Some time ago I visited a couple of my friends, a family of mixed nationalities. Both of them spoke French, but I didn’t. The wife and I spoke Polish, but not the husband. He and I spoke English, a language she didn’t speak. So despite knowing three different languages, we didn’t have any common one to be able to chat…
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Too lenient a punishment, said some. Too harsh, said others. A fair and proportionate decision made by Pope Francis, said Archbishop Leo Cushley. Yesterday’s decision by the Vatican regarding Cardinal Keith O’Brien made headlines across the country, and inevitably produced a wide range of comments. Those who made them did so from various points of view. Some had expected an…
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Despite my deep interest in history, the commemoration of the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War last year prompted me to realise how little I knew about it. In order to fill in the gaps, I bought a book on the Great War and started reading it. Very soon I noticed a distinctive difference between what I thought…
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The weather forecast for Monday looked good on Saturday afternoon so I requested my friends to give me a lift from Ballindalloch to Grantown-on-Spey in order to pass my last stretch of the Speyside Way. Then I checked the forecast again on Sunday late afternoon and had a genuine dilemma; it was much worse than before. The main danger was…
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The biblical readings we’ve just listened to are supposed to give me an easy ride either to moralistic rant based on the Ten Commandments (the first reading) or to a clichéd call for moralistic purging as derived from the Gospel reading. I considered that – by following either of these routes – I would be guaranteed the prospect of losing the…