New Year Honours

Following my nomination for a Liebster award, I have been nominated for a Sunshine Award by the wonderful Jessica Hof, chatelaine of All Along the Watchtower.

Now, I have to do one or two things, so please excuse me for being boring:

Write 10 pieces of information about yourself.

Well, luckily these don't all have to be strictly true.

1. I now live in a dog kennel in Croydon with rather dodgy Wi-Fi.

2. My favourite Christmas Carol is probably "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing".

3. Yes, I really do like eating Eccles cakes with custard.

Yummmmm...

4. I do not speak Catalan, Samoan or Swahili. I prefer Masses in Latin.

5. I have just changed the name of my blog to "Eccles is saved" as a result of certain doubts about brother Bosco.

6. Unlike Nicholas Parsons, I was not awarded an OBE. But I do have a Sunshine Award.

An OBE won't save you if you're being followed by two unsaved persons.

7. Father Zuhlsdorf is thinking of renaming his blog "Reading Francis through Eccles".

8. My Auntie Moly hasn't quite got the idea of carol services: you are supposed to sing the same as everyone else sings. No wonder they chucked her out.

Probably not a Christmas carol.

9. Paul Inwood invited us round for Christmas. "Have you got a turkey for us?" we asked.
"No, but I can write another one in the next 10 minutes or so," he replied.

10. I do not play the trombone, but I wish I could.

Scientific research.

Nominate ten fellow bloggers "who positively and creatively inspire others in the blogosphere."

Well, I'll avoid the well-known blogs with millions of followers, and go for the following:

Meadowsweet. Poems and paintings.

Ragazzagallese. The great Rhoslyn Thomas.

Linen on the hedgerow.. Catholicism and wit.

Mulier Fortis. Cats and Catholics.

Countercultural Father. Ben Trovato.

Men are like Wine. Traditional Catholic.

Battlements of Rubies. Catholic Midwife.

De Omnibus Dubitandum Est. Erudite.

The Catachesis of Caroline. By a star of TV and the press.

Catholic Lisa. Weird and wonderful. And the blog is too.

Brother Lapin's Pilgrimage. Catholic donkeys.

Yes, that's eleven, but I was one short last time I had to do this sort of thing.

Leave a comment on the nominees' blogs to tell them of the award.

Will do, if I can ever read those captchas. Or I'll contact them some other way, e.g. Twitter.

A particularly difficult captcha to solve.

Et in terra pax

This has been a very good Christmas season for me, as lots of people with whom I disagreed violently have contacted me to admit that I was right all along. To avoid embarrassment, or people checking my claims, I cannot name any names, but here are some heart-warming messages I have received.

Professor D, who wishes to remain anonymous.

A retired professor at a well-known Oxbridge University (which isn't Cambridge) has e-mailed me to say that after reading my blog he has come to the conclusion that I was right all along, and that atheism is bunk. It is embarrassing for him to come out in public and say this, as he runs a "Foundation for Reason and Science" of which the main purpose is (i) to say how wonderful he is, and (ii) to promote atheism. Still, he is hoping to change the name of his foundation when nobody is looking.

Spot the difference!

I then received a Christmas card from another professor, living somewhere near Roehampton, who also feels that it is egg-on-face time. "How could I have been so wrong when I wrote my book God's Mother, Eve's Advocate?" she asks. "Did I not realise that it was in direct contradiction to all mainstream Christian teaching since the first century?"

It's never too late to make amends.

Another distinguished person who contacted me over Christmas was someone who - to spare his blushes - we shall refer to simply as Paul Mirkwood. "You have opened my eyes to the possible richness of liturgy and music," he told me. "Apparently, there's more to worship than singing 'Alleluia-Moo-Moo'." I have put him in contact with the composer James MacMillan, who thinks that it may not be too late to retrain Paul as a musician.

Were sinister plots hatched in this shed?

Of course 2013 was a year in which I was stalked, harassed, calumniated, and generally insulted on Twitter. How I wish I could share with you the fulsome apology I received from a deacon who was to blame for much of this. At 4 a.m. he stood in the street outside my house, yelling, "Eccles, for months I accused you of running dozens of sockpuppets, including Damian Thompson, a lady journalist in Hove, a donkey-breeding teacher in Spain, a midwife, Spock of the Enterprise, Fr Ray Blake, and Fr John Zuhlsdorf. I now realise that I may have exaggerated slightly. Will you ever forgive me?"

"In Cappella Calvariæ nulla salus."

Of course I forgave the deacon, and no sooner had I done this than my dear brother, the first person ever mentioned on this blog - whose name I will anagrammatise to "Scoob" so that nobody can identify him - grabbed me by the hand and said, "Eccles, I have been considering the words of St Cyprian of Carthage, In Cappella Calvariæ nulla salus ('No Salvation in the Calvary Chapel'), and I now realise that I am not as saved as I thought I was."

"Scoob" is baptised, as a first step to Salvation.

More e-mails flooded into my inbox. A Telegraph journalist (the only clue I shall give this time is the word "custard") apologised for blocking me on Twitter - he said that reading my blog made him realise that his own efforts could never be as spiritually nourishing. Phantom Domains (anag.) you are forgiven.

Last, and definitely not least, and this one may even be true: I have been nominated for another award by the great Jessica Hof. I must blog on this separately.