“There are no supernatural answers to natural problems” – Edward Bond,

Pope Benedict XVI has made history as the first pontiff to take part in a televised question-and-answer session. The pre-recorded programme was broadcast on the Italian Rai channel on Good Friday afternoon. Seven questions were chosen from thousands submitted for the Pope to answer during the 80-minute programme. Most of the questions, from people across the world, dealt with struggle and suffering. TV viewers saw a split screen, with the Pope sitting in the Vatican library and those asking the questions filmed near their homes. The first question was asked by a seven-year-old Japanese girl traumatized by the recent devastating earthquake and tsunami. She asked why she and other children should have to feel afraid. The Pope replied that he had also asked himself the same question and his answer was ‘we know that Jesus suffered as you do.’ That is – no reason given, no answer.

Another question came from the Italian mother of a boy in a long-term coma. She asked if he still had a soul, to which the Pope replied that, yes, his soul is still present in his body. "The situation, perhaps, is like that of a guitar whose strings have been broken and therefore can no longer play," he said. "The instrument of the body is fragile like that, it is vulnerable, and the soul cannot play, so to speak, but remains present." Well, we cannot prove this one way or another, the existence of the soul never has been proved, so I hope the Pope’s metaphor was enough to satisfy a grieving mother.

To a Muslim woman in the Ivory Coast who asked his advice about how to cope with the conflict that has afflicted her country, he said people should look to Christ as an example of peace. –again an answer so anodyne as to be totally useless. The questioner is Muslim as is a great proportion of the population of West Africa to some of whom Christianity is anathema.

He told Christian students in Iraq - when asked how to encourage fellow Christians not to flee the country - that the Church was encouraging dialogue between religions. Another virtually meaningless response.

The BBC's Duncan Kennedy, watching the programme, said it would be viewed by critics as very controlled and a little sanitised. That’s putting it mildly.

There was no opportunity to ask tough questions of the Church, such as about the priestly sex scandals that overshadowed the Church's Easter celebrations last year. But the Vatican will have viewed it as a first step in their overall effort to be more accountable and transparent, arising from accusations that the Church was failing to be open about the abuse scandal.

But, as far as answers are concerned, as Mister Bond said, there quite simply are no supernatural answers.

Well, yesterday went down like a damp squib, a lead balloon. There were no celebrations due to ill-health and almost a visit to the hospital. The festivities will have to come later. So many birthday wishes I will never get around to answering them all so my thanks to those reading this who thought of me.

There is a song in the musical “Sweet Charity - I love to cry at weddings.” I know I said I wasn’t going to mention it again but I would think there will be millions blubbing into their handkerchiefs tomorrow. Britain’s stiff upper lip is evidently a myth. Take for example the national outpouring of grief at the death of Princess Diana. That is often said to be the moment the UK lost its stiff upper lip and the British started being comfortable crying in public especially for mass outpourings of national grief?

Has Britain recently become a nation of cry-babies, despite its long-held reputation for keeping emotions firmly under control? For politicians, public figures, anyone being given an award and not forgetting to thank their mothers for begetting them, and just about everyone on a TV talent show, and the tears flow thick and fast.

Often this shift towards public crying is linked with the death of Princess Diana in 1997. This collective moment of mourning is seen as releasing a nation from the restraints of being reserved and stoical. But the British actually have a long history of very public grieving and their reputation for being emotionally reserved is only a relatively recent thing, says historian Dr Thomas Dixon, who is researching a history of crying.

"We've been a pretty weepy country through the centuries until the 20th Century," says Dr Dixon, “when there was a lot of stoicism and reserve. But if we go back before the 20th Century, we have other peaks of sentiments, emotion and weeping in the late 18th and up to the mid-19th Century. There's been more crying than you might think.

Even in the 19th Century there were large outpourings of national grief in response to the death of famous figures, the death of Lord Nelson in 1805 for instance. "There was a huge state funeral and there were many pieces of journalism reporting the event in the national press and many of them talk about 'tears gushing from every eye' and the 'nation's tears', 'Britannia's tears' at the falling of her hero and poems about Nelson and so on," says Dr Dixon.

