Month: October 2025

Yesterday I went to London for the twice-annual Fountain Pen Show there. If you’re at all afflicted by love for pens, or ink, and even a selection of paper, washi tape, notebooks, notebook covers, stationery in general, it’s an intoxicating experience. That’s just as well, because a degree of intoxication will help deal with the idea of paying for these goods; if you’re the type to be satisfied with the stock at W. H. Smith (oops, I mean T. G. Jones, /eyeroll) (Holy smoke, I didn’t know that W H Smith owns Cult Pens, the very popular and highly-regarded pen dealers!) or Ryman’s (no shade on stationery shops for normies), why pay £7 to shop for more expensive, higher-quality merchandise? But a little giddiness in the name of beauty goes a long way toward explaining paying an admission fee to gaze longingly at £350 fountain pens. I didn’t look at the pricier ones.

I went with the expectation that I might untie my pursestrings for a more modest pen, but realised when I was trying to choose that I have more fountain pens than a sensible person could ever use, even if their job description were ‘Use as many of these fountain pens as you can’. They are magnificent, most of them, and a number are gifts or legacies, for which I give heartfelt thanks; they include several of my favourites, beginning with my late father’s Montblanc Meisterstück. But at a certain point, the irrationality started ringing bells: why use savings to buy yet another model of a pen of which I already have several, even if it’s beautiful and sparks joy? That’s awfully close to a legal form of cocaine high, and I’m glad to not feel the drive to obtain coke, or pens, no matter the cost, just to fill a coke- or pen-shaped vacancy in my soul.

None of which should give offence to true collectors. I love you; if I were a few inches closer to the line, I know I would have crossed it. I have the fascination with arcane knowledge, the strong collector’s impulse, a love of order and completeness. I saw a Sheaffer Connoisseur for £120, a German school pen for £40, a white Cross pen (don’t have any Cross pens, and I have a soft spot for white pens) for only #10, almost bought one… but I didn’t. I think I’m a post-collector. If I ever think I really want to add a pen to my life, I’ll sort through the pens I’ve hunted down and trade in three or four — noe from the gifts-and-legacies category, I have principles — for one pen that I crave.

In the meantime, I’ll focus on fixing, polishing, and using the pens at hand. I might hire myself, after all, to use as many as I can, and I want to be able to point to my experience on my c.v.
(Will add photos of LPS tomorrow, and will post today’s sermon, and perhaps delete this promissory note.)

Back from the Pen Show yesterday, I got most of the way through this morning’s sermon for both St Michael’s and St Nic’s, but I have to bear down and work out the ending. This morning’s run was a full minute slower than my recent average, but that’s fine; I ran the two miles, it was colder than any morning since before summer, and I’m not in it for records. Coffee, fruit, in a while I’ll shower and then I’m off to church(es).

Good run this morning, with somewhat better breathing (not vigilantly deep, but a positive alternation between deep and shallow — progress toward more and deeper) and a good time. Coffee, fruit, cleaned up, restored the silver sacred vessels to St Helen’s (that were borrowed at St Michael’s last night) so that’s one worry off my mind, Morning Prayer, check messages (someone wants to hire the Parish Centre), and now public office hours at R&R. Sermon composition remains a desirable, but not (sadly) guaranteed to-do item.

This morning’s run felt much better than yesterday’s, with better breathing and no particular stiffness or wobbliness in legs, and a decent pace. When I looked at the time, then, I was surprised to learn that the time had been at the slow end of average (obviously ‘average’ will be drifting slower as this goes on). Further evidence that there is little relation between how a run feels and how fast I’m running.

Coffee, fruit, clean up, Morning Prayer, home, then back to church for a funeral, then home, then back to St Michael’s for Fr Paul’s last Mass before retiring. As I write in this week’s parish newsletter, ‘it can feel a little like the words of the prophet Elijah, who would have said (were he serving our parish), “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; but the Team Rector has retired, and the Team Vicar has retired, and the Associate Priest is on leave; and I, I alone, am left.”’ But that’s only till Jen is installed as Team Rector in twelve days, and it omits mention of our assisting clergy — stars! — who really keep all cylinders firing. Luckily, today is my notional day off from parish work, so I have lots of time.

I went to town for groceries after Morning Prayer, and on my way home — as I was literally only a few metres from the church — I got a phone call noting that there was no priest there for the 10:30 Communion service, and was there any chance I could get there? I had hardly rung off when I got to the church door, everything went fine (though I was a bit more boggled than usual), and then I rushed home with the still slightly frozen veg. I had an hour or so before returning for the preachers’ group, then home at last.

