Day Off Week 47 2021

It was slightly Christmassy this week. I started playing Christmas music and noticed a band I'd not noticed before from Canada called Coig who have two nice Christmas albums. I also read a few pages from a collection of Christmas stories I have on kindle that I downloaded last year or the year before and went out and did some Christmas shopping! I also read some more of Northanger Abbey, which I started to reread the other day in a beautiful Chiltern Publications edition and another in the series of art books from the shelf on the landing that I began on recently. This week, it was Lautrec. Again, I had a vague idea of things but this helped get me clearer on the short lived French artist. In the evening I watched the Bake off final because others were watching it.

Day off Week 41

Last week's day off fell on Saturday, as we wanted to join Eleri's father celebrating his 80th birthday down in Cardiff. We travelled on Friday night and were pleasantly surprised at how straight forward it was for a potentially stormy Friday night. We stayed with Eleri's younger sister. I spent half of Saturday morning catching up on my Bible reading journal - behind again. I then discovered that I had brought no change of shirt and so had to head into Whitchurch, which only has a Peacocks when it comes to men's shirts (I don't buy clothes from charity shops). I nearly bought a trartan shirt but went for the black denim in the end. Geoff's daughters and thers had worked really hard and so we had an excellent get together in the church where two of our sons now worship with their wives. (In fact one pair now live in a bungalow right next to the church so it was good to visit them for the first time in their new home beforehand) About sixty family and friends turned up and we sang happy birthday, etc. Lovely time. It was nice to be with some of the family after the party before we left, getting home around 10 pm. The only sad note was missing sons - one in America and the family who couldn't get down from Aber because of the flooding.

Grudem for sale

I was in a charity shop earlier today (Noah's Ark Hospice shop on the Finchley Rd) and was surprised to see a copy of Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology going for £2. I hope they've gone on to Bavinck rather than having abandoned theology. There was no sign of the previous owner within.

The modern world

In South Wales again. En route I stopped for diesel at a BP garage. "What number?" he says when I go to pay. "18". He looks confused as 18 is already paid. I check again and I am right. it turns out the man at number 19 has paid the wrong bill. The difference is about a pound so they ask me if I have change, which I don't as I'm saving my cash for the bridge. In the end the customer whose mistake it was stuck with my bill and let me pay his, losing a pound or so but getting us all out of a problem.

Then I'm in Cwmbran shopping centre trying to get change for a £10 note. The shops won't open their tills except for a purchase. No problem, I'll try a bank. The banks won't give you change unless you're a customer (my bank is the other side of the centre). They say it's to do with money laundering but they are quick to volunteer that the Post Office will do it (queue too long). So if you are planning to launder money go to the Post Office not a bank, I guess.

Meanwhile I drive my nephew into my old school (Croesy Comp). Can't remember when I was there last. It's now like a prison. Everywhere is fenced off to keep kids out of the woods and fields. It's looking pretty tatty all round but the fencing doesn't help I'm sure.

Things Seen

I was in W H Smith's today and asked to try out a pen I wanted to buy. The assistant then threw the piece of paper at the bin and missed. "You won't make the team" I said. "I'm too short anyway" he replied, obviously this being a bit of a thing with him. At 5'5" it seemed to me that he didn't need to worry. I said to him "there are bigger things to worry about than that" ....

Unbelief in boxes

I'm in W H Smith, waiting in the queue to pay for my paper. The man in front of me says "two boxes of unbelief, please". I think to myself "it's come to this. You can even buy unbelief over the counter". Then I thought "I've probably misheard him". I had. He wanted Amber leaf cigarettes.

Easter Apology

I found this Easter apology to TV broadcaster Richard Madeley here

Dear Richard
About fifteen years ago you walked into Tesco, picked up a couple of bottle’s of champagne and left, forgetting to pay. You were subsequently accused of shoplifting but declared not guilty. In spite of this I took great delight in laughing about you with my friends. Being teenagers we found that the mention of your name brought gales of laughter and so you became subject of a cheap gag. Today I feel guilty about that. I’m a 32 year old man with three small and distracting children; a Tesco over the road which I visit almost every day and a rapidly decreasing attention span. These elements have created a perfect storm. Since Christmas I’ve unwittingly taken things out of the shop without paying on three different occasions. On each occasion I have gone back and paid without anyone realising, and on each occasion I’ve gone home thinking of you. There’s no difference between us. We both wandered out of a shop without paying. It was an accident when you did it just as it is an accident when I and a million people like me do it from time to time. So why was I so keen to mock you? One reason is that when I was 15 I lived to make people laugh and you were an easy target. But maybe there was more to it. I wonder if you provoked my sense of justice like a man hitting a wasp nest with a stick. After all you were a wealthy celebrity stealing champagne while I, a school boy, had to buy the things I wanted with money from a paper round. So on some subconscious level I refused to believe that you had just made a mistake. Even when the British justice system got taken in, I knew the truth and I determined that I would not forgive you. Of course that sense of justice is less pronounced now. One day when the inevitable happens and an overweight and red faced security guard collars me and asks me why I’m leaving Tesco with a block of cheese and no receipt, I’m hoping that the staff in Tesco will accept my explanation that I was distracted and forgot. I hope they will look at the children tugging at my coat, the baby sick on my shoulder and the three day stubble on my face and understand. I hope they will go easy on me. That’s the odd thing about Justice. We demand it for everyone else without prejudice and yet when we find ourselves in a similar position we cry out for understanding, leniency even mercy. It’s double standards of course and also impossible to allow in a civilised country. Sometimes, no matter how many tears are shed and apologies made, Justice must be done at the expense of mercy. If that frightens us in this life it should be terrifying when we think of our relationship with God. After all God is holy and cannot tolerate sin and yet none of us is perfect. In fact the Bible tells we have all fallen short of the glory of God. If God is going to be just he will have to punish us for declare us all guilty and separate Himself from us for ever. But God is a loving God and wants to share Eternity with us so he faces a dilemma. On the one hand He must be just but on the other hand He wants to show mercy. It’s in the Easter story that we see this dilemma resolved. In the darkness and violence of Calvary, we see Justice done; a man called Jesus is punished for sin. The amazing thing is though, that the man is innocent! The sin He is punished for is not His own. More amazing still, the man punished is God’s own son! He willingly entered in an agreement with his father that together they rescue sinful people. And so on the cross, God acts justly, punishing sin, so that he may forgive the sin of everyone who asks, in his mercy. I hope that this Easter you will know the forgiveness and Grace of God for yourself. Yours sincerely.
Jonathan
PS Please do not hold your breath for any accompanying apology from me concerning the number of times I have shouted/ cringed/ chewed my fist at the television when you have been on doing your Alan Partridge impression.

