Love the Sinner, hate the sin…

In all my years online I don’t think I’ve ever read anything as heinous as a blog post I read yesterday accusing Pope Benedict XVI of being Madeliene McCann’s abducter. You know that I would normally not post a link, or even bring your attention to such a site as this, and I apologise [...]

Madeleine McCann’s Parents to Meet the Pope

The parents of Madeleine McCann are to meet with the Pope, the Telegraph reports.
Madeleine, had her fourth birthday shortly after she was abducted from her bedroom, while she was holidaying with her family in Portugal. A month since her disapearance and her Catholic parents remain prayerful and hopeful of her return, though at [...]

Daffydils

Glynliffon Park
The sun’s gone walkabouts over here in England and we are currently experiencing semi-autumnal type weather in my part of the world, which I’m afraid to say has rather reflected my mood of late. There have been so many disapointments, so many ‘incidents and accidents’ (as Paul Simon sang) in [...]

Pentecost Sunday Celebrations!

It was a fabulous day today despite the much predicted rain (well it is a Bank Holiday Weekend, it’s almost obligatory that it rain). Mass was simply awesome. We went all out at the parish to make it an International Mass with the Gloria, readings and bidding prayers read in many languages. [...]

A Blog Buddy Writes

A Blog Buddy writes in the com box:
hi, ukok. I’m catching up on visiting people, and don’t know if anyone will see this, but I could really use some feedback on something – maybe not here in the combox, but if anyone feels up to posting something and letting me know about it, that would [...]

Title Blending Meme

Thanks to Jean from Catholicfire who tagged me for this Title Blending Meme.
Here are the rules:
Blend two book titles together by using the last word of one title and the first word of the second title. If you want, you can blend the authors’ names too. Like this:
The Divine Comedy 0f Errors by Dante Shakespeare
Harry [...]

Blooming Souls!

“If you’ve never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom.” ~Audra Foveo
Is your soul in bloom? How can one tell? Sometimes I feel more like a shrivelled pile of dead leaves than a radiant flower. [...]

Quandry

I’m looking over the Sacraments coursebook and pondering on the essay titles. Of all 7 of them, only two are jumping out at me.

Write an essay on the practice of infant baptism.
Write an essay on the points you would bring out over the course of a minimum of 4 meetings, [...]

The ‘7 Things About Me’ Meme

Lorna has kindly tagged me for this meme. She’s asked me to write something that might surprise her to know about me, but I’m not sure I have any secrets left anymore! Still, I’ll try to think of 7 things I haven’t told you all before – though I can’t promise that [...]

Catholic Places in England and Wales

I’ve been tagged by Antonia to divulge my 5 favourite Catholic places in England. However, this is so much more than a meme and hence, I am taking this opportunity to share with you in some depth, dear friends, the places -or at least some of the places-that have a special place in my heart [...]

Fluff ‘n’ Stuff

To find your love attitude number, add your birth month and your birthdate together. Keep reducing it until it’s a single digit.
Example:
January 28 —> 1+28 = 29 —> 2+9 = 11 —> 1+1 = 2;
Your love attitude number is 2.
What number are you ? and is your ‘love attitude’ accurate at all? [...]

Double Dipping

When I was a kid I used to buy ‘Double Dip’ sherbert tooth rotting sweets with my pocket money. Double Dip’s were sold in a tri-pocket style (still are). You had to rip of the top inch of paper all the way along, to have access to the goodies inside which included one edible swizzle [...]

Thinking Blogger Award

The ever lovely Esther has tagged me for the…

I’m surprised and flattered all at the same time :-)
I’m not used to receiving awards for my blogging, as far as I’m aware I’ve never been nominated for one. So yes, it really is good to know that someone, somewhere appreciates my blog existance and [...]

8 Things about me (me)

I’ve been tagged by Valerie over at I am my kid’s Mom!
Now, if I’m honest, I can’t think that there’s anything much left to tell you all about myself to fill up this meme with answers… after all, my blog has been a kind of open book about my life for years! Still, [...]

Linkage

While house-moving to WordPress, I decided that there were some things about the old blog that I would rather not take with me. One thing I’ve decided to leave behind are dead links to blogs that no longer exist or haven’t been updated in well over a year (unless they have exceptional blog content as [...]

Weigh Day

There’s a new post up on my Fit for Forty Blog. Feel free to check it out :-)

The ‘How To’ of moving from Blogger to WordPress

Since making my feelings clear about no longer wanting to blog with Blogger due to their stance on affording a portal through which paedophiles can permeate the blogosphere, I’ve received some comments and emails from fellow bloggers asking me how they too can go about moving over to WordPress. I’m no cyber-whizz, so let me [...]

A new chapter…

When I started blogging I never anticipated that anyone other than family and a few real-time friends would bother to visit my blog. Over the years though, I’ve been surprised to accumulate in the blogger edition of Ukok’s Place alone…

60,000 blog visits
100,000 page views
5,000 comments (just shy of)
1, 071 posts

Well, all of that is very [...]

Moving House

WordPress might not offer me the flexibility of messing around with HTML or even give as much choice when it comes to replacing ‘themes’ and blog presentation, but I think I’m probably going to take the necessary (in my view) leap and tie up the loose ends of my previous blog. The old place has [...]

Confuddled

I just discovered two things that have really disconcerted me. Firstly, that Sitemeter users unwittingly permit third party spyware cookies to infiltrate our own computers. I was gobsmacked at this. I followed the advice on this site and discovered 11 ’specificclick’ cookies and 12 ’sitemeter’ cookies on my computer.
A lot of these cookies are apparantly [...]

Fish out of Water?

Mysterious forest creature at Glynliffon?

The above image is of what I can only imagine to have once been part of a tree. I suppose technically it still is a part of a tree, though not living – or is it? Looks like it just might close that eye and wink at any moment.
It struck [...]

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink

Darling Daughter
 
Nothing but rain, rain and more rain here in the Midlands, UK. We have had a near heatwave in recent weeks and now the weathers turned for the worse :-(
Still, it’s good for the plants, it’s good for the ducks, and where would we be without life sustaining water?
Speaking of water, if you [...]

Weigh Day

There’s a new post up on my ‘Fit for Forty’ Blog, you can read it here.

May – the Month of Mary

Stained glass window in Our Lady’s Chapel, Sacred Heart Catholic Church – click to enlarge

As always I’m a day (or 9) late and a dollar (pound) short. The month of May is well under way and I haven’t even posted on Mary yet. I have been intending to write a post on Mother though, especially [...]

Upon this Rock

taken at Llanberis, Wales

As I shot the above image, it reminded me of the following passage of scripture ~

“Simon Peter said (in reply), “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus said to him in reply,

“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not [...]