“The UK is currently in a middle of a new wave of weeping in public life,” he says. It started in the 1990s, with incidents like Margaret Thatcher leaving Downing Street with tears in her eyes in 1990. In the same year the footballer, Gazza bawled his eyes out at the World Cup. Then there was mass crying when Princess Diana died.

So where did Britain's reputation for the stiff upper lip come from? "That came from World War II," says Dr Dixon. "The 20th Century is where the tears started to dry up. A time of war is no time for weeping, whether you're on the home front or fighting the war against Hitler.

"It's at that point that however much private grief one might have, this ethos emerges that British people don't cry because they are strong and determined and resilient and stoical."

Social historian Dr Julie-Marie Strange says that until the mid-19th Century, it was considered fine for men and women to cry in public.

"It's particularly surprising for us when you get Victorian men crying in public. It was deemed fine to cry at bereavement, at a particular situation, for example because of the death of a child. Lots of people admitted crying at the death of Little Nell in the Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens."

Byron and Shelley were men who made careers and reputations from being very emotional, and when Byron died in 1824, nearly 20 years after Nelson, lots of young men wore black armbands and wept openly,” she says. But by the end of the century, the tone had changed so much that such behaviour was characterised as weak and intellectually stunted.

From the 1880s onwards, it became less acceptable for men particularly to cry in public, she says, partly due to the emergence of what has been called "muscular Christianity", which emphasised a vigorous masculinity in the face of anxieties about the decline of the Empire and the degeneration of Britain as a nation.

This change was best symbolised by writer Oscar Wilde, who sneered at the grief displayed by fans of Charles Dickens over Little Nell.

"One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing," he famously remarked.

What Wilde would make of today's blubbing, one can only imagine.

Tomorrow, April 27 is my 80^th birthday. I look on every day as a bonus. I doubt anyone will ever name a rose after me.

Kate has had a rose named after her, the Catherine of course, pink and scented. William already has one. His is red. It is estimated that over two billion people will be watching the wedding. Two billion! Has there ever been an audience that size? She has also been granted a coat of arms. It’s rather soppy looking as though designed by some art school student and I’m not sure if the College of Arms didn’t devise it with tongue in cheek though, heavens to Betsy, let’s not even think that!

Thomas Woodcock, Garter Principal King of Arms, explains the Middleton coat of arms Kate’s father Michael commissioned and which will feature on a souvenir royal wedding programme. It features three acorn sprigs, one for each of the Middleton’s children: an idea Miss Middleton suggested. Royal experts say the coat of arms - which cost £4,400 to make - marks the increased social status of her parents and her potential as a future queen. Thomas Woodcock helped the Middletons with the design. He said the oak tree was a traditional symbol of England and a feature of west Berkshire, where the family have lived for 30 years. The gold chevron in the centre of the coat of arms signified Miss Middleton's mother, Carole, whose maiden name was Goldsmith and the coat of arms includes a tied ribbon, showing she is an unmarried woman. Katherine that is, not Carole.

Woodcock said Miss Middleton could have been granted her own heraldic design but her father wanted the whole family to be able to use it. A version of the coat of arms, which can only be used by Kate or her sister Pippa as it denotes a Middleton spinster, will be printed on the back of the souvenir programme. Prince William's will be on the front. Overall, it is designed like an elaborate lozenge rather than a shield, a shape reserved for men. She will be able to use the coat of arms up until her wedding day, after which it will be combined with that of Prince William. A hundred and fifty thousand copies of the official souvenir programme booklet will go on sale on the day of the wedding. The booklet will be handed out along the processional route by a team of military cadets and Explorer Scouts. The cost will be £2, with proceeds to go to the Foundation of Prince William and Prince Harry. But it will also be available to download for free the day before the wedding from the official Royal Wedding website.

Now were it up to me to design the coat of arms I would keep the inverted V ( just to keep Carole happy) but instead of the acorns I would have three Davy lamps, or maybe two pickaxes and a Davy lamp, Or maybe a Davy lamp, a pickaxe, and a quill pen for those ancestors who escaped from coal mining and labouring to become solicitors, bank managers and business types. Which brings me to a couple of questions before signing off and not mentioning this subject ever again. Kate Middleton could not be more common. I don’t say this in a derogatory sense, it just happens to be a fact. Does the marriage mean that once she is a member of the Windsor family her blood automatically becomes blue? And what title or titles will she hold? Eventually if ever she becomes queen, it will be Her Maj of course but until then? Her Highness? Her Royal Highness? This was a title denied to Wallis Simpson for the simple reason that she wasn’t royal, not a drop of blue blood in her veins, but will it be allowed in the case of common or garden Kate no matter how sweetly scented her rose?

