Christ Church Huntingdon Blog

 Click here for audio. Head teacher Jeanette Hart at Osmaston CofE Primary school in Derbyshire got a bit of a surprise last month when a boy brought a hand grenade into school [1] . It was a show and tell assembly, and since the class had been talking about VE day, this particular lad thought that he’d grab the family heirloom, a world war two hand grenade, and bring it into school. Mrs Hart told the BBC, “It was quite an eventful assembly. It was going fine and there was a boy who brought an old bullet case in, which I knew about, but then his friend produced a hand grenade from his pocket… That I was not expecting”. What followed next was that the head ended the assembly, moved all the children to safety, rather nervously deposited the grenade at the far end of the school and then called in the police and Army explosive experts. Well fortunately the grenade wasn’t live, and everyone was able to get back on with their day, but it ended up not your average day for Osmaston Primary...

For audio click here .  A few days ago I heard Mike Amesbury being interviewed on the radio [1] . In case you don’t recognise the name, he was the MP for Runcorn and Helsby who in October last year got drunk and punched a member of his constituency to the ground, repeatedly beating him and saying “You won’t threaten the MP ever again will you?” Well the incident was investigated. Amesbury lost his place in the Labour party, he appeared in court, was charged and spent some time in prison. He was ordered to carry out 200 hours of community work, and recently stood down as an MP triggering a by-election. What do you make of him? I actually feel sorry for Mike Amesbury. Let’s be clear, what he did was utterly out of order and it’s right that he has stepped down. He owned his mistake, pled guilty and describes the events of 26 th of October as a series of mistakes. The whole process has led to significant mental health challenges for him, and currently he is struggling to find a job. M...

 Click  here  for audio.  I wonder what you think about AI? Artificial Intelligence. I enjoyed the Christmas Wallace and Gromit with Norbot the robot who helped a jailed penguin steal a blue diamond (although that sounds like a local garden centre!), that was pretty harmless fun, but real AI- well people say it's either the key to the future, or a bit too scary. There’s a novelist and screenwriter called Ewan Morrison and he’s just written a book called “ For Emma ”. I haven’t read it, but I heard him talking about it on the radio . In the story, Emma is a Harvard Graduate that offers her brain to be implanted with an AI computer chip that is going to herald the next advance in pushing back the frontiers of artificial intelligence. Tragically she dies as a result of having this chip implanted, and her father is devastated. The writer Ewan Morrison said that he was trying to tap into the longing people have for something big to believe in, and I quote.. “we live i...

 Click here for audio I was amused to hear the true story last October of a passerby who spotted a bunch of suspicious youths on the roof of a church in Norwich. You may know that a lot of lead has been stolen from church roofs, even in our local area, and so the passerby decided to contact Norfolk police to seek to get the bunch of nogooders up on the roof arrested. However, it was a case of mistaken identity. The people on the roof weren’t dodgy teenagers, but the Bishop of Norwich, Graham Usher, who was there on church business with the vicar of the church inspecting the new solar panels that the church had installed, to seek to bring their carbon footprint to net zero. Bishop Graham tweeted that he was rather flattered to be mistaken for a youth, and was able to share the good news story of a church seeking to reduce their carbon footprint, like some of our local churches have done. It made me think a bit about Easter. Jesus himself had many cases of mistaken identity. ...

 Audio here and video footage here .  Well I saw an astonishing video on my news feed today, with the headline “Watch moment man is swallowed by humpback whale”. You can see it for yourself on the BBC website [1] . It’s quite astonishing. Adrián Simancas was out kayaking with his father, Dall, on the Patagonian coast off Chile, when he felt like something was lifting him, something too strong to be a wave. Next he felt something blue and white passing close to his face. He didn’t understand what was happening as he got submerged down into the water as a slimy texture brushed his face. Fortunately for Adrian, it was a Humpback whale which actually has a very narrow throat, so the whale which may just have been motivated by curiosity spat out the kayak and its kayaker within a couple of seconds. All of this was recorded by Adrian’s father Dall, and Adrian lived to tell the tale. Adrian says he felt he received a second chance in life when he was spat out, and said that the...

 Click here to listen to audio. Welcome to Thought for the Day. For you listeners, today is Friday 31 st Jan, but if you can think back exactly a week to last Friday, that’s now for me. I’m recording this little thought for the day as right now Storm Eowyn batters the British Isles on Friday morning 24 th January.   And as I look out of the window, it’s blowing a hooley. I had to ring my neighbour to tell him his garden furniture was ripped, and the headlines on the BBC read “Danger to life warnings as ‘once in a generation’ Storm Eowyn batters UK and Ireland”, and a gust of 114mph has just been recorded in Ireland. Nobody can stop the wind. Railways have been closed, planes have been rerouted, solid walls have been blown down, less solid structures and some roof tiles don’t have a chance. We’re so used to thinking that we can control events, our weekend plans, our TV choices, our home décor, but the wind reminds us how limited we are, and how sometimes we need to hunker...

 Click here for recording... Welcome to Thought for the Day. Well tomorrow will be the last day of 2024. I wonder how it went for you? Maybe you had a memorable family gathering to look back on, or a great holiday, or moved home like we did. Maybe you had a change in your job or your relationships, or a new family member arrived. Certainly, internationally, it’s been quite a year… Our July elections in the UK that saw a massive Labour landslide, and a new MP for Huntingdon. And as well as the re-election of Donald Trump (who himself narrowly escaped an assassination in July), there have been elections in Iran, Mexico, Bangladesh to name a few. There has been the resignation of the Archbishop of   Canterbury. There have been hurricanes and storms, There have been earthquakes in Japan, Taiwan and Vanuatu. There’s been the ongoing military conflicts in Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, Myanmar. And of course the toppling of the Assad regime in Syria, as well as martial law in Sout...