Killing Spree! Crazed Londoner
in night-time garden massacre!

It was like this you see, I'd been taking these pills for
my backpain - I've been on them weeks now. And I'm
taking sleeping pills on top of them like. Sometimes
they help me sleep for a few hours and sometimes I
get these "dreams".

Anyway one night I'd had all these pills and had had
a nightmare, besides I couldn't sleep cos I was in pain,
so I hobbles downstairs to make myself a cup of tea. It's
2 or 3 O'Clock in the morning. I has my tea....and
then I'm not sure if I'm awake or dreaming....maybe
it was the pills that was making me confused like!
Or MAYBE they're really helping me see things
straight for the first time! Because everthing becomes
clear to me.

You see I realise that they are out there....in the garden
....but they don't know I'm awake....they think I'm tucked
up in bed don't they? These neighbours of mine have
never liked me....I could never prove anything but I
was sure they were plotting against me.....they mess up
my garden at night [every night!] when I'm not around....
they don't have the guts to do it in daylight! Stinking cowards!
And then it comes to me like a "revelation!" This is it! I can
catch the blighters red handed......cos they won't be expecting
me will they?!

Quick as a flash I grabs a torch and a weapon and I
charges out into the garden in the dead of night - and
the bastards are there! Scores of 'em! BANG! Slug there.
BANG! Slug there. I go mental like and I can't stop and
when I've finished they're all these bodies lying there all
around me.

The snails didn't fair much better either.

CHESSWORLD.NET

While I have been laid up with back pain and sciatica I have been keeping myself amused by playing Chess on the internet. If you fancy your chances against me [or any number of other players] you can subscribe to chessworld.net and look me up. But it will cost you £12.00, or $22.50 or €17.50 for a one year full membership subscription. Or you can just come along as a guest and play for free.

My cousin, Mike Carney, taught me how to play Chess over thirty-five years ago. Unfortunately the only set we had was missing several key pieces, so
I learnt to play with only one bishop and/or only one knight. In retrospect it was a surreal introduction to the game, and Mike was a formidable opponent.

Even as a young teen Mike had an impressive intellect and I stood in awe of him. While I read science fiction he would be reading Wittgenstein! [I kid you not!] Mike had much more capacity for hard work than me and this combined with his natural gifts quickly took him onto better schools and ultimately to university. I had that typical teen conceit that success would come to me naturally without any undue effort - in fact "effort " was just `not the done thing' - not least because it drew the attention of the school yard bully.

In retrospect it is a little puzzling how Mike and I struck up such a strong frienship. Perhaps it was that we came from an extended Roman Catholic family and had become ardent atheists while retaining the angst of the recusant outsider. In any event we were the same age and as we all understand, most thirteen year olds know what's wrong with the world
and it isn't them!

Mike and I lost touch - our academic trajectories took us in very different directions. And I became a Christian in 1975 when I was seventeen. I never could buy into the notion of moral relativity because, it seemed to me
self evident that, there is such a thing as "Natural Law", a la Aquinas but actually preceded by Paul in Romans 1 and 2. I simply could not see my way to the conclusion that "everything is relative!" This was a regression from Mike's perspective and I had yet to learn to disagree agreeably with people. His take on my conversion was that I had lurched into obscurantism
and, in fairness, I did little to demonstrate the grace of Jesus to him.

Ironically thanks to the churches I have belonged to over the years I have developed an interest in apologetics [countering objections to the Christian
Gospel ] and that has taken me into the philosophical areas Mike explored years ago. If I had my time over again we could probably have a "good argument" - in the sense of being both thoughtful and gracious! I guess I am a late developer.



*****************************************************************
Post-Script, 12th June 06.
When you start playing with Chessworld.net you have a nominal score of 1400. You gain so many points for a win and so many for a draw and have points deducted if you lose. After a shaky start I've managed to get to 1511. If any of you out there rose to my challenge to play and I declined the game I am very sorry. I realise now that there are only so many games one can keep tabs on. Maybe try again later?

****************************************************************
Post-Post-Script, 18th June 06.
It's a calendar month since I joined chessworld.net and my rating has taken a beating in that time...down to 1326 currently. I came across a "centile" of my performance and it was 26%! If I understand this correctly that means I'm way below average. I have changed my "stated strength" from `intermediate' [which is what I initially, genuinely, thought was my standard] to `beginner'. Maybe I've always had much too high an opinion of myself and it is quite liberatingto discover a more realistic appraisal of oneself! Truth is always preferable to self delusion and true freedom can be found in humility - which, when all is said and done, is merely seeing things the way they really are. And this is not just about Chess; it's about "face"!

SCIATICA ! - and the Gift of Time!