I might be wrong but I have a feeling the monarchy will never be the same again.

Directors of Greek soaps, well one soap in particular though it possibly applies to others, have made some quite remarkable discoveries. Firstly they have come to the conclusion that as the camera used in the making of film and television programmes is called a movie camera that means it should move, and boy, does it move! It never seems to stop moving until there is the real danger of motion sickness setting in in the eyes of the viewer. The director also likes to have some dressing in the foreground that stands between the camera and the subject, a large glass vase on a table top for example, with or without flowers, which means the camera has to move either slightly left or right, probably one direction after the other and then in reverse, to keep the subject in shot. The subject meanwhile will be talking on his/her mobile phone, American cell, Greek kineto, because this is the other great discovery, and not a scene goes by when actors haven’t got their hands glued to the sides of their heads as they chat away on this wretched instrument. But miracle of miracles as Tevye or Tzeitel might have said they have also discovered the split screen so there is no need to cut from one character to the other during a phone call, you can watch them both simultaneously. But there is more; not only can the screen be split, it can be split again, making four separate pictures and, bless me, even five. Gosh!

Okay, so okay, having sent that up as far as it is likely to go, let me move on to talk about something really worthwhile. I refer (forgive me if I have written about this before) to the adaptation of Victoria Hislop’s book, “The Island.” Thank God it’s a period piece and there’s never a mobile phone in sight, but more than that, it is beautifully directed and photographed in the exact location, is so wonderfully atmospheric but above all is superbly acted by everyone involved from the leads to the smallest bit parts. By that I mean you simply forget it is being acted at all, unlike I am afraid the soaps where everyone tends to go a wee bit over the top and you can see the wheels turning. The cast is headed by a well-known Greek actor, Stelios Mainas who portrays beautifully and most sympathetically a fisherman whose boat is used to ferry lepers from the village on the mainland to the island of Spinalonga where there was a colony for many years and who early on in the story loses his wife to the dreaded disease. Now Maria, the elder of his two daughters on the eve of her wedding, the village having already celebrated the betrothal, discovers a patch on her leg and a medical examination confirms that she now has leprosy. I don’t have all that long to go I suppose in this vale of woe but, as long as I do live, I don’t think I will ever be privileged, and that is not too strong a word, to see another performance like the one this actress, Gioulika Skafida gives, from the moment of discovering the blemish to her father taking her across to the island. In this particular episode I sat in the saloni weeping uncontrollably. And even thinking of it as I write the tears well up. Oh, come on, Glyn! What’s the matter with you? This is fiction, you silly man. This is television. I don’t recollect ever in my life being moved to this degree by fiction or by anything watched on television. When Miss Skafida is on the screen you cannot take your eyes off her and as though her wonderful performance isn’t enough she is incredibly beautiful and has quite stolen my heart.

