New York

Around the time of the Olympics there I heard a suggestion that as the World HQ of Coca Cola Atlanta was the cultural capitol of the world.

Interesting.

However I would dispute this  vociferously.

Having lived in New York I would say that with her constant movement, green spiritual lungs and immense creativity that mantle belongs to Atlanta's sister, further North. The Beijing Olympics, majestic as they were, were contrived compared to London so I imagine that our beating heart will soon move to Mumbai, of which I have never had the pleasure.

Anyway I was working in New York when John Paul II left us.

Astonishingly I found myself in Assisi, when the world was in Rome, enjoying a small glass of wine with regulars at the railway cafe feeling quite eschatoligical for his funeral.

We watched a small black and white television as the Shiroc blew up sand from North Africa through the pages of the gospel, positioned on the Pole's humble Polish coffin.

In between times I sat on the Subway and perused The New York Times for profiles of the preferati. Absolutely content I looked up through the grimey Underground window as shadows flashed by. As if looking into a Hebridean hearth I imagined the head of one fiery Latin American  red hat who had apparently
brought three drug barons to thier knees in repentance. My thoughts ranged back to Europe and our comfortable seminaries.

Common sense dictates that the key to bringing up children is to keep them as close to reality as possible. I imagine that most of Northern Conclave have never been anything like as close to life in the raw as that.