I'm in heaven when you smile

When we first went out in the Beetle, I realised to my horror that people noticed the car. I hadn’t really considered this beforehand; I know it’s a funky little car, but I didn’t think it was particularly noticeable. But actually we've not passed another one on the road in six weeks. And alas, people look. My heart sank.

I have quite enough of being noticed, thank you. No, please don't look over here.

People do notice me when I am out and about. The shape of my presence is different; I am going to catch your eye. Not your problem. I get so used to being noticed because of the wheelchair that whenever people look at me, it feels like it is because of that. Even when I'm not using the wheelchair.

But then I realised something else about the Beetle. People notice the car. People look at the car. And then, almost every time, people smile at the car. They smile! Almost every time!

What a funky little car, I suppose they must be thinking. It is uncomplicated, whatever it is. Unlike me.

People don't automatically respond to me with a smile.

Naturally, I get more smiles if I smile a lot myself. And I do smile a lot because that's what you do when you meet someone's eyes. And I like being smiled at. Do you get the feeling I'm not about to break into a bad poem about smiling? Not worth applying my skills to; smiling has already inspired a wealth of fantastically bad poems, and every one of them rhymning smile with while.

But I really do appreciate it.

Smiling is never patronising. You might be smiling at the poor pathetic wheelchair woman as you might smile at a child, but I'm not to know that. You’re already looking at me, for crying out loud, what else are you going to do? Stare at me? Avert your gaze in embarrassment?

The latter is a very common and upsetting response. Because it doesn’t feel to me like you merely found yourself looking and didn’t want to be rude. It feels like you are embarrassed by the very sight of me. Like you are blanking me out because my appearance makes you uncomfortable. It looks like disgust. Which perhaps it is.

Just a few of these and I get a tight knot just under my ribs. I get pissed off. Unreasonably, deeply pissed off. I start speaking your thoughts out loud; "How embarrassing!" I declare, to make you all the more so.

No, that's not nice. It isn't fair either. The mistake is a split-second barely-conscious decision, and I must have done it myself. I try not to. I try to look every charity collector or homeless person in the eye and smile, even when I have nothing to give them, even when it often means saying as much out loud, which is embarrassing.

But a smile, even from a stranger, can untangle that knot completely; Alka-Seltzer for the soul. It is that powerful, a physical relief, especially when on those days when the world seems full of scowlers and starers. Staring is less troublesome, because I convince myself that nobody ever knows they're doing it. It looks like you are just staring into space and I happen to occupy that space. Because nobody could possibly be that rude, could they?

So anyway, it's a novelty to be noticed in an uncomplicated way. And I love riding in the Beetle for its effect on people. Whenever we are the first in the queue at a level crossing (which we are, very often; we have to cross the track between Norwich and Cambridge to get anywhere), I sit and wave at the train. I reckon I can get six or seven smiles for every carriage that passes.

And last week, I was sat in a carpark in Thetford and a small group of passing Portuguese school children broke into song about the Beetle; something about a buggy bug. Now that's a novelty indeed.

5 Blogs That Make Me Think

I have been a very naughty blogger, in that I have received the Thinking Blogger Award more than once and haven't got around to doing the post until now. This is not to detract anything from the honour of receiving the award, particularly from the folks who gave it me; Sage at Persephone's Box, David at Growing Up with a Disability, Sara at Moving Right Along and Sharon from The Family Voyage. All fantastic bloggers, who do make me think.

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

It wasn't that I didn't want to do this, but that it I found it very difficult thing to do. Of course, when I first received the award I had a much longer shortlist; many of those I would have chosen have got their just deserts in the meantime. However, it is still necessary to leave out bloggers who might well make me think as much as these do. And that's before one comes to the issue of how to be complimentary without sounding somewhat creepy, a lifelong conundrum for me.

Not that I can guarantee that none of my five haven't already received the award; if they have then either I missed their post about it or they are just as naughty as I am.

So, the award goes to...


1. Chewing the Fat
Many disabled writers steer well clear of sentiment, for fear of the Tragedy Model stereotypes we're all used to. David Hindburger does a remarkable thing, in that he writes very moving and touching stories about his experiences and the disabled people he meets, without resorting to the emotional shorthand we're so used to. This is human interest, to which disability is incidental. Uh, not very articulate today, so you best go read some.