Let’s talk for a while about death. I guess most good folk hate to talk abut it but you have to admit it’s an intriguing subject as it lies there in wait for all of us and there is no getting away from it. Peter Pan thought it must be “a very great adventure.” The world’s reputedly oldest man has just died in America aged 114. What he said was very simple - “We are born to die.” For those of a religious bent death is the gateway to a life everlasting. To someone like me who does not believe in any form of afterlife it merely means an endless dreamless sleep, oblivion in fact. So what was it brought this subject to mind? Shock horror headlines in the newspaper – “Outcry over BBC2 Terry Pratchett euthanasia documentary – BBC films man taking his life. Screening the moment of a suicide victim’s (?) death - considering it was a voluntary act he could hardly be termed a victim but that’s journalise for you – is a first for terrestrial television.” Wrong. I remember seeing this on television some years ago, not taking place in Switzerland at the Dignitas clinic but in Amsterdam, the lethal injection being administered by a doctor in the subject’s home. The man was suffering from motor neurone disease, as was the current subject, and his end, with his wife by his side, was dignified and oh so peaceful. He just slipped silently away which reminds me of the Catholic prayer, God grant me a peaceful death.” The article continues to say the programme is condemned by campaigners, politicians, professionals and religious leaders. They accused the corporation of being unethical, of promoting assisted death and euthanasia and disregarding … here comes the big crunch… “the sanctity of life.” I don’t know who the campaigners and the professionals in this instance are, (professional what? Accountants maybe? Dentists? Veterinary surgeons?) But it stands to reason that the religious would be appalled by this, what can one call it? Act of sacrilege? So what is it exactly, this sanctity of life they continually blether about? Where to start? Let’s start with the Roman Catholic Church. Contraception is a sin because it denies the start of a new life. So let’s presume pregnancy takes place. Apart from the miscarriages and millions of abortions, it is estimated that there are 7000 still births worldwide every day. That’s 2.6million a year. Not much sanctity of life there. Until the advancement of modern medicine that all but eradicated childhood illness, infant mortality was universal and a child in Victorian times for example was lucky to get beyond its first year. Not much sanctity there either. There are still any number of children in various parts of the world dying from malnutrition and diseases that haven’t been controlled, or being caught up in the riots, tribal and civil wars and massacres that seem to be forever erupting in various parts of Africa. Not much sanctity of life there either. In the Middle East, the Far East, South America, there are terrorists prepared to die by suicide or to take as many innocent people with them as they can. Northern Ireland seems to have quietened down a little as has Spain but the danger of violence erupting is always there. Similarly the ongoing hatred of Sunnis for Shias and vice versa does not say much for the sanctity of life but what is new there? Religious wars and horrifying persecution in the name of God have been going on for centuries and the world is riddled with gangsters to whom the term would be absolutely meaningless. Let us not forget worldwide wars, Auschwitz, the Gulags, Pol Pot, and more recently euphemistically called ethnic cleansing. It would seem half the history of the world is a horror story with mankind’s total disregard for the so-called sanctity of life not only of his own but of too many other species.
But what has God to say about it?
At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead." (Exodus 12:29) The Lord said to Moses, "Take vengeance on the Midianites... After that, you will be gathered to your people. So twelve thousand men armed for battle, a thousand from each tribe, were supplied from the clans of Israel. They fought against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed every man. They burned all the towns where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps. They took all the plunder and spoils, including the people and animals. Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp and Moses was angry with the officers of the army--the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds--who returned from the battle."Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them. “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."
(Numbers 31)
On God’s instructions wanton wholesale, barbaric slaughter and cold blooded murder of helpless captives - the boys and non virgin women massacred.
Ezekiel 9: 4-6 And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem....let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women...."
And there is more of the same and more and more. So much for the sanctity of life.

Can you believe this? They aren’t even married yet and already a film is being (has been) made about their relationship, from their meting at St. Andrews to their becoming a couple. Has there ever been such a band wagon to jump on? Actors Camilla Luddington and Nico Evers-Swindell portray the pair in the upcoming film “William and Kate” – an original title, no? Already premiered in the states and due to be seen in the UK on Channel 5. Do you think the actors were cast because of their names? It’s obviously going to be a film for the hooray Henrys, the maudlin blue rinses, dyed in the wool royalists, little girls dreaming, and a no no for anyone of any intelligence judging by the clip I have just watched and what the actors have to say about it. According to Nico, take note of this if you please, these are brave words, people are going to “have a jolly good time watching it.” Bravo, Nico.
We have in our village a zaxaroplasteio (we sell sugary things) in other words a cake shop and confectioners and, boy, do the Greeks love their sweet cakes that come in an infinite variety. The shop’s motto emblazoned on the side of their van reads in English, “Beyond Fresh.” Hmn… Yes… well I don’t think it says exactly what the proprietors mean it to say but we do get the intention. As far as the celeb culture is concerned and, let’s face it, William and Kate have become celebs of the very first order, (I’m surprised some enterprising publisher hasn’t offered them a trillion dollars to write their very own book. Guess that one’s still in the pipeline) the motto should read ‘Beyond Ridiculous.’ Am I the only old sourpuss who thinks so? In a way I can’t help feeling sorry for them and there’s Harry’s wedding yet to come. It must now be like living in a goldfish bowl or doing intimate things in public with a million pairs of prurient eyes gleefully watching.
Jesus and the Virgin Mary are constantly being seen in cloud, sand, and rock formations etcetera but a short while ago, I don’t remember if I ever mentioned this, the Prophet was discovered in a tomato! And now, not from the sublime to the ridiculous but from the ridiculous to the even more ridiculous; Kate Middleton’s features have been revealed on…Ta-ra-ta-ra…a jelly bean! Of all things, a jelly bean! “Trainee accountant Wesley Hosle spotted her image as he opened the jar with his girl-friend Jessica White. (Jessica is a jar opener?) Her long hair, strong facial features and even her smile are clearly visible in the yellow jelly bean’s red blotches!” As the wedding is only two weeks away Wesley hopes to make a few pounds by selling the bean to a collector. He’s not a trainee accountant for nothing.
Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, the American illustrator Tom Tierney has created a nine inch Kate doll in her underwear with seven changes of costume and there is also a William with a couple of changes of his own.
It gets worse: phone company T-mobile hired a host of royal look-alikes to make a commercial in a London church. It is so unbelievably tacky I don’t now why I even mentioned it and how on earth did they even get permission to do it?

