A Restaurant Review To Cherish...

...but the chef will not be the one doing the cherishing...

Seriously, this is one of the wittiest restaurant reviews I have ever read. I'm almost tempted to book a table, just to see if it is really as bad as Jay Rayner makes out...

"A little over a century ago my Jewish forebears fled that part of Eastern Europe then known as the Pale of Settlement. Having eaten at Divo, described as London's first luxury Ukrainian restaurant, I now know why. It was to escape the cooking. There are many words I could use to describe the food served here, but this is a family newspaper and none of them should be available before the watershed..."

Mantilla-twitch to the Closed Cafeteria.

How To Heckle... Lesson 1

This made me smile: rarely has a speaker been heckled so politely, or with such panache...


Twitch of the mantilla in the direction of Ttony at The Muniment Room

Our Lady Of The Rosary School Bazaar

Our Primary School is very badly funded by the Education Authority, probably because it does so well... it doesn't get all the extra financial help which struggling schools seem to qualify for. So they hold regular fund-raising events (like the School Fete) which parishioners are warmly encouraged (read three-line-whip from the pulpit last Sunday!) to attend...

I don't have any children of my own, and I see quite a lot of children (older ones, but still children) during my working week, but the school and parish are closely linked, so I try to go along. Invariably, I end up having a whale of a time chatting to friends.

The Parish UCM were out in force: they had home-made plum jam, marmalade, and various cakes (I succumbed to a delicious-looking cherry cake and a pot of jam) and they were running a raffle for the christmas cake - the Nativity Scene was hand-painted in food colouring!!!

Tea was served by this intrepid team... they were also serving mulled wine, but kept remarkably quiet about its availability, positioning themselves carefully so as to conceal the tipple from view...



There was a stall with children's toys on it. I did my usual trick of walking right past it, thinking "no children, doesn't apply!" when a friend pointed out that I have an eleven-month-old nephew, and it's worth getting into the habit of checking such things out. I ended up buying a bag of wooden track and train-type vehicles (recommended by a friend who has several children - she seemed to know what the stuff was called as well...)

This pair were selling videos... I thought there wouldn't be much call for them these days, but the mother assured me that videos were much more child-friendly than DVDs (which scratch easily.) I later spotted a friend of mine (a primary school teacher) stocking up on various videos. The little girl in the photo had only started at the school a few days before, so it must have seemed like they were throwing a welcome party just for her; it was great to see her mother getting stuck right in...

Of course, a Christmas Bazaar wouldn't feel like a proper Christmas Bazaar without Santa's Grotto. Here, Santa's little helper is keeping order, probably for 'elf and safety purposes. I was allowed to sneak in to Santa's Grotto to take a couple of unofficial photos for the blog...


All in all, a great time was had by everyone. Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a large slice of cherry cake with my name on it...

One In The Eye For The PC Crowd...

Apparently, Pope Benedict XIII took up smoking at the tender age of 75. I couldn't resist putting up the following portrait of him...


Mantilla twitched in Fr. Ray's direction... but I take full responsibility for the slight addition!

Time Out !

After yesterday's rant, I needed a little light relief...

First, over at the Ironic Catholic, an oldie-but-goodie:


Secondly, courtesy of the Gem of the Ocean:



And finally, a friend sent me this by email...

A young lad was visiting a church for the first time, checking all the announcements and posters along the walls.

When he came to a group of pictures of men in uniform, he asked a nearby usher, "Who are all those men in the pictures?"

The usher replied, "Why, those are our boys who died in the service".

Horrified, the youngster asked, "Was that the morning service or the evening service?"

Enjoy your weekend!

Expletives Deleted!

I just cannot believe that it has come to this! Well, actually, I do believe it... it is symptomatic of all that is going horribly wrong in modern, secular Britain. What else can you expect from a country whose Prime Minister declared that it was really great that the UK was at the forefront of embryo research involving monstrosities like hybrids; stuff, incidentally, that the rest of Europe wouldn't touch with a ten-foot barge-pole?

But this really is "extracting the urine"*...

