That's "dead" witty that is.

From this month's Middlesbrough Catholic Voice...

Since October 2007 there has been a pro-life group established in St Mary’s College, Hull. The pupils decided to form as a result of a truly amazing and inspirational speaker who came to Hull to address the Hull Faith Forum. Berni Smyth, the foundress of ‘Precious Life’, the major prolife group in Northern Ireland, works with girls and women who want to have an abortion and with those who have had abortions. Berni highlighted the physical, emotional and spiritual consequences that abortion has on women. She urged everyone to attempt to do something to highlight the passing of the 40th year of the legalisation of the Abortion Act in the UK.

Every Wednesday SMILE (St Mary’s Inviting Life Eternally) meets at 3.30 pm. The SMILE group have just finished putting up a display in the School. The display has testimonies from famous women who have had abortions (such as Sharon Osborne) and have regretted their decision. It illustrates foetal development and highlights celebrities and companies who support abortion. SMILE have put together an assembly for the entire school and have already given their first assembly to the sixth formers. SMILE sell the precious feet and give all money to pro-life organisations. In their last meeting the group wrote strong letters of appeal to the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

Sarah Holmes, Diocesan Youth Worker

What can I say? Well done to all involved. You are good eggs one and all.

Ella and I went to York today to be commissioned as Ministers of the Word

It's always been a concern to me that reading isn't taken very seriously. Reading and singing. You only have to mention reading and singing and people say things like "wouldn't it be lovely to have the children do it?". There's this idea that reading and singing are mickey mouse jobs for getting as many people participating as possible. No. They are not. As it says in the General Introduction to the Lectionary: The ministry of reader, conferred through a liturgical rite, must be held in respect.

So, while many people were wailing and gnashing their teeth and saying things like "Why does the silly Church want to train me to read? I know how to read? I've been reading for years!" I was thinking "Thank goodness they are taking reading seriously."

All in all it was a good day. In the morning session Caroline and Kit Dollard did a fantastic exposition of what "ministry" means. They focussed on the spiritual preparation side of things talking about things like how to pray with the scriptures. Then Fr John Wood... I owe Fr John Wood an apology. I've only ever encountered him in the context of "listening" type events where he chaired and had to be seen to "listen". I kept thinking "why doesn't this silly priest tell these silly people how silly they are being". Well, it turns out Fr John Wood isn't a silly priest at all. His talk on the practical side of reading during mass was frank, engaging, illuminating and educational. We were impressed.

We stopped for lunch and after lunch we had a reflection to make sure there was a suitable gap between lunch and mass. I thought the altar arrangements were, well, poor...

Maybe I have ridiculously high expectations, but it surely wouldn't have been hard to have put a bit of effort in. I mean, two tea-light candles? Somebody needs to put together a diocesan mobile mass kit with a decent cloth that makes the altar look a bit more special and some decent candles. It would have been good to have had a cross for us to focus on... That said, I was very impressed to see Bishop Drainey saying mass with an altar cross...

Perhaps he's been reading "Spirit of the Liturgy"?

Yesterday was very exciting... we went to Derby to buy a long bow. Ever since I started archery my goal was to work towards a longbow, not only a beautiful tool but one that required you to hone your own skills. I have been trying to build up my pathetic poundage in order to get one that might make it some distance and lets just say the men at Bickerstaffe Bows did not laugh me out the door!

We turned up and entered a room with tools that James and I can only dream of using! Feeling a little intimidated by these burly men who were twice the size of me I did that girly thing of babbling and not being clear (to my shame) but they were really nice and helpful and I soon felt more confident and hopefully sounded like I had shot a bow before!

The chaps were really helpful giving both advice on shooting techniques as well as advising on bows ect and they did not talk to me like I was 12, which was quite novel.

I was advised to make my own arrows, which to be honest I was considering doing but thought I would make a hash of, but by the sound of it they must have deemed me fairly competent to advise such things!

James managed to make himself look pathetic when asked "what do you shoot James?" he could have said something manly like "One of us looks after Leona so I do my wood carving" but no his answer was "nothing"

All in all I am very excited and can't wait to get my bow. I have to be good and practice the new techniques I will need for my new bow, and I will have to spend spend spend to make ready my arrows, oh the decisions on the colours!

I recommend Bickerstaffe Bows to anyone considering a longbow, they were just so helpful.

Thank you Chaps!

That Mark Shea is a funny man...

England is a magical far off land that positively bristles with literary, religious, cultural and historical meaning. Here in Seattle, when you park your car, you are just parking your car. When you do it in England, you are parking next to the River Ouse where William Cowper drowned himself in despair that he was not one of Calvin's Elect. When you take a walk in Seattle, you're just taking a walk. When you take a walk in York, you are walking past the Tower where the Jews of York committed mass suicide because a mob of locals decided to kill them in 1170. When you turn a corner, there's the house of St. Margaret Clitherow, right in the middle of the Shambles, a genuine medieval street. Go a couple of blocks over, and there's a Roman column from the camp of Constantine, who was sitting *right there* when word came that he had better hie himself back to Rome if he wanted to be Emperor now that the previous Emperor had died.

And there is York Cathedral: one of the most awesome architectural achievements of the High Middle Ages. We have the Space Needle. Cool, in a Jetsons sort of way. But really, it can't hold a candle to York Cathedral. And when you go inside, you can practically trace the history of the West for the past 800 years or so as you watch the various layers of art and architecture build upon one another. The only way you can trace the last 800 year where I live is by counting rings on old growth trees in the Olympic Rain Forest. History, for Washingtonians, means remembering JP Patches, Stan Boreson, Heart, and Microsoft programs that only required 64K.

We interrupt this complete lack of interest in all things football to deliver the following announcement...

Hull City 1
Bristol 0

Premiership? Your 'avin a laff!

Normal service will now be resumed...

Introduced by Zosia in 2004, the Eurovision Party has become a regular part of every year. The songs are rubbish, we always lose, but we have a good time. This year, we left our planning a bit late, we completely failed to realise that Eurovision was even happening until the day before... fortunately a few phone calls was all it took to round up some friends.

For those of you in America who may not be familiar. The Eurovision Network is an association of broadcasters who swap TV shows and news clips. Once a year they hold a song contest. It used to be taken very seriously when my parents were young but it's turned in to a bit of a joke.

The procedure is this.. countries submit songs, drippy girl songs, comedy songs, ballads etc. Then every country votes for the countries they like the most. England always loses. Winners from previous years have included Ukraine in 2004 with Wild Dancers and Finland in 2006 with Hard Rock Hallelujah.

This year, the song that should have won was was undoubtedly this one from Latvia...

But, alas, the pirates were robbed. We also quite liked this one from Croatia...

But, alas, the old men were robbed (despite the awesome playing of bottles). The offering from Bosnia was crazy as was the song from Spain. Fr Massie liked Denmark.

Subsequent YouTube searching revealed that we missed out on Bulgaria which never made it to the final and a comedy Turkey from Ireland resplendent with lines like "Eastern Europe we like you, do you like Irish stew?".

The final result? The UK came joint last alongside Poland. The winners were Russia with crap. As Terry Wogan said towards the end, it's not really a song contest anymore.

But was it ever?

The car tax runs out today and we have decided not to renew it. We simply cannot afford to run a car. Too much money on tax, insurance, repairs and petrol.

We have SORNed.