Check out Shufffft about the changing pace of the "Institutionalised Shuffle", Too much on whether it is possible to have too much diversity in one person or Imagine that! where David encounters some ladies who may be in denial...


2. Writhe Safely
Flawedplan is one of the most articulate and authoritative bloggers writing about mental health politics. She manages to intersperse very smart impassioned analyses of current affairs, medical ethics and sociology, with extremely personal accounts of her own life experiences, some of which make for rather uncomfortable, if very compelling, reading.

Check out Red Eyes and Tears, where she wrestles with the question of overcoming stigma or
Mothered Day about nature, nurture and child abuse [Trigger Warning].


3. The Center of Gravitas
Gay Prof is a extraordinarily smart cookie, writing about queer politics, academia, queer politics within academia and Wonder Woman. But he is also very funny. I can have read the most robust argument on a deeply serious subject and still, he's always thrown in some line which has me creasing up. Usually something rather rude. Or something about Tinky Winky.

Check out The Wages of Straightness about the divisive nature of privilege among the those fighting for equality (contains sexual references), Immoral Minority the best post I read reacting to the death of Jerry Falwell or ¡Por Fin! on getting over a crap relationship... and Texas.


4. The Beauty Offensive
Seahorse hasn't been blogging for very long, but she is a blogger with a mission; to blog the everyday things of beauty. Which she does, despite having started this project at a pretty dramatic turning point in her life.

Check out I am happy in which she shares a day of happiness, Accessories for the Aesthete or From Where I'm Sitting, Seahorse's contribution Blogging Against Disablism Day which records her first outing on wheels.


5. The Perorations of Lady Bracknell
I'm kind of amazed that it looks like I'll be the first to award her, but Lady Bracknell is the epitome of wit and wisdom, perhaps' the thinking blogger's blogger (the compulsion in my fingers to type crumpet just then was only narrowly avoided). She manages to be both very clever and very funny however serious or (dare I say it) frivolous the subject matter. Her Ladyship and her Editor also keeps a hold of that humour even when the fates seems quite determined to knock it out of them.

Check out In which we name and shame, about revealing Sitemeter data, Do you think you are sufficiently decayed? in which Lady Bracknell outlines those qualities in a gentleman which are likely to catch her eye or The results of a sleepless night about pain and friendship.

In defence of the Human Rights Act (with thrilling house martin action)

The Human Rights Act 1998 came into UK law in October 2000. Since then, it has faced a lot of criticism, with the opposition proposing to scrap it altogether. The main reason for its unpopularity is an inevitable consequence of its fundamental purpose; to protect the individual from abuse at the hands of the state. Inevitably, many of the people who have been affected or brought cases invoking it have been suspected or convicted criminals, including suspected terrorists; the least popular people there are. And inevitably, with any brand new wide-reaching law, some of the most sensational cases invoking the law have been pretty frivolous. The media also has a habit of reporting when a ridiculous case is brought, but forgetting to report when it was subsequently thrown out of court.

I, however, would argue that the Human Rights Act is one of the most important pieces of legislation that has ever been and is perhaps more important at this point in our history than ever before. Seriously. Very very very important. Very. Very important indeed.

The wording of the Act is based on the European Convention on Human Rights (1950) which borrows from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, first proclaimed in 1948, inspired by events which should be obvious. This point is worth bearing in mind; there has been very little change in the wording in fifty years, but it took that long for advocates to persuade governments like ours to put this properly into law.

Why? Because it puts firm limits on the power that the state may enjoy over the individual. And the state does enjoy power. This is not a sinister enjoyment, all power corrupts etc., but simply because the more power you have, the easier it is to look after people. For example, when visiting the beach, it is far easier to simply tie your children to deckchairs rather than letting them run about and paddle in the sea where you must watch them, because the sea is dangerous. Similarly when you're trying to run a country and keep people safe. Only it is no fun being at the beach if you are tied to a deckchair.

The Human Rights Act limits the power of the
state by outlining the minimum levels of freedom that an individual has an innate entitlement to. All of these rights are conditional (e.g. you have a Right to Life so long as you are not engaged in the act of harming someone else and the only way to stop you is by killing you). But they are default; they don't need to be earned. And they belong to every human being. They are, if you like, the Ten Commandments of liberal democracy; the fundamental obligations that a state has to its people. And, rather like the Ten Commandments to a Christian, they are entirely sound to anyone who supports the idea of democracy.

But like the Ten Commandments, there is the small issue of interpretation. That is a problem and perhaps always will be. We need to keep debating how this or that article should be understood and applied, and right now, when it is so very new, this debate is inevitably extremely active. Good. That is good. But still some people object.

The only argument against the Human Rights Act is the argument that I, or my group, know better than other people and should be able to control their behaviour for the overall good. People do argue this or something like this. The indefinitely imprisonment of foreign nationals suspected of terrorist offences at Belmarsh Prison is one example. It is felt that the danger these people might pose is far greater than what those individuals would have suffered for losing their freedom. Yet there is not evidence to charge them of any crime (see Article 7; No Punishment Without Law).

Similarly, for myself, quite frankly. I mean, there is no evidence against me which could be used to convict me of a crime, but you never know what I might get up to. Legally, I am no more innocent than any one of those detainees because neither of us have or could be charged of a crime (let alone convicted). So why not me? Wrong colour, wrong religion? It is not as if we haven't messed this up terribly in the past.

For example, when we extended the period a suspect could be detained without charge up to seven days in the 1970s (now 28 days as of 2005), the very first people affected by this law were a certain three Irishman and an Englishwoman, who were claimed they were tortured into giving false confessions. Of course they did; Irish, weren't they? They were convicted of the Guildford Bombing and spent fifteen years in prison before their convictions were quashed. See also the Birmingham Six.

Such events took place in a not dissimilar climate, where fear of terrorism was very great and used to push through changes to the law. Where people assumed that there was no smoke without fire, and that this was a free country where miscarriages of justice simply couldn't happen. Now, we're told, the stakes are even higher. And yet there is a mentality which says, "Yeah, but that was the seventies; miscarriages of justice couldn't happen now, not in 2007."

Thus we have a BBC News: Have Your Say page dedicated to the disappearance of three suspects under Control Orders (once again, because they could not be charged with a crime) and it is full of folks calling for an end to the Human Rights Act, all referring to these men as terrorists when they remain innocent under the law.

Liberal democracy is not, alas, the natural arrangement that all states eventually mature into and stick with forever. It has only existed for a blink of the eye in our political history and it is immensely fragile, particularly durings times where people feel threatened. But it is well worth fighting for. And by far the greatest threat to our freedom comes from our own complacency.

People are strange, when you're a stranger

This stinks: The Times : Secret plans to turn staff into police informers.

"Council workers, charity staff and doctors will be required to tip off police about anyone whom they believe could commit a violent crime, under secret Home Office plans.

Civil liberties campaigners last night said that the proposal raised the prospect of people being placed under surveillance and detained even though they have committed no offence.

And a senior Whitehall official, who leaked the plans to The Times, said that it would entail a mass of personal information, including sensitive medical records, being passed around many different agencies — even if there was no firm evidence of any potential risk from an individual."

It is always difficult to work out how serious these things are, the words leaked and proposal being key. But it would be in line with the increasingly popular idea that all tragedy is preventable and the law enforcement authorities should become involved in matters where nothing which constitutes a crime has actually been committed (for example, Anti-Social Behaviour Orders or Clause 23 of the 2005 Terrorism Bill)

There are currently fairly clear guidelines about the parameters of confidentiality that public service workers have to work within. Whenever you see a psychiatrist or counsellor, for example, there is always a preamble about how nothing you say goes beyond the four walls unless you give them reason to believe you are going to put yourself in danger, are going commit a crime or have committed a crime.

But none of us are qualified to anticipate who may, at some time in the future, commit a crime - even those who are experts in human behaviour. If healthcare professionals could merely predict which of us were going to commit suicide, then many thousands more lives could be saved each year than if we somehow managed to eliminate violent crime. Only they can’t. Why? Because people are making choices in their own heads, choices we are not privy to, choices which are often completely different to the ones the same person might have made last week, or yesterday or five minutes ago. Free will is awfully inconvenient like that.

The only obvious predictive indicator of criminal activity is criminal activity; someone who beats his girlfriend up might eventually kill her outright, someone who has an illegal drug habit may, in time, feel compelled to commit theft in order to fund said habit, and so on. We can prevent these more serious crimes if we can effectively deal with their precursors, however that might be best achieved.

