Thursday, May 08, 2008

To Parliament...

...to watch Lord Tebbitt distribute the prizes won by young people in the Robin McNair Essay Competition organised by SPUC. It was a delight to meet some of these young winners, their families and teachers. Lord Tebbit spoke well: in alluding to his own religious practice, he said that his local vicar had asked him why he attended church, and he had replied that he went because he didn't want the church pews to be empty and the building closed, as he wanted it to be there and available for everyone in the future. I sort of like the circular logic in that.

Afterwards, I was able to show some people round - we went out on to the Terrace where the great Thames swirled regally by, and we looked up to the glorious gothic facade with its royal coats of arms and its turrets and spires, and we thought about the monks who had lived on that spot and drained the marshes and made it possible for Parliament to meet there, on land safe from the king's intervention. Later we walked through the Great Hall, where Thomas More was tried and Edmund Campion also, and where just a few years ago the coffin of our last Queen Empress lay in state with the Koh-in-Noor diamond on the imperial crown flashing in sudden shafts of sunlight from those Norman-arched windows...

Afterwards, a cup of coffee with SPUC Executive member Richard Marsden, ( a young journalist,whose blog is a good read) and then on to the CTS bookshop, where I ran into Dan Cooper, of the John Fisher School. He was enthusiastic about Jamie's feature article, on marriage and fathers, in the latest FAITH magazine, which I hadn't yet seen - when I got home there was my copy of the magazine waiting for me. I read the feature and warmly concur with Dan's opinion.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What on earth does your husband know about fatherhood, or you about motherhood come to that?

Marita said...

anonymous: As Ann Widdecombe once said (not an exact quote) - you don't need to be a criminal to be a crime writer.

Anonymous said...

An athletics coach isn't necessarily an athlete, a literary critic isn't necessarily a novelist, a heart surgeon isn't necessarily recovering from a cardiac arrest.

Medieval wisdom was that virgins make the best marriage counsellors.

Anonymous said...

The proof of the pudding is in the eating and there is not even a crumb in this case.

Anonymous said...

Honestly, I think the Bogles are the Neil and Christine Hamilton of the Catholic underworld.