Month: March 2004

It is so easy to get distracted on a sunny day. I have been being distracted all day by thoughts of running in fields like Julie Andrews, or winging through the air like a bird.

But the biggest and most surprising distraction was Andrew J. Wood, a man who wants money from my office. At first I was drawn to his website out of a curiosity as to how kitchen worktops can be described as Ecclesiastical Stonemasonary. Even in a Vicarage, it would be pushing the definition.

But on inspecting his website and the history of his business I became more intrigued by the question of what exactly Cyril Wood thought he was doing in 1922 when he became a Stone Mason. With a name like Wood you surely become a carpenter – you’re just making life difficult if you go against the grain (pun intended). Was there a reason for the decision to pursue stone? Was he being deliberately perverse? Perhaps he was fighting willfully against a lifetime of people telling him, “so, I suppose you’ll be going into carpentry, Master Wood!”

Maybe Cyril Wood might have enjoyed the film I went to see last night, which was about somebody else fighting against a life of carpentry, who went terribly off the rails and ended up getting horribly beaten up. I went to see it because it was an 18 and had the word “Passion” in the title, so I thought it would have lots of sex in it, only as it turned out it didn’t have very much sex in it at all.

“We’re here to memorise some guy” said James Bachman, towards the end of Footlights’ final tribute to its longest-serving, and probably most important, member, Dr Harry Porter. And we were, and we did.

James Casey has written up his impressions of the night, and there’s not much more I want to add (not least because James, I suspect, managed to get more sleep than I did – even though I by no means stayed until the end). I had been thinking, sometime in the afternoon, that I might skip it, or at least not stick around afterwards – feeling a bit ill, feeling a bit tired. But I didn’t, because talking to lots of nice people is curiously addictive (it probably releases natural opiates into the brain, as all good things do), and because it’s much easier to stay and talk than face a half hour walk back in the cold. And so much more enjoyable.

My comment (quoted in James’ entry) that David Mitchell’s unexpected pyrotechnics were “the only particularly notable thing” to happen misses the point that it was all the unnotable things that were such fun. Daniel Morgenstern’s quiet joy at the ADC cocktail named after him; Jon Taylor relating tour show tales; nobody quite understanding why the ADC bothered to put out brochures asking for money when almost everyone there was an impoverished actor. Just enjoying good company, really.

As it happens, I didn’t actually see David on fire; he was remarkably quiet until he’d recovered. He seemed fine when I left, thankfully.

So: thank you to everyone involved, to everyone I talked to, to everyone who made it a good night. And to Harry, for being who he was, and bringing all those people together.

with Revd Ian Thompson
(recently elected Patron of FUD)

Och – deeeairrry productssss, eh? Wha’s the point o’ a warrrrm cup o’ milk, I say, wi’oot a dram o’ whisky or two to wassshhh it doon? Eh? Eh? We all love a wee bit o’ caek, but wheeerrr’s the joy in caek wi’oot beeerrrrr? If a wee laddie were tae ask me if I was inclined tae consoom cheese productsss, for instance, I’d be a-tellin’ he, “Och, wee gorgeous laddie, wheeer’s ya flagon, och aye?” and a-fillin of his tankard, metaphorical or otherwise I’ll a have-ye, tee hee hae ha hoo!

And that Atkins lassie – At-SINS more leik, in me oon humble opinion! She just spoots nonsense oot of herrr wee mouth, not that ye’ll get a lot o’ sense oot of Angela Tilby, meind yoo, and she’s less than wee if you noo what I mean, aye.

Bent leik drums, eh? Eh? till a’ their weel – swall’d kytes belyve; then auld deeeairrry productssss, maist like to rise, be thankit hums. Is there that owre his milk ragout? Or cheese wad straw a sov, or creeem caeks wad make her spew wi perfect scummer, looks down wi sneering, scornfu’ view on sic a dinner? Sic on ice-creeem? Wha? And hoo cairees anyhoo?

So – here’s tae us, wha’s like us, damn few, and they’re a’ deid – mair’s the pity!

Okay, this is genuinely brilliant: I am processing a project proposal to develop sniffer bees. Because they’re cheaper than dogs.

Give ’em the money, says I.

Over the last week or so, work has been somewhat hectic, for a variety of reasons. We’re gearing up to enter new markets, announce new products – all the sorts of thing that keeps Tangozebra in the news as the next big thing (apparently).

Anyway, we’ve been identifying new roles that need filling, whether internally or by hiring new people. As part of this process, I’ve made a list of administrative things I need to do. It’s about a page long which, in my experience, is about the largest it ever gets. Or at least the largest it ever gets before I forget things.

Which brings me to my point, which is that up to about two hours ago I was carrying this list around in my head. There are other lists, including development ideas for current products, and thoughts and ideas about new ones that will be starting soon. And lists of things nothing to do with work, like “sort out auditions for the new UD show”, and “buy some new boots that don’t leak”. Where does it all go?

Assuming each list is at most a page long, and that I have perhaps twenty lists at most, we have maybe ten sheets of A4, written on both sides, living in my head. Of course, they won’t fit just like that – they’ll have to be folded. Some crude measurements suggest that we need to fold them twice, at which point they’re about the same size as the horizontal cross section of my head. Leaving space for eyes, ears, and all the stuff around my mouth, I reckon there’s a good three inches of space of that size at the top. A rough estimate shows that ten sheets of A4, folded twice, will take up about half an inch – so I have two and a half inches of space, or a little over half an inch of full-sized A4 for all my non-list thoughts. That’s about the size of, say, Extreme Programming Refactored, or slightly smaller than Government and Politics of The United States, to compare with two volumes that are to hand. Which is presumably where the notion that everyone has a book inside them comes from – that’s what you can fit into your head.

Of course, if the pieces of paper are scrunched up, there won’t be any other space at all. If this is the case, where do my thoughts go?

One of the entries on my administrative list is ‘tidy my desk’. I suspect, when I get round to this, that I’ll find yet more things to do. I can’t win.

with Rabbi Lionel Blue

In a hedonistic age, it is perhaps unsurprising that dairy products are now seen with such frequency. Cream cakes are displayed on television adverts and in shop windows. Ice-creams are paraded on the top of vans. Milk is left on the very step on which we ascend into our own homes.

We have become acclimatised to dairy products. They are all around us, inviting us, tempting us. Perhaps we even have too many dairy products.

But have they brought us happiness?

Everybody is searching for happiness. Happiness is what we seek. A quest, a goal. A never-ending hunt for contentment, fulfilment.

And on one level, perhaps the dash of milk we allow ourselves in each mug of tea gives us a moment of pleasure and makes the tea taste nicer. Nobody denies that crackers taste less dry with a chunk of brie.

But we have not found in dairy products the fulfilling, permanent happiness that we perhaps want to expect. I recall the first time I allowed myself the indulgence of consuming a bowlful of profiteroles, when I was in my mid-40s. “Is that it?” I recall thinking, as I wiped away the last vestiges of cream from my sated lips.

It was only much later in life that I realised we only find the true potential in dairy products when we allow ourselves to digest as much as we ingest.

I have found, for example, that dairy products have played a vital part in keeping my strength up in what has been a rigorous a glittering stage career, particularly with regard to my skills as a tap-dancer. I could not have performed in the number of pantomimes I have managed to do, without some form of digestion where dairy products are concerned.

But ingestion is important too. I recall once on Give Us A Clue being asked to mime the film title Confessions of a Milkman. I responded to this challenge in the way that seemed most appropriate, by dropping my trousers and draining a glass of warm milk. How Sue Pollard interpreted this as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids I have never been sure; perhaps in a Biblical sense she saw milk as very much linked to honey.

We all seek our promised land. I believe, in being a tap-dancing panto-producing personality, I have at least attained a degree of alliteration.

