Critic Cal

When The Snowden Revelations first broke in late May 2013, I couldn't help but notice his date of birth: June 21, 1983. A mere 20 days away from my own. Which means that we were both of us in the messy process of turning 30 when it happened. My experience of said process inclines me to conjecture that it may not have been altogether without bearing on his decision to go public. A costly act of selfless bravery, or a desperate bid for significance ahead of a conspicuous personal landmark? Or, if my own (far less internationally consequential) attempts at 'meaningful' adult life are anything to go by, a complex blend of both ...                 A CRITICAL AGE                 And it came to pass in his thirtieth year                 He found t...

Mr W. and myself have been unanimous, this week, in our delight at the long-awaited start of the season. We have not, however, been quite so unanimous as to the which of the said season. He seems to think it is the Premier League lays rightful claim to our delight; I'm pretty sure it is the Great British Bake Off . However, my attempts to reason with him have fallen on deaf ears. "I honestly don't understand what's gotten everybody so ridiculously hyped," he marvels disdainfully. "It's not even real." Well, he's right about the hype. My Facebook newsfeed is testament to that. And it doesn't seem to be peculiar to my online peers: 9.3 million tuned in for the opener; 2 million more than the equivalent figures for last year. The Telegraph even provided a live text update  of the first episode, football match-style, for people (I guess?) who were unavoidably away from their TV screens between the hours of 8 and 9 last Wednesday evening b...

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...

"This is the saddest story I have ever heard." ( The Good Soldier ,  Ford Madox Ford ) There's an opening line to draw instinctive protestation, if I ever read one. The world is over-flowing with sadness; we blind ourselves in order to survive. One's own feels no less unbearable for the realisation that it's only the tip of an unthinkable iceberg. For a story to self-advertise as "the saddest" takes some cheek. And yet, having now read to the end of Ford Madox Ford's mini masterpiece, I'm half inclined to say the same myself. The novel charts the miserable disintegration of two couples' marriages and lives. It is written in the most remarkably effective nonlinear, ' unreliable ' narrative, so that the true characters of the people involved, and the actual events, are revealed gradually -- piecemeal and out-of-order and repeatedly revised. The narrator's own understanding and perspective -- and his honesty with himself and with...

Thanks, Spotify, for kicking off with Moby's ' Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad '. How did you know? Disappointment is hard to deal with, even if it's nothing more poignant or eternally significant than a paper rejection (see email dated 28/04/2012 14:27). When you invest so much of yourself into something it is hard not to feel such a rejection on a personal level. So, OK, it sounds a little melodramatic to speak about this as 'suffering', in the grand scheme of things and all that. It is pretty resoundingly a 'first world problem', as Mr. W would be only too happy to point out to me... if he wasn't the one who'd have to pick up the emotional pieces afterwards. Because there is just no escaping that, on the spectrum of feelings it is possible to feel, this one certainly falls some distance from happy. And yet: "…we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces...