It's blackberry season

and I've got the bucket ready to go. All the hedges are guarded by an impenetrable phalanx of shoulder-high stinging nettles, but, because evolution is really slow and the monkeys are really clever, I've got the solution. A pair of rubber washing-up gloves and kitchen scissors does the trick just fine.

I'll take the camera and you can see what you're missing: the beautiful county of Cheshire in the season of mellow fruitfulness.

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Just finished reading a book this morning, The Wormwood Files: Email from Hell by Jim Forrest (yes, I've never heard of him either.) It was another attempt at bringing Screwtape up to date. It wasn't bad actually. Not really brimming over with profound insights into human nature, the common blocks to the spiritual life or modern society, but it had its merits nonetheless. I've seen worse attempts to have another go at the Screwtape model, and it's no one's fault that Lewis is such a tough act to follow. His kind of education, for one thing, simply doesn't exist any more. I'd recommend it as a good book to give someone who has no clew whatever about religion and why Christians think as they do. I didn't find anything in it that was obviously mistaken (though it did go a little soft on the whole 'which church is the right one' issue, as did Lewis himself).

What was remarkable about it was that it was published by the Maryknoll Fathers. That anything remotely orthodox comes out of that sinkhole of modernism is a great surprise.

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