I went to an interesting talk on A History of Sex and Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch at St Paul’s Cathedral on Tuesday. You hear a lot from people on the more conservative side, keen to denounce all kinds of “sin”, backed up by some very selective reading, and it was refreshing to hear analysis from a liberal perspective.

It’s also useful background if you have to deal with people with (perhaps spuriously) religiously-justified regressive views.

The next morning I woke up to the news that our cousins across the sea continue to live in a state of chaotic dysfunction. It was clearly much the worse of two bad options, but if Harris had won it would still have been quite shit and we’d be back here in four years with the same worries about the next freak on the Republican ticket.

In the rest of the world, we can’t do anything about the US, and we can’t rely on it, but we learned nothing from 2016. At some point we need to move beyond this dependence on a mercurial, hypocritical, genocidal, sclerotic polity that has long since ceded any moral authority. The sooner the better.

I feel bad for Taiwan, which has the potential to lose the most.

With accidentally perfect timing, we had tickets to a refugee and migrant poetry event at the National Poetry Library on Wednesday evening. Unlike everything else going on, it was beautiful, hopeful, and positive.

The Dog and Bell Pickle Festival on Saturday was far busier than I anticipated. It took place partly in the pub, but mostly in the space next door that usually serves as an adventure playground. It took about half an hour just to get to the bar for a beer, so between that and a similar queue for the portaloos, we didn’t get a second round.

A sea of people under a giant hanging pickle sculpture, from which rays of bunting are strung out in all directions.

All hail the pickle

I submitted an entry into the pickle competition (Savoy cabbage, leek and apple kimchi), but I didn’t win.

We did, however, get to watch a hugely entertaining live set from “alternative folk band” Man The Lifeboats, who combine a strong stage presence, tongue-in-cheek lyrics, banjo, squeezebox, and fiddles with a drum and bass guitar rhythm section into a very danceable mixture.

A band on stage including a singer playing an acoustic guitar, and people playing violin, bass guitar, and drums.

Man The Lifeboats

Pages I’ve bookmarked this week: