HRH Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge

I know what you are thinking, what awful things are you going to say about the little baby?

Wrong.

You wound me with your cynicism. Naughty naughty Guru-ites.

My message for today is about childhood and growing up, though it does seem that some us manage to grow up and yet retain a certain childlike quality and innocence.

Just a few weeks ago we were lucky enough to find a baby arrive in our lives, a wonderful little creature called Polly.

Polly is the daughter of Miss Twillets, or should that be Ms. Twillets now? I get confused by social gender politics. Anyway, Polly is being groomed by her mother to become perfect marriage material for the new Prince George and I think he'd be lucky to get her...even though she does suck her thumb.

In reality we don't know what Polly will achieve in her life, she's too young yet to express any hopes and dreams for the future but those around her can dream and do I'm sure hope for a long and happy life for this little girl, Princess Polly of Mansfield.

Polly might not have a real title, and she will not have access to all the things George will have - but she does have one thing he will never have - the freedom to grow up and become what she wants to be.

Longevity seems to be a family trait in the Windsor household, it may well be that the Queen will carry on for another 10 years or more, then King Charles and Queen Camilla will have their shot and that may take us on another 20 or so years, making George 30 when his dad becomes King William.

If his dad manages 30 or so years on the throne then by the time Prince George becomes King George, he might be as old as his grandfather is now.

60 plus years waiting for the job you never asked for.

By the time she is 60, Polly could be retired to her villa in Tuscany. She will sit by her pool reflecting on a long and happy career as an actress, a dancer, a business woman, a hired killer, a flower arranger, a champion Beagle breeder, the scientist who discovered a cure for the common cold,  a teacher, a journalist, a fashion designer etc etc. She might have been a wife, mother, grandmother, she might even have been spotted by a dashing young Prince George at Pushy Fit classes.

Polly is a Thursday's Child - she has far to go and where she goes will be pretty much up to her.

George is a Monday's Child - fair of face he may be, and he may get to travel far and wide but he will never have the freedom to be what he wants to be. By the time he is old enough to realise he is trapped, it will be too late to escape - unless he makes the sacrifice of giving up on the throne to pursue happiness in whatever form happiness takes for plain George Cambridge.

I think Polly is the lucky one, and the fact that the world is not clamouring for her picture now doesn't mean a thing.

Her story will be written on blank pages, she will be the author of her story.

You know as I write this I find myself hoping that George manages to escape the shackles of the court, and the expectations of a Royalist driven agenda, the supporters of  St Diana who think of this baby as some sort of second coming. If by some chance he wants to be a potter or a bee keeper or a ballet dancer or just live with his 'friend' Gerald in a quiet village in Cambridgeshire and write books on needlecraft, then we should all let him be who he wants to be...it's not going to happen though. The brainwashing will already have begun.

It's all a matter of luck - where we are born. For every child complaining to his parents that the X-Box is broken, there is another child somewhere in the world living in a box, being nibbled by rats as they try and sleep.

For every child throwing a tantrum because they didn't want sauce on their chicken, there is another child who is on the verge of starvation.

For every child who is complaining that they NEED the latest fashionable trainers there is a child whose feet are blistered from the miles they walk to find water.

Mansfield isn't glamorous at the side of Kensington but Polly's home is a palace compared to a cardboard box.


Yes, Polly is lucky. She will be surrounded by love and by people who want her to be happy in her life and to become all she wants to be.

So, George Alexander Louis; I wish you a long and happy life but in my heart I wish you had the freedom to be just George.

A Review...

Daddy

Devised and presented by Andy Dobb & Jack Burrows

Create Theatre Thursday 18th July 7.30pm


Two good friends decide that they are going to create a piece of theatre based upon their experiences of being and wanting to be a father. The result was presented to a small but appreciative audience, in a sweltering hot studio at The Create Theatre last night.

The piece was well structured and the journey was easy to follow as they discussed the very real and honest path they had trod in reaching their relative positions as a Daddy in Residence and Daddy in Waiting.

Presented as a work in progress, scripts in hand, Dobb and Burrows occasionally lost their way but I didn’t care because I knew, that they knew, what they were doing.

The very brave decision these two men had taken was to open their hearts to the world, to share their real and sometimes brutally honest story with us but to do so laced with physical humour, terrible puns and some real laugh out loud moments.

I will not divulge the exact content of the piece as that would destroy the chance of any future audiences  responding to the power of the piece, and have no doubt it has real power and tremendous potential.

This would not be a ‘Drew Review’ if I did not offer some criticism.

My first criticism would be about the pace and timing. I know this would come with rehearsal so I’m not going to dwell on that.


My second and final criticism is - it may have benefitted from an external eye.

Not to tell them what to say or how to say it but to offer the unbiased perspective of the audience thereby allowing them to further explore the themes in play. With such an emotional  piece, such a personal piece, it must be hard to be totally self critical all of the time.

