Remember GKC is For Life - Not Just for Christmas

GKC is on the Tree by G. Hurley

At last! At last! Oh felicity.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Nativity.

Oh happiness and peace profound
When family are gathered 'round.

The Christ-child born, the greatest day.
Our festivities are under-way.

Our joy is complete when we see
GKC on our Christmas tree.

A Warning to the Modern World

“Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”

G.K. Chesterton

Are Old Pa Hurley and GK Chesterton Distant Cousins?

I always wondered was I was drawn to the great English Catholic writer GK Chesterton.

Was it his innate humour? His dry wit? His piercing observations? His loathing of pomposity? His love of the poor and the underdog? His defence of Catholic tradition? His absolutism against relativism? His love of country but loathing of jingoism? His love of politics but scepticism of politicians? His embrace of history but his emphasis on creating a better tomorrow?

Apparently not!

GKC? or Old Pa Hurley?

This you tube video of a GK Chesterton talk, pricking the bubble of Protestantism's central tenet of 'sola scriptura' (scripture alone) in his wonderful style has an artist's computerised impression of a (admittedly slimmer than usual) GKC.

Take a look at the image (reproduced at right) of GKC. Remind you of anyone?

Someone who totters down Albany Road of a Saturday night after righting the wrongs of the world in the bar? Someone who likes to get a 10p clearance bag of doughnuts to nibble as he meanders his way homeward, just as (GKC's chum) Hilaire Belloc wrote of the winding lanes of Sussex in his celebration of life, England, social history and so on, in his famous book The Four Men?

The GKC cartoon character even wears the kind of suit adorned by Old Pa Hurley that led to him getting free beer in one Cardiff hostelry when they assumed he was a plain-clothes policeman!

Little short of a Damascene Conversion (if one can mention such non-ecumenical things in the modern world without straying into hate crimes), I am now given to thinking (I know, it's worrying) that I must have first picked up a GKC tome because of some familial tie, some inner yearning to learn from the wisdom of my old dad.

I thank God (ditto re. ecumenism) that I don't believe in the many-armed elephantine deities and turbanated wotnots of the Hindoos, for with GKC passing away in 1936 and Old Pa Hurley being brought into this unsuspecting world in 1937, one might wonder at the possibility of reincarnation.

Now if I find out that GKC had a fondness for supping Brains SA*, then I think I'll have to phone up some clever genealogist in the morning.

---

* I am still awaiting my letter confirming sponsorship by Brains Brewery. One of their vans travels down our street with worrying regularity as if to coax more pennies from my padlocked coin purse (all very medieval).

Advent Calendars and the Downfall of the West

No Cadbury's, no!

Advent in Welsh is known as "Winter Lent" the name goes back to when these islands were Catholic (hurrah!) before the Reformation (boo), and people would fast in preparation for the Feast of Christmas.

In those days the good people of Wales (OK, and England too) would prepare themselves for Christmas, and following Christmas Day would celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas until Epiphany - the day the Wise Men visited the Infant Christ, the first gentiles to see and worship the Son of God.

Spot the difference?

Today Christmas at its consumerist best seems to start mid November, rattles on for weeks and weeks, then by the time Christmas Day arrives, and folks eat even more chocolate than they have in the whole run-up to Christmas, a lot of people are all Christmas'd out, can't wait for Christmas to be over with, get into the shops for the sales on Boxing Day...

Where have the Twelve Days of Christmas gone? Where has the Winter Lent of Advent gone? Like all our Feast Days that used to be dotted across the calendar - they have been robbed from us, by a robber band of merchant Protestants (or morecorrectly the Mammonistas!) who saw our old traditions as a barrier to working the poor 364 days a year.

Even in my own lifetime I have seen the demise of the traditional (semi-)religious Advent calendar with its little pictures, culminating on the 24th with a double-doored picture of the Nativity, so the excitement and the reminder of what Christmas was all about was brought home to the wee bairns on Christmas Eve.

Advent calendars originated in Germany

Now, as I potter around and rarely walk about shops (having an aversion to spending money, I am my father's son) all I tend to see are chocolate-filled calendars, most with very little to do with the Christian Feast Day of Christmas at all. They may have a Coca-Cola style Santa, a snowman, little elves, or even a pop band, singer or wotnot on the front.

Bleuch.

So I am pleading with all my army of readers (yes, both of you) to not cave-in the chocolate Cadbury (owned by Kraft Foods anyway) calendars! We'll all eat enough chocolate and other goodies over Christmas anyway -- so whether buying for the grandchildren, children or the kids next door: choose an old fashioned Advent calendar, with a bit of Bethlehem about it!

