Little bits of life

I had thought I would note a few more things this week, but the days have rushed by and another weekend is almost here. So just a couple of comments, one on unclean links and another on pipelines of filth.

I am now a member of the National Trust, and not just a member but a joint one. That links me with the largest society in Europe (apparently), and surely some of those are bound to be disreputable people? That's what my old co-religionists would say, anyway. In actual fact, one of the things that's so pleasant about the NT is that the average member is so relentlessly middle-class, predictably well-mannered and unobtrusive. We visited yet another of our series of old houses last weekend - Ham House in Richmond - and the pattern held. And it was nice to snack in the sun, sitting on a bench that looked a hundred years old.

My membership sticker is in the windscreen of my car, but I haven't had any comment yet. I'd rather be externally identified by that than as a member of the brethren, I have to say, regardless of their thoughts on the subject.

I have also acquired an increasing fondness for radio, and now wake to the sound of a clock-radio thanks to a gift. That too would be a shock to my family, as radio is almost a defining moral point for brethren - if you can't see the evil, you are the wrong side of a very definite line. Yet I was thinking about that this week, and noting to myself that the doctrine appears to have weakened a lot in the last year or two.

As I understand it, the original argument against radio was that it was an uncontrolled medium in which external forces decided what would emerge from the machine stationed a Christian's home, and such a risk could not be countenanced. But along the way, all electromagnetic waves longer than infrared became demonised ... well, actually, microwave ovens were always acceptable. That never made any sense to me - how could you decide at what wavelength they shifted from innocence to evil? But nevertheless, all kinds of things were banned purely for making waves of the wrong frequency. That seems to have ended now. Radio remotes are OK. Mobile phones are OK, as long as they're from the approved source and carefully crippled. Just another example of deliberate sliding from one emphasis to another, as the original stated reason for banning something is replaced by a convenient alternative reason, which can then be stated to have changed somehow. Still, I can't see radio in the usual sense ever being permitted, as entertainment of any kind is just not a brethren thing.

Oh yes, and one final thing. Fishing. Brethren do not do field sports, and official doctrine says that animals are only to be killed for a reason such as food. Yet I know quite a few brethren who are only to keen to go on fishing expeditions. I've never seen the attraction myself, but having dabbled this last weekend just briefly, I begin to see just a little. Mind you, the water we fished in contained fish who were tragically innocent of the ways of people with rods (maybe something to do with the sign alongside us), and consequently weren't much of a challenge. Another time I hope to do a bit of the sitting-and-doing-nothing type rather than just pulling fish out at will.