Gareth Malone, and my telly face

I really enjoyed the final episode of 'The Choir' on BBC2 last night. It was one of those occasions where MrsLanky and I break out what we call our 'telly faces'. This is where there's something on TV which is really captivating and inspiring, and it causes an inane open-mouthed smile to appear on each of our faces. We know we're doing it, but we just can't help ourselves.

Last effect night this was exaggerated further by the compelling nature of the programme. MrsLanky and I both sing, and we both believe in the value of singing in churches and communities. So you might say this was a match made in heaven even before the opening titles finished.

On last night's show, Gareth Malone showed again how a little bit of vision, and a huge amount of energy and enthusiasm, can bring together even the most hopeless (and I don't mean that in a pejorative sense) groups of people. He also showed the value of caring and compassionate leadership, and I think that's what the people of South Oxhey were really craving; the music was an excellent vehicle which was, in a sense, incidental.

In an age where the church has faded into the background for many people, it's not surprising that there are places and people in need of this type of leadership. We just need to clone Gareth Malone, or maybe get him to lead a module at theological colleges, on the subject of leadership in communities.

UPDATE - It looks like someone else agrees with me

Happy engagement

The midwife we saw on Friday went through the usual routine of feeling around for the position of LittleLanky, and she wasn't sure which way round it was. She thought it might have been breach, so she sent us for a scan at the hospital. After a nervous wait, we were squeezed in for a scan which confirmed that the baby is actually nearly fully engaged. Needless to say, we were relieved at this outcome. It does mean, though, that labour could start at any time! Scary.

So scary, in fact, that yesterday was my most productive day at work in a long time! I'm desperately trying to work through my to do list so I don't disappear on paternity leave leaving disaster in my wake!

Singing in the emerging church

Maggi Dawn has posted about the role of live singing in an emerging church setting, and I agree with her. Live singing is a wonderfully adaptive aspect of worship, and I'd add that you don't need to be restricted to the model of a choir. I've been working for ages with the music of the Iona and Taize communities, and if you want to get people engaged in part singing really quickly, then this is the way to do it. One strong and confident leader and a roomful of people who think they can't sing can do some amazing things with an african chant or a simple Taize canon.

Maggi also mentions Gareth Malone, star of the BBC series The Choir. If you haven't already seen the programme, you can catch the final episode on Tuesday next week. From watching the programme, I recognise the joyful feeling when a roomful of people really click with a piece of music.

The final thing I want to do is to encourage anyone who can hold a tune that they can actually lead people in singing. I only have an average singing voice; I'm certainly not a soloist. I do, however, have a loud voice and I can sing in tune. Along with a good knowledge of the piece you're teaching, this is all you need!

Having said all of this, I also accept that there are people for whom participating in singing doesn't 'float the boat', and I think as leaders and teachers, we need to respect that. This is why I always try to make it a relaxed affair with as little pressure as possible.

Paternal perks

I've long held the view that the Scandinavian approach to maternity and paternity leave is one we should emulate, so when I saw this news story about prospective changes to UK paternity leave, I was most impressed. The proposal is to allow fathers to take 6 months of paternity leave compared to the current 2 weeks.

The only problem is that I don't see much support for a policy like this in the middle of a recession.

Common sense prevails over Blackburn's 'tainted' eucharist

I doubt this news will make the same splash as the original story did! The Chapter at Blackburn Cathedral have decided to remove the facility, at services with a female president, for people to receive elements consecrated by a male priest. There is also an acknowledgement that the decision to do this in the first place was regrettable.

Of course, it would be better if this kerfuffle had never happened, but this seems to be the best outcome.

Turing apology

I've long been a fan of Alan Turing and his work. I was first introduced to Turing's ideas during a philosophy module called 'Knowledge, Mind and Language' whilst at university. We looked at the 'Turing Test', which is a test for detecting artificial intelligence.

Whilst at university, I also developed an interest in logic and crypotgraphy (though I have no skill in either!), and I read a lot about the work of Station X. It's clear to me, from what I've read, that the work of Turing, and his lesser-known colleagues, was instrumental in shortening the war. It also paved the way for the birth of computing as we know it.

I'm pleased that Gordon Brown has offered an official apology for the apalling 'treatment' Turing received:

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of the Second World War could have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely.

In 1952, he was convicted of "gross indecency" – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

I'm pleased about the apology, but it doesn't reduce the sorrow I feel about his plight. It makes me angry that anyone could be treated in this way, and sad that we missed out on his academic brilliance. The only comfort I take is that we don't treat people in this way any more - at least not on an institutional level.

