Critic Cal

They don't call me Carolling for nothing. I love a bit of choral exertion this time of year. Bring on the way-outside-of-my-register top notes, the determined-but-disastrous descants, the I-don't-remember-that-one-from-before intervals, the oh-dear-are-we-still-on-this-syllable-I'm-about-to-pass-out slurs... But there's a handful of carols that I find challenging to sing for entirely different reasons -- and top of that list would have to be Away in a Manger : musically straightforward, theologically problematic. In fact, as far as my faltering understanding goes, I find it so debatable in places that I am driven to on-the-fly editing (for example, I'm not convinced about Jesus residing in "the sky", but I am pretty confident that he is "on high" -- which, conveniently, fits the rhyme and meter just as well), selective silence (I've read too much N.T. Wright to sing "fit us for heaven to live with Thee there" without worrying th

CC from RyAwesome on Flickr I can feel the pull as far away as mid-September, when the first mince pies appear upon the shelves at Sainsbury's. The inescapability appalls me. I grasp at structure -- work, routine, the gym -- and thrash against the glitter, gluttony, commercialism, social obligation, expectations unmet and resented. Dragged disorganised, disoriented, struggling to think straight or maintain composure, losing sight of the important things in life and failing to be loving or restrain my raging selfishness...The Season sucks me in and spins me round and spits me out in January full of self-reproach and melancholy. Whilst Christmas has become, to me, a cause for annual dread, the Incarnation -- disentangled from the trappings -- draws me to increasing wonderment with every passing year. In the heart-stirringly good  Housekeeping , my new-favourite-novelist  Marilynne Robinson articulates it with compelling resonance... Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pull

Quite what the professional (ahem) activities of Karren Brady  had to do with the anticipated proceedings of an away match in the West country remain a mystery to me even now. Nonetheless, defamatory speculations on this particular theme, resounding to the tune of the Hallelujah Chorus, comprised the central substance of the prologue to Swindon vs. Leyton Orient , which I attended, in great earnest, earlier this month. Once the action centre stage kicked off, the accompaniment subsided into the popular and versatile refrain most famously exampled by the 1998 classic Vindaloo : "Ori-urrrgh ... Ori-urrrgh ... Ori-urgh, Ori-urgh, Ori-urrrgh ... Ori-urrrgh ... Ori-urrrgh ... Ori-urgh, Ori-urgh, Ori-urrrgh". I must confess I'm not entirely certain of the spelling. There followed a relatively uneventful twenty minutes or so, but for some mildly rankled recitative between a polite young lady spectator who wished to be seated, and a row of youths in front of her who preferred

There's this great bit in Brave New World where Helmholtz inadvertently re-invents the lost art of poetry. In a lecture 'On the Use of Rhymes in Moral Propaganda and Advertisement', he introduces a technical example of his own: 'Pure madness, of course; but I couldn't resist it.' He laughed. 'I was curious to see what their reactions would be. Besides,' he added more gravely, 'I wanted to do a bit of propaganda; I was trying to engineer them into feeling as I'd felt when I wrote the rhymes. Ford!' He laughed again. 'What an outcry there was! The Principal had me up and threatened to hand me the immediate sack. I'm a marked man.' 'But what were your rhymes?' Bernard asked. 'They were about being alone.' Bernard's eyebrows went up. ( Aldous Huxley , Brave New World , 1931) Being alone -- or feeling any type of mental or emotional 'excess' -- is some achievement in Huxley's imagined world of r

"Who here is bad ?"... The speaker surveyed the congregation with spoof solemnity. It was a typical Sunday morning, the "bit before the kids go out" at church. I must have been about 6. "Who here is  bad ?"... I knew all about sin. I'd had it explained to me, and everything, and quite frankly it seemed to make a lot of sense. Disobedience, lies, unkindness; I could think of lots of things that I had done which would make me sad if someone else did them to me. And it made me sad that I had done them, and I imagined it would make God sad too, going by what I knew of God. So, naturally, I raised my hand. And everybody burst out laughing. "Oh, dear, dear", chuckled the speaker, "I'm sure you're not bad  -- maybe naughty occasionally, but not bad ". But nonetheless he summoned me up to the front, where I was made to hold a piece of paper emblazoned with that word in bubble letters as part of his interactive family-friendly warm

sonnet_cxvi_v2_cw2013 Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it finds weetabix-encrusted bowls, Nor bends, when bending to remove socks from the bedroom floor. Oh no! It is an ever-fixèd mark, much like the one left on the wall by that ham-fisted DIY attempt, That looks on tempests, and does not excuse itself from taking out the bins. It is the GPS to every long car journey back from stressful family events, Whose worth's unknown, although for goodness sake, don't leave it on the front seat to get taken. Love's not time's fool, though time-worn jokes may fall within the compass of a scathing glance; Love alters not with lengthy working days and weary weeks, But bears it out, and even finds the energy, come Saturday, to hoover to the edges of the living room. If this be error, and myself accused, Will never writ, nor I his words abused. (cf. an earlier draft ) Bearing with one another doesn't

