Occidental Partridge

It often feels as though I am the last one in the country but I am one of those Catholics that have never been quite able to reconcile the Church of Rome with Britishness. I am more likely to be found in a CofE church on Sunday than an RC one, and in self-description am increasingly tending to insert an ‘Anglo’ before ‘Catholic’, thus standing in the Great British tradition of having one’s fudge and eating it. It seems all the more ridiculous when there are so many examples of Roman Catholics who want for nothing in patriotism, from G.K. Chesterton to Jacob Rees-Mogg, for whom there is no contradiction in bowing to the House of Windsor and kneeling before the Bishop of Rome.  And when I attend an RC Mass among the diverse congregation smell the incense, hear the hymns I grew up with, I feel the gravitational pull, back to the Holy Mother Church. But it isn’t long before I think of the pews in some Anglican edifice I know, generally older, almost always emptier, but no less

Today is Bangladeshi Independence Day. I know this thanks only to a good-humoured and educational chat I had with a chap in a Subway in Leytonstone a few months back. A conversation about how spicy we like our toppings quickly gave way to the richer and more interesting topic of our countries of origin. Not for him the affected wincing at being asked about his homeland (who knew that in 2020 curiosity about your fellow human beings would be classed as offensive?); he jumped at the chance to share a little about his country's proud and traumatic transition from 'East Pakistan' to independent Bangladesh.  He told me about the annulled 1970 election in which 'East Pakistan' returned a huge majority for the nationalists, the following Pakistani military campaign to take out well known nationalists and the resulting (and successful) Bangladeshi Liberation War of 1971, concluding the potted history lesson with the playful postscript that today's Bangladesh continua

For World Down Syndrome Day, 21/03/20 “I find it deeply offensive” , says 24-year-old campaigner on breakfast talkshow slot . My fellow conservatives might eye-roll with weary familiarity. Who’s this latest young grievance-monger come bidding for boomer recognition of some imagined injustice? Here to shoehorn some alien pronoun into the English language, no doubt, or to tack yet another letter onto the ever-sprawling ‘LGBTQIA+’?  Continue reading at  Orthodox Conservatives

My elicit affair with the weird and wonderful folk of Happy Science continues. It's last Sunday and I have been lured to an old haunt, the Prince Charles Cinema off Leicester Square, with the promise of a free ticket to the London premier of Immortal Hero , the new religion's latest cinematic effort to spread enlightenment across the globe. There is a gaggle of HS members bearing the usual literature and membership forms - the first time I've seen a number of them 'on active service'. I tell one young fellow that I am looking for Hiro, and that I already have a free ticket booked. "Yay!" he says.                                                                                                                                                                          The closest that Happy Science will get to China. Hiro locates me and quickly ushers me in, as - true to form - I'm cutting it fine. I move quickly but not too quickly to be hit by a