Dedicated to all the men and women who have fought in armed combat, and in particular:

My father, Frederick George Theodore Eyre, who died on 2 March 2004, aged 85. Served in Borneo, West Papua and Rabaul during the Second World War. He spoke very, very little about his war service during his lifetime.

His brother, Percy Walter Ellis Eyre, who died on 23 October 1942, aged 22, in the Battle of El Alamein.

Genuine Swiss made Rolex replicas are as close to=20
the real thing
as a replica watch can be. Sometimes even the professional jewelers
are unable to tell the difference from the real Rolex watch. =20

All genuine Swiss Rolex Replicas should have the following:

- Full 1-year Warranty
- Solid 14k or 18k Gold on two-toned models
- Guaranteed triple-wrapped gold on all-gold models
- Genuine sapphire crystal - a type of glass that is many times better=20

at resisting scratches than regular glass.
- The color of the gold looks exactly like a genuine Rolex watch

If the retailer does not offer this, do not purchase from them!

//e have all this! JUST
COME and buy your REPLICA //atches!

Genuine Swiss made Rolex replicas are as close to=20
the real thing
as a replica watch can be. Sometimes even the professional jewelers
are unable to tell the difference from the real Rolex watch. =20

All genuine Swiss Rolex Replicas should have the following:

- Full 1-year Warranty
- Solid 14k or 18k Gold on two-toned models
- Guaranteed triple-wrapped gold on all-gold models
- Genuine sapphire crystal - a type of glass that is many times better=20

at resisting scratches than regular glass.
- The color of the gold looks exactly like a genuine Rolex watch

If the retailer does not offer this, do not purchase from them!

//e have all this! JUST
COME and buy your REPLICA //atches!

That nice old lady in the big house at Windsor turns 80 today. Happy birthday, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor.

Despite the fact that I believe it is highly inappropriate for her to be the sovereign head of state of Australia, she is by far the nicest member of her family and I wish her good health and many happy returns.

I’ll leave it to Jonathan Freedland in today’s Guardian to echo my sentiments a bit further. On the other side of the ledger is the leader in today’s Telegraph. For party animals there is Her Majesty’s Official 80th Birthday website.

An extraordinary situation in Chittagong on Sunday when police used excessive force to stop a press photographer from entering a cricket arena, followed with a sit-down protest by his colleagues on the pitch, delaying the start of the match between Bangladesh and Australia. This, followed by further clashes between the police and the journalists, putting one reporter in hospital in a coma.

I’m covering this story extensively in my cricket blog. If you’re interested in this rather unlikely attack on the working media, I’ll see you there.

Passion, passion and more passion. Such was the story of Good Friday. Three of the more interesting and non-standard Passion performances that I experienced over Easter:

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004), which I watched on DVD, is actually a better movie than I had feared it would be. Intense, grim, bloody, but not gratuitously so in my opinion. The actor portraying Jesus seemed remarkably uncharismatic in the flashback scenes. I’m not in a position to discuss the theological merit of the film, although the English subtitles did seem faithful to the Gospels. Next time I watch it, however, I intend to switch the subtitles off and see how well I can follow the film having no understanding of Aramaic.

La Pasión según San Marcos - St Mark’s Passion - by Osvaldo Golijov (2000) is an absolute joy to listen to. Available as a 2CD, I bought it in MP3 format from emusic (which, of course, has the downside of no liner notes or libretto). An utterly dazzling blend of musical styles, primarily, but not only, South American.

Good Friday evening saw the Manchester Passion - a re-enactment of the last hours of Christ through the streets of Manchester at dusk, told through the music of Manchester-based musicians, and televised live by the BBC. The Guardian reviewed the performance in their Saturday edition.

I listened online to BBC Radio Manchester (and recorded it - all right officer I’ll come quietly). I was surprised how well some of the songs (for example, Love Will Tear Us Apart) were placed into context. It sounded fabulous to me and I do hope it turns up on the ABC some day. Being a live broadcast on local radio, however, did mean the occasional interruption for reports on that other great religion, Manchester United, from the Old Trafford Cathedral of St Matthew the Busby. That turned out to be another sombre occasion, United drew 0-0 with Sunderland. For Man U, that meant they could no longer catch Chelsea at the top of the Premiership. For Sunderland, it meant relegation.

It begs the question: would the Crucifixion have gone ahead on Friday if Jerusalem United had a home game against Corinthian Lions in the Imperial Premier League that evening?

Now that this blog’s enforced downtime is out of the way, I’m going to begin a series of posts covering the last days of Christ through from Lent to his crucifixion, resurrection and ascention. This is my first Easter since becoming serious about Christianity, and you can expect to see more reportage of religion in these parts in future.

I still have to sit down and write my background to becoming (returning, in fact) to the Christian faith and my position on religious matters. I stress that my views as expressed here are personal and not necessarily those of my church or the diocese to which it belongs.

I’ve just discovered this Lent Blog: 2006, which features one posting per day from a group of contributors. Based from Glasgow.
Freshworship.org, which is run by St Mary’s Church of Ealing in west London, has been running a similar concept with their Grace Lent blog (their fourth annual Lent blog).

Hopeful Imagination was a less successful attempt to run a daily Lent blog. Another that started with great ambition was Our Short Term Lent Community Blog. Has had its moments, but the posting midway through that starts off “Have we all given up blogging for Lent?” will give some idea.

The Lent Challenge was to read all four gospels during Lent. Essentially a daily link to the relevant scripture on BibleGateway.com each day.