As I sit here with a blank page before me, I feel like a pilot who is about to embark on the final flight of a beloved plane that will thereafter be retired, set aside as a museum piece, engine removed and wings clipped like a raven in the Tower of London. The words I put down now will be the last words for ‘Meanwhile’, after this there will be no more. This is the final article, the final flight if you will.

I began writing ‘Meanwhile’ ten years ago. The thought that my words could perhaps find their way to places far from my bedsit in Birkenhead where this all began was somehow liberating for me. Their freedom was my inspiration, and as the occasional email from a reader would find it’s way to my inbox, so I became more inspired…. [Click here to continue reading this article at 'Meanwhile']

I’m not one for New Year resolutions. I might be, but I’m a little forgetful. I forget to make them, then I forget what they were anyway. Perhaps the fact that I don’t make such resolutions could be taken in some way as proof of the fact that I am essentially a happy chap. Happy enough not to require a resolution to change my life in any significant way. Or maybe not having a list of resolutions shows instead that I am lazy. It’s difficult to tell.

Looking ahead at 2007 I find myself amazed that we’re here already. When I was a young boy reading books about the future complete with brightly colored illustrations, ‘the future’ was the year 2000. In the year 2000 the world was going to be an entirely different place filled with technologies far beyond that which surrounded me in my day-to-day life of the late 1970′s. It wasn’t going to be ‘Buck Rogers in the 25th century‘ or ‘Star Trek‘, but it might just be somewhere between that and ‘Space 1999‘ where humanity was already zipping around space interacting with funny ladies that could change into birds and other animals in a puff of cosmic magic. Back then from my animal wallpapered bedroom with my mono record player and AM-MW radio on which I could often hear the music of ABBA and Boney-M, the future as close as it might have been, was still a long way off…. [Click here to continue reading this article at 'Meanwhile']

Anyone who knows me probably knows that I’m not really a ‘churchy’ person. That’s not to say I don’t believe in God you understand, just that I’m a person who doesn’t feel entirely comfortable or engaged by the traditions and culture that surround church life.

No one could say I haven’t tried church life. When I was a kid my parents sent me and my siblings off to a Sunday morning Christian youth group called ‘Crusaders.’ Now when I look back on their motives I don’t think I want to join the dots. Neither of them profess to having a faith in any God, so I can only assume that the well-being of our eternal souls wasn’t the only reason we were shunted out of the house until lunchtimes on Sunday.

Since those early days I’ve attended many a church service. Thus far, I’ve been unceremoniously expelled from two Pentecostal churches and a dodgy church in London that turned out to be a cult. It’s been a rocky road where church and I are involved, leading me to conclude that on this spiritual journey I might need something akin to a dirt bike. I’m willing to concede that I may have just been unlucky in my quest to find something sacred within the confines of ‘God’s house’. But then as the saying goes, a house doesn’t make a home…. [Click here to continue reading this article at 'Meanwhile']

Sometimes I think that having children is the most selfish thing in the world to do. Other times I think it’s just an amazing show of faith and optimism for the future. Then I wonder if its ever really that thought out in the first place. I mean if we really sat down and thought about the future would we still feel that it would be responsible to bring another person into the world?

If being a parent means doing everything you can to protect your child and see that it lives in a safe and loving environment, then shouldn’t all parents be crazy environmentalists living the most eco-friendly ‘green’ lives they possibly can?…. [Click here to continue reading this article at 'Meanwhile']

As I drove back from London today along the notorious M6 motorway I couldn’t help but notice the number of mini-vans proudly displaying a ‘Baby on board’ sticker in the rear window. I led me to wonder if the parents felt that the sticker served any real safety purpose, or whether it’s just something one feel the need to do out of nothing more than simple parental pride? Maybe some of you parental units out there can shed some light on the mindset that makes a person stick such an uncool and seemingly pointless sticker in the rear window of their mini-van that needed no help being uncool in the first place.

Perhaps I’m looking at this all from the wrong angle. After all, I’m not a proud parent, in fact I’m not a parent of any description. I don’t even have a pet to look after and there’s a good reason for that. In years gone by I’ve boiled and frozen fish in an aquarium, run over two cats, got in something resembling a bar brawl with a dog named ‘Prince’… [Click here to continue reading this article at 'Meanwhile']

It seems to me that here in the West the general feeling toward Islam is one of suspicion. These days the popular new enemy of the state in many Hollywood movies seems to be an Islamic terrorist, and therein lies the problem: the word ‘Islam’ and ‘terrorist’ are so often seen together that to believe they are one and the same might almost be a forgivable mistake.

At the same time though, it might be fair to suggest that there are large areas of the Middle East that view Westerners with the same amount of suspicion. We might be referred to as ‘infidels’ despite the fact that the predominant religion in the West, Christianity, actually worships the very same God as that of Islam; the God of Abraham.

Maybe it’s just a cultural difference that’s been muddled up with religion and politics? When we look at their lives, their rules, and their traditions and it’s hard for us to put ourselves in their shoes… [Click here to continue reading this article at 'Meanwhile']