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I remember once sitting with the parents of a four-year-old who had tragically died. A bright and bubbly little boy he had complained one day of a headache and within 48 hours had died from viral meningitis. It was a catastrophe and there were no words to say. We sat for a while in silence with grief filling the room. Sometimes silence speaks the loudest. It’s now two years since the catastr...

It’s seventy years since the first TV advert was broadcast in the UK. In the years since billions of pounds have been spent by advertisers with ever more imaginative ways of grabbing our attention and persuading us that our lives will be diminished without their product. Sadly, the truth is that most ads overpromise and underdeliver. In the 1970’s ladies swooned at the ad depicting James Bond deli...

In the UK the tectonic plates of political life are shifting, and no one quite knows what the landscape will look like when they settle. With resignations and defections, the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition must be feeling distinctly nervous as they break for their party’s annual conferences.  Two thousand years ago political intrigue was just as rife of course, but rather easier...

After 35 years in ordained ministry, I was given a three-month sabbatical and on day one flew to Scotland to stay by the sea. One sunny afternoon, I took a walk down to the port and set off along the harbour wall without a care in the world. The wall was not fenced in on any side and an unwary walker might easily plunge over the edge. But that wasn’t going to be. Or so I thought. Suddenly distract...

On 8 th  May 1945 Victory in Europe was declared. In the UK people poured onto the streets, and from the balcony of Buckingham Palace the King and Prime Minister joined in the celebrations of a hard-won victory over tyranny. But Europe was a continent in ruins. Some regions were on the brink of famine and the threat of Communism was marching west. Having won the war now it was time to secure...

On Christmas Day 1859 Thomas Austin, a British ex-pat, gave Australia a gift they have never forgotten. He was missing his old hunting traditions and so asked his family to send him 24 European rabbits that he could breed for hunting. Sadly, he seems to have forgotten that rabbits breed like…well like rabbits. Genetically disposed to flourish in the Australian climate their population grew rapidly...

A place for everything and everything in its place. This is the rule by which I try to live my life. It means that I can tell you exactly where things are in my house. This applies to the important stuff like keys, wallet, and passport but also the less important like Sellotape, hole punches, and scissors. So, on the rare occasions when something isn’t where I expect it to be panic sets in. If it’...

Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ was so powerful that a number of those involved turned to Christ during its filming. One of those was the actress Sabrina Impacciatore who played the part of Veronica, the woman who steps out of the crowd to wipe Jesus’ blood-stained face as he makes his way to the cross. Brought up a Catholic Sabrina had long since stopped practising her faith. Her part...

Stranded in the Atlantic Ocean RMS Titanic was facing her final few hours. Her hull breached by collision with an iceberg she was shipping more water than she was designed to hold and going down by the bow. On board chaos and confusion reigned with some saying everything would be OK with this unsinkable ship, while others scrambled to find room in the lifeboats of which there were not enough. All...

On 1 st  April 1957 the BBC scheduled an edition of its iconic Panorama programme. The subject was the harvesting of the Swiss spaghetti crop. It was narrated by perhaps the most famous broadcaster of the day Richard Dimbleby. While his serious tones described the process of picking and drying the spaghetti, the film showed a Swiss family bringing in the harvest and then celebrating the crop...

Two men have been fined and ordered to do unpaid work after vandalising a statue of Paddington Bear. Pronouncing sentence, the judge told them that they were the antithesis of everything the bear stood for – kindness, tolerance and acceptance. While the label on Paddington’s coat reads ‘please look after this bear’, the behaviour of the men in question had demonstrated the very opposite. The two a...

In 2019 Edward Spencer-Churchill reviewed the security arrangements for a solid gold toilet at Blenhiem Palace. It was part of an art installation. He announced that it would not be ‘the easiest thing to nick’. Sadly, he was wrong as thieves broke in and made off with it during a raid lasting less than five minutes. Fast forward nearly six years and the thieves have this week been convicted of bur...

In a recent interview Lady Gaga admitted that for many years her biggest fear was of being alone. In 2017 she confessed ‘I go from everyone touching me all day and talking at me all day to total silence.’ She said, ‘I think my biggest fear was doing life on my own’. She’s now happily engaged, and those days of loneliness are a thing of the past. But her experience is not uncommon – to be in the mi...

‘It’s going to be a spicy one’. So said Russ Cook, otherwise known as the Hardest Geezer, as he announced his latest challenge – to run the length of New Zealand. He earned his nickname after running the length of Africa in just 352 days – a gruelling journey through sixteen countries over mountains and deserts (not to mention being robbed at gunpoint). Struggling at one point with severe ba...

When 18-year-old Donovan Shears sent a text message to a number he had just made up he wasn’t expecting a reply. It was 1998 and he had his first mobile phone that could send text messages. So, he made up some numbers and fired off the simple greeting ‘hullo’. One recipient was another 18-year-old called Kirsty who thought the message was from a friend whose number she hadn’t stored on her phone,...

Both outgoing and incoming American Presidents have been generous with their displays of forgiveness. Four years ago, the clear up was in full swing after the storming of the Capitol on 6 th  January 2020. Some 1,600 people were convicted, some for violent assault. Now Trump has set them all free. Perhaps even more surprising, however, is Biden’s offer of pardons for family members and key of...

As we know the universe is governed by certain laws. One concerns putting away Christmas tree decorations: only when you have packed them all away will you find one you missed. I have done this so many times that I have grown wise. I pack the boxes and then wait several days. I just know I’ve missed something. This year it was a green sparkly star found on the doorstep after dragging out the tree....

With Gen Z leading the charge 2024 is going to be another year where the cost of Christmas is loaded onto credit cards. But when did our love affair with credit begin?  Back in the 1950’s the Bank of America sent an unsolicited credit card to every one of its 60,000 customers. Known as the ‘Fresno Drop’ it was a spectacular success, and within two years a million cards were in use. &nbsp...

You won’t be surprised to discover that we spend a lot of our lives waiting for things. According to some research, we spend on average 20 minutes a day waiting for a bus or train, 32 minutes every time we visit the Dr, 13 hours a year on hold, and 38 hours a year stuck in traffic. So, what do we do while we’re waiting and in the end is the wait worth the time we’ve spent? Advent is a season for w...

Reporting on the resignation of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, a BBC reporter referred to the Church of England as a ‘fading institution’. A cursory glance at the statistics from the last few decades surely bears this out. Perhaps we should not be surprised. Over the centuries church institutions have come and gone, not least when they abandon the Biblical authority which gave them bi...

Jesus once got lost. At least that’s what his parents thought. They were returning from a festival in Jerusalem to their home in Nazareth and travelling with a large company of family and friends. Mary thought Jesus was with Joseph and he thought he was with her. It took a day to realise that he wasn’t with either of them and another three days of frantic searching before they found him. He was in...

Jesus told a story about a man who had two sons. One day the younger son demanded his inheritance, in effect telling his father ‘I wish you were dead!’. Surprisingly his father agreed, and the son was soon far from home and splashing the cash on parties for his newfound friends. Before long, however, the cash ran out and so did the friends, leaving the son destitute and wondering what to do now. H...

Many years ago, I volunteered at a night shelter for the homeless in Bristol. One man in particular stayed in my mind. He stood out because he was smartly dressed wearing a jacket and tie and carried a small bag of possessions. Thoughtful and articulate he explained that this was a way of life he had chosen. Unlike most in his position who would love to have a home he had given his up for a life o...

When the USS Enterprise launched in September 1966 ‘to boldy go’ where no one had gone before, it didn’t actually go very far. The idea of exploring the Milky Way was one of pure imagination far beyond the bounds of possibility. Fast forward nearly 60 years and how much has changed. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is now planning for a future where humans live and work in space. In a recent interview th...

The premature death of someone we love is one of the hardest griefs to bear. We are left with the haunting and unanswerable question ‘Why?’ It seems so unfair and makes no sense. How could a good God allow such a thing? A while ago a friend of mine had to grapple with this question following the diagnosis of his terminal illness. His response to the ‘why me?’ question was to ask, ‘why not me?’ and...