Hilary White has reported on LifeSite News that:

"A British physician may be forced out of a job for helping women decide against abortion. Dr. Tammie Downes is under investigation for professional misconduct after she said in an interview with the Daily Mail that she had been instrumental in helping many women patients decide to continue to carry their children to term.

"In the Daily Mail interview, Dr. Downes said she asked women in crisis pregnancies, “What would have to change to make you see things differently? What would help you to see this baby as good news and not bad news?”

"For defying the abortion-ideology that prevails in the British medical establishment, Dr. Downes is under investigation by the General Medical Council and may lose the right to practice medicine. The Guardian newspaper reported that the investigation was begun after a complaint by “a practising doctor involved in the pro-choice movement” accused Downes of breaching the GMC's Good Medical Practice Guidelines."

Oh, right... it's ok for the pro-abortion lot to advertise their services to the extent of campaigning to have the abortion pill sold over the counter in supermarket pharmacies and peddled to 13-year-old girls by the school nurse, but doctors are not allowed to give the opposite point of view if it's one that they actually happen to believe in it... so all the doctors signing abortion certificates are really pro-life themselves...

...yeah, right. And the moon is made of green cheese.

Mantilla-twitch to Fr. Blake.

* This expression, a favourite of mine, can be translated loosely as "taking the Mick"... the exact translation is much more expressive, but involves a four-letter word!

A Call To Arms...

The Hermeneutic of Continuity has thrown down the gauntlet: someone must know someone who knows Mel Gibson... actually, I thought there were six degrees of separation between every person on the planet, but the Catholic Blogosphere is such a cosy, intimate group...

So, the idea is to persuade Mr. Gibson that he really, really wants to make another stonking good movie, this time on the life of St. Edmund Campion. It would be the perfect answer to the Catholic-bashing tosh which is being promulgated as "history" in the films Elizabeth and The Golden Age.

And Fr. Tim has asked all bloggers in sympathy with this campaign to get the word out - "Unleash the power of the Blog."

Oh, and if anyone out there does happen to know Mel Gibson, I'm available for lunch...

Parents' Evening...

I do like Parents' Evenings. They are very hard work, and, on top of a full teaching day, they can be totally exhausting, but it is really great to be able to meet the parents of some of the children we teach. It also has the advantage of demonstrating to the parents that the "mean ogre who always picks on innocent little me for no reason at all" is actually human and quite approachable.

My opening salvo is nearly always effective here: "So, Johnny, what do you think I'm going to say to your parents?"

Little Johnny has nearly always been brought up by parents to tell the truth. So he very obligingly confesses to whichever misdemeanours you usually reproach him with in class...

...which are henceforth impossible to deny as something done by his friends which he got the blame for, or something which the teacher has imagined, or misunderstood...

...definitely payback time!

Holy Smoke...

I saw this book on Fr. Tim's blog. Thinking I could do with a little light-hearted reading matter, I went and ordered it, and then, because there was a delay in getting it from the printers or some such thing, promptly forgot about it.

I was then distracted by the arrival of Fr. William's Daughter. Having demolished that book in record time, I was just about to bemoan the fact that I was once again bereft of light reading matter, when I remembered Smoke in the Sanctuary...

...It was another unputdownable book, only this time for very different reasons. I was laughing so much: I felt I'd met so many of the characters already. And as for the dancing nuns...

If you need a little light relief, I would recommend this book. But be warned: the descriptions of liturgical dance and ecumenical services are not for the faint-hearted!

A Memorial In Stained Glass

This photo is pretty horrible... until you consider that things don't usually make it into stained glass until they're dead and buried, when suddenly all becomes cheerfulness and light...

Twitch of the mantilla to the Ironic Catholic.

A Gripping Read !

My copy of Father William's Daughter, signed by the author, arrived the other day. I managed to avoid opening the parcel for a whole 24 hours, because I suspected that it would be a good read, and I didn't need the distraction which a fascinating murder mystery would bring...

I was not disappointed. I could barely bring myself to put the book down (I think I had to on two occasions...) and positively devoured it, cover-to-cover.

My only complaint: it finished too soon.

I shall try to find out if there is another novel in the pipeline. Watch this space!

(Oh, and you can order your copy HERE.)