How to wash baby

Our third antenatal class was last night, and it was very useful. We were very lucky to meet a baby girl who was only born 12 hours earlier. We were shown how one cleans one's baby without breaking it. She was very cooperative; hopefully LittleLanky will share this characteristic.

MrsLanky and I were a little unsure about the value of antenatal classes. We have both read a lot, and have been around young babies in the family. We thought we were quite clued-up. There is, however, significant value in being taken through the issues by an experienced midwife. Add to this the value of demonstration and the ability to ask random questions, and we're very glad to have taken the opportunity.

Only one more class to go now, plus a breastfeeding workshop and a massage for labour session!

Technical Support problems

Maggi Dawn posted this flow diagram which rings bells with me. Most of my visits to parents and parents in law turn into technical troubleshooting sessions.

Plane wrong

I heard this story on the radio this morning, and wondered whether I was hearing things. It seems to be the case that, in order to maintain our obsession with cheap air travel, the Government's Climate Change Committee are recommending a cut of 90% on other greehouse gas emissions.

Now don't get me wrong; if we can reduce our emissions by this amount by 2050 we should get on with it, but surely we should also be looking to reduce our emissions from aviation by the same kind of amount. Why on earth would we want to give preference to the air travel industry?

The final countdown

I thought I should record the fact that Mrs Lanky has just started her last week of work before her maternity leave commences. It will be nice for her not to have to drag herself out of bed for a 9am start, though we're both aware that there's plenty of hard graft to come when the baby arrives.

On an unrelated note, students are starting to migrate back to Lancaster. The medical students are already working and there are plenty of postgrads around. It won't be long until Freshers' week, though I think we'll opt out of this year's festivities given the impending arrival of LittleLanky. It's amazing how quickly the summer comes and goes!

Fresh expressions of cricket

Jim Cumbes hit the nail on the head last night:

"We have got to rethink how we treat our public in cricket," added Cumbes, acutely aware that some of those now trudging into the night behind him, caterwauling as they went, might never return.

We were in a similar rain-hit situation at a Lancashire game earlier in the 'summer', and Jim knows what he's talking about. He knows (moreso than the pundits) that the game dies if people don't come to watch. Twenty20 was meant to be the 'fresh expression' of cricket; still cricket, but made more accessible and understandable for people who were previously agnostic toward the sport. It was meant to be a friendly format with less formality and stuffiness; we were told that the players would play in a wider range of weather conditions, and that play would be much more likely even if it was raining a bit.

So much for that!

David Keen's post about the unwritten rules of worship struck a chord with me, and got me thinking about the parallels between cricket and the church. Seasoned cricket fans will have been able to read the signs at Old Trafford last night long before the succinct announcement was made over the PA and big screens. Newcomers will have left more confused and frustrated than when they arrived, and many of them won't go back! Spooky.

Friday frolics

There are lots of little things to say today, so I will skip around the subjects in this post:

The end of 50 over domestic cricket
The BBC reports on the ECB's announcement that there will be no 50 over domestic competition next year. The 4 day game survives along with a revitalised 40 over competition and T20. Ultimately, though I may have favoured the 50 over game over the Pro40, I think it's the right decision to only have one of them.

The Ashes and the Crown Jewels
David Keen has launched a campaign to bring the Ashes back to terrestrial TV. I agree with his assessment that the atmosphere around this year's Ashes series was subdued because only evening highlights were available on Channel 5; the live coverage restricted to Sky subscription channels. David quotes the Guardian, who published the slightly embarassing viewing figures:

At its peak, Sky Sports 1's live Ashes coverage had more viewers than Gardeners' World on BBC2, which had 1.1 million viewers between 5.45pm and 6pm, and was neck and neck with a repeat of Agatha Christie's Poirot on ITV1, which had 1.9 million viewers. But it could not better the 2.3 million viewers watching Songs of Praise on BBC1.

Wales - a hotbed of terrorism
Amateur Photographer reports the experience of a railway enthusiast (or trainspotter) who was on a camping holiday in Wales. He took some photos of some 'interesting' engines at an oil depot, and was then traced by the Police to his campsite. The Police caught up with him the following day and demanded he hand over the camera and memory card. I'm happy to say that he knew his rights, and that he refused to do so. He did offer to show them his images, but they declined the offer.

I wish the Police would learn a bit more about the law in this area!

Chilean Chapel
This post caught my eye. It shows a wooden chapel built on a lakeside in Chile. Simple and sensitive. I feel like going up to the Lake District via B&Q.

I think that's about it for now.

Mike Peatman on Megrahi

Mike Peatman has posted on the release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber. I've posted on this before, and last night I listened to an extended piece on Radio 4 whilst driving through 6 (yes 6) sets of roadworks on the M62 (down to 1 lane every time!). I agree with much of what Mike says, and will make a couple more points of my own.

• It's a shame we'll never have the chance to see an appeal brought. Many people who have reviewed the evidence are not convinced about it and there is also new evidence to be tested. Surely it would provide a better sense of justice for those affected to have the right people convicted and punished for the crime.
• As there will not be any re-examination of the evidence, the existing conviction stands. As far as the law is concerned, Megrahi is still guilty.

Megrahi's release (to me) has nothing to do with either of the above issues. He is dying. He is no longer seen as a threat to society. He was being detained far from his home and his family. The only reasons to keep him in detention are that a) we think he still needs to be punished, and b) the victims and their families (and some politicians seeking to cash in) aren't happy with his release.

My belief is that prison as punishment is a fundamentally flawed model. I know many will disagree, but I don't see what right I have to inflict pain (to put it in a basic form) on somebody because of the pain they have inflicted on me. We tell our children that 2 wrongs don't make a right, and we aspire to 'turn the other cheek', but then we go and enshrine the principle of revenge into our legal systems. We even talk about someone's debt to society; we say that 'you caused society x pain, so we have to cause you x pain in return'. Otherwise they are in a position of debt. How on earth can we quantify pain in this way? I'm reminded of the famous Gandhi quotation, 'An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind'.

I do think that we have to respect the victims and their families, but we have to accept that those closest to the crime are probably not in the best position to decide on what happens to the offender. That's one of the reasons we have a legal system - to lend some objectivity to the process.

All in all, I think the right decision was made, though I think we should have insisted on a low key repatriation. That, however, is a PR/diplomatic issue; Not a moral/legal one.

Friday fun

Many of the bloggers I regularly read have a habit of blogging a summary of issues on a Friday, and today I feel drawn to do the same. It's been a very busy day for me at work (Day one of a four day health and safety training course), and having scanned my usual internet reading list this evening, there seems to be too much to say today!

Cricket

A mediocre day for England. Seemed to start well, but then lost a predictable flurry of middle order wickets. Hopefully the tail can add on a few more in the morning before we see which Steve Harmison turns up.

Megrahi

I have a lot of sympathy with the Scottish politicians who have had to make the decisions on the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. I think it's a complex situation, and I'm not sure of the security of the original conviction. I think they've made the correct decision to let a dying man go home for the end of his life.

Swine flu and communion at Greenbelt

Maggi Dawn shares the news that this year's Greenbelt won't feature the usual Sunday morning communion service and asks for comments about how people are coping with swine flu in churches. As I think I've said before, we have fairly unconventional arrangements for communion at the University Chaplaincy we attend. These arrangements are more peculiar at the moment because the RC Diocese have not been as harsh as the C of E, and the methodists have their shot glasses. This means that our ecumenical weekly communion service (during holiday time) now has a buffet of choices, though denominationally restricted! Anglicans receive in one kind, methodists receive bread and unfermented wine from shot glasses, and the Roman Catholics are continuing as if there's no swine-flu. I can't imagine what newcomers from outside a church setting would make of this, but it seems to work ok.

SPCK

Great news for the former employees of SPCK, who appear to have been shafted by their incoming Texan bosses. Lots of reports everywhere in the blogosphere, but the USDAW action resulting in payouts to some of the people involved was covered on the BBC.

Jessops

The current management have struck back in Amateur Photographer. they are blaming the previous management. I think they're all to blame, along with uncontrollable changes to the photography market.

Come on Burnley!

Despite the fact that it doesn't help my fantasy football team, and the more important fact that I am an Accringtonian, I take great delight in Burnley's victory over Man United. It's great to see the big teams knocked over by the new boys.

More bad news at Jessops

My former employer is finding it hard at the moment. Jessops have found it very difficult over the last few years, and I found out yesterday that one of my former colleagues is to be made redundant as the company moves to cut costs even further. When I managed a Jessops store, we had the following indefinite full time posts:

• Manager
• Assistant Manager
• Sales Assistant
• Lab Supervisor

In addition we had 4 or 5 part-time sales assistants, and this was a small shop!

I'm informed that the profile of a similar store (mine was closed a couple of years ago) is now down to just a Manager on a full time indefinite contract, and a bunch of part-time assistants.

The unique selling point of the business, when I joined it, was that the people who worked there were enthusiasts. That meant that customers came to the shop for more than the product; they came for advice and a chat about obscure photographic equipment. It was a specialist shop.

By employing part-time staff in the majority of posts, they have lost this USP. There isn't any advantage to shopping in Jessops now. You'll get a better price and equivalent customer service from the faceless internet!

It's sad that a company founded on family values and expert advice has been diluted, and I'm not sure how much longer the business will last.

**UPDATE**
Amateur Photographer has this from the former Chairman and Chief Exec.

Guitar Hero

This is a story that the sadly missed BigBulkyAnglican would definitely have recorded on his blog. And even though I posses the guitar skills of an otter (despite owning two guitars), I thought I should mark the passing of Les Paul on this blog.

I played in a band for a while when I was at school, and although I was a keyboard 'player', I was inevitably exposed to electric guitar culture - all bands have guitars! It appears to me that Les Paul was much more than just a person who played and made guitars. He was an icon in the world of rock music.

He was an innovator in musical technology and developed one of the first solid bodied electric guitars. The move away from a resonant sound box opened up massive stylistic possibilities that hadn't existed before! He and his contemporaries changed the course of rock and roll music with this innovation. Les Paul's 'log' (yes that's what he called this guitar) was the forerunner of the Gibson Les Paul; a guitar that nearly all your favourite rock musicians will have played on stage at some point in their career. This is what many people mean by a 'Les Paul'; in my teenage years, I remember the dawning realisation that a 'Les Paul' wasn't just a guitar!

Lester William Polsfuss (to give him his full name) wasn't just a guitar maker though. He continued to innovate with musical effects and recording techniques which have gone on to shape modern music even more than his guitar design! He experimented with multitracking well before there was a convenient, all-in-one machine that would do the hard work for you! Les Paul will go down in musical history for his contribution to music. I just hope that future generations of musical geeks have the same realisation I did. There was a man behind the guitar, and he was great!

The final thing to say is that in reading about his life today, I discovered that I've spent some time in his neck of the woods. He was born and raised in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Just down the road from New Berlin, where some good friends of ours live.

Loft-boarding

It sounds like it could be a new form of torture dreamt up by American intelligence agents. In reality, though, it's what a friend and I did last night.

Although we are in rented property, our landlord is quite flexible about us doing little bits about the house. With the impending arrival of LittleLanky, we are trying to create space in the house for an assembled cot etc, so we thought it would be a good idea to spend £20 on materials and make the loft a bit more usable as a storage location.

Thanks to the assistance of the aforementioned friend this task is now complete, and our giant tent is now safely sitting in the loft. The next step is to dismantle a couple of shelving units (upon which the tent was previously stored) and put them (along with 10 boxes of books) alongside the tent. That should give us acres of space for a baby and all its 'stuff'.

Strange experiences

Up until yesterday, all the purchases we've made in the anticipation of LittleLanky's arrival have failed to cause alarm.

• The pram (an Easy Walker Sky) is assembled, but safely tucked away at my parents' house.
• The cot (Ikea's cheapest one) is still in it's box in the spare room.
• The changing table (a funky Ikea number) is next to the cot, also in its box.

I think that's about all we've acquired so far, and as you can see, it's mostly boxed or not in our house.

It all changed yesterday when we were in Booths we spotted an offer on organic and environmentally friendlier disposable nappies for new born babies. Although we fully intend to use reusable nappies, we're not naive enough to think that we'll never use a disposable, so we bought some.

I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, but it felt a bit like it did when we decided we were going to try for a baby in the first place; a bit scary, and completely uncharted territory.

Anyway, we now own some nappies, and we should probably get our act together on the myriad other items we 'need' before the baby arrives.

Mummy and Daddy classes

Last night we went to our first antenatal session at the hospital, which was all very interesting. The person leading the session was very nice, if slightly mad.

Although we didn't discover any amazing truths about parenthood in the first session (it was mostly common sense), the session brought our experience of pregnancy to the next level! It's all somehow much more immediate now that we've had the tour of the maternity ward and seen a model of a baby at 30 weeks gestation (which is the milestone we reached today).

I need to crack on with assembling furniture and tidying up a bedroom! Everyone tells me that once the baby arrives, we will both be too tired to operate allen keys.