In our own small way we can get Christmas back to being Christmas, and the period beforehand all about the anticipation of the coming of the Christ Child, as Leonardo Da Vinci might say the Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World).

As the greatest Englishman of the 20th Century put it:

"There is no more dangerous or disgusting habit than that of celebrating Christmas before it comes."
- G.K. Chesterton

GKC will be chuffed to know that's what I think too.

Fat Rascals to the Rescue!

GKC - the original "fat rascal?"

Yes, Fat Rascals.

Sounds like some sort of band of anti-establishment superheroes. One can imagine Belloc and Chesterton being described as Fat Rascals in atheist and banking circles back in the day.

I have been called many things, and not all of them nice, dear reader!!! Some not even suitable for a family blog like this. Can you imagine? Tut tut. Some people. But a fat rascal?

Now Mrs H is a bit of a cook. She has to be because teenage children are like gannets. Our fridge needs a revolving door. Orange juice, has a shelf like of mere hours. Strawberries of minutes. It's not so much three meals a day as four or five, with snacks and other bits for the hungry hordes.

Perhaps they are part Hobbit? That would explain the hairy feet and second breakfasts. But that would make me part-Hobbit too, so I think I'll quit that theme.

The other day Mrs H put a platter of something new on the kitchen table, on a cake stand (with cover) we have. A bad idea really because it protects the displayed items from the summer's flies - which means we all get to see the goodies and be tempted to nibble at every hour of the day. How wonderful.

And the name of these "new" treats? Fat Rascals.

One from Betty's (all ours have been eaten)

Apparently they are a Yorkshire treat, made famous via Betty's Cafe Tea Rooms, and that is all well and good. They are surely going down a treat in our humble home.

With their glacé cherry eyes and almond teeth, they are hideously ugly, so I feel they are kindred spirits - yet I take a strange delight in nibbling away at their visages

Try them yourself:


Fat Rascals BBC Recipe Page

Buying Goldfish - More Paperwork than Madonna in Africa

Fish pedicure seems the latest fad. I can sense GK Chesterton slowly turning in his grave...

An advert for the service even appeared on this blog (courtesy of Google Ads).

No doubt my post on a conversation in a local chippy whilst buying fish and chips brought about this bizarre advert placement.

When I read about fish pedicure and see ads for it in the local paper I always wonder how they work out the charges. Is it per fish?

If I were the fish-owner (the pedicurist if you will) I think I'd want to see the state of the feet being plunged in with my fish before setting a rate.

Nice n clean, size 4's? That'll be £5 please.

Cheesy, crusty, flaking, size 13's? That'll be £40 please.

On the subject of fish, we were in a large pet store the other week and whilst there I decided to buy some 99p goldfish (no expense spared!) to go in our garden pond, now that it is secured via some netting and the fish are safe from the heron (see past posts).

One of the fish tanks the shop sells: cruelty itself!

Dear Lord above.

You would have thought I wanted to adopt six children rather than buy six fish. I bet Madonna filled out less paperwork and answered fewer questions the last time she played the child-snatcher in Africa.

Next they wanted to know how big the tank was. I gulped. Would putting fish in a natural environment where they are free to swim about amongst plants, under stones etc. be considered cruelty in a store that sells garish minuscule fish tanks with themed backdrops and stickers all over them? I shifted weight from foot to foot, my mouth went dry, and beads of sweat appeared on my forehead.

So, opting for the path of moral cowardice, I held out my arms in a fisherman "the one that got away" style and even guesstimating a tank way smaller than our pond, it clearly got the 'OK' from the Obergruppenfuhrer in charge of the fish section.

Hey crickets have rights too!

As they fished out the little fishies, my eldest whispered to me "hey Dad, how come they say only so many can be kept in a tank so big, when they keep dozens in tiny tanks themselves!"

Absolutely.

It was only afterwards, whilst taking our new adoptees home (and feeling as guilty as a Weight Watchers member after a chocolate cake binge), that I remembered the same shop sells insects as a 'live food' for reptiles.

Does their adoption, animal rights and sales protocol extend to crickets?

Physicians heal thyselves.

Harry the Swansea Cat (or I Lost my Keys but Found the Door)

The modern world can be a wonderful place. Oh yes, like most other middle aged men (I am gradually accepting my status) I can shake my fist at the evening news and moan about the government as well as the next man, but every now and then a strange story comes along that makes me laugh.

We used to say "only in America," but the truth is that these strange episodes are happening with growing frequency over here in 'dear old blighty'. Just the other day in the South Wales Evening Post just such a story had me chuckling into my morning cuppa.