I had begun to think that this morning’s run would be nothing special, maybe on the slow end of average (my legs and my breathing both felt ragged) when I met a parishioner on Spring Road, wondering where to catch the bus he needed to get to work; one of the knock-on effects of hosting Europe’s longest street fair entails throwing the bus routes into a whirligig. I paused the workout meter and we mulled over the alternatives (ultimately reaching an imperfect compromise), and when I started up again both my legs and my breathing were having none of it. So I made of today a run/walk day, took things easy, and strolled and jogged home. Coffee, hot breakfast, cleaning up, Morning Prayer, home for a while before the midday Preachers’ Group (I’ll be leading in the absence of the Team Rector-designate), and back home again unless Margaret needs errands done in town.

Much time yesterday filling in the forms for my Ministry Development Review, a step in the diocesan system for keeping an eye on clergy wellness and effectiveness. My quibbling mind and my forms-phobia combine to make me resist this sort of exercise with every neuron and every (whatever the constituent elements of ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ might be, or are they monads in the end after all? This just illustrates the sort of reason I struggle with HR ‘wellness’ and ‘effectiveness’ discourse) thingummybob in my holistic self. I understand that this system provides a functional process for the expansive bureaucracy to fulfil a record-keeping, multidimensional standardised need to keep an eye on clergy. I will learn how it actually plays out as the process unfolds. Of course, this is also probably the only MDR I’ll ever go through, after 39 years of ordained ministry and with only another year or so before I retire therefrom.

This morning’s run was appreciably faster than yesterday’s, but (a) breathing was shallower (I tried to diaphragm-breathe, but at the pace at which I was running my lungs demanded faster breathing) and (b) I don’t remember what I was going to say for (b). A good run, anyway, within the general span of post-holiday workouts. Coffee, fruit, clean-up, Morning Prayer, and then back to my MDR form.

For this morning’s run, I once again concentrated on my breathing. That went pretty well; I was surprised that I could avoid the ragged panting that correlated with upper-chest breathing through most of the run (though toward the end I was alternating deep- and shallow-breathing). At the same time, it was one of the slower runs I’ve made since our holiday. Still all to the good; I’m not racing against Mo Farah, I’m running faster than the desk potato I was growing into about eight years ago. And I’m beating that stout, lethargic blancmange handily.

Coffee and fruit, clean up, Morning Prayer, and right now I’m expecting to hold public office hours in town, although the Michaelmas Fair (extending from the Market Square right down to the intersection with Drayton Road, Spring Road, and Marcham Road — at one mile, it’s reputedly the longest street fair in Europe.

Communion at the Bridge House care home in the afternoon.

Beautiful weather for my Saturday morning run, though the gusty high winds challenged me after my two-day layoff. I remembered, for the first time in ages, that I should be breathing more deeply, not just chest (or throat!) breathing; but my time came in right about average for these days. I have a very hard time running more slowly, even if my legs and breathing suggest that would be a reasonable pace to adopt, but at least I’m no longer possessed by the need to be getting faster every few days.

I gathered with Fr Keith’s family to inter his wife Pamela’s ashes at St Michael’s. With sustained winds in the mid-twenties and gusts into the forties, there was a lot of potential for indecorous mischances in the process, but everything went very smoothly. Fr Keith was cold, so we wrapped him in my cuppa nigra (a sort of heavy wool funeral cloak). His family was very sweet, and I had the satisfaction of working with Ben Tonks, who is on my wavelength about the conduct of ritual.

Now, a sermon for tomorrow…

May God guard and protect, comfort and assure our sisters and brothers in Manchester’s Jewish community; may he purge our church of every trace of hatred, arrogance, presumption, and intolerance; may he cure that madness into which we rush when drunk with bigotry or desperation; may he straighten the crooked politics by which a very few benefit from stirring up unholy passions; as God’s people have so recently prayed, may the wicked talk no more so very proudly, and let not arrogance come from their mouth.
May God’s kindness and relief protect those who suffer in innocence, in Manchester and Israel and Gaza and the West Bank. May peace be upon Jerusalem, and on all who call the Land their home.

My most frequent listens in September according to last.fm — It was a light month cos (a) we were on holiday for two glorious weeks and (b) my laptop failed while we were away and I couldn’t get it sorted till last Thursday. Thus, only about 10 days are represented by:

1 Nick Cave
2 Cat Power
3 Van Morrison
4 Leonard Cohen
5 Sufjan Stevens
6 Beyoncé
7 Grinderman
8 Juliana Hatfield
9 Living Colour
10 PJ Harvey

No run this morning, because it has been raining, and after Saturday’s experience I refuse to trust a lull in precipitation to betoken a safe interval for two miles. Coffee, fruit, Morning Prayer, check for phone messages at the parish office, errand for Margaret, public office hours, emails, and sermon preparation.

