The Sacred Sandwich

Yesterday a news story about a "blasphemous sandwich" popped up on my Facebook feed. The cafe in question had a caramelised onion, chutney, cheddar and mozzarella sandwich named the Cheesus Christ, which someone took exception to. They vandalised the cafe sign, demanded that the sandwich be removed from the menu, and - I rather liked this touch - wanted the cafe to donate £300 to the local church. The cafe declined all requests.

Well, I'm afraid that tickled my brain. So may I introduce my latest business venture, The Sacred Sandwich Cafe. Donations to any church in your vicinity are welcome, whether you are offended or not.

Two days into Stage One water restrictions, and I looked out of the window to see the guy over the road washing his car. Admittedly, the restrictions don't actually forbid you to wash your car. They limit you to using a hand-held bucket (does it count if you put it down on the driveway?) or hand-held hose "for quick rinses". But they are pretty much "if you don't mind" rules at this stage anyway, with holes large enough to lose whole buckets of water through (hand-held or otherwise). For example, we are now limited to watering our lawn twice a week, but this only applies to sprinkler systems. You can still use a hose as much as you like, presumably on the assumption that you will get bored of standing there holding it very quickly. And besides, everything you read about good watering technique says it's better to water thoroughly just once a week. Our garden would think Christmas had come early if it got watered every three days! So hopefully...

Jesus came to earth... to reflect God to us

Do you remember playing with a magnifying glass on a sunny day? That curved piece of glass you held in your hand captured the scattered rays, narrowing them down to a fluttering patch of brightness. And all the light’s power was held in that one small circle, shrinking and shrinking… until finally you were rewarded with a sudden curl of smoke, and a neat charred hole. Imagine, then, that God, seeking to reveal himself on earth, condensed his essential being through some kind of celestial magnifying glass. That wavering point became smaller and smaller, losing none of its power… until it became the exact size of a human baby, growing in a womb. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, says the verse in Colossians, the perfect reflection of God’s glory. This is the first and greatest reason that Jesus came: to show us what God is really like. Yet sometimes, reflected and refracted through 2000 years of history, the image that Jesus shows...

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions. The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?" This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them. Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone. That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of. Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died. And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was. His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...

Martha's Marvellous Munchies

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