...and the celebration of a new Chesterton Library, based at the Oxford Oratory (St Aloysius).. Speeches, wine, delicious food, lots of lively talk. There was a reading of a 1909 debate between George Bernard Shaw and Chesterton, with Dr William Oddie taking the part of the latter. It made one realise how utterly faraway is that Edwardian England...
The evening was cheery, convivial, celebratory and gently academic, much greeting of friends and general enjoyment.
Afterwards, out into the Oxford summer night, with "hen party" girls shrieking and wobbling on their spiky stilt-heels, and joining groups of undergraduates in drunken vomiting and staggering about in the pedestrianised shopping centres. Police hovering about in their ugly heavy anti-stab jackets, with siren cars at the ready, lights flashing.
A bus out through the Oxfordshire countryside, and an overnight stay with relatives. In the morning, news, expected but still depressing, of Ireland's collapse into absurdity. Over the past few years, I have learned much, of the bossines and deficiencies in the old-style Irish Catholicism...it offers no joy to note that now Catholicism, in any style at all, seems to be treated with derision there...
1 comment:
But we mustn`t forget the `no` voters in Ireland -thye need our prayers and solidarity. The referendum result was far from unanimous and large numbers of Irish people will now be forced to live with laws they did not want, and with that vicious intolerance with which this particular lobby group always treats its opposition.
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