Poe-faced Pillockry

This (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/unholy-row-as-former-lt-gov-targets-bishop-1-5609756  ) was a welcome relief from the Sefton Hotel row (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/business/cannan-says-sefton-deal-is-ill-judged-and-fundamentally-unfair-1-5603786  for example) which dominates the Manx press but does not interest me in the slightest.

Two unwanted political presents from Westminster (at least one, thankfully, well past his sell-by date) taking a noisy pop at each other. You could not make this up.

A hissy catfight between two colonial relics over the future of the island’s campest High Gothic church. I’m only surprised that instead of the picture the local press used they didn’t just Photoshop the protagonists into Grant Wood’s ‘American Gothic’ painting.

Google it and you’ll soon see what I mean. Larry New would be a spit for the grump with the pitchfork.

Isle of Man Newspapers used only the bilge generated by both sides in this silly argument, and did no digging. This is a pity, as neither side wants us ‘heathens’ to really know what is going on.

To get to the root of it, just go to http://www.stmatthewsiom.org/ and note the prominent announcement that St. Matthew’s is “a Forward in Faith Parish under the Pastoral care of the Bishop of Beverley”. THAT is the root of the problem neither side will talk about in public. For some years now, this Anglican church has been unique on the island in having a special dispensation to, when it suits, take orders from another Bishop rather than any memsahib who might hold office under the island’s Bishop.

The thing is, the present Bishop of Sodor & Mann could be described as “conservative with a small c” .Think ‘Anglican Mainstream lite” – conservative but evangelical rather than high church, keeping the church status quo together, now willing to see women priests rather than look ridiculous in the eyes of the unchurched public but gays are still a step too far.

Forward in Faith, by comparison, are at best UKIP with a hint of Monster Raving Loony and probably far worse. Pouty, petulant, predominantly ex-public schoolboys who will take their ball home if the world won’t let them run things. For years they have been threatening to break away, initially to Rome (which doesn’t want them), then playing footsie under the table with the Russian Orthodox churches. Basically, anything it takes to let a bunch of silly boys carry on flouncing around in nice frocks, ringing bells, and chucking incense about.

Oh, and they really don’t like homosexuality either, these beardy wierdies. Oh no, not one bit! Hate them more than women, the working class, believers in other faiths (don’t even go there on Jews or Muslims….) and commie subversives.

Two bishops back, the Manx FIF crew were tight with Anglican management. Nothing open, but the power behind the throne while the occupant was a permanently half-cut chum of Prince Philip (amicable enough though - as long you kept real life out of the conversation). He was replaced by an urbane careerist to whom nothing stuck – a real Teflon man – and who saw at once that these rabid smell and bell merchants would get him nowhere fast, so he quietly ditched them and got somewhere fast.

St. Paul’s actually, just in time for the Occupation. Whoops!

At this point the Manx diocese was really falling apart – losing worshippers faster than any in the British Isles in fact - so no surprise that John Sentamu saw to it that the next area manager was a lad who would knock heads together and stop the rot. Which, to be fair, he has done. The process is inevitably painful for churchgoers as hard economic decisions are taken, but most factions in his church seem to accept Paterson is trying to keep things together and even, in the long term, give some room for various models of (cost-efficient) worship to develop.

Except for half a dozen or so deranged FIF fanatics who cannot cope with democracy, the 21^st century, or the world in general because they have never had to deal with such distractions.

It is tempting to suggest the Bishop should just let them go, then consider what use would the building be when they have to sell up in the near future?

Sadly too few Manx Goths to finance a potentially amazing nightclub with a unique William Morris picture window. Perhaps some sort of S & M establishment to fuel the darker night-time urges of finance sector sickos? Real shame if it became yet another carpet warehouse.

More seriously, considering the government attempts to regenerate the quayside as an upmarket ‘development’, the particular history of some complainants with dodgy financiers and property developers (and that the only way to balance the diocesan books could be the sale of ‘surplus to requirement’ buildings) maybe the future sale of the church is all anyone is arguing about.

Now maybe that is the real story we are missing…..

Situationist comedy, on the rates

We’ve just come back from the most unlikely comedic experience, at the Northern Civic Amenity Centre.

Now this may sound like one of those genteel community arts centres where you can buy carrot cake and crap paintings by people with mental health issues. It is, in fact, the town rubbish dump, though I think they like to stress the potential recycling opportunities these days. So, it wasn’t a comedy gig –or at least not intentionally.

The thing is, we like a good mooch around junk – charity shops (of which, in a community overstocked with wealthy crinklies, there are many), antique fairs (tat with social pretensions offered for silly money by the klingons of anal banker families) and, of course the inimitable Jurby Junk – truly the world’s most astounding Aladdin’s Cave of urban trivia.

