Today I received an order from my favourite Christian bookshop. I won't mention the company name as it wouldn't be fair given the nature of this post. On the whole I really respect the company in question - their profits go to charity and one of our best friends is a senior manager there.

Anyway, I received the order (next year's lectionary and a new Bible for preaching from) today, along with their Christmas catalogue. I have to say that I am just astounded at the sheer quantity of Christian tat that can be purchased these days. An example: a stone key chain in the shape of a fish! Not only that but there are pages and pages of what I'm calling McTheology (Ref).

As if that wasn't all bad enough, I spotted the following in the music section of the catalogue: "Ideal for fan's of good worship music!" (sic). Nnnnnnng!

Friday night, we went and saw Bill Bailey live in Birmingham as part of his Tinselworm tour. We were, apparently, the largest audience he'd ever performed to and I'm not surprised. The gig was at the National Indoor Arena which, even with one block of seats unsold (presumably because of line of sight issues - it was right behind the sound/vision desk), is enormous.

We went with most of the infamous Naughty Table from college - mad props to Liz in particular for organising the whole thing.

Apologies to anyone who'd emailed me recently to ask for something to be done on Planet SUSE - I've got a huge backlog on my inbox at the moment but just did a blitz on updates for that site.