I was cruising (is that the right word or should it be browsing, or searching rather?) the internet the other evening looking for off-Broadway theatre companies, of which there seem to be a hundred or more, as I have a new play I want to submit. It is a comedy, I call it my Neil Simon play and laugh uproariously at my own lines, (there’s conceit for you. Oscar had nothing on me) As it is set in America, America seems the obvious route to take but I don’t have an American agent who can push it for me. It was performed as a play reading last month by students at the University of Alabama and looking at the DVD, I am more than pleased with it. The play works really well and the reading has given me a chance to tweak it here and there where necessary – no major rewrites – and to bring it up to date. When I say a new play what I should have said was, it is a play, one of two, I wrote some time ago when working in the states. If anyone wants to read the first one, GENERATIONS, it’s available from Amazon. This one, THIRD DRAWER FROM THE TOP is its title, isn’t published yet but I am sure soon will be. In the meantime here I am in a preliminary search for the right company or companies to send it to. I not only looked at off-Broadway New York but went further afield to Chicago, Seattle and Los Angeles. It was quite an education reading about some of the various companies as they wrote about themselves and I have never read so much pretentious bullshit in my life. Well, Lor’ bless us, that might be exaggerating a little and I suppose they have to sell themselves in a precarious business but for goodness sake their theatres are not Holy of Holies, they are not a Shinto Shrine, the heart of the Vatican or a Tibetan monastery, a Southern Baptist revivalist meeting or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre– they are theatres and in theatres one produces plays. That’s it unless you definitely need to clarify exactly what plays you produce so that you are not landed with a hundred unwanted scripts totally out of your remit: You produce classical plays or Elizabethan plays or Restoration plays or already established modern plays, or new writing. On your website you could include a few pictures, possibly some reviews so we can maybe get some idea of your work, and examples of plays produced, and that should be quite enough without having to tell the world how you are a centre of excellence and that you encourage young actors etcetera etcetera etcetera as the king of Siam might have said. That sort of thing surely goes without saying. Do young actors need to know you encourage them even if they’re no bloody good but are living on dreams that will be unfulfilled? If they have enough conviction and feel they’re worth it they will fight for themselves. Sir Henry Irving started his theatrical life with everything against him. No contacts for a start, secondly a weak and spindly body, (Laurence Olivier hated his spindly legs and padded them out) thirdly a high pitched unattractive voice and fourthly a not too prepossessing face but he persevered to become the great Shakespearian, what the Japanese would call a national treasure, and the first knight of the British theatre.
There are some lovely (possibly apocryphal) stories about the trials and tribulations of young actors hoping to make it, unfortunately so many don’t but no amount of off-Broadway encouragement is going to make the slightest bit of difference. One of the stories is about a young actor many years ago auditioning at The Old Vic and he had hardly delivered more than half a dozen lines when a voice boomed out from the auditorium, ‘Call yourself a fucking actor? Get off my stage!’
That young actor was Sir Alex Guinness and, should anyone doubt he was every inch an actor, just watch some of his movies, “Bridge On The River Kwai,” “The Lady Killers,” “Kind Hearts And Coronets.” Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.