Monday 8 December 2008

Waugh … huh … what is it good for?

How I love puns. Surprisingly, the answer isn't 'absolutely nothing'. I read Brideshead Revisited again recently and realised how unlike the revolting, Tory, snobbish, arrogant ITV drama the book is. I'm a cradle Catholic, violently socialist malcontent (and if your kids don't pass their A-levels, I'll be brainwas sorry teaching them), yet Brideshead does evoke not just the fading of a class but satirises a class desperately searching for meaning. Remember - the Marchmains have only been Catholic for one generation, and none too successfully. There's little joy in their faith. 

I went to Evensong at Worcester Cathedral a couple of weeks ago, and felt like nothing but a tourist. As Cordelia says (that name is following me about at the moment), to the faithless a church is simply 'an oddly-decorated room'. The question is whether the experience is spiritually worthless. 

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