Waterboys setlist – Birmingham Symphony Hall 22.05.12

Just discovered the setlist from the Waterboys concert I went to on Tuesday. An absolutely fantastic evening!

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My photos from the gig can be found here. More thoughts might follow later…

Review: The Winter Ghosts

The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the third Kate Mosse book I’ve read, following Labyrinth and Sepulchre. It’s much smaller than these two and was a very quick read. It has it’s historical roots in the persecution of the Cathars, like Labyrinth, and in the post war period. As before she utilizes a way of writing continually slips between both time periods. She isn’t merely working to the same formula, however, but introduces the exploration of recovery after emotional upheaval and bereavement as well as ghosts. Yes this is a ghost story – not a horror story but a romance, yet still a little unsettling. I came away wanting to know more and to experience a further development of the interaction between ghost and living, but this is no bad thing. I’ve grown to enjoy her writing style and will definitely look out for more by her. I would love to see her turn her hand at writing a fuller ghost story; she certainly has the knack of getting the mood and colour just right.

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Review: Blueeyedboy

Blueeyedboy by Joanne Harris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As always, I loved this offering by Joanne Harris. It’s different than many of her works, more disturbing, but still maintains all her usual trademarks; a great imagination, fantastic use of all the senses in description (more relevant her than usual for reasons that will become clear if you read the book) and a playing around with the reader’s mind. The book explores two topics, the nature of our relationships especially with those closest to us, and the nature of personal and public identity and the way the virtual world can blur this. I’d say that her exploration is successful, but will restrain from saying more to avoid spoiling the plot for those who haven’t read it yet!
Whilst others haven’t enjoyed this as much as they expected, I certainly did, and am looking forward to her next offering.

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The Return of… The BIGPicnic

Somebody To Love

The Queen Extravaganza version of Somebody to Love from American Idol. Have to confess I thoroughly loved it – great effort for a first performance live.

Erroneous Stories

Whilst I was at University I was introduced to Stephen Jay Gould, and paleontogist and biologist, who gained quite a name for himself writing popular science books in an attempt to inspire people to become more interested in biology. I recently stumbled across a quote from him, although I must confess to not knowing where he wrote it, or which particular stories he was referring to. It goes:

‘The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best — and therefore never scrutinize or question.’

As a scientist I know these are wise words. As a scientist, there is always the danger of assuming you know how things operate, and so read that understanding into your observations and interpretations of data, and so become blinded to the possibility that in fact in reality things work quite differently. It can take quite a leap of imagination to see the world differently to how it is widely believed to be. For centuries people believed that the Sun went around the Earth, it took the imagination and courage of Galileo to begin to persuade people that they’d got the story wrong. Similarly, since Newton, it was widely believed that these rules governed everything – until a wave of scientists in the 20th Century came along with the concept of Quantum Mechanics. Suddenly the story of the world became a whole lot stranger.

But Gould’s saying doesn’t just relate to science. It can also apply to how we relate to people. It is all too easy to believe we understand other cultures around us, that we know what they believe and what is important to them. Gould’s saying warns us against this and challenges us to make sure this isn’t simple prejudice or misunderstanding.

As a Christian, his words provoked me to think about how I approach the Bible too. The challenge for us is to keep the Bible fresh, to always approach it with an open mind, to never assume that we’ve understood it all. It is all too easy for us to believe we know how it’s story goes, and be blinded by our assumption with the consequence that we are prevented from actually hearing what it really says, or to hearing what God might be trying to say to us through it today because we remember what he said yesterday. The Pharisees thought they knew the story, and yet when the Story became flesh and walked amongst them, they didn’t recognise him as he wasn’t what they thought the Story said. Let us heed Gould’s words and the warning from the Pharisee’s example.

The King’s English – 100 phrases in 3 Minutes

A little late, but I’ve just stumbled across this video cramming in 100 phrases introduced in to our language by the King James Bible (I’m assuming it was made to celebrate its recent anniversary). Quite a list!