pumpkinstrokemarrow

Then yesterday, left the house to find the helicopter, presumably the police helicopter, circling low overhead. Maybe circling over Drummond Gardens, a block of flats just up the road. Is there an escaped mental on the run? Have there been reports of burglary? Then we set off up the road to find that the thing was following us. At least that was what we thought (being a touch paranoid for no especial reason), but then it veered off to the south west, presumably heading for home which I believe to be somewhere in that direction. Checking with the various helicopter hire outfits visible online, I find one which offers a guide price. To wit, £2,000 to be be taken from one of the London airports to the Battersea heliport. On the basis that the cost to hire for an hour is not a bad proxy for the cost of an hour's mission by the Surrey Police Helicopter Brigade (SPHB), did they get their monies' worth? Would the £2,000 have been better spent on a brigade of fully manned patrol cars descending on said Drummond Gardens? Then how much can actually one see from a helicopter? Are they just hype from the boys who love their toys? One just has to hope that they have some management accountants on board who can and are empowered to do these sorts of sums.

More interesting, I had, until yesterday afternoon thought that the Holy Trinity, the three in one, stood high and alone. With perhaps the Angel Gabriel, the Virgin Mary, Satan et al. standing on much lower pedestals. Maybe some other former humans such as the Holy Fathers were allowed into the lower pedestal club. Maybe even the saints in general. People such as Cardinal Newman and Saint Philip Howard (see 1st November) . I guess Catholics are more into all these trimmings than Protestants. But now I learn that in the early twentieth century Russia they were into something called the Holy Wisdom, the same holy wisdom which was the name of the big mosque in Istanbul when it was a big church in Constantinople. The Holy Wisdom was feminine and held by some to be an aspect of the Holy Spirit. Held by others to be an aspect of Jesus and held by still others to be a fourth leg of the Holy Trinity, thus converting it into the Holy Table from the Holy Tripod. Another view was that she was a symbol rather than an allegory but I got a bit lost in the OED at this point. Maybe I need to fast for a few weeks to grasp the full glory of her holy wisdom.

Then a few days before that, someone from the suicide clinic in Switzerland was speculating on whether it was time to extend their franchise, beyond those with terminal physical illness, attested by two regular physicians. The dignity in dying people here were very quick off the mark to explain that the very idea of such extension was abhorrent. I wondered whether this public position reflected the need to compromise in order to move forward, rather than their own private opinion.

So all kinds of different people might agree that the new bus shelter should be placed at grid reference SU 786567 (somewhere in Hampshire, I believe) facing 15 degrees east of north. But they might want this for all kinds of different reasons, reasons founded on deeply held faiths and beliefs, and it would cause all kinds of trouble if one was too open and honest about all this. One has to come up with some reasonably anodyne line which they all can subscribe to and all punt for on a public platform. Or does one? How sophisticated does an electorate have to be before it can cope with there being different, possibly conflicting, reasons for doing something? That it is OK to be be someone on some particular thing while believing that someone to be thoroughly obnoxious from almost every other point of view? That it is OK to be with someone on some particular thing even if that someone believes that that particular thing will advance something else that you believe to be obnoxious? You would not believe that belief, but would you care to be associated with someone who did?

It's a hard life being both political and decent.

PS: I learn of fallibility in blog search in the course of all this. Searching for 'Saint' finds 'Saint' but searching for 'saint' does not. I am sure that regular Google is not so picky in this matter of case.