How else would you be able to guess who might be a potential violent criminal? Well, we've all seen the films and read the books. Your dangerous criminals - other than your sophisticated and charming master criminals who live in isolated mansions and rarely cross paths with public service providers - are oddballs; they are all men (the freaks!) and they’re kind of scary-looking. They don’t make eye-contact - or they make eye-contact but too intensely - perhaps they have a tic? They are sometimes over-friendly, they talk too much, make inappropriate remarks or become easily upset or angry when met with disappointment or confusion. This one seems a bit paranoid - being put under police surveillance is exactly what he needs!

People who lack social confidence or acumen, including a hell of a lot of disabled people, are extremely vulnerable to meeting the stereotype of a suspicious character. And I can't see what, other than sheer prejudice, folks could have to work off. Unless, of course, they had evidence of an actual factual crime being committed - in which scenario, no new legislation is required.

To be perfectly honest, I am myself suspcious of what this story implies, which is surely too outrageous to be true. Come on, it is; this is the stuff of totalitarian nightmares...


[Giving power to people who might exercise it out of malice is another issue, of course. Last time I came into face-to-face contact with a council worker, she was a grumpy lady whose inattention to what I was saying made the whole thing long-winded and rather frustrating. Towards the end of our conversation she thrust a Customer Feedback form in my direction, saying, “You need to fill this out.”

This was, in itself, a fascinating form. It had the various aspects of service you had to rate; Friendliness of Staff, Helpfulness of Staff, Office Décor (which was, actually very nice, but not of tremendous importance). And then if you didn’t understand the conception of rating your responses as Very Unsatisfied, Unsatisfied, Neutral, Satisfied and Very Satisfied (in which case it seemed unlikely you would manage to read the rest of the form), they’d filled the columns with emoticons for you to tick; sad faces for the two negative columns, a straight face for Neutral, and smilies for the positives. And then, if this wasn’t clear enough, they had colour-coded the emoticons, red for Very Unsatisfied through to bright green for Very Satisfied.

You can tell I studied the thing. And all the time, this grumpy lady is sat opposite me, scowling impatiently (it is possible to give an impatient scowl; it's all in the eyebrows). So naturally, I ticked the bright green smiley, Very Satisfied for the friendliness and helpfulness of the customer service I had received. Which was a wise move, because the sourpuss – on whom I was relying on to pass essential documents on to the folks who would deal with my Housing Benefit claim – proceeded to scan down my responses the moment I'd handed it back.]

Passing by, like Lady Godiva

Some more mystery flowers have sprung up (doiiing!). I think the dark pink flowers belong to the same sort of plant, even though they appear to be trailing and the pale pink ones are more up right. Once again, these appeared in the middle of the grass, which we haven’t got round to cutting yet. There is a mower in the shed, but it is broken, so has gone on the list of things that need fixing, which is already as long as your arm (if you have really very long gangly arms).

We also have at least two nests of sparrows living in our roof, despite not having had a ceiling at the point they nested their. Noisy little buggers they are too.

Meanwhile, I have been sleeping lots, but we went out today with my folks to Ely. Ely is a pleasant little town in the middle of the very flat part of East Anglia. It is where Hereward the Wake held out against the Normans. Hereward the Wake is one of the characters who the Robin Hood myth may have been based on.

The only story I can remember about Hereward from School was that the Normans at one point hired a witch to curse the Saxons rebels during what had become a little guerilla war going on following the Norman conquest (it may be flat, but Ely was in fact an island at the time - we gradually drained the rivers to make the Fens; I'm not really sure why, but there is in fact a Drainage Museum, if you are interested). Anyhow, this witch performed her rite which cursed the rebels and concluded by turning round and mooning at them. Which provoked the Saxons to shoot her in the bum. There's a moral in that.

Perhaps more interesting was Hereward's mother - or who we suppose was his mother, British history of that period being a little shakey - Lady Godiva. I don't suppose she is that much more interesting, but she gives me an excuse to show you a rather lovely Pre-Raphaelite naked lady.

So the story went, Lady Godiva entreated her husband, a reputedly stingey git, to reduce taxes on the poor people of Coventry. He said, "Not on thine nelly, missus." (which is Old English). Then he said, "Tell thee what, I'll reduce ye olde taxes, if you ride ye olde gee-gee through ye olde streets of Coventry, naked."

So Lady Godiva asked the townspeople not to look and rode through the streets of Coventry in her birthday suit. Nobody looked except for a character called Peeping Tom - the fact his parents had christened their child Peeping suggesting little hope for him from the outset. Peeping Tom drilled a hole through his door, had a butcher's at Godiva and was struck instantly blind. Since then, anyone who drills holes through things to look at naked people is known as a Peeping Tom.

While I'm here, I am tempted to post that other famous John Collier nude, Lilith, who is a bit more womanly. Lilith was of course Adam's first wife, who was his equal. She got fed up and left Eden, thus they had to resort the spare rib arrangement. No, I've never really got to the bottom of what Lilith is about, where the idea of her came from, but as I understand it, it is kind of Jewish folklore (as opposed to Jewish doctrine) and she's kind of this vampire type character.

If anyone wishes to enlighten me, please do so. She was clearly an animal-lover, anyway.

In other news:

Timbo is running Big Blogger 2007, so do check that out.

Following my Guide to Talking About Stuff Without Sounding Like A Racist, JackP at The Pickards (Me vs. Stephen Hawking being a particularly memorable BADD entry) has written about attitudes towards race and then disability in I'm not a racist, but...

Sex and Feminism - False Consciousness

Probably a mistake to try and write about this given my current brain-mire, but I was thinking about what Sage has been writing about recently. Often arguments come up about why, given that the objectives of feminism would be to benefit all women (men too, but women more so), many women continue to behave in ways which perpetuate inequalities. Much of the difficulty is that feminists are a diverse bunch and passionately disagree with one another about which behaviours actually do perpetuate inequality.

These arguments tend to center around expressions of sexuality, in the widest possible sense. Perhaps it could even be opened up to our bodies and what we do with them. Very much of the way that society values or devalues women is to do with our bodies, therefore it makes sense that they are a priniciple battleground. I'm afraid I think the easiest way of doing this is offering a rather silly and entirely superficial example.

Today I want to wear high-heel shoes (I don't, but let's pretend).

Another feminist (a made-up one, sorry) says, "But high-heel shoes serve one purpose. Standing on tip-toes makes your arse stick out in such a way which advertises your sexual availability to other primates. High-heel shoes are entirely for the benefit of men who live under the illusion that all women are available to them for sex. And by wearing high-heel shoes you perpetuate this myth, as well encouraging other women to do the same."

"But that's not it at all," I say, "I like high-heel shoes. I chose to wear them for me."

"Yes," says the made-up feminist, "you might imagine that to be the case. You have been programmed to think that. But you get nothing out of wearing high-heels except physical problems with your feet and legs. You have been programmed to like high-heels because you have been programmed to enjoy dressing for the benefit of men."

This is a superficial example, I'm not sure anyone would present such an argument, but we could have a similar conversation about all number of choices I might make about grooming and my appearance, through things I do or tolerate in the relationships I have with men, right through to whether I become a prostitute or participate in pornographic movies. Many feminists do argue that the latter two are options that no woman who has a genuine choice could possibly choose, even if she thinks she is exercising free will.

Which takes us on to the real mucky yucky mess in the middle of feminist discourse on sexuality which is false consciousness.

False consciousness was originally Friedrich Engels’ idea, although similar, if fuzzier versions had been used in religion before then. He reckoned that whatever you think you believe, it has come from somewhere; nobody, he argued, can have ideas and beliefs independent of their social and political experience. I’m afraid I struggle with Engels, it is almost as if he is arguing that two plus two equals four only in a society which supports the concept of fourness. Sound familiar?

A more compelling idea was Malcolm X’s description of the difference between what he referred the House Negro and the Field Negro. Black slaves who existed in the master’s house as unpaid servants might form attachment to their abusers, but those who existed outside the house and were treated as working animals were far more likely to rebel. Similarly, he felt that some black folks in his society behaved like House Negroes; they had it just comfortable enough to become compliant – and complicit - in their own oppression

This is an important point for many egalitarians. A recurring theme in some of the BADD posts under “Personal Journeys” was the realisation by disabled people that the way they felt about themselves was not okay, that they were judging themselves by societal values based on prejudice. And the same applies to women. Many women now feel that feminism’s job is done. Many women felt the same in the seventies, when our rights remained disparate in law. And many women felt that the whole suffrage malarkey was a tremendous waste of time and effort.

