Familiar British Wildlife

Last week I saw around my home in Bath a fox, a doormouse, a hedgehog, a green woodpecker, Peter Bowles, a Ronnie Wood lookalike and, resplendent in his socks and sandals, walking towards Pulteney Weir, Martin Parr.

The West of England is a small place, so Martin's easy to bump into (I think there may be more than one of him) - here is a picture I took of Martin when I bumped into him in Clifton, the outrageously snooty and twee (it's tweer than Bath - it is, it is, it is!) suburb of Bristol that Martin calls his home.

Don't Buy the Sun

Continuing on the subject of football, the first part of Alexei Sayle's Liverpool showed on the BBC last Friday.

Sayle (bald, leftist comedian who holidayed in the DDR when he was a Kid) focussed on the eighties - "When Thatcher came to power in1979," he said, "me and all the other left-wing comedians knew that here was a true monster who was soon going to make us rich and famous."

More eighties nostalgia came with the Toxteth Riots and Derek Hatton, the sharp-suited Militant leader of Liverpool City Council who's now into golf-course property development in Cyprus ( confirming what many of us knew all along).

Sayle also looked at the role football played in Liverpool and the effect the Hillsborough Disaster (when 96 Liverpool supporters got crushed to death) had in the city, and how the city responded to the subsequent reporting of the event in the Murdoch-owned Sun newspaper (see front page left and check out the Don't Buy the Sun here). Just to show how good Liverpool is at bearing a grudge, Sayle burned copies of the paper in the street. A cheap, but wonderful gag.

Euro 2008

Tying in with Fred West (just one reason we in England shouldn't get too up ourselves in discussions on the small town Austrian psyche), is Austria, joint host of this year's European Championships.

Here to commemorate England's involvement in the 2006 World Cup is a picture Isabel made - that's me in the middle.

Due to England's failure to qualify, there's no picture for this year's event, and none of the usual build up of scepticism, hope and inevitable realisation of the disappointment we would have avoided if we hadn't qualified in the first place. Instead I will look forward to Ronaldo missing a few penalties and put our money on the Anti-Christ of football - Italy.

I love the pictures Isabel (and all children) make, including the ones in Yeondoo Jung's Wonderland series. I like the remakes as well. They're light and fun, and reveal something of his vision of childhood - but they do lack the brutal directness of the originals.

What went wrong with Fred West

What went wrong with Fred West? That was the line used to accompany this picture and advertise a documentary on the man.

The assumption is he looks like a lovely, innocent child, but I'm not so sure. He has that West Country look about him (I know so many people who look like this!), but with a scary stare - before the spliffs and cider take hold.

But then Tracey Emin has a depth to her in the second portrait of a childhood - so perhaps it's just a projection on my part or something to do with the formal portrait era in which the pictures were made and the children grew up.

A young Liam Gallagher completes the set, shown here with with his dad, Thomas. Not sure how he got in, though?

Persepolis - Simone and Sartre

We even get a little bit of Sartre and Simone in Persepolis. Even more fabulous!

Persepolis

Fundamentalist Christians believe in the ultimate demise of Israel and the consignment of all Jews, Muslims and non-believers to hell, and so does President Ahmedinejad of Iran (except the muslims going to hell bit), who has his own end-time beliefs according to Ian McEwan.

"In Jamkaran, a village not far from the holy city of Qum, a small mosque is undergoing a $20m-expansion, driven forward by Ahmadinejad's office. Within the Shi'ite apocalyptic tradition, the Twelfth Imam, the Mahdi, who disappeared in the ninth century, is expected to reappear in a well behind the mosque. His re-emergence will signify the beginning of the end days. He will lead the battle against the Dajjal, the Islamic version of the anti-Christ, and with Jesus as his follower, will establish the global Dar el Salaam, the dominion of peace, under Islam. Ahmadinejad is extending the mosque to receive the Mahdi, and already pilgrims by the thousands are visiting the shrine, for the president has reportedly told his cabinet that he expects the visitation within two years."

Belief has many shades though, and not all Iranians share Ahmedinejad's nutjob beliefs (so don't bomb it - it won't end well!), especially not Marjane Satrapi.

Satrapi is the author of Persepolis, her graphic memoir (and film) of growing up in the Iranian revolution. The book melds the politics of religion, gender and exile with a cynical humour and a zest for life that gives a real feel for the contradictions of Iranian society. Just fabulous!

Among the Believers

picture - Carmen Winant

Bringing together Waco, the Great Disappointment, sacrificial Red Heifer's, the Third Temple on the Mount and a spurious sprinkling of Susan Sontag, Ian McEwan writes about End Times and the Apocalypse in last weekend's Guardian.

He quotes (and questions ) various opinion polls. "Ninety per cent of Americans say they have never doubted the existence of God and are certain they will be called to answer for their sins. Fifty-three per cent are creationists who believe that the cosmos is 6,000 years old, 44 per cent are sure that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead within the next 50 years. Only 12 per cent believe that life on earth has evolved through natural selection without the intervention of supernatural agency."

McEwan concludes that "We have no reason to believe that there are dates inscribed in heaven or hell. We may yet destroy ourselves; we might scrape through... The believers should know in their hearts by now that, even if they are right and there actually is a benign and watchful personal God, he is, as all the daily tragedies, all the dead children attest, a reluctant intervener. The rest of us, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, know that it is highly improbable that there is anyone up there at all. Either way, in this case it hardly matters who is wrong - there will be no one to save us but ourselves."

Which brings us to Carmen Winant. She has fine work up on her website here, and an interesting blog, especially this post on her beliefs. Carmen isn't one of the ninety per cent mentioned above, but one of the 4% of non-believing Americans. Here she talks about the isolation she felt at college regarding her lack of religion.




"...what isolated me most profoundly from my teammates was not my religion. The chasm I felt most sharply was my godlessness.

My teammates -- who were among my dearest friends, with whom I survived grueling workouts, logged up to 80 miles a week, and traveled to races in cities like Terre Haute and Boise almost every weekend – more or less despised what they termed “a person without faith.” I suddenly felt more was more non-Christian, and more Godless, then I had ever been.

And this was how I went in the closet.

.....

I could confront my teammates – including the men’s team -- on their attitudes about homosexuality. I argued with them about abortion rights. I went to the mat defending Title IX protections of equal access for women’s sports. But asking them to comprehend, let alone, respect my atheism seemed too daunting.

Godlessness is the great taboo. According to a 2006 study of attitudes toward marginalized groups conducted by the University of Minnesota, atheists win the popularity booby prize in America. Asked which group “least shares their vision of society,” a shocking 40% of Americans picked atheists. We beat out Muslims (26.3%) and homosexuals (20%) by a landslide. We are also deemed the worst marriage prospects: Almost half (47.6%) of respondents also checked “atheists” in response to the statement: “I would disapprove if my child wanted to marry a member of this group.” ( Muslims again followed suit, and as for gays, well that's barely legal in the first place.) A March 2007 Newsweek survey found that 62% of people would refuse to vote for any candidate admitting to being an atheist (and this is after seven years of seeing what havoc a born-again Christian president -- who claims his policies come to him from God -- has wreaked on the earth).

....

Last year, the Pew Forum on Public and Religious Life conducted another survey. They report that there has actually been a modest increase in those who state they are atheists, from 3.2% to 4.0%. This gives me hope that one day I will feel safer with my old teammates, and that this country will grow past our discrimination. That public universities will come to uphold the separation of church and state. That the burden of proof will not always fall upon those who do not believe in the supernatural.

I know it will take a long, long time. But I’ve got faith."