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June 12, 2007

The game's nearly up Chuck

An advantage of an extended family, certainly in my case, was a wide source of pocket money and income in general. My sensible uncle would buy my sister and I saving stamps. This was in the days when the friction of chunky reassuring half crowns if not burning a hole in your pocket could erode one through the finest gabardine. Encouraging frugality and fiscal prudence he bought us a half crown stamp each per week, Princess Anne's head was on my sisters and Prince Charles was on mine. Charles and I are the same age, so as kids we were linked in a positive way. Each time I saw the silhouetted visage of the monarch's first born it was bucks in the bank for me. We were inextricably and positively connected. I think Marx called it the cash nexus. It may have been literally the prince and the pauper, but he was my mate and brought little rays of sunshine into my life. I would diligently accumulate enough stamps to buy a predetermined object of desire. Charlie always came up trumps except for one instance when after pressing my nose against a toy shop window in the Morgan Arcade and keeping almost a daily vigil on a gun with a spinning barrel and removable bullets, much favoured by Bronco Lane and The Cisco Kid, it disappeared a stamp short.

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June 1, 2007

Faith is not a virtue

Faith, hope and charity, are the theological virtues and the greatest of these is hope. This, amongst what seemed an avalanche of dictacts, was consumed by generations of 5-year olds whilst learning, rote style, the questions and answers of the Catholic Catechism. Why did God make you? God made me to know him, love him, serve him, and to be with him forever in the next. The word "world" at the end of the answer was inexplicable omitted, further complicating what must have been like reading Ulysses in backslang to us toddlers. What is Purgatory? Purgatory is a place where souls suffer for a time on account of their sins we all chanted in unison. We practiced these answers, dare I say it, religiously, to be tested once a term by the Archbishop. The answers developed a rhythm and metre similar to an iambic pentameter which aided recollection, and made rendition musical and almost enjoyable. The fact that most of the content was beyond all understanding to us seemed unimportant. I think it's rather unfair that these tenets of faith are based on both questions and answers being supplied by, shall we say, the vendor. It's a bit like Tony Blair supplying Jeremy Paxman with pre-selected questions without any suplimentaries. What I would like to see in the Catechism are questions with answers such as not what but where is Purgatory?, and not why did God create me but why did he create the Tsunami and Aberfan?

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