On the morning of my planned departure to the Lake District
I awoke at 5am with an absolutely excruciating pain in my left thigh.
I phoned NHS Direct - 0845 4647 - who took some details and
passed my case to the on-call Doctor at my local surgery.

The upshot is I probably have a problem with my Lumbar
Spine - could be a prolapsed disc compressing my sciatic
nerve. Maybe I'm a bit of a wuss but I have to say I have
rarely ever had such pain before so I'm thankful to have
been prescribed Diclofenac, Dihydrocodeine and Paracetamol
(aka Acetaminophen in the USA), along with some Diazepam.

In all of this there are mercies I can truly thank Jesus for;
[1] that it hadn't happened the next day when I would
have been stuck on a campsite, or [2] worse still to have found
myself immobilised by pain on a mountain....taking up the
valuable time of a mountain rescue team.

Although my mobility is severely curtailed, I have been given
the valuable gift of time having been signed off from work. All
the books I've never gotten around to finding time for I can read
now. Also during the night when I've been unable to sleep I've
listened to some great audio-books - Bill Bryson's "A Short
History of Nearly Everything", Tom Holland's "Persian Fire"
(a gripping account of the war between ancient Greece and Persia)
and Robert Harris' "Pompeii". [Amazon.co.uk are going to do some
great trade with me over the next few weeks!]

I read Alister McGrath's "Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes
and the Meaning of Life" in one sitting.....that is a cracking
book from a Christian perspective - well argued in both
senses of the phrase; thoughtful and gracious! [I wish more
Christian literature was like it!]

Time is a precious gift - maybe I have been given the
opportunity to come good on all those past New Years'
Resolutions I usually end up forwarding!

This is a photo of me in 2002 on top of Helvellyn in the Lake district.
I first went to the
Lakes on a school excursion in the early 1970's. Apart from the occasional trip to the seaside I had never been outside of a town. One day on this excursion we went to Borrowdale and
climbed Great Gable. I was totally awestruck by the sight of these amazing mountains -
I had never seen the like in my entire life! I fell in love with the place and I have returned here whenever I could.

In the immediate aftermath of this school trip I used to regularly get myself invited to visit my cousins who had just moved to Skipton in North Yorkshire - the bus journey was magical to me as streets and factories gave way to open fields and hills. It was like journeying from one planet to another.
I had no idea that the Yorkshire Dales were on my doorstep! I had learned to love the grandeur of such open spaces.
As I write this I am planning on a camping trip back to the Lakes to continue my exploration of the Ullswater area.l

CARL SAGAN:
Out of the Silent Planet!

May 2006's thought from my agnostic calendar is:-
"What I'm saying is, if God wanted to send us a message,
and ancient writings were the only way he could think of
doing it, he could have done a better job." Dr Arroway
in Carl Sagan's ["CONTACT"].

First off, it should come as no surprise that God has spoken
throughout history - so the writings would be ancient wouldn't they?
From a Christian perspective God is not limited to writing - he
speaks through Creation (Romans 1), he speaks to the
consciences of people (Romans 2) and we believe that God
has revealed himself definitively by being born as a human
being and so revealing God to man in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1).

On the specific issue of ancient texts it is clear on any objective
count that when one compares other ancient writings, such as
the Mesopotamian creation, flood and Gilgamesh stories etc,
with the Bible one realises that it is in a different league. While
the other texts relate amoral tales of the pantheon the Bible
lays a foundation of ethical monotheism and as such touches
us directly in a way that the other texts cannot (as we saw last
March with Gene Roddenberry). This is not to say that the
pagan writings are not gripping yarns. Equally this is not to say
that it is always easy for christians to correctly apply the Biblical
text, which is why we are keen to ensure that it is set in the right
context....in a nutshell we are living in the fourth act of a five part
drama!

Sagan was instrumental in the design of the plaques fitted to the
Voyager spacecraft launched in the 1970's to explore the outer
solar system; these robots are now heading out into interstellar
space. Wouldn't it be ironic if in the future these were recovered
by some extra-terrestrial civilisation only to be met with the same
sniffy disdain as Sagan's? What if they too looked with contempt
at this, what will be by then, ancient writing - (well it would be
wouldn't it?) - "Is this the only way Sagan could think of sending
a message?!" - and missed the true significance of what was before
them; "you are not alone!"

The real issue here is not the antiquity of the communication, or
the mode or even the efficiency of the revelation - the real issue
is the message itself....because of the implications it may have
for the recipient. The problem is not transmission but receptivity,
the recognition that "we are not alone" theologically means we are
not the centre of the universe, and some people will find that hard
to hear.



tagline: Calendar of Doom.