"How is being a Christian like being a pumpkin?", my Facebook newsfeed prompted me: "God picks you from the patch, brings you in, and washes all the dirt off of you. Cuts off the top and scoops out all the yucky stuff. He removes the seeds of doubt, hate, greed, etc...and then He carves you a new smiling face and puts His light inside of you to shine for all the world to see." Underneath were lots of awws, and 'likes', and general indications of approval, many from dear friends whom I should possibly be more reluctant to offend. But I couldn't help but think – "hang on a sec – have none of you ever actually seen a jack-o-lantern?" Picture CC from Handtwerk on Flickr Wow, that's, erm, really something to aspire to, hey. In fact, I worry that we Christians have  gained a reputation for certain pumpkin-like tendencies, along rather less flattering lines of comparison: permanently, determinedly, grotesquely, smiley; little going on b

First Witch When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain? Second Witch When the hurlyburly's done, When the battle's lost and won. Third Witch That will be ere the set of sun. First Witch Where the place? Second Witch Upon the heath. Third Witch There to meet with Macbeth. (Shakespeare, Macbeth , Act I, Scene I) That fateful meeting on the heath plants the seed of a dark ambition: Macbeth is to be king of Scotland. He eagerly believes the witches' prophecy -- though not quite enough, it seems, to prevent him taking matters into his own hands. Spurred on by Lady M, he murders the visiting King Duncan as he sleeps, and frames his servants in the morning. Duncan's sons flee in fear, and Macbeth assumes the throne. And then, objective ostensibly gained, all manner of madness proceeds ... Macbeth, remembering the witches' other prediction that his friend Banquo would be father to a line of kings, is racked with anxiety at this thr

Sonnet Hating   Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? You wince at all things metaphorical; Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May -- Just like they shook it into you at school. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, Too many iambs make you lose your cool, And every fair from fair sometime declines, While you decline all rhyme and metric rule. But thy eternal summer shall not fade -- The heat of your disdain is turned up full; Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade -- For you, that's too anthropomorphical. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, You will remain averse to poetry.  (Sorry Will ). No time for rhyme? Averse to verse? Incensed by cadence? I feel patronisingly sorry for you, but you're not alone. Especially not if recent poetry sales are anything to go by -- according to a Guardian article earlier this year, the total value of the market has dropped from £8.4m in 2009 to just £6.7m in 2012 -- a massive 20% declin

I take great issue with the pseudo-scriptural aphorism "cleanliness is next to godliness". Whatever its original intent, it sounds too much like something a prim and disapproving well-to-do would utter disdainfully in the presence of a small, grubby child or a dishevelled 'vagrant'. Whereas, when you look at what the Bible actually says, there turns out to be a good deal more affirmation than there is reproach for such persons: And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them. ( Mark 10 :13-16) Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs

America. The near future. Society has run to seed. Promiscuity, prostitution and sexual degeneracy are rife. Abortion, contraception, nuclear radiation, toxic waste and STDs are taking a worrying toll on birth rates. Women are objectified, degraded by pornography, at risk of sexual violence. This unwholesome nation is in desperate need of the reinstatement of some good old-fashioned Biblical values. And so (according to Margaret Atwood 's awfully superb work of dystopian speculative fiction ' The Handmaid's Tale ') a subtle coup is staged. An apparent terrorist attack destroys the President and most of Congress, and throws the country into a state of emergency. The Constitution is suspended. The "Sons of Jacob" movement sets to work "restoring order". Non-white people are shipped to "appropriate" homelands. Women are returned to their "rightful" stations, as baby-makers and domestics. It becomes illegal to employ them, and at a

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Sunk in these thoughts, my hapless self despising, I turn for balm to Sonnet Twenty Nine But two-thirds down, I feel my rancour rising... The Bard recants his woe, and says he's fine! Well, thanks a million, Will: my misery Was reckoning on yours for company.  ( Shakes et Cal. And I do apologise... ) So, feeling low, and low on fellow human low feeling, and betrayed thus by the Bard,  Pessoa  beckons -- as companion to my own disquiet I find him quite disquietingly meet: "I question myself but do not know myself. I've done nothing nor will I ever do anything useful to justify my existence. The part of my lif

A well-proportioned naked woman kneels at the edge of a raised open-air platform. Sombrely, she contemplates a scattering of onlookers reclined on picnic blankets, whilst two young girls arrayed as cherubs shroud her head with a transpicuous white veil. The girls depart; the woman rises slowly -- to display some rather unexpected (ahem) 'lady topiary' picturing, in vivid red, the communist insignia. Standing tall -- sinews stiffened, blood summoned, terrible aspect duly lent unto her eye -- she forms her full-lipped lipsticked mouth beneath the veil and fills her lungs and issues forth a fervid bellow: "io non ti amo!" She turns, and strikes the posture of an athlete at the blocks. A pause, to let her audience appreciate the moment of the moment. Then, she sprints: with unconstrained determination down the full length of the platform -- which, it happens, has been given the appearance of a road and ends abruptly with a wall -- and it is at this wall the woman ends her