Former bishop the Rt Rev Kenneth Stevenson is a victim of the all-seeing eye of the CP.
THE VIEW FROM HERE A CAUTIONARY tale today, which should serve as a warning to anyone who imagines they are out of range of the all-seeing eye of the County Press. No matter where you go, we know what you’re up to.
The Rt Rev Kenneth Stevenson, who retired last year as Anglican Bishop of Portsmouth (a diocese which includes the Island), probably thought he was quite safe in one of the more fashionable reaches of London where he recently conducted a confirmation service at Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street.
Described by John Betjeman as "The Cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement", the church, a glorious treasure-house of design, must have lent a delightful grandeur to the bishop’s presence.
Was that why he made a reference to the Island at the end of the service? Did he think he’d make the congregation tee-hee at our humble ways? Having invited the Sloane Street worshippers to give a round of applause to those who had just been confirmed, he said after the clapping had stopped: "I even got them to do that on the Isle of Wight."
I’m sorry? What precisely could you have meant by that, Bishop? Were you insinuating that we’re usually so physically inept we can’t put our hands together without messing up? Or were you implying that we’re a dyed-in-the-wool lot who sit pudding-faced through church services, bridling at the thought of spontaneous applause?
Whatever you meant, Bishop, I’m sure you won’t do it again. Remember, the County Press is almost as omnipresent as the Almighty.
Now not a lot of people know this…and even fewer remember why
CLERGY are generally on safer ground with sermons than the bishop was with his joke.
No matter how good a sermon might be (and depressingly few of them are much cop) they are almost invariably instantly forgettable.
Ooh, you think as the vicar comes up with some rare nugget of wisdom, I’ll re-member that. Ten minutes after the service is over, you’ve forgotten, just like a dream that you recall only fleetingly after you’ve woken up.
Very occasionally, however, there’s a revelation so startling that it’ll stick in the mind. Radio 4’s Thought For the Day is a sort of mini-sermon and usually it just washes over the listener, like a three-minute sluice with a bar of oblivion soap. It’s primarily handy as an alternative ad break ("I’ll just pop out and get a paper while the Chief Rabbi is on") but the other day, the speaker, Rhidian Brook, said something I shall never forget.
He told us that a million seconds lasts 11 and a half days. Well, that was interesting enough, and I’d never have guessed it, not in a million seconds or even years. But then he said that a billion seconds (ie, a thousand times a million) is, wait for it, 32 years. Gosh. How can that be? Well, it was on Radio 4 in the religious bit, so it must be true.
I can’t actually remember why this fascinating information should make us better people. I expect Mr Brook told us, but I was so bowled over by the million/billion second thing, I forgot to listen.
I have, though, learned another astonishing fact, this time courtesy of economist Tim Harford. Where do you think the UK lies in the international table of manufacturers? Yes, the UK, where we don’t manufacture anything at all these days, so we’re obviously 275th or something. Or probably bottom apart from Papua New Guinea.
Well, sucks boo, that’s quite wrong. We’re the sixth largest manufacturer in the whole wide world. Fancy! Only America, China, Germany, Japan and Italy churn out more than us, and we currently make more stuff, by value, than we did in 1979.
Armed with my amazing new-found knowledge, I’m off to the pub in search of a quiz. I have no idea who won the FA Cup, but I’m brill on time spans and manufacturing league tables.