss, when I confessed that this apparent love song was about my dog. I almost couldn't sing it, actually, but once I started, it was alright.

I was really grateful for the chance to perform like that - and I was grateful to Jonny for asking me. Steve on trombone & John on bass who played with me were immense, and great fun. We may do something similar again; there is a suggestion in the air that we find an excuse to bring more simple jazz to the venue...

Then we headed into Jonny territory. The crowd loved it. Quite right. He is a great performer, even if a gig like this (as opposed to the informality of the streets) isn't quite his familiar territory. It should be, the material is certainly up to it, as is his terrific voice. In rehearsal, bass-player John's amazing ear rescued me more than once, and I guess Jonny is so used to working alone, and I so used to providing people with charts & chords that our very different working styles meant working together was at times a challenge for me. A challenge I'm glad I had, because it was a total pleasure to play on the evening, to listen, to watch and to be a part of what Jonny was doing.

Again - lots of thanks to Steve & John for being wonderful musicians to work with. And a shout out to Aled for help with the Welsh in Dyma Gariad. And thanks to Jonny for asking me to take part - and congrats on a great gig and a great CD. Click the link & have a listen!

renewing the Church in Wales

The Church in Wales has today issued a report offering a "radical vision" for its future as it approaches the centenary of its disestablishment in 2020.

The press report is here. The full report is here. The headlines picked out in the press report are:

• Parishes replaced by much larger ‘ministry areas’ which would mirror the catchment areas of secondary schools, where possible, and be served by a team of clergy and lay people;
• Creative use of church buildings to enable them to be used by the whole community;
• Training lay people to play a greater part in church leadership;
• Investing more in ministry for young people; 
• Developing new forms of worship to reach out to those unfamiliar with church services;
•  Encouraging financial giving to the church through tithing.

Other recommendations I've seen picked up on include selling off vicarages so that clergy can buy or rent their own homes, continuing the drive to emphasise Welsh language services and promoting ecumenism. The BBC have an interesting piece on the report, and a reaction item in which my successor at St Catherine's comments, as does Stewart Franklin, erstwhile warden there & good friend who always supported me in many, many ways. I see they've added a comment from Mark Broadway too! He'll be delighted.

There are things to welcome and things to question, as with any report. I'm going to be a positive voice. It's important to be a positive voice. For the church to move forwards, we have to grab opportunities and use them. It doesn't matter if we think they are ideal. We take what comes and make the most of what we have. Otherwise, we simply corrode and destroy, and I have a suspicion that this isn't ideal Gospel life.

It is simply common sense that the future of the church lies in mixed ministry models.

The age of one-size-fits all parochial ministry has gone. It was probably never perfect. It was probably the best thing. For a very long time. What matters is that the concept of the church for the community remains.

'The community' is not the concept it was, and that's a problem. I am interested that the review, on the surface, without having yet had time to go through it in detail, links the future of the church to school catchment areas. Undoubtedly there is no future without youth, and that recognition is powerful and well made. Communities are built around schools. This is a powerful identifier. It serves a very useful purpose.

(Is it the best identifier? In church growth terms, more churches gain more whole families - and therefore youth - by focussing on men than on children. Just a comment.)

If I look back at my time in Pontypridd, we tried at one time to see what this kind of 'ministry area' idea might be. It might involve fewer buildings. A fine concept - but people need to be nurtured on that journey so that it's not just about losing a building and being made to "go to church in someone else's church" but also about gaining a future and a new community. That's the stuff of real challenge. Real challenge needs real vision, and real vision needs real leaders.

Question: is the Church in Wales training real leaders? You can't move forward without them.

Because in Pontypridd, we looked at what might be...and stepped back. We looked at something very like the recommendations I am reading, and didn't do it. And if I am honest, and I may get some stick for this, it was because there was a leadership failure. Clergy wanted the archdeacon & the bishop to lead - ie to take the flack. The archdeacon & the bishop wanted clergy to do that job. Quite rightly, in my opinion. The people just wanted to know what was going on, and in the meantime, dug their heels in.

I fear that this may happen across Wales...

Not because people are weak, but because change is tricky. Grand ideas need more than a vote at Governing Body. They need to be owned. Understood. To be prayed through and to be believed in. And the process of loss for 'what was' is deep; but it is acceptable if the leaders (and that's parish clergy - they are the on the ground leaders, they have to do this) can take their flocks through the journey safely to the new place.