For example, I would have pushed this piece to be even more gritty in the dramatic sections as I felt there was a slight pulling back on occasion from really hitting the audience with what were some very uncomfortable truths.

Overall, I loved it, I found it funny and moving and it touched some very real emotions within my own experiences of life. I know this was equally true for other audience members.

I hope that Andy Dobb and Jack Burrows do make progress with the piece and that a wider audience get to see these two talented men continue their ‘Daddy’ journeys.

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Personal Comments: As an aside, the audience contained many other ‘actors’ some of whom offered feedback after the show.  I found this part of the evening particularly uncomfortable and some of the comments were ill judged.

I will state for the record that Andy Dobb and Jack Burrows are on a different planet, no in a different acting galaxy to some of the amateur and apparently theatrically ignorant folk who tried to tell them how to improve their show.

After seeing them work in this piece and taking into account the brilliant work they did with The Odd Couple, I would go as far as to say that they are the preeminent theatrical performers in Mansfield.

I have seen nothing better than the work they continue to do and look forward to pushing them even harder when we start work on Drag Queens On Trial.

(Obviously I am in a galaxy of my own too, a very special galaxy far far away.  I also wish to exclude Rob from my analogy as well as Ed and his mum, plus Vicky and any other nice people who kept their opinions to themselves and just said well done to two splendid lads).

Finally a word for Natalie and Lauren - thank you.

The Dangers Of Reasonable Religion

It's Sunday and here I sit in my nicely tidied office at the Ashram, contemplating the week passed and the week ahead. Suddenly, I decided that I should bother my followers with a little explosion of concern, an ejaculation of anxiety if you will.

Which reminds me, I learnt yesterday that the reason some faiths used to ask women to keep their heads covered is because the superstitious monkeys thought that sperm was stored in hair...stay with me. The hair on a ladies head has the power to suck sperm up her body after sexual intercourse, so you didn't want all that sperm laden hair just staring at you did you? Keep it covered ladies!

I head this story from a lady vicar named Kate Bottley, she is more recently become famous for a viral video clip of her 'flashmob' dancing with the congregation at a wedding.

She is one of those 'reasonable' vicars who swears during ceremonies and offers ice-pops to her congregation on hot days. The sort of vicar who has a quick retort for every dig at religion and offers a 'reasonable' answer to the sort of questions people like me send in her direction.

By the way, I use the word 'reasonable' as it was a word used to me in describing this modern almost secular approach to faith. The actual quote was "it all seems very reasonable, and what's the harm in religion being human".

So, a 'reasonable' vicar, the sort of vicar who avoids the literal reading of the bible, embracing instead both science and faith by  accepting the concept of evolution and thereby undercutting any chance of debating the idea of god or gods in any logical way.

These sorts of 'reasonable' vicars make religion appealing to the masses by basically inviting and allowing you to believe in both fact and fiction and treating them as equally valid.

Kate Bottley is a force of nature, larger than life and someone who would no doubt fight very VERY hard for what she believes in and I have respect for that, we all follow our own path. It's harder to respect an attitude to life that says all we have and all we are, all progress and science and understanding of human development is only ours through god.

How can you argue with that?

It's ALL part of gods plan. Forget the bible, forget the obvious flaws in that story, just believe in god and have faith. We will tell you which bits of the bible are to be adhered to and which can be ignored, you just have faith. Don't worry, just join the queue and believe.

How can you argue with that?  You can't - and that's why 'reasonable' religion is dangerous.

The basic premise of religion is that god exists, that's what you have to accept. That god is real, and not just any god.

You see the 'reasonable' religious are actually as atheistic as me because they don't believe in all the other gods that people have worshiped in ancient Rome or Greece or Egypt for example. They just have their god who we have to accept exists and that there are no others...

How do we know that? How do we come to accept that there is only one god?

Answer... it says so in the bible - the very book that the 'reasonable' religious now say we should not take literally.

You see the real danger is that the 'reasonable' religious make everything seem so warm and human and safe so if you ask questions you seem to be questioning your own faith in humanity not humanities fear of the dark.

The worst thing is that the 'reasonable' religious sneer at those of us that don't believe and they undermine us in very subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways. Like telling me, it doesn't matter what you believe, god is always with you.

How can you argue with that when they seem so 'reasonable'?

What a Wonderful World

Hello children, are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

As a true believer you will not be shocked to discover that evolution, not creation, is my considered opinion on how we got to where we are and that the world will continue to evolve until we either evolve ourselves out of the picture or the sun explodes and we all end up as crispy critters on some planetary fritto misto.

Science continues to find new ways of prolonging human life, the Catholic church continues to aid in the population growth around the world and the planet is shrinking beneath our feet.

More and more people arrive and less and less depart - it's going to get crowded and the demand for space and for food can only mean one thing - other species will have to get out of the way.

Trees will be cut down, animals will become extinct, birds will disappear, insects (especially cockroaches) will thrive and still scientists will be helping us all to live longer lives.

Why?

