Sublime and ridiculous

Its amazing how quickly my posts have strayed from the heavy theology of asking about 'the nature of prayer' and 'Ruth offering a perspective on postmodernity' to 'what time of day am i' and, my favourite, motorbikes!

Having said that i make no apologies for the motorbike stuff, am looking forward to picking up my new machine on Saturday week and riding down from Peterborough on it! I can only describe the feeling i had on my test ride as a bit of 'Nempnett Thrubwell' which is taken from the book 'the meaning of liff' (or its later reissue 'the deeper meaning of liff') by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd...

This wonderful book uses odd place names, mainly in the UK, to give us 'a dictionary of things that there aren't any words for yet' very funny, and perhaps you will find a few cropping up in other posts.

Nempnett Thrubwell (n.)
The feeling experienced when driving off for the very first time on a brand new motorbike

Douglas Adams & John Lloyd The Meaning of Liff Pan Books

There's also a website with the definitions! Link in the title of this post too!

Comments

Jem said…
I'm kind of having a Nempnett Thrubwell experience by e-osmosis here!
12:43 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trying to connect the dots, unnecessarily

Image
Another sermon - as seems to be the way of this blog at present! Life is busy and complicated, and good, and bad, and exciting, and challenging, and (in short) not conducive to getting Blog posts written! So, here's my thought for today taken from these passages (Click for details): Exodus 16:1–5, 9–15,  Psalm 78;18–29 Mt 13.1–9 Grace and Meaning In the words of St Paul, or perhaps St John, or maybe St George, or even St Ringo “When I was younger, so much younger than today.” Ah, sorry, couldn’t resist!  No, it’s not a tubby boy story – but just a general reflection that today’s story from the book of Exodus used to cause me great consternation.  Or at least was one of those parts of Scripture that didn’t seem to fit… I knew the story, the mythological story I am now convinced, of the temptations in the wilderness when Jesus proclaims, quoting Deuteronomy 6 ‘you shall not put the Lord your God to the test’. As I moved into the Anglican Church and got to kno
Read more

A Sermon which upset someone

So, I'm not a theological conservative.  That probably comes across in pretty much everything I write, but I thought I should say it.  I believe myself to be orthodox, however, and hold to those things which the Church expresses in the catholic creeds.  I also have a relatively 'high' theology regarding the inspiration of Scripture. But I am not a Biblical literalist, nor do I hold to a doctrine of the infallibility of Scripture. I can't.  The Bible is too rich, too deep, too difficult, too flawed for that.  And by flawed I mean I understand it to be the record of human beings trying to make sense of God at work.  It has the breath of the Spirit blowing through it's words and on every page, but when we try and make sense of God there is a chance we will go awry.... 'Hey lets condemn (and or murder) pretty much everyone who isn't in our tribe, that's obviously what God wants' kind of awry.  And if we study this book carefully then we see that ideas
Read more