The Mail I Receive
I may have mentioned before that I get a lot of mail on my Gmail account that isn't spam, but it is mis-addressed. Someone with a name like mine has both;
1) a problem entering his own email address on forms, and
2) a lot of friends who don't know his address and keep guessing it wrongly.
In fact, this is more than one person with a name like mine, because I get mails for a 'me' who's in Australia, another in the US, and a third and indeed a fourth in the UK.
The guy in the US, I know very little about other than that he has a Home Depot credit card. I know this because I get the emails telling him that his statement is ready. And when I tracked down a phone number to call the Home Depot card people (not an easy feat in itself to begin with), they told me that they couldn't even access the account with my email address on it to note that the email address is wrong because I couldn't give them the account details. The fact that I was calling to explain I wasn't even the person with the account and therefore certainly couldn't give them the account details didn't seem to register, and my suggestion that maybe they just highlight to someone who could follow it up that there's an incorrect email address in their system was met with a blank "I'm not sure I'd know how to to that'.So I just added them to my spam filter and now I don't see the mail every month.
The guys in the UK I've actually exchanged a few mails with, and if I receive stuff that I can be fairly sure is for one or other I forward it on. We occasionally have a laugh about how this has happened *again*.
But the guy in Australia... well to begin with, I think there might be two. It's hard to tell because the subject matter of all his/their mails is broadly the same, but the ways people address him/them differ. Where these mails are chatty notes to a group of people planning a get-together and that kind of thing, I started out sending back a mail pointing out that I'm not the person intended for inclusion, mostly so that I didn't then get another dozen mails as they all entered the discussion. This has happened frequently enough that again, I occasionally get an email from someone apologising that my address has clearly been dumped into so many people's contact lists.
There's an odd crossover too, between some US and some Australian mails, and when a spate of them fall close together it can get a bit annoying. And also disturbing. Because that subject matter they tend to have in common? Let's just call it 'aggressively religious', shall we?
There seems to be a group very actively organising prayer camps, and planning for their salvation, and generally getting happy clappy in a way that I'm sure they think is okay but which comes across as a bit brainwashed and creepy to an outsider like me. The many mails I also get about their 'Youth Challenges' make me worry about indoctrination and far worse when it comes to putting youth with religious types. A few times when I've been the unintended recipient of a particularly full-on diatribe I've replied to the sender somewhat more sharply, which I occasionally worry is going to lead to me being put on a lot of 'burn in hell' mailing lists.
I appear to be in the middle of a spate at the moment - this morning I had a mail with the subject line "What are you looking forward to the most in the Kingdom?" sent to me and about 50 other people, all of whose email addresses I now have, but who seem fortunately not all to have jumped on the reply-all button yet.
But this week's winner is the mail I received last night from someone in America who appears unable to use subject lines, has difficulty spelling really quite simple words; ("Dear Paster Jon") and is writing to complain about how loud the music was at the YMCA last week, which was apparently "way too LOUD". Also to complain about how she didn't like that she didn't know any of the songs and didn't like that it was new music that was being played.
So far, so uptight bitch. But then, and I promise you this is a direct quotation, she throws this little thought into her sanctimonious little missive:
"Also I though [sic] for a moment I was in a black church with the songs and loudness. Just thought you might like to know."
Yeah Paster Jon, what are you thinking, turning the YMCA into something like one of those churches where the black people have their songs and their loudness. We don't want to be having folks thinking we're anything like them. Good grief, what if some of those black people heard the songs and loudness from out in the street and wanted to come and join us. We can't be having that. Just thought you might like to know.
I'm currently contemplating the most entertaining response.
And people wonder why I have a problem with religion and the religious.
Protesting The Pope
I'm feeling exercised to get out and take part in a protest from the first time here in the UK since the Stop The War marches. It's been on my mind to get involved in the protests around the upcoming Papal visit for a while - I signed the online petition to the government, and have followed the plans for the visit since it was announced while I was still out of the country, but the rash of news items and TV trailers has made me realise how imminent it now is.
His Naziness is in the UK from the 16th to the 19th of this month. During that time, as it's a State Visit, he'll be meeting the Prime Minister and leaders of the other parties, and will be accorded the same status and access given to other heads of state who don't preside over regimes of institutionalised misogyny, homophobia, child abuse and religious intolerance. That doesn't seem right to me.
Of course, the evil old queen is free to say whatever he likes, but a lot of people don't think he should be given any kind of elevated status from which to utter his bigotry, nor that any of the cost associated with allowing him to do so here should be met by people who not only don't follow him, but actively oppose him.
More information on the group organising the main protest next Saturday is here.
Other activities associated with some of the specific events on his trip are being organised locally.
Quintessentially British; Quintessentially Great
I defy anyone to suggest that any broadcaster but the BBC would ever bring a programme like The Great British Bake-Off to our screens.
For those poor souls deprived of this gem by geography or ignorance, this is (I kid you not), a competitive baking programme. Each week, in a different location, the programme focuses on a different subset of the baker's art; cakes, bread, puddings, etc. And each week, a number of amateur baking enthusiasts are presented with baking challenges, and are ousted from the competition if their bread is of insufficiently open texture, their Victoria Sponge not perfectly risen, or their scones fail to present an entirely uniform colour. Judges Paul Hollywood and baking legend Mary Berry look like the most easy-going pair in the world, but mess up one of their own recipes in the technical challenge and you'll wish you were standing in front of Simon Cowell with a plate-spinning act.
Between challenges (each programme has three rounds; signature bake, technical and a variable 'big' challenge) presenters Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins - not seen enough as a double act these days - provide filmed inserts outlining the cultural histories of each week's subject bakes, from the way the invention of the railway affected the development of biscuits, to the impact of Queen Victoria on the classic wedding cake.
In those terms, it sounds like a piece of inoffensive fluff of the kind Stephen Fry probably thinks fearful BBC execs thought of as a safe option. But even if it is, I'm not sure there's anything wrong with at least some of that on our screens. There's a lot to be said, after all, for showing 'ordinary' people indulging in activities they feel passionate about, and explaining the history of any elements of our culture is surely part of the BBC charter requirement to 'promote education and learning'.
There's something about The Great British Bake-Off that makes me happy it exists. Maybe it's the fact that it allows people to be proud of something regarded as mundane. Perhaps it's the fact that it evokes a British idyll at a time when I think the country's in a pretty crappy place. It's possible that it's just a happy collision of elements that I think work.
But mostly I think it's because I know that only the BBC could or would ever make it and broadcast it. And I think that's a reason to be happy by itself, even if the programme itself wasn't so engaging.