A firm of "pet detectives" were called into Swansea, according to the very same morning paper, in search of an eight-month-old cat called Harry. What had he done? Were they going to get him in a cold and sterile room, shine a light in his face and question him over some dead goldfish? Or was there an evidence bag with a few lonely yellow feathers that had been found at the scene of a crime, at the bottom of a Swansea bird cage amidst the budgie guano?

No. Roll back a bit. These pet detectives are not (really) like their human counterparts. Well, they are human themselves (now that would be weird!), but rather than quiz felines, canines and aquatic life on crimes committed (wouldn't you love to see the latter being questioned - would they "do a runner" to the shipwreck?), like some Pit Bull who's been running an international drugs cartel, they look for missing pets. Not quite as exciting. Hardly Miami Vice.

Now I am fully aware that a missing pet can cause upset. We all grow to love our pets, unless we are the inhuman breed of human that enjoys making animals suffer (a step away from enjoying making humans suffer). The more attentive amongst you (hi mum) will recall how upset the Hurley household was when our very own Pussykins got run over outside our home. However, there is something so very "American" about calling in the pet detectives to find a missing cat. The firm in question travelled all the way from Birmingham (I can only surmise how relieved they were to get the opportunity to get away from Birmingham).

It is so very 'British' to put up signs for a 'missing moggy' on lamp-posts and so on, with a small reward for info leading to the tracking-down of said feline. Not that it doesn't stop local councils threatening fire from the heavens against those who do so (don't they have ASBO*-brats to worry about?). Sorry Mr. Council Man, I have left the lid of my wheelie bin ever so slightly ajar: "Off to Colditz with him! Life - no parole." Meanwhile the idiots who weekly scratch cars seem to walk through the raindrops. Too difficult to catch I suppose, or at least too difficult to deal with (10p a week off their dole money and another ASBO). The Catholic Church used to say (I hope it still does) that 'defrauding the working man of a just wage' is one of the sins calling out to heaven for vengeance. I forget all the others, but one was homosexuality - not very pc (thank God - literally). Today it seems the worst sin is to leave ones bin ajar, to use one's car or to suggest that homosexuals shouldn't adopt (but enough - the Stasi will be knocking on my door!)

No - in what GK Chesterton would have dismissed as a "fad" and which teeters on the very edge of making our pets into little humans (pet cemetery anyone?), the owner of the missing moggy had the Pet Detectives out and about, searching for the family pet. As much as I understand how upset someone might be at this turn of events (our littlest has been upset over a missing rabbit and chicken - but she has the excuse that she is still in single figures), the day is coming when we will have memorial tablets on the walls of churches for Felix the Cat, that is if Churches still bother with that kind of thing (everyone these days being canonised at the graveside by the vicar/priest/minister/vicaress/priestess/social worker who tells us all that the deceased is already in heaven, thus robbing us all of the greatest act of charity we can do, to pray for the dead; and robbing the dead of all the help they need) not to mention if the churches haven't all become carpet warehouses or pound-shops.

Animal Search UK: The A Team in safety vests

Yet despite the humour that Pet Detectives might evoke in and of themselves, or the idea of people travelling all the way from Birmingham to Swansea to seek out a wandering cat (oh - the carbon footprint! Let us hope they stopped every five minutes to plant a tree), the bit that had me chortling into my morning tea was further down the article.

The Brummies from Animal Search UK announced that their investigation had been a success because they had found... Well, let me reprint the words I found so amusing:

Animal Search UK professional pet detective Lucy Green, who acted as a search coordinator on the hunt for Harry, said that while they didn't find the cat they did locate his collar.
"It was a quite successful day," she said.

News that Shergar's saddle has been found has led to street parties in Ireland and headlines in the Irish Independent: "Shergar find: Quite Successful." The next time I lose my keys (a daily event) I will congratulate myself on locating the door they go into! Is that success in 2011?

Link:
Pet Detectives Join Hunt

* For bemused readers everywhere ASBO means Anti-Social Behaviour Order. Some say these court-issued "warnings" meant to stop criminal behaviour, are viewed as badges of honour by low-life criminals.

Can Christmas Get Any Better?

You know the saying 'if Mohammed cant go to the mountain...'* Well, if there isn't a GKC Christmas Party (see my last post), then it is a duty of every red blooded Catholic to create one in the bosom of his own home!

Let's think of the ingredients we need:

1. Good food (that should be a given anyway, surely in a good - or bad - Catholic household). Funnily enough I was watching Fern Britton interview Clarissa Dickson Wright about her life and the Two Fat Ladies, and how they, her and Jennifer Paterson, were Catholics, went to Mass when filming, had to have the Saints Days on the scripts - if you get a chance watch it on iplayer. I was surprised to see such a moving, heartwarming programme which gave a positive light to our Faith.

