Tremendous Trifles

…and buy this good lady’s inestimable tome here.  Over on a fellow labourer-in-the-blogyard’s site she harrumphed that she still hadn’t the funds to cross the old blue-and-briney to the land of her fathers.  If she doesn’t make it over, it’ll be your fault for not forking out the mullah, and you’ll win the enmity of more that just fictional Scots.  So there. 

My review:

A rip-roaring joy-ride of a story.  I laughed, I cried, I went to Mass.

STOP PRESS: New and definitive 3rd edition now out (follow link above).

I’m not sure what it says about modern telecommunications that my mobile (a.k.a. cell) phone predicts “bishkek” before “bishop” when in text mode.  If you are at all confused by the difference, it’s best to approach both with caution, I should think.

So. Farewell then
Edinburgh’s own
Sci-Fi legend,
Arthur Seat Clarke.

“2001:
A Speyside Odyssey”
That
Was one of yours.

Although
Keith’s mum
Said you preferred
A nice Islay.

E J McThribb (35 ½ )

Check it out now, fald-stool brethren:

It’s a bit more complicated than:

“Nazis–I hate those guys.”

Matthew Collings on Picasso’s Guernica.

V: St George’s-in-the-West 

In the slender gap

Between the drum and column,

Space to notice this.

At the High Mass

The senses start to quicken as the bell
Heralds the linen-silken train of men
Into the giant jewel-box of the church.
The expectation of what’s old and known
From age-long repetition weights the gloom:
The quickening thrill of God-made-man, made Bread.

This solemn celebration of the rite
Is elemental nature consummate:
The very stuff of earth is made to shout
And yield its fundamental self to God;
Flame, water, incense, metal, stone, and dust–
Arrayed in splendour—crying out to Him.

The house is filled with smoke, the Lamb is slain–
All may be clear and clean, and live again.

Faithful Cross, above all other,
one and only noble Tree,
none in foliage, none in blossom,
none in fruit thy peer may be;
sweetest wood and sweetest iron,
sweetest weight is hung on thee.

†   †   †

 O tree of beauty, tree of light!
O tree with royal purple dight!
Elect on whose triumphal breast
those holy limbs should find their rest.

Like juddering gusts

Flicking slack flags, these flames tug

At my grate’s last log.