How did John Waters come back from the Electric Picnic with such a bleak view of the spiritual life of the younger generation (as I am told I should start calling them)? Didn’t I travel with him on the writers’ bus to the site? Didn’t I explain the matter to him en route? That’s the trouble with John. Never listens. Except to the 100th Monkey of Koshima. No, really.

Stuff like that apart, he’s a sensitive, insightful fellow with an original if sometimes bent-out-of-shape turn of mind, and a dote.
The writers’ bus carried a distinguished selection of prominent scribes... Dermot Bolger, Paul Muldoon, Rita Ann Higgins, Gene Kerrigan, Declan Hughes, Olaf Tyaransen, Waters... I chanced to remark as we set off back to the hotel (camping days long gone) that if the vehicle were to plunge off the road into a ravine the effect on contemporary Irish literature would be absolutely marginal. Nobody laughed. Dour lot, these serious writers.

The Express says Tony Blair is a Bob Dylan fan. First I’ve heard of it. He has previously lied about being into The Clash. But I’ve never heard mention of Dylan. Now that the subject’s been raised though...

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
(‘Masters Of War’)

Across the water for a couple of days, I was blown away by the storm of apathy generated by the contest for leadership of the British Labour Party.
Will it be Ant or will it be Dec? The heated debate is not heard in every pub I called into. But “a string of stars” has thrillingly intervened to pledge support for a Miliband. Or maybe it’s Balls.
What do these people stand for, apart from like yo-yos when they hear ‘God Save The Queen’? One of them apparently believes in everything Tony Blair believed in, while another remains a faithful follower of Gordon Brown. But what did they stand for?
A clue may be found in the identities of the “string of stars” (The Sun) who have rallied to Dec if it isn’t Ant Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall, TV hardman Ross Kemp, Star Trek actor Patrick Stewart, Spandau Ballet guitarist Gary Kemp and Vera Duckworth as was, from Coronation Street.
Meanwhile, beautiful, brilliant artist Tracey Emin, inspired, zeitgeist-setting fashion designer Vivien Westwood and supreme music genius Brian Eno were among a galaxy which threatened a picket and put a stop to plans for war-monger Blair to pollute the Tate Modern with a bash to launch his deceitful book. Compare and contrast.

You will all have had your eyes laser-focused on Benedict XVI as he made gaudy progress through Britland, insulting women, denouncing gays and canonising the slightly mad John Henry Newman. You will likely have noticed the bear with a pack-saddle on its back in the top right-hand corner of his coat of arms and wondered what the frig that’s about.
Unlike the pope, I can enlighten you.
The bear with a pack saddle on its back (of the Ursus arctops sub-species, if I am not mistaken) features in the remarkable tale of St. Corbinian (680-730), the first Bishop of Freising.
Benedict studied philosophy and theology at Freising – now in Bavaria – and the city is close to his heart. It was one of the first places he visited after his election, when he was made a freeman of the city.
One day in 724, Corbinian was riding through a forest en route from Freising to Rome when a raging bear bustled out from the undergrowth and ripped his horse to pieces. Corbinian didn’t panic but, something of a bear whisperer as it turned out, spoke gently to the beast and persuaded it to allow him to strap the horse’s saddle onto its back and carry his baggage the rest of the way to the Eternal City.
Interestingly enough, Corbinian didn’t bring the bear into the city with him but set it free on the outskirts. Nobody would have known anything about this miraculous story if Corbinian hadn’t taken to reciting the details to anybody who’d listen.
I referred to Corbinian in the Derry Journal a couple of weeks back, prompting a kindly woman to way-lay me on Creggan Street with a promise to pray for my soul to the self-same saint.
“I have a great devotion to Corbinian,” she claimed.
I was going to ask her what Corbinian had ever done for Ireland, but missed my moment.
Newman was a more interesting man than most of the accounts of the past week have suggested. The key quote – at least so it seems to me – came in his Apologia: “The Catholic Church holds it better for the Sun and Moon to drop from Heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony... than that one soul, I will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin.”
Aggravating the AIDS crisis in Africa by false propaganda against condoms OK. But wanking will send you to hell. Is that sort of sentiment not the most likely reason Benedict thought him a role-model for the times that we live in?