We stayed up late last night to watch all four of the remaining episodes of Disclaimer*, so I rose late-ish and — with a view to letting my leg muscles have some respite — I had a walk-run-walk morning miles. I would job a few steps, maybe run a few, but slow to a walk as soon as any muscle, joint, or anything felt stressed. I don’t like deviating from my usual pattern, but (especially as I begin to acknowledge my age) it seems worth treating my body a bit more gently than I have been.

As to Disclaimer*, Margaret and I agree that there’s a lot there to think about; it warrants taking seriously, whether one admires it or not. Many of the details we had picked up became relevant in credible ways, and although we had picked up the wavelength of the plot twist, the way it played out was still gripping. And Cate Blanchett gets a devastating line toward the end (though overall, the ending sails a bit close to ‘pat’, given the strength and imagination of the rest of the series). Being an old clergyman, I was impressed by the amount of very direct sexual content; remember, I grew up watching television sitcoms wherein married couples always had twin beds. While on one hand, I’m inclined to think that there must have been a way to make the cinematic point without veering so close to the pornographic, I can see arguments both cultural (so much sexual content in visual arts, one has to push the boundary in contexts where the sex is integral to the point) and narrative (a great deal of the series’s force hinges on the effect of watching, or squinting at while averting a direct gaze, the sexual passages) for Cuarón’s decision, but it made for some extremely awkward watching.

And as I say, in the end the provocation was much less about the sex scenes than about the project itself. We found many, many subtleties and grace notes and a range of deeply affecting dimensions of the project, along with moments of clunkiness and very intense sex. Though it’s difficult to execute a seven-hour thriller without characters making some con convincingly dumb decisions, Cuarón allowed only a few. Cate Blanchett is tremendous. Kevin Kline always reminds me of my wish that he appeared in more films; he did a great job with a role that slid occasionally into the over-egged. Sacha Baron Cohen aptly conveyed a feckless husband/father, and Lesley Manville reaches a peak as Kline’s wife. And the number of resonant themes the series invokes (the question of truth, parent-child relationships, marriages, and others I’m deliberately omitting) add up to a series that one can either fault for not doing everything well, or celebrate for having dome so much so well, and we definitely opt for the latter.

Back at the beginning of blogging, we used to talk about topics such as poststructuralist philosophy and Derrida and meaning and such stuff as that. This afternoon I caught a link the great Lucy Bellwood made to inmagasroom’s Tumblr, which itself linked to the original interview with Catherine Malabou, in which Malabou quotes Foucault to the effect of ‘Do you think I’ve worked so much, for so many years, to always say the same thing, and not be transformed?’

I cite this because Malabou refers to a sentiment Foucault also expressed another time, in his aphorism ‘…Travailler, c’est entreprendre de penser autre chose que ce qu’on pensait avant’ (‘To work is to undertake to think something different from what one thought before’) in ‘Le souci de la vérité (entretien avec F. Ewald)’, Magazine littéraire 207 (1984), pp. 18-23. I’ve quoted this latter form several times, but evidently it was on MF’s mind recurrently in the early 80s.

I probably would just have noticed and thought it was cool except that a couple of days ago somebody (and now I’ve culpably lost my original link, mea culpa, was it Tim Howles?) linked to the article ‘Sexuality and Solitude’ (LRB Vol. 3 No. 9, 21 May 1981) in which Richard Sennett and Foucault write casual introductions of their shared interest in disparate aspects of the problem of when and how ‘sexuality’ became so prominent as aspect of Western self-definition. And all the more I’m glad to have been redirected to Foucault, inasmuch as the tale of his advocacy of, perhaps guilt of, pederasty has been vigorously called into question (if not utterly refuted).

Morning run on which my thighs felt as though they’d been strapped tight, unwilling to stretch out, but in the end the time was good. Coffee and fruit (skipping hot breakfast since I’ll have a more sumptuous lunch with Fr Paul and Mother Jen as a farewell staff occasion). Will pick up some groceries, come home for more coffee, then head in to town for lunch, then work toward Sunday’s sermon.

We started the Cate Blanchett/Kevin Kline/Alfonso Cuarón series Disclaimer* last night; ‘pretty rooty-tooty’, in the immortal words of Dinah Lord, and we were somewhat stunned by the candid sexuality. But this morning we both were noting numerous subtleties and possible narrative hooks, so it will be interesting to see what Cuarón makes of this start.