Passions Old and New

 Trying to think of a title for this latest post I came up with passions - old ones and new ones. I am hoping that this will increase my readership because people will come across it in a search engine whilst looking for something ... ahem... slightly different.
One of my passions that is about 6 years old is my church. Not a day goes by without having an enormous sense of privilege being the minister to such a lovely big family. Now into my 7th year, one of the things we have done around this time of year is a student barbecue, really just trying to promote the church among the younger residents of the area, a great many of whom are students.

 We last did it a couple of years ago and it was an absolute disaster, mainly because the publicity advertising it which should have been sent out by another group sat on someone's desk, so no one knew about it. Result was a group of about 6 students who couldn't manage the 200 - odd burgers and hot dogs we had cooked.
So I was more than a little nervous waiting for the start of this one. But I have long believed that faith is only faith when you try something and are prepared to hang yourself out to dry if it doesn't come off.
Well it was brilliant - dozens and dozens of young people came, and all but 3 of the burgers were eaten. The remaining three, I'm ashamed to say, didn't survive the journey home, which was about 5 minutes.

Well now for a brand new passion - my brand new grandchildren. The observant among you will notice a difference in size. On the right is my first grandchild, a little boy who was born in early August, and who has rapidly put on a great deal of very healthy weight. Large appetites tend to run in our family. He is absolutely gorgeous and such a delight to his Mom and Dad, and to Mrs. L. and I.

At the other end are my twin granddaughters, also irresistibly gorgeous, and born about a month after our grandson. They are also doing fantastically well, having been 5 lb and some change at birth and now expanding nicely. We can't tell them apart - identical twins - so their Mom and Dad colour code them for us so we know what each one is called. Just as a fail-safe in case they get them confused or the clothing gets mixed up one has painted toe-nails!
Yes I am a proud Grandad.

 Is this an old passion or a new one? Well I guess its a bit of both. I had two and a half days at our home in Northumberland because I wanted some time and space with God to talk about one or two rather important things, and up there I am not interrupted much. And for me the best place to talk to God is Lindisfarne (Holy Island) where Aidan, who first brought Christianity to England, decided he would set up his base too.

  

 You don't always see fishing boats operating round the island so it's always nice to bump into a few islanders who make a living from the sea. There was something really poignant, I thought, about this small fishing boat plying its lonely way through the tidal waters just south of the island.

 

 But just to lighten the mood I came across this sign on one of the village greens. Really people ought to stop and think before they put home-made signs up - or perhaps it was deliberate. Anyhow some rather interesting and not altogether wholesome images passed through my mind for a minute or two after this.

 But back to the sublime - another picture of Lindisfarne Castle, surely one of the most iconic sights in the whole of the UK, if not Europe.

 I love October - it's one of my favourite months, and in my opinion the most underrated month in the calendar; people seem to think winter has set in and batten down the hatches once September ends. This is a shame I always think, because October offers an enormous amount. One of the reasons I love Northumberland at this time of year is because of the weather - often dry, not too cold, and with fantastic light. These two photos I took just because I thought the sky was so full of creative light and cloud formations.

 You see this a lot - the causeway to Lindisfarne after the tide has come in and a driver who is sure he (occasionally she but not normally) can make it due to his incredible driving skills. This is right at the start of the causeway at high tide, and the water at its deepest will be at least at waist height. There is more than three miles of road to navigate to reach the  island in the distance. Will he have enough sense to turn round or will he become another drain on the resources of the rescue services?
I didn't stay to find out.

Now another older passion of mine - football. I played till my mid-30's and refereed for a while, but nowadays I am only a spectator. There was no premiership football this weekend so my beloved Aston Villa weren't in action, but Mrs. L. was in London at a craft fair or something similar with her best friend. So I looked through the fixture list of non-league football and noted that Atherstone Town were playing Barrow just about 45 minutes from home.It was a match in the 3rd qualifying round of the FA Cup, so for the minnows a great deal was at stake. Having expected to find a couple of dozen old chaps in cloth caps watching, all of whom knew far more about the game than any of the players I was pleasantly surprised to find the ground quite full. The home supporters were also letting off red flares in their stand, presumably to encourage their team who play in red and white.

I only just arrived in time, but some chap opened a gate to ease the queue at the only turnstile I could see in operation and announced "It's a fiver to get in" and then took the money off all of us who went in that way. I presumed that he was a club official, but I'm not so sure now. Still, I was in the ground, and £5 seemed quite a reasonable price to pay for the entertainment.
I was later to rate it as one of the best £5s I have spent in quite a while.
The match was really a David and Goliath affair - Barrow (the one in Cumbria) play in the Conference Premier division - that's 4 levels below the Premier League, and Atherstone are about three levels below that, so were always going to struggle.
Well it was all one-way traffic but heroic last-ditch defending kept the away team at bay for about 25 minutes, when a rather neat header couldn't be kept out by the hitherto immaculate Atherstone goalkeeper (pictured below.)