Anyway, good food abounds at Christmas (following our shriving at Advent- a local retired Bishop often says that in Welsh, Advent was known as Winter Lent, i.e. a time of preparation for the Feast of Christmas). If between meals always have a stash of pork pies handy in the fridge. 

2. A wee tipple. You can toast the great man with a wee dram or perchance a healthy glass of Brains SA. If you are unfortunate enough to live outside Wales, then see your local ale specialist about procuring supplies of Brains SA, it really will be worth your while.

3. Put Christ back in Christmas. With the growing secularisation of our society (which GKC warned about 100 years ago) many people bemoan the taking of Christ from celebrations. The most extreme example was Birmingham's "Winterval."  As well as sending out cards with the Holy Family on, make sure your home has a Nativity Scene and, where possible, your Christmas decorations (and Advent calendars) have a Christian flavour.

4. And don't forget GKC. Read a little (or a lot!) of the great man at Christmas. Maybe a novel (try The Flying Inn) or a poem (try The Battle of Lepanto) or why not even go the whole hog and try a book (try the Everlasting Man). According to the Wikipedia page on the book:

In a letter to Sheldon Vanauken (December 14, 1950) ^[1] [C.S.] Lewis calls the book "the best popular apologetic I know," and to Rhonda Bodle he wrote (December 31, 1947) ^[2] "the [very] best popular defence of the full Christian position I know is G. K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man."

5. Make sure Christian Carols are sung, played, in short are present in your home. Some favourites include Hark the Herald Angels Sing, O Holy Night, Silent Night, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, The Twelve Days of Christmas, Oh Come All Ye Faithful/Adeste Fidelis, The First Noel, Joy to the World, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen... All of which place the Infant Christ at the centre of Christmas.

6. Don't forget Confession during Advent, and Mass throughout of course. All the celebrations, quaffing etc. lead to Christmas Mass and the remembrance that the infant Christ went on to give us the Sacrifice of the Mass.

Follow these 6 steps and you too can have a Happy, Holy, Wise, Merry and Joyful Christmas.

*Not being a Muslim it was a moot point whether to use a heathen quote, but I once asked a Mohammedan at an eatery in Brick Lane if he knew of this quote, and he responded that despite studying the Koran he had never heard of it. That's my get out clause anyway.

GKC Christmas Party? Wine & Pork Pies Surely!

I was very excited on seeing the headline "GKC Christmas Party."

Being a huge GK Chesterton (aka GKC) fan - though not as huge as the great man himself, whose cause for canonisation is well under way - I envisaged a wonderfully warm, witty gathering of great minds and friendly faces, quaffing wine (very continental and dare I say Catholic) and pork pies (quintessentially English and against all the dietary fads that GKC would have poked fun at).

How disappointed was I to find out that the GKC Christmas Party was in fact being held by the Greenville Kennel Club - the clue being in the name.

Oh well.

My tweeds, extra padding and GKC wig will have to go back to the hire shop.

Still it could have been worse - I could have booked the ticket to America, or even to Australia for the GKC Christmas meet. I was excited to read that they would be having fish n chips.... though what/who is "Barwon Heads Pup" and how you would eat it has left me perplexed. Sounds positively Korean.

All of which GKC, the king of the paradox, would have found highly amusing.

Here he is at his best with The Problem With Modern Man:

‘But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.' (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1909).

"Rebel" students take note...

Cinema Code of Conduct: About Time Too

GK Chesterton (hurrah!) said that morality is like art: it's knowing where to draw the line.

Quite so GKC. And were it that we learnt that lesson the modern world might not be in such a mess.

It might seem pedantic to some, but I am a great believer (in the footsteps of St David) that if we do the small things well, the big things will follow, thus it was that I was awaiting the cinematic 'Code of Conduct' put together by Radio 5's Messrs Kermode and Mayo.

Having suffered the rustle of a plastic bag umpteen times through one film by a couple sat behind me, who turned out to be in their 40s or 50s; through the piercing light of mobile phones being checked in my peripheral vision; to people explaining the film/plot to young attendees throughout the duration; even down to having a bare pair of cheesy feet placed on the back of the seat next to mine (honestly! in a Swansea cinema)... enough was enough.

So cinema-goers of the world unite - you have nothing to lose but umpteen distractions to the cinematic treat you have shelled out your hard-earned for.

Maybe a return to acceptable standards in the cinema, coupled with an acceptance of behaviour that is conducive to the Common Good might see the rebirth (or a re-embracing) of civilised, Christian standards in more spheres of life, viz that we should do unto others as we would wish done to ourselves.

Let's make the cinema a battleground for acceptable standards, norms and behaviour.

I know GKC would approve.