Critic Cal

As someone with a healthy recognition of my need for the mercy of God, as well as a less-than-healthy capacity for shame and religious anxiety (people, we really need to help each other learn the difference), Psalm 51 – King David's great prayer of contrition and repentance – has long been close to my heart. Have mercy on me, O God,     according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy     blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,     and cleanse me from my sin! ( Psalm 51 :1-2) But I've had a growing unease with it ever since the following was pointed out to me. "Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight..." confesses David to God (Ps 51:4). Meanwhile, the short context-providing note at the start of the psalm explains the particular sin which has prompted this humbled outcry: "A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba." If "...

When I finished primary school, my all-time favourite teacher gave me Cranford and Jane Eyre  as a leaving gift. It's taken me until now to realise that, as much as seeking to further my literary education, she was almost certainly trying to gently nudge me into feminist awakeness. Well, after a two-decade-long lie-in, I'm finally rubbing my eyes (sorry I'm late, Miss). I've not read either book for ages  – it's impossible enough keeping pace with the 'to-read' list without appending the many worthy 'to-revisit's. But I was recently delightfully surprised by the stage adaptation  of Jane Eyre in its second run at the Bristol Old Vic. I say 'surprised' ... it's a grumpy habit of mine to routinely and volubly disapprove of adaptations of anything , especially fiction to stage or screen. Too often (I maintain) it becomes an exercise in plot narration, neglecting all but the surface layer of the original material as well as the unique op...

Mr. W's had me watching the oh-so-disturbingly funny ' Inside No. 9 ', a series of disconnected black comedy shorts made by the men what done ' The League of Gentlemen '. It's all mindgames and murders, domestic intruders and sinister secrets and aargh. Tends to be that I enjoy it in the moment and regret it in the middle of the nightmare-riddled night... So the other evening, I opted for the tried-and-tested ' Cabin Pressure ' remedy, and drifted off to the dulcet, charmingly hi-lariously crafted tones of Douglas, Martin, Carolyn and Arthur. Indeed, my sleep was much the sweeter for this I'm-too-old-for-a-bedtime-story-but-radio-4-does-pretty-much-the-same-job stratagem. Except, part way through I was distracted by an onset of thoughtfulness, prompted by the following interlocution between the sharp-tongued Carolyn and her cheerfully be-leagured new-found love interest, Herc: Carolyn: Oh, don't tell me you're a vegetarian.  Herc: ...