This happens, it seems to me, when everyone has bought into two things:

1. The Church we belong to is God's; he loves us, and what we do matters because he loves us. So we are safe to give our all.

2. We will trust each other on this journey. Come what may.

If we believe that the Church is God's, and sacrifice is OK because we are giving to God our time and energy and lives - we will achieve far more than we thought possible. The Church will change. We will change. Amazing things will happen, and it will be different from what we knew in the past - but life will come. Resurrection occurs in the strangest places, normally amongst the tombs.

And love will break out. Not distrust, 'protecting my patch at any cost'. I have to let go of my patch. I have to love you. You who aren't as holy as me. I have to trust that you are a Christian too. And that we belong to one another. It's this generosity that changes the world.

Plans & reviews are frameworks. Attitudes of the heart make frameworks live. Without them, the best plans will fail.

Is this the best plan?

Not sure. But it has great ideas. And for sure, the Church in Wales should grab the time and be of good cheer. There's lots here to like. But liking isn't enough.

This is a time for the Church to astound the world and be fundamentally Christian. To believe God loves us. To love one another. Then even a half-crazy plan will stunningly succeed. And this, to me, seems better than half-crazy. A little pessimistic, but not crazy.

For Christ is for us; who can be against us?

the unkindest cut

The Telegraph reported on June 27th that a German court had banned circumcision of infants. Religious freedom was not contravened, the court decided, because a child could decide later in life whether it wanted the rite. Until a child was of age to decide, it was seen as an offence to contravene the child's fundamental right to bodily integrity.

I tweeted about this at the time, and received a bit of grief for it. One doctor saw unnecessary surgery on a child as criminal.

Giles Fraser posted about the case this weekend in the Guardian. He's had a lot of comments. Mostly, from my brief perusal, fairly negative. His argument is that religion, faith, isn't simply personal because identity isn't personal. We believe because we are. Or, to put that another way, communities exist. They exist with standards and cultures and ways of seeing the world. Modern liberalism, which reduces everything to a place where there are no values until you choose your values, is a lazy middle class fiction. (He doesn't call it lazy; I can think of worse words.) There are always values.

No man is an island.

Sorry.

No person...

I want to go far further. For me, Christians need to hear what happened here and understand what our job is. Our job is to defend the fatherless, protect the widows, champion the dispossessed. Where there are weak, there we are - on their side, being strong. We sing for the lost. We protest for the powerless. We are for those who feel that the world is against them.

Even when we don't always believe in the cause.

Because we love what God loves, and God loves people.

But Marcus, comes the liberal rejoinder, what about the child who has no power to say, "Stop!" as the knife approaches, as the cut comes near, as the blood flows. "What about being on his side?"

For a Christian, identity comes in many shapes and sizes. George Carey is winning his war on the wearing of crosses at work; the Prime Minister has promised the law will be changed to allow this, if it needs to be changed. Little silver crucifixes are not terribly New Testament, even if they are en vogue for Bishops and politicians and nurses and airline attendants. The badge of Christian faith is in fact something altogether invisible. St Paul, at least in good Protestant tradition,  is clear: baptism is our marker. Faith is what makes us Christians, but baptism is the badge of belonging.

And it can come when an infant or later in life. A child can decide. A parent can lead the way. We vary.

Oh, how ignorant of the Scriptures we are.

The same liberal minded Guardian readers who condemn Giles Fraser march in hundreds of thousands to condemn the US for cultural vandalism, enforcing 'western' standards on Iraq or Afghanistan. But then they engage in exactly the same kind of cultural vandalism on Judaism, bidding it become just a bit more like the Church of England. So much easier to ignore, except at Christmas. Or whatever.

Circumcision is not a choice. It's not optional. It's not now or later. It is at the very core of Jewish identity. It comes on the eighth day. It is cultural, religious, personal, social, it is at the heart of a people and has been for thousands of years. It's older than Moses. It's from the beginning.

As Christians we opt in, we opt out. We have so much choice. We lose so much. Jewish identity does not work like this, and we make a mistake if we judge another aspect of humanity on the poverty-stricken standards of our own.

A court says a child suffers loss; it must have the right to self-determination and freedom of belief.

It must lose community. Identity. Belonging. Tradition. Culture. Because these things do not match what we see as right. And we know so much better.

No, we don't.

Never mind the secular liberals whom I am parodying here (and it is a parody, I accept, though like all good parodies, it carries a very great deal of truth) as Christians, when we disagree with others, we are called to love them. This involves understanding them. We may still disagree. That's OK. But part of loving is understanding so well that when our neighbour is threatened we fight for them. For their right to exist. This German ruling threatens our neighbour. We should stand as one and fight for them.

Personally, I find circumcision abhorent. People are sometimes surprised by this - and again this carries cultural overtones: 55% of American males do it for reasons of hygiene. I don't care. I just don't like it. I'm not Jewish. I'm not Moslem. It's not for me. But that a court thinks it can stop a community from existing - that I will stand up against & do my best to stop.

We stop things that are wrong by standing with our neighbours and supporting them 100%.

And tomorrow they will stand with us.

Now of course, the German Chancellor herself stood up to the court and its ridiculous decision. Quite right. So I write about this not because it's ongoing and has an unfinished or unhappy ending, but because the issue behind the story is vital. Christians must love people. Must understand people. Must allow people to be different. Must value people and their myriad values. We are only 'right' when we do this. This is the only standard we may ever set and hope to have emulated everywhere we go. Our morality is not simply about making people conform to our idea of what it means to 'be moral'. And that's a huge thing for us to grasp. Love is complex.

In the end, we are called to do unto others...

Because God loves others.

Because others are people too.

Because others will do likewise unto us.

Because this kind of doing is the closest thing to living out love we can manage, and that has to be our aim.

a year on

A year ago today saw my final Sunday at St Catherine's.

Frankly, it seems a very long time ago.

I've often been asked if I miss my life there. The answer is 'no'. I do miss a lot of people, whom I think of often, and I do miss some of the things I used to do, and it's great to preach occasionally in Calverley.

But I don't miss the whole package.

I was clear when I went into it that it was what I should be doing, and I was clear when I walked away 12 months ago, that it was what I should be doing. Life is about change and moving forwards and growing and (for a Christian) being obedient and serving God and people. You don't have to be in paid ministry to do that stuff!

There are no crystal balls; we make decisions and sometimes we get things wrong. In which case we should acknowledge what we've done and have another go. But in moving from Pontypridd, I got it right. The job's a challenge, and I love a challenge. I'm learning constantly in all kinds of ways, and I'm enjoying that process. My pride takes all kinds of knocks, and I smile at myself and get on with it.

Then I go home, relax, and rest till the next day.

Of course, there have been challenges.

Most of these have been about family illnesses and being concerned with what has been happening to people I care about. I've had a bit of bad health myself. And, of course, losing Matt affects every day. There's a piece in today's Telegraph by Ben Fogle about losing his dog, and I know what he means. Matt's companionship and friendship was a foundational reality in my life. Far more so than my old job title or the social standing or community leadership that went with that role.

Last year on this Sunday I looked out at the crowd before me and saw some of the faces that were not there: I wrote of Dan & Kirsty Jones. Today I am with them, and Flo & Sam, in their Dordogne home. We've been speaking of change & identity.

The things that make me who I am remain; desires to love God & people, and a certain fallibility at both; a passion for music; a need to communicate in written & spoken word; an enjoyment of performance arts, sports & good food, passively and actively, with varying degrees of relative success; insecurities about my height, my weight, my hair-loss... Changing my job, my home, my situation, my challenges freshens everything up. It reminds me what really matters. Who I am. Even, just a bit, why I am.

A year on, I miss people I left behind. I occasionally think of the work back there in terms of the ways I could be serving, but I am reminded that my solutions had a sell-by date attached, and I am thrilled that Peter is in place to take a community forwards in ways beyond my gift set. I am working on my gift set.

And I don't know what the long term is, but I am grateful to be where I am (and I mean Leeds, rather than this current, splendid holiday weekend with la Famille Jones, for which gratitude is insufficient a word) and, with the qualification of the sadness of Matt, to be enjoying the moment.

As for what is to come... As I said. There are no crystal balls. But I have a smile on my face, hope in my heart, and curiosity abundant. That's a fair deal, I should say.