Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

I can only imagine what it’s like for someone who actually cares, but I for one am fed up with reading about the Anglican Church imploding over the vexed questions of women and/or gay bishops. So far the knotty problem of the first lesbian bishop has yet to be addressed.

It is my understanding, and I am quite willing to ignore corrections or facts to the contrary, that the Anglican Communion is an inclusive communion. Apparently it is, provided you are male and straight. The debate seems to rage whenever a few bishops come together in the same place. Instead of arguing over the best way to bring their message to their flocks¹, they are far more concerned with the sexuality and sex of the least necessary tier of the entire church.

As unrepentantly ungodly as I am, I have by tradition and culture, if not by faith, a streak of the puritan in my make up. I try to stand on it to be sure and I think that most of the time I am reasonably successful. Anyway, the point is who actually needs bishops? Apart from kicking up unwarranted fuss in a very un-Anglican manner, or at least a very un-Church of England manner and maybe there’s the problem: the bulk of Anglicans are no longer Church of England, where acceptance is so broad that it can cope with atheist vicars at one end and non-papal catholic priests at the other.

The English are by nature a very unobservant (in religious terms) lot and like their vicars to be seen gently dozing at village cricket matches, officiating over village fetes and getting into muddles with the church roof fund. Pretty much anything, in fact provided the refrain from bothering us with religion outside the formidable trinity of rituals concerning hatchings, matchings and despatchings. Anyone who actually cares about Christianity adopts any one of a number of reformed churches, chapels or Catholicism, depending on their relative preferences for comfort, terror, guilt, singing, beady-eyed fanaticism and/or incense.

In today’s Times there is an interesting article: in 1850, the weekly congregation for the Church of England was about three million. Eighty percent of babies were baptised into the CofE and the entire structure got by with 26 bishops. In 1945, the congregation had fallen to two million, baptisms into the CofE were down to 70% and the number of bishops had risen to Ninety. Sixty-three years further along, the relevant figures are 900,000, 15% and One hundred and fourteen. At this rate, by the end of the 21st century, the Church of England communion will be on first name terms with their own personal bishop.

My taxes are paying for this unrepresentative bunch of out of touch idiots. It galls me that church and state are so intermingled. Disestablish the buggers and let them get on with it.

Think of the money we can save and they will still be there for the odd times when they are actually useful.

¹Actually, now I think about it, this is the accidental benefit emerging from the issue: Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons are quite pesky enough, without Anglican clergy turning up on the doorstep uninvited with a flask of tea and a slice of Madeira cake, “Let’s talk ‘God’ and will you have a tombola ticket?”

So. Lunchtime.

I managed to restrain my impulse to go out CD purchasing. I talked my ever-acquisitive Id into waiting until Saturday, when I can get to Steve's Sounds just off Charing Cross Road, where his 'off the back of a truck' prices are more to the liking of my wallet. My Id, of course, cares little for such economic niceties and is bouncing up and down screaming, "Want now! Want now!". My Superego is standing by with a cattle prod and mop, just in case it shows signs of getting its way.

This was all particularly difficult because the short walk to Sainsbury's to stock up on coffee takes me perilously close to the station, and I could quite easily have wandered off unconsciously, acquired a CD and returned to the office coffee-less. Tricky, but mission accomplished.

Of course, this was helped by the fact that it is raining. It is that 'worst of all worlds' type of rain in that it is persistent, but not heavy; more a heavy mist/drizzle. The temperature is still somewhere around 70 degrees too, so the humidity is high, almost as though the air is sweating.

These past few days we have had much of the rain we failed to get in the spring.

Were I a farmer, I should be shaking my fist at the skies and cursing the rain for the flat, wet wheat fields with their potentially ruined harvest. It's the sort of weather that makes lesser people build Wicker Men to propitiate angry gods. Except, of course, that they wouldn't burn because it's too damp. Kerosene would redress the balance, but weather and fertility gods tend to look askance at that sort of thing. It's a bit like using firelighters to get the barbecue going; it just isn't cricket, and the steaks taste odd afterward.

Best, I think, just to take a couple of cans of chicken soup to the harvest festival, and if anyone asks, you can just look accusingly upwards and mutter about the weather and rubbish harvests.

Churches tend to have lightning rods, see.

Tonight, DT sans LJ and I took advantage of Orange Wednesday again and disappeared off to the Vue cinema in North Finchley to watch the latest Tom Cruise vehicle, War of the Worlds.

Interestingly, DT thought it could have been longer, whilst I thought it could have done with tighter editing and brought back closer to the 100 minute mark. In many ways, it's a reasonable update of the story, and the plot is there, easily seen underneath the Spielberg schmaltz. The special effects were impeccable, and Dakota Fanning acted the arse off of Tom Cruise. I guess it's the invisible aliens sucking at his aura that loses it for him, strange little Scientologist jaffa that he is.

I think, however, that I have deduced the problem with the movie, and I am now going to commit science fiction heresy.

As original and forward thinking as it may have been when it was published in 1898, War of the Worlds is essentially a boring and old-fashioned plot line. The pacing is of the Victorian drawing room, and the central premise assumes that an advanced alien culture knows nothing about bacteria. This may have been clever new stuff to a traditional Victorian society, but in the 21st century, any one who has watched a bleach advert knows what the little blighters are like. The story works as a period piece, but really it hasn't aged at all well. This is not to denigrate Wells; standing on the shoulders of giants and all that, but let's be honest, he has been outstripped by the later SF writers such as Asimov and Clarke. And even the earlier parts of their work is beginning to show their age a little now.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi indeed.