However, I think we need to be very careful before we describe this as false consciousness, or else put it into language which suggests that a person doesn’t know what is good for them. In the Malcolm X letter linked to above, he goes on to strongly imply that Martin Luther King is a House Negro, a victim of false consciousness, even though the two men were fighting (and were soon to give their lives) for the same cause.

Which is the problem; if I can’t be bothered to argue with you on almost any matter, I can just say, “Well of course, you think that; you have been duped by the dominant ideology. Whereas I, by some miracle, remain immune to it.”

Which is nonsense. As I said earlier, there were always fuzzier versions of this in theological discourse; the idea that deep down we must all know there is a one true God and know who He is since He created us and exists in all our hearts, only we deceive ourselves (with the assistance of Mr B. L. Zeebub). If only we could be forced to undeceive ourselves, we would be saved. Fetch... the cushions!

And similarly, in fairness, I have heard the occassional atheist say similar things about the theists; they must know there’s no God, it’s all made up, people use religion to justify themselves and to maintain control over others. The whole thing should be abolished and people forced to think for themselves - a process which would undoubtedly lead them to the exact same conclusions as we did.

So back to my high-heels. Fact is, that I know that the reason men and women like high-heel shoes is sexual in origin, but thanks to the way we have learnt to think about clothes over a long time, women often opt for a higher-heel because it might look smarter, it works better with given outfit or even because adding height to a person enables someone to better command authority (in line with the sexist and disablist association between physical height and social authority, perhaps). I don't imagine most women are thinking about getting laid, or pleasing men, when they put on their shoes. Many shoes are very beautiful objects of design in any case, so many women like them for that reason.

However, personally, I also fail to see the relationship between high-heel shoes and sex to be necessarily problematic. Perhaps I might wear high-heels on an occasion wear I wish to advertise my sexual availability to someone, perhaps I wish to be sexy. Wishing to be sexually attractive to those people I am myself sexually attracted to is an intrinsic part of my sexuality, as I imagine it is to the sexuality of most people. Also, being an equal-opportunities lech, I like high-heeled shoes on women myself.

What you have here is a point of view. It could be wrong. However, if I am wrong, it is not because I have been passively absorbed the programming that a pair of shoes are just a pair of shoes. If I am wrong, it is because I have made a mistake in my reasoning.

I do have a point here, I imagine the next post will make far more sense.

Smoke without fire

BBC News: Church no smoking signs condemned
(I'm sure that should involve a hyphen, but hey.)

I am one of the very few people I know who have never put a cigarette to their lips. When I was seven or right I was sick off school with the flu and saw a programme on the television which must have been meant for teenagers to deter them from the demon weed. In my case, it gave me more information and gruesome mental images than a seven or eight year old really ought to have and I became very concerned about my Dad's smoking.

This was one respect where I was quite naughty and got away with it because Mum hated the smoking and Dad knew that to defend his habit would be to condone it in us should we wish to have a go (he knew this, because I told him as much). I would hide the cigarettes, I once dipped all the tips in soapy water and put them back in the packet. I would collect all the butts together and stew them in a jar of water before declaring, "Yuck! That's probably what it looks like inside your lungs!"

I know. But I felt very let down; if Dad didn't want us to watch him die horribly (which I was sure was imminent), he'd stop. If he wanted to set a good example to his growing children, he would stop. My world was uncomplicated like that.

So anyway, I don't like cigarettes. I really don't like cigarettes. But...

The UK government has taken what I consider to be the entirely sensible move of banning smoking in all places of work, effective from the first of July. This is a health and safety move and it'll also enable some disabled people to work or simply go to places they couldn't previously access; people with severe asthma or cystic fibrosis for example, who simply haven't been able to go for a drink in a pub. Wonderful stuff.

However, it's only bloody cigarettes. Everyone understands what the ban means. You don't need to put no-smokings signs up in churches - since when was it ever okay to smoke in church? And I do wonder what a smoking compliance officer might actually do that another health and safety worker couldn't. We don't have signs up in places of work or special officers coming round telling folks not to sexually harass one another or stick pencils up our noses.

I find it all rather suspicious. Well, of course I'm not that bothered, I'm just writing this post as an excuse to post my ideas for no-smoking signs that could be used in church. You knew that, didn't you? I spent a while thinking about Moses, the burning bush and the pillar of smoke, but I didn't get anywhere. Yes, I know, quite tired today, head full of nonsense.