I have just been to a requiem mass for a long-standing family friend. In so far as these things can be said to go well, it did.

However, we are left with jumbled theology: no fewer than three strands in one service to be precise..
1. The deceased was referred to as having been "reunited" with her husband of 49 years.
2. There was a prayer that the deceased would "soon" be admitted to the kingdom of Heaven (an element of Roman purgatory being implied here)..
3. The final references were to the hope of being raised on judgement day.
The mind boggles. No wonder people are leaving the church in droves. If this were a local government minute being submitted for analysis to a newspaper (or a court report without a good shorthand note) it would be sent back to the reporter not just for checking, but for triple checking.
And unless the outcome was satisfactory, the report would be spiked.

* With the price of a loaf now nearing £1, I have taken to baking home-made bread. Not that I knead the dough. But I do need something more thrilling than a supermarket shelf full of Blackpool Milk Loaves and all the other steam-cleaned white nonsense that passes for daily bread. Get baking.
PS Liverpool has been named (in one of thos dubious surveys!) as the city with the UK's worst food record.
Not really surprising. Many people I know (including colleauges) can't even boil an egg. One has forsaken what they call "raw cooking" to eat out of cardboard boxes, tins and bottles.

* No wonder Ken Russell quit the Big Brother house. What was a cinematic genius doing there in the first place with such a load of nerds? He's 79. He lives in the Lake District. He should be locking himself into the Britannia at Elterwater, or the Three Shires in Little Langdale or the Old Dungeon Ghyll just down the road and neckinga few pints of Jennings. Not wasting his time with pretentious has-beens and no-marks, be it from Hollywood, Bollywood or any other neck of the woods.

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