 Well he is clearly a favourite of the supporters, those standing behind the goal chanting "England's Number One." Well I know Joe Hart is having a bit of an off season, but such adulation seemed a little over the top.
This proved to be the case about 5 minutes after the first goal when he bent down to pick up the ball as it was moving very slowly towards him and his goal and ... well, perhaps it hit a bump, or perhaps it swerved suddenly, or ... errrr.... well, it kind of went though his hands, then through his legs, then almost with an apology for the inconvenience rolled sedately over the goal line coming to rest long before it got anywhere near the netting. 2-0

 

More relentless Barrow attacking followed, and two more goals in the first half, and the only real question was how many the visitors would score. In the immortal words of Bill Shankley (I think) 'It was four nil at half time and we were lucky to get nil.'

At this point my money would have been on 7-0 on the basis that the game was being played in a very good spirit, and at some point the away team would decide to have mercy on their opponents. Here they are shoulder to shoulder leaving the pitch - about the only expression of equality in the entire game.
Then the fun started.

I'd just gone to queue up for my Bovril. I should explain that if you are a Brummie and go to a football match, a cup of hot Bovril at half time is de rigeur. Disappointed to discover that they had no Bovril and could only offer me Oxo (a poor substitute in the same way that you can eat mincemeat if there's no sirloin steak available) and I understood still better why the country is going downhill so fast and has apparently lost its moral fibre.
So exuding chagrin I turned round, wondering what I would do for the rest of the half-time interval when I discovered the home supporters had laid on some free entertainment. About 30 of them had run across the field of play to launch an attack on the opposing supporters.
The artillery bombardment came first in the form of more of the red flares, hurled into the stands where the away supporters were busy gloating, and then the infantry went in brandishing fists and boots and goodness knows what weaponry in an all-out assault.
The police sprang into action - both of them and decided that another cup of tea would help them decide on the best course of action.  Now this was like football of old, back in the 70's and 80's at Villa Park when you could still stand up to watch a match, which made the obligatory scrap with any away supporters who came running across the pitch so much easier to engineer and so entertaining.
Because there was no one to intervene to break up the fighting we had three full rounds of no-holds-barred scrapping before the stewards lumbered into action with sufficient determination to separate the now exhausted fans. But what a wonderful show it had been.

 I really thought it might have been abandoned at half time, especially as the officials and substitutes from Barrow had to sit right in front of the home supporters, but to their credit they came out and played the second half.

This is the away goalkeeper whose only real problems were staying awake and staving off frostbite. And the assistant referee jogging over to check the net is ok.

Well to their credit Atherstone managed to draw the second half 0-0, though just possibly Barrow decided that if they wanted any windows left in their team bus to keep out the cold and rain they had better not score again. Amazingly Atherstone even made it to the Barrow penalty area a couple of times. The defender in yellow has clearly been taking lessons in holding opposing forwards in a way the referee can't see from the likes of Rio Ferdinand and John Terry .

 

They even created one clear header almost on target, though I think someone was offside at the time!

What a wonderful Saturday afternoon out. Hope no one was seriously hurt. Funny how the streets outside the ground were full of police but they didn't seem to make it inside. Well it was a bit cold and damp.

Chess shenanigins

 A bit of a confession - I'm something of a chess nut, and the inception of online chess was for me one of the happiest moments in my life.If I'm honest I spend a bit too much time playing online chess, but it is quite addictive. You get to play people from all over the world and communicate through the universal language of chess.

Almost 3 years ago I entered a tournament that began with 96 players, and somehow by a combination of good luck and people dropping out, and the occasional good bit of play I kept getting through to the next round.

Because you are allowed 5 days for each move games can take an awful long time - I think there has been one that lasted 6 months or more. Anyhow, to cut a long story short, I was thrilled (and slightly proud) to discover I had made it to the last 4.

1.  dGuran (2243)	X	_ _	_ _	1  1	2	0
2.  me! (1961)	_  _	X	_  _	1  1	2	0
3.  ProVteur (1903)	_  _	_ _	X	1  1	2	0
4.  Bordiga (2551)	0  0	0  0	0  0	X	0	0

The numbers in brackets are the rating figures, basically the higher the figure the better the player. In spite of the statistics I am the weakest player in the group - the chap with 1903  is actually better than me for reasons I won't bore my readers with.