Do we really think that the value of a life can only be measured by the number of days in it?

Next week I will conduct a funeral for a boy of 15 and this week a man of 37 - were their lives less valuable because they were cut short?

When we lose someone at a young age we mourn that loss and we mourn the future that we had hoped and planned for. But where do we get the idea that life is supposed to be long?


As a species we used to live shorter lives, we used to succumb to our surroundings and dangers of life - we evolved and we learned to manage and mitigate that danger out of the equation in million different ways, meaning millions lived longer. That's good isn't it?

In South Africa life expectancy is 52. In South Korea it's 80. Is a South African less valuable than a South Korean?

I hope you get my point by now - we live in a diverse world and people live very different lives just by accident of where they are born.

An orangutan might live 40 years in the wild if it isn't killed by poachers or people chopping down its habitat for a variety of reasons and yet in captivity it lives for 60 years.

Tigers might get to 15 years of age in the wild, 30 years in captivity.

I'll let you into a secret - if I was a tiger I'd prefer 15 years in the wild to 30 years in a cage. What do you think?

Now think about the small space that man will eventually be forced to live in and remember that requirement for space would have displaced all the tigers, in the wild or captivity.

Science fact is scary - science fiction or fantasy might be our only real hope of salvation.

Will we become a wandering tribe, roaming the endless depths of space fighting Cylons or Klingons?

I don't have an answer for this - but I decided today to donate to the WWF.

It might not save mankind from its own self induced sleepwalk to mass extinction, but it might mean that  I don't outlive the last tigers, leopards and polar bears.

When my life ends they can feed me to the animals in the zoo for all I care. It might be the best thing man ever did for the animals.





2010 - The Alaotra Grebe (Tachybaptus rufolavatus) is declared extinct.

2011 - The Eastern Cougar was declared extinct.

2011 - The Western Black Rhinoceros was declared extinct.

2012 - The Japanese River Otter (Lutra lutra whiteneyi) has been declared extinct by the country’s Ministry of the Environment, after not being seen for more than 30 years.

2012 - "Lonesome George," the last specimen of the Pinta Island Tortoise died on June 10 2012.

2013 - The Formosan clouded leopard, previously endemic to the island of Taiwan, is officially declared extinct.

2013 - ?

The Gospel According to Me

I really do try and let others live as they wish. I’m a very liberal man. I know what I believe and I accept that others believe differently to me and that’s a good way for the world to turn as far as I can see. All of us following the path we think we should follow.

Recently, however, I have been getting a little fed up with the sniping and the comments from people who don't know me but think they have a right to judge me because I don't believe in god.

I wanted to take just a little time to address these people, to offer a little judgement of my own before I go back to my path and happily walk on to the end of my life, when I shall cease to exist in body and in spirit. 

Here we go then...

Dear god botherers, if you ask me to justify why I don’t believe in god please don't be surprised when I ask you to justify why you do. I will gladly answer your question and the answer will be based in fact and reason which is obviously something your answer will be short on.

Dear bible bashers, the bible does not prove anything other than that men can write down words in sentences and paragraphs and chapters. It is not proof that god exists.

It wasn’t written in English, it was translated into English and it was translated by humans who might have made mistakes in the translation or even altered it deliberately to strengthen their own position and reinforce certain beliefs.

There are certainly parts of the bible which contain some very useful lessons for life, for example how man should love his fellow man - although that’s one rule the religious find less keen to accept. 

It is possible to be a good family man and neighbour and citizen and never bend the knee in prayer. You can just be a decent human being and expect no reward in heaven.

Dear concerned Christians, there is not a god shaped hole in my life - my life is full of meaning and if you felt that there was a hole in your life, why did you fill it with god and not with fish finger sandwiches as this would seem an eminently more sensible  and practical way to fill a hole.

I have a question for those who have filled their ‘hole’ with Christianity - why didn't you choose Islam or Buddhism or Zoroastrianism or Odin or become a Jedi? 

Could it be because you are English?  Does the god of Abraham have special privileges in the UK that prevent other faiths having a claim on your ‘hole’?

Dear proselytizing pest - no, I’m not scared of dying. I would like to live as long as possible but when the time comes there does not seem much I can do about it other than say cheerio. The religious seem much more scared of death in my experience and yet you should all embrace it, knowing with certainty that your journey will continue with god in heaven.

Dear doom laden doorstepping prophets, if the end of the world is upon us I intend to enjoy my final days and not cower with my head in my hands begging for forgiveness just for being human. 

I know this all seems a little cheap and vindictive but I’m only returning the gift that the faithful have been so keen to give to me of late.

I really don’t care what you believe, but I do care if you force your views on others and try and shape the world to your ends. 

It’s been very liberating getting this off my chest and I know the faithful will forgive me - if they don’t they should give up on religion as it’s obviously not for them.


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PS: Just as I was about to post this blog entry the doorbell rang...you guessed it. Janet and Sandra with this months Watchtower!

She has a real sense of irony this god of yours.