Modern Britain 03

I saw this in the Times today

How the middle class are shoplifting to keep up appearances

Middle-class shoppers who have been hit by the recession are stealing hundreds of millions of pounds of expensive food in an effort to maintain their high standard of living, according to a new survey.

Quality cuts of meat, fresh fish and high-priced cheeses are being taken by mostly middle-class women from speciality food and convenience shops, where thefts have risen sharply in the past year. Thousands of retailers have found that luxury foods are being stolen for individual use rather than to be sold on.

The information comes from more than 42,000 shops in Europe with combined sales of £262 billion, who were questioned by the Centre for Retail Research, an independent organisation, for Checkpoint Systems, the retail security specialists.

They found that shoplifting in Britain has increased in the past year by nearly 20 per cent to almost £5 billion, £750 million more than in 2008, keeping Britain at the top of Europe’s shoplifting table. Clothing and fashion accessory shops were hardest hit, with branded designer goods high on thieves’ shopping lists, closely followed by DIY stores.


Neil Matthews, vice-president of Checkpoint Systems, said that he was astonished at the rise of middle-class shoplifters. “We are not simply looking at your traditional shoplifters here. We are seeing more instances of amateur thieves stealing goods for their own personal use rather than to sell on than before,” he said.

“This is epitomised in the recent uprising of the middle-class shoplifter, someone who has turned to theft to sustain their standard of living. I suppose people want to carry on with their lifestyle but cannot afford the expensive cheeses, fresh cuts of meat or nice fish that they used to be able to afford and now they just take it. This is the first year we have seen a huge rise in theft of these items and we are being told it is for their own consumption rather than to sell on.”

He added: “The UK’s retail industry has seen its largest ever increase in shoplifting over the last 12 months, and it comes at a time when the industry can least afford it.”

The report, which surveyed more than 1,000 retailers worldwide with sales of £514 billion, found that 43.5 per cent of all stock that went missing was stolen by opportunistic thieves and organised gangs, but employee theft was on the rise. Britain is behind only the Irish Republic in Western Europe for the most dishonest staff.

SM City

Manila is full of shopping malls and tonight I was in the biggest in The Philippines, the SM City North EDSA one with Pastor Mon and his family. You can read about it here. We visited Pizza Hut for a lovely big meal and the incredibly over staffed SM Department Store for gifts and The National Bookstore where I bought Jose Rizal's Do not touch me.

Days in Devon 03

Wednesday was a less successful day in some ways, with the weather still not too bad but not great either. As on other days the children were up first for a bit of telly followed by the adults one by one. All up before 9.30 am. Geoff or someone else heads off for the papers around eightish and returns with the Mail, Telegraph and Times. We all enjoy being together in the large kitchen until 10 or so.
Today we headed off to Westward Ho! (named from a Kingsley novel, the only place in Britain with an exclamation mark in its name). It was rather different to what most of us expected I think. I thought it would be more like Clovelly but it was more like Margate or Rhyl or somewhere. The dull weather didn’t help. We went on the beach nevertheless and enjoyed throwing stones and working on a quiz that Geoff had found in a charity shop. The IT shop was closed and so hopes of an internet connection that some of us would like were dashed. We’ll cope.
We headed on then to a retail park just outside Bideford we had visited briefly on the way down. It had an Asda and several other shops including an M&S outlet and a remaindered books shop. There was also a nice park with various activities for kids (bouncing, panning for gold, etc) that all the younger ones enjoyed.
Back here there were more old videos to see. There are 15 one hour tapes (not all full) that will hopefully be transferred to something more accessible at some time. There was one clip from 1994 of a school concert with Rhodri in, followed by Christmas Dinner with my parents. That was interesting. Later we played consequences together - the kids love it. We had a hilarious moment when Owain tried to read back what he'd written. His writing and reading skills are quite minimal. We also played an urban myth team game that Rhodri had brought later. None of us proved very able at discerning truth from myth.

New Photo Series 04

Kilburn Charity Shop

Romania 03

After the conference there was time to relax. We walked into town from the University. Oradea is clearly a developing town with many of the features of any modern European city. We went into a shopping mall for a coffee and to buy some gifts and I could have been in Brent Cross for all the difference. That's what makes buying gifts difficult. Everything is so internationalised. I managed to find some chocolate with suitably Romanian labels and some mugs for the boys celebrating Steaua and Rapid Bucharest (nearly 500 km away!).

At the same time religion is in evidence. Work on the Orthodox Cathedral with its impressive roof continues (John said it had been going on for years). We took the tram back and were then due to join Dinu, Lydia and their son Andrei for our evening meal. They took us out to the rather select Hotel Scorilo (see here). In an attempt to avoid the smoke we ended up in a room themed on the story of Al Capone. Prison uniforms were provided and I managed to get us all into the hats (although Lydia I notice declined to wear hers).