Announcing this proudly to Mrs. L I followed it with the comment that it will be all downhill from here as the other players are stronger / much stronger than me, and the two strongest have already thrashed me 4 times between them.

So I come down to the computer yesterday to discover some interesting developments.
The chap with the strongest rating (2551 is only about 300 less than the world champion and would certainly place him in the category of people who might expect to earn a living from the game) has been thrown out for cheating, and his games awarded to his opponents.

There are a number of consequences to this; one is that I now won't finish any worse than third in the tournament - something beyond my wildest dreams at the start. But the main consequence is that my rating of 1961 (already rather higher than warranted to be honest) has gone through the roof because when you beat (or are awarded a game) against a stronger player your rating goes up, and the greater the difference in rating the greater the increase in points. So I am now on 2100 or more. As a consequence I received this rather nice message from Chess.com who host all the chess I play.



Congratulations on achieving a high rating on Chess.com! You are now among the strongest players on our site.

Whenever any player reaches this level we send out this message to highlight our policies and practices related to cheating. As a strong player, you should not be overly concerned about increased exposure to cheaters: We are doing everything we can to combat cheating on this site!

We have a zero-tolerance policy on cheating, and we have developed sophisticated (and very effective) cheat-detection methods.When we catch cheaters, we close their accounts immediately and ban them from future participation on Chess.com.

If you are at all unclear on our policies related to the use of chess software or reference materials, please review our FAQ on cheating. Otherwise, just relax and enjoy the game! We will remain vigilant, working hard to minimize the impact of cheating in your games and those of other honest players on our site.

We wish you best as you continue to play and improve!

Sincerely,
Chess.com

Of course the veiled warning is "if you cheat we will catch you and throw you out." If you don't know how people cheat they basically use a computer programme to make their moves, and since the best computer programmes can pretty much beat the best chess players in the world you really have no chance at all if you find yourself up against one. I don't even own a chess programme so the temptation doesn't arise, though I do have books, which they allow you to use.

So I now find myself ranked something like 1,900th out of 340,000 chess players.

This will not last, so I am enjoying the moment before the coming day - not too far off, I suspect, when I will be brought crashing down to earth.
But it is nice while it lasts!

Recent Outings

 A few interesting things have been happening in the bishop's world in recent weeks, so time for an update on where I've been and what I've been up to.
This photo was taken in Southwold while on a one-night camping trip with my wonderful wife. Methodists are supposed to be teetotal - very few of them are in my experience. I was grateful that this church was over 100 miles from home, or I could lose half my congregation. The church building is actually situated next to the brewery and they seem to coexist quite happily cheek by jowl. This would not have been the case a century ago- there would have been pickets, prayer meetings and demonstrations, and the Methodists would have been even worse.

 Weather was glorious, and we walked into Southwold from Walberswick, which was a delight. The return at sunset across the golf course and common after fish and chips was idyllic.

Not sure if I have posted about this, but on August 5th my first grandchild, Rowan, was born. My little daughter is a wonderful Mom, and my son-in-law a great father. Rowan is gorgeous, but I thought I would make this the first picture - think this mouthful of Mom's milk didn't quite pass quality control.

 Here's a gorgeous one to compensate. He really is a lovely cute baby. So proud of my daughter and son-in-law.
Four weeks later the twin girls were born - more on that to follow in another blog. But to have a grandson and two granddaughters as well as two sons and two daughters, two sons-in-law and one daughter-in-law with another to follow next year,all of whom are wonderful, is wealth beyond imagination

 Last night Mrs. L and I went out to the theatre, but first dinner at Wagamama. Really impressed with this place in Highcross in Leicester; very tasty noodle dishes at reasonable prices. These two meals look similar but don't be fooled - mine has no chilli, garlic or spice in, and Mrs. L's has another use - blasting rock in the local quarry.

 A rather revealing outfit my gorgeous wife was wearing made the view very enjoyable. Anyone for dumplings?

On to the theatre to see the new Alan Bennett play "People". Script and storyline and general air of comforting melancholia up to his usual very high standards, but I was irritated at the stereotypical portrayal of Church leaders. Mrs. L. pointed out that they were only Church of England clergy so it didn't matter so much. Fair comment I suppose. Then I thought through the cast and realised that all the characters were stereotypes, and the clergy were not singled out for special treatment.

Perhaps I was just disappointed because Mrs. L got to see a man's bare bottom (why women find this part of a man's anatomy attractive is completely beyond me) and I was not really similarly rewarded. I won't say more for fear of giving too much away.

