Category Archives: Arts

Arts, Drama

Lateral Thinking Drama: The Office

‘The Office’ – using your detective sleuth skills and abilities of language and comprehension, who is the murderer?

SETTING & SCENARIO

“I can’t believe poor Tommy is dead. I just had coffee with him not two hours ago.” Dr Adamson certainly seemed distressed. “He and I co-own this building, along with Michael Taylor on the second floor.”

Chief Inspector Bryant nodded. “So I understand. I believe Mr Talbot was a private investigator?”

“Yes. My practice is on the first floor, Michael has a law office on the second, and Tommy’s office is up top. We shared the mortgage payments equally between us. He never seemed to have any trouble keeping up his share.”

“Did anyone?” asked Bryant.

“Well, Michael has been having a rather tricky time recently, and I know he’d like us to sell this building so he could move somewhere cheaper. Tommy and I had offered to let him reduce his share a little for a few months, though, until things picked up. I don’t know what will happen now. How did he die, may I ask?”

“Our investigations are ongoing,” Bryant said.

The victim’s receptionist, Annabel Mortimore, knew exactly what had happened. “It was poison,” she told Bryant tearfully. “He and Dr Adamson had just finished their morning coffees. Tommy went into his room, and made a call. He got as far as “Good morning”, when he gasped and started wheezing horribly. He started to stagger towards my room. He looked terrible. Then he fell to his hands and knees, crawled a few paces, and . . . and . . . he died.” She burst out weeping again.

Chief Inspector Bryant offered her a handkerchief and gave her a few moments. Once she had recovered a little, he smiled at her encouragingly. “What happened then?”

“I screamed,” Annabel said. “Then I ran downstairs to find Dr Adamson. He had got out, but Helena, his assistant, called the police, and looked after me until you came. It . . . it must have been Dr Adamson! They’d just had coffee. But why would he kill Tommy? He seems so nice.” She broke down again.

“Perhaps,” said Bryant gently. “Where was Mr Taylor in all this?”

“Oh,” she sniffled, “Mr Taylor was here early, and I could hear that he was disagreeing with Tommy about something. But then he left to go to meetings across town, so he’s been gone for hours. No one else has come by today.”

“Thank you, Miss Mortimore. You’ve been a great help.” Bryant left the receptionist and went into the detective’s office. The room was dominated by an untidy desk bearing an empty coffee mug, various papers, several file folders, a jug of water with a couple of glasses, a telephone on its stand, an inkwell and pens, and some sheets of blotting paper. Behind it was a comfortable chair and in front stood a pair of more formal chairs for visitors. Filing cabinets lined one wall, and bookshelves the other. The building’s mortgage agreement was prominent amid the clutter on the desk.

Taking great care, the chief inspector cautiously sniffed the mug, noticing a faint, bitter hint of almond. Definitely poison, then.

He returned to the reception area and sat down next to Annabel again. “I now know enough to bring the murderer to justice,” he told her.

Who is it, and how does Chief Inspector Bryant know?

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Arts, Christianity, Culture

The Old Testament Book of Ezekiel, Chapter 10

GOD WALKS OUT ON A LOVER

– A narrative on Ezekiel 10

THE DIVINE PROMISE “I will be with you always” (Matthew 28:20) recurs in various forms throughout Scripture. But just occasionally, it is revoked. God is patient. God is love. Sometimes, however, his people become so insufferable that like an exasperated lover he walks out.

In Ezekiel’s vision he leaves his “house”, the temple in Jerusalem, before it is destroyed. The symbolism is powerful. It says to the Judeans that God is leaving them to their own devices. His holiness cannot co-exist with their sinfulness.

It wasn’t the first time he had walked out like that. When the ark of the covenant was captured by the Philistines in Samuel’s day, it was said that the glory of the Lord had departed (1 Samuel 4:21,22).

It won’t be the last time, either. Churches, like ancient castles, can become empty shells from which the Spirit of life has departed. Those that survive the invasion of property developers may echo with liturgy but do not vibrate with life. There were some like that even in New Testament times (Revelation 3:1,2).

And people once zealous for God became shipwrecked on the reefs of materialism; no longer able to catch the wind of the Spirit they drift on the tide (1 Timothy 1:19; 2 Timothy 4:10) while God sails on without them. He will stay as long as you want him to, but he never outstays his welcome.

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Arts, Books, History, Literature, Poetry

Book Club: Butler To The World

SYNOPSIS

SCATHINGLY, Oliver Bullough compares the UK to Wodehouse’s inscrutable butler, Jeeves.

Just as Jeeves tirelessly helped the “quarter-witted Bertie Wooster evade the consequences of [his] misbehaviour, Britain helps the world’s financial criminals and tax dodgers . . . enjoy the fruits of their crimes free of scrutiny”.

In January 2022, Lord Agnew of Oulton, the minister in charge of combating fraud, resigned, citing “arrogance, indolence and ignorance” within government.

Just a few weeks later, Russia’s invasion meant that political promises to deal with oligarchs were hastily remembered.

Yet, underfunded and demoralised law enforcement agencies face an unequal battle. Bullough’s highly readable account of the UK’s role in facilitating global financial wrongdoing is a call to action.

– Butler To The World by Oliver Bullough is published by Profile, 304pp

Isabella Whitney,

the pioneering poet

Isabella Whitney is not a name that is well known, yet she many have been the UK’s first female professional poet. She published two books of poetry (in 1567 and 1573) and, from the way she described herself, it seems that she was single, poor and suffering from ill health. Some of this may have represented an attempt to inspire sympathy in her readers. However, judging by her writing, it appears that she knew what it was to be living on the margins, plagued by anxiety and insecurity.

Whitney wrote of London’s beauties and riches, but also of its “stynking streetes”, its “lothsome Lanes” and its many prisons, including those that incarcerated debtors. Her depiction of the capital showed a city humming with mercantile activity and crammed with expensive goods for sale. Yet her verses also sketched out the damage that the pursuit of wealth had done to society as a whole.

As a poet and writer, she took inspiration from her male counterparts – but she wrote as a woman, painfully aware of the difficulties that women in London might encounter. She warned readers against flattery and deceit, and against those who shed “crocodile tears”; in particular, she advised young women never to trust a man at first sight. On this subject she made it clear that she was writing from her own personal experience of duplicity, describing herself as one “who was deceived”.

Whitney may not have been a poet to rank among the greatest names of the Elizabethan age but her voice was distinctive, eloquent, ironic and powerfully evocative of a woman’s experience.

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