But it is also worth bearing in mind that, whilst a Mini-Milk used to cost a mere ten pence, it is now as expensive as a Cornetto used to be. And it may be my imagination, but it seems that they are even more Mini than ever before.

with Anne Atkins

Shocking, isn’t it? That anybody could compare dairy products to incest, abortion, rape?

Yet that is exactly what the Bible challenges us to accept. Each day, as people pierce the tops of their milk bottles, just as Jesus’ side was pierced on the cross, homeless people who ought to know better huddle in pieces of newspaper relating news of war and containing pornographic images.

Fun? Yes, of course. And God knows, fun exists! We’ve all had fun. And fun, looked on as just fun, can be fun.

Healthy? No. It is a deadly poison which eats away at the heart of society. Like the snake which ate away at the heart of paradise.

There will be those who argue that dairy products contain calcium – “they must be natural”, they will say, “they are good for bones and teeth”. Indeed. Hungry words from a hungry, idolatrous world.

Yes, it may seem unfair and unjust to suggest that people who indulge in dairy products are somehow “unnatural”. Yes, it may seem “un-politically correct” to take the point of view that consumers of cheese and milk are cut off from God.

But this is the harsh reality of truth. The Bible is clear about one thing: God hates those who indulge in dairy products. “And ye shall go out at the breaches,” the book of Amos proclaims, “every cow at that which is before her.” Even more clearly, Exodus actually states that “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk”. The implications are plain.

Fortunately for those apparently addicted to the unwholesome and, eventually, life-endangering terrors of the dairy product lifestyle, my Atkins diet helps people give up all dairy products, and strives ultimately to enable people to give up food altogether in pursuit of a more spiritual lifestyle.

It may seem an impossible, even distasteful ideology to impose on a society. But it is not impossible, for as the Bible makes clear, all things are possible. Difficult? Yes. Challenging? Yes.

But just as murder and starvation and even moreso the wicked perverted evils of homosexuality pose a challenge to which we need to respond, so do dairy products. It is time to take away the dairy products from the world.

Not unlike the lamb who came to take away the sins of the world…

With the Revd Angela Tilby

In these times, we are perhaps closer than we like to admit to the desert fathers and mothers who have, intrinsically and hermeneutically, taken from the very cud of the bovine stain a source of what flows, as it were, in the overused but nevertheless still relevant in a contemporary society for which calcium is a required part of everybody who has bones’ diet terminology referring to it thus as, if it may be somehow undressed in a single and necessarily inadequate word, milk. People simply dislike the assumption that they have inherited a controlling institution of dairies and milk-floats which emphasises dairy products and their power over human beings. It is not obviously good news that the only value I have is the value I acquire by pouring a little half-fat milk on my cereal every morning, though it is true that even in a compunction where insights have led to a general suspicion of full-cream products, there are those who have few reservations about the putting on of full-cream milk, even when a cereal such as coco-pops are concerned (they are so chocolatey that they make the milk turn brown).

This liberation of the self, a platonic ascetic in which Augustine discovered the original innocence which embodied his lifelong search for Christian spirituality, can also be a snare, and could easily turn into a narcissistic fixation on the self. Thus we are left with a fundamental dilemma, which is far more aggressive and complex than the misleadingly simple contemporary question “one pint or two?”

People who thirst must make space for milk; the Augustinian guilt hitherto a fundamental part of the dairy product model is no longer the most fruitful way for most individuals to ensure their bones are strong. There is a bovine image within all of us, but it is often only discovered through a detailed and dispassionate examination of how much we have actually colluded with what we put in our tea, what we put on our Weetabix, where cheese, yoghurt, fromage-frais and ice-creams are really all derived from. Accepting the discipline of the dairy product enables us to move towards a way of life where we are not simply driven to and fro by our instincts, drives and even blood sugar levels. It is the beginning of dietary stability. It is, paradoxically, the putting on of milk which actually leads to the emergence of that spontaneous self which is so vividly portrayed in the iconography of the milkman, who is surely a symbol of the very self itself.

I was in London yesterday and Jonathan Pryce walked past me.

He pretended not to recognise me so I pretended not to recognise him, and we went our separate ways.