 On the way out we were able to see what went on behind the scenes, and just how complex the whole operation is.

 Some of the many props....

 ... including several chamber pots that had been filled with the pee of famous people (don't ask!)

And a glimpse onto the stage; it all made me want to tread the boards myself; perhaps one day when I am retired.

Well we're off to Rhodes in a few weeks time for our main holiday - delayed this year by the arrival of grandchildren, and a price well worth paying. Now that will probably take a few blogs, if there is nothing much to report in the meantime.

Three Days with Benji in Picardy Part 4

Now when you wake up on a French camp site on an August morning that looks like this you really don't want to be leaving. So it was rather depressing to put the tent away after breakfast, load the bike and head off.

In order to make my visit to the World War 1 battlefield sites more eclectic I decided to go to Ypres - Ieper as the Belgians now call it, and since it is in their country they should know. It was a flying visit, negotiating the motorway round Lille and thankful for my excellent TomTom  motorbike satnav which was superb, an attribute that could hardly be ascribed to some of the French drivers on the busy roads. What is it about people that changes them from thoughtful, considerate drivers on rural roads to morons once they are on four-lane city perimeter roads? Anyway I knew I had crossed into Belgium not only because of a change in the road signs but because the road surfaces deteriorated significantly - one way of enforcing the speed limit for motorbikes! Ieper has a lovely cathedral - and lots of impressive buildings.

I only had time to call into the entrance to this museum, but it is pretty clear that the WWI battlefields are a major contributor to the tourist trade. I was surprised that here, just over the border from France, everything is in Flemish that isn't geared to the English tourist.

A scorching hot day, and I had my bike gear on - could cheerfully have stripped and lay down in this, but doubt it would have improved the prospects for the tourist industry.

First sight of the monument I had come to Ypres to see - the Menin Gate. Bought a couple of bottles of Coca Cola on this street, spoke not a word to the shop woman, who nevertheless wished me a "good morning." How did she know I was British? "I can just tell." This is depressing, but at least I didn't have to demonstrate my ignorance of the language.

You get a bit nearer and start to appreciate the scale of the thing

There were a whole host of places like this, offering tours of battlefield sites and various other "reality" experiences. I would have liked to have tried one, but had insufficient time.

Close up it becomes even more impressive

Some boards explaining what happens here on a regular basis and what the monument is all about

thankfully all in English

This is what is morbidly impressive - every inch of every wall is covered with the names of the people who were killed in the fighting around Ypres.

But these are only the names of those who were never buried because their remains were never found. As I understand it some simply disappeared under the water and mud and their bodies were never recovered.

Even allowing for the possibility of the odd few having escaped and who sat out the war incognito in some Belgian bordello this is gruesomely impressive. Every archway reveals another series of walls covered in yet more names.

It simply never seems to end. Now they are just names, but of course they were once real men who were loved and missed and mourned.

Just time for a quick walk around Ieper. Some really nice architecture with religion dominating the skyline.

That and various memorials - more names, emotional anaesthetic generated by anonymity and by the sheer scale of the slaughter

Loads of churches like this - we could do with just one of these in Leicester to replace our rather flea-bitten and unimpressive cathedral

Funny seeing religious icons like this just adorning the walls of commercial premises. Mary keeping an eye on the place while the owners are out to lunch?

O dear

The motorbike park in the middle of the town - and Benji was keeping company with some pretty impressive machines - some rather posh Harleys and a top of the range Gold Wing in particular. Personally I still prefer BMW's but they did stand out from the crowd.

Met one or two bikers who had just taken off from the UK, crossed the channel, and were spending 2-3 weeks just going where the fancy took them. This gave me ideas!

More impressive buildings to admire during lunch and then the return trip to Dunkirk, where I thought I had plenty of time to buy some wine for my lovely wife before driving down to the ferry, only to discover that the ferry terminal is in Dunkirk in the same sense that London Stansted airport is in London. Good job I allowed plenty of time.

Benji had a good crossing with some new friends at the front of the boat.

This is the one thing about cross-channel ferries I have never understood.Half an hour before arrival people start queuing at the stairway to the car decks in order to be at their vehicles before anyone else, rather than enjoying the view, or having a comfortable seat and a coffee while the ferry docks. Do they think that if they get to their cars before anyone else they will be off the ferry first? Answers on a postcard.
It was all rather fun, as the bikes were at the front of the ferry, and we ended up disembarking long before the people at the front of the queue.
Anyway an uneventful 3 hours back to Leicester sampling the delights of the M25 and M11 in the rush hour followed making me so thankful I don't live in the south-east of England and longing for the remoteness of my beloved Northumberland.