Recently a friend of mine tried hard to find out when my birthday is. There was a good reason for all that effort; there are rumours that soon the world will have suffered half a century of my existence. There are – admittedly few – people who think that the world has not suffered enough and there should be a…

Two weeks ago, on 23rd September, we ‘celebrated’ a special occasion: six months since a UK-wide lockdown was introduced. As we know all too well, life as we had known it stopped and we had to adapt to a ‘new normal’: no social interaction, many businesses shut down and ‘working from home’ as the default position wherever possible. From day…

The gospel clearly wasn’t written as a bedtime story for children… Good luck with explaining to them the professions Jesus mentioned in today’s passage, and why he praised them. I guess it’s no less shocking to adult regular churchgoers, although sometimes it goes unnoticed – so used to listening to this gospel as we are that we no longer pay…

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme is the official name for ‘furlough’. This word used to be of marginal use, but now it’s very familiar to everyone who has not lived under a rock for the last half-year or so. All political and partisan aspects aside, the scheme proved to be a godsend to millions of people across the country, who…

The parish priest and I went to a family’s house for dinner. After a while, the lady of the house turned to me and said: ‘Father, having had enough wine I can tell you what I think about…’ and then she referred to a certain situation from a not-so-distant past; nothing really nasty or unpleasant. The sad thing about it…