In my case, put it down to a teenage obsession with the Surrealist dérive – those amazing attempts to turn stream-of consciousness into urban exploration, such as the legendary time Andre Breton picked up an old gas mask in a Parisian flea-market and for some minutes thought he had discovered an ethnic African artefact, or maybe something left by a passing Martian. In the case of Management and Trainee Management – maybe they picked up the habit to indulge my odd whimsies, but having far more common sense continued it because they like a bargain…. or a free gift.

In the Isle of Man, it is more than that. The truth is, we are surrounded by dullards with shedloads of money and no taste, which has a devastating effect on the local shopping experience. It is, simply, impossible to buy anything new that is interesting and different, because both Manx shops and their marketing strategies are driven by what rich inbreeds with no imagination have decided to buy because they heard about it from magazines or TV shows staffed by equally dull, timid and socially conservative airheads. Factor into this that nobody with more than three braincells will be offered well paid Manx employment for fear that something interesting happens socially, and there is really no choice open to folk like us. We can, however, root happily forever around the abandoned treasures of colonial claptrap and find something free and marvellous almost daily, if only we can find the time.

…..but I digress.

There were the three of us, happily wandering around sheds full of old fridges, TVs, bikes, kitchen utensils and other urban leftovers from numpties who feel obliged to upgrade or die to the latest 52 inch flat-screen monstrosity. Shamelessly, we had not even bothered to bring our own leftovers to this potlatch for pillocks. We wanted a free lunch and no excuses. What we also got was situationist comedy, also for free.

After about two minutes a grumpy soul – the very spit of Blakey from On the Buses but in a high-visibility tabard instead of a dirty mac - approached and asked, politely enough, how old was Trainee Management. Well, she may be almost as tall as Management but it’s clear enough she’s still at Junior School, and I admitted that.

In that case, I was told, she had to wait in the car. Elfin Safety and all that. Apparently some Parent-of-the-Year candidate had let his feral sprog loose a few months back, and she’d run smack bang into a car. Both me and Management pointed out that TM was hardly rushing about like a Ritalin-wired ADD case, and even offered to walk hand-in-hand with her to avoid worry. But Captain Dayglo said his hands were tied, and that was that, back in the car and home, TM sobbing at yet another example of what passes for Manx adult responsibility.

And then it got even sillier.

As we pulled away, Captain Dayglo was throwing himself in front of some other kid’s dad, who was reckless enough to test out a rather nice old school Raleigh 10 speed bike I’d had my eye on. Apparently there was a one way system, and he was going against it. There weren’t actually any cars on the site (which is a mile outside the town and set apart from the main road by  a 100 metre approach road) apart from ours and the would-be Mark Cavendish’s.

Instinctive class solidarity means I don’t want to blame this on Captain Dayglo. Many is the time when in some dead-end job, over the years, I had to uphold a cretinous management policy against an innocent punter. You try your best to be sensible, but the dimmer the Boss Class the less wriggle room their inane policies allow. CD didn’t look like a barrel-of-laughs, let-it-all-hang-out kind of bloke, but maybe that’s what a lifetime of struggling with small town uncivil demeanity has brought him to.

But it was still a great afternoon out, and for the comedy alone yet again we thank the selfless (and witless) forces of local government.

Sparing the faithful's blushes

A surreal sight in a Douglas shop window today has me wondering.
There’s a big sale on in Mackay’s, and at first sight the window behind the huge ‘Sale’ notices is bare.
Not quite. Actually the shop dummies are there, but the dummies themselves are bare. Clever little idea – isn’t it?
And it gets funnier. Because as my missis and daughter noticed first, all the dummies have been turned around so that they modestly look inwards towards the shop floor.
Just another part of the joke, or is there something more to it? Because you see, the shop is next door to a church, St Thomas’s.
No, they couldn’t have, could they?
Well actually they could, and they probably did.
Because this is the church whose tiny but well connected congregation raised so much fuss about having to pay to park in the town’s multi-storey car park – whose entrance lies just to the other side of Mackay’s - that Douglas Town Council eventually dropped all charges for Sunday parking.
And this is the church whose clientele got so snotty about being combined into a single parish with the larger, less snooty All Saints that the current bish has upgraded them again. Now a church with a single figure congregation which used to be pretty much tended by a very junior curate on his day off again has it’s own full blown priest who…..
Well, he has a lot of time on his hands in which to take up any minor matter any of his parishioners cares to blow up into a moral mountain actually.