Fr.Ogs
| Occupation | Finding good excuses for not attending Meetings |
|---|---|
| Location | England (it's just across the Border from Cornwall) |
| Interests | The Operation of the Three Great Laws: Parkinsons's Law ('work expands... but, more importantly, how a declining institution and a burgeoning bureaucracy go hand in hand: but which way round is it? Does a declining institution merely acquire more barnacle-like accretions, or is it a parasitic relationship? Falling attendances? We need another Bishop! Huge falls in number of Baptisms, Confirmations, Marriages? This calls for another Archdeacon! Then there's Murphy's Law. Then there's, e.g., A Decade of Evangelism (the unprintable Law). Then there's the 'more-of-the-same' Law, or syndrome: we've got to innovate to survive, that's what Darwin's all about; let's modernise everything ('aggiornamento'), abolish the Past and start again (Christian Marxism - remember that?). |
| Favorite Movies | The Lady Vanishes, The Seventh Seal, Looney Tunes, ...all old Westerns where they shoot unbelievable numbers of rounds without having to re-load (including all the bottles behind the Bar)chase round the same cactus several times fight in the dust and mud whereafter the hero (White hat)rides off in an immaculately clean and pressed shirt. |
| Favorite Music | ALL Elgar, most of Delius, much of Parry and of Stanford, as also of Charles Wood, George Oldroyd, and Percy Whitlock. I can bear a surprising amount of Bach and quite a bit of Brahms (& Liszt)But NO Beethoven (=Turnip-farm. I rest my case), Sandy Macpherson (preferably on a Compton, not a Wurlitzer - better still, a Christie). NO Messaien about in Organ-lofts, NO Berg, Schoenberg, Stockhausen, Boulanger, Michael Nyman (yes, it should 'be made a criminal offence')or Ludovico Einaudi (Vorsprung durch lack-of-Technik?), English Hymnal ('No: we can't call it that! What about the Welsh? The British Hymnal, then. 'No: we can't possibly call it that: it might offend our European partners, to say nothing of all those who, for very understandable reasons, hate the very idea of Britishness! 'Songs of Praise?' No, that's been done before. I like getting rid of the outmoded term 'hymnal' mind - but 'praise'! Far too suggestive of an elitist, hierarchical, three-decker view of the Universe: why not 'The Song-book'? Oh yes, I take your point 'the' is so prescriptive, so delimiting, so absolutist...'Song-book', then?... Oh no, I quite see: the possibility of offending non-singers! 'Book' then?...No, what about the non-literate, to say nothing of the visually-impaired? Just put three stars on the cover? What a brilliant idea! I worry slightly, about the implicit elitism - star-Star - and then there's the problem of colour...sorry - tint... shade.........) |
| Favorite Books | The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Decline and Fall, The Cynic's Dictionary, Religio Medici & Pseudodoxia Epidemica, The Boke of Common Praier |