OVERHEARD IN HARRIS & HOOLE...

(An occasional feature)

Harris & Hoole ... Friday 17th March 2023

No Mass this morning in our parish - Mass is at 6.00pm for St Patrick's Day - so my good self, Mary Winterbourne and Tony of the Big Saloon meet early at Harris & Hoole in the High Street for coffee and croissants. Cafe quiet this morning. 

Mary has had her silvered hair restyled and looks very elegant. Smatterings of green being worn in the High Street this morning in honour of St Patrick's Day. As it happens none of us can claim Irish ancestry. Mary - well her ancestors must have lived somewhere, probably in the west country, beside a bourne that flowed only in winter. Tony: Italian all down the line. Myself; well some possibility. Plus my late father loved Ireland. He was stationed during WWII at an RAF base on Lough Erne in County Fermanagh and developed a passionate love for all things Irish. He always said that the saddest day of his life was Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972.

The chat turns to the recent contretemps on my blog over Bishop Nicholas Chamberlain. I say that I am grateful to Detterling for taking the heat out of the situation by stating that there would not be a libel action. I don't take the threat of legal action lightly. Recently it has become clear that no one can hide behind anonymity on the internet in respect legal action - and quite rightly so. Having said that I had no fear about losing a libel action in this matter. But who wants the hassle and publicity of a court case? I say that I had no fear of losing the case as in a libel action if your grounds are 'insinuation' you'd better forget it. Any barrister would in five minutes drive a coach and horses through such a claim.

And I went on to say how impressed I was with Bishop Nicholas Chamberlain and felt that if the C of E had more clergy of the calibre of Bishop Nicholas it would not be in the state it's in.

Mary, who is a convert to Catholism from the C of E, looks quite angry and says:

"Gene you are being very magnanimous  with regard to Detterling. To be frank I have no time for the man or his pinko-liberal, Gay Lobby ilk. They do not have the Christian faith at heart and seem only interested in C of E members having the right to sodomise one another. On the real issues you will not hear them speak. For example, for all his liberalism, have you ever heard Detterling call for the disestablishment of the C of E? Never. And that's because the pinko-liberals deep down want to bootlick to the establishment."

At this point Tony of the Big saloon said he would treat us all to an extra croissant and went up to the counter to order.

GENE