The Diocese of Oxford has produced a document entitled ‘Welcoming those with Autism and Asperger Syndrome in our Churches and Communities’. The document includes some of my cartoons - they are existing ones with occasional minor modifications rather than new material. You can find the document as a downloadable .pdf via this page: Asperger Friendly Church?, which includes an interview with Ann Memmott, Advisor to the Oxford Diocese on autism and Asperger syndrome.

My understanding is that there are plans for guidelines for the Church of England as a whole. On a related note, from the Church Times earlier this year: Act on autism, Church urged.

As an aside: I am aware that there is a lack of crispness in the cartoons in the document. This is something I am aware of, and I’m hoping that it is something that can be addressed.

Posted by Dave at 10:03 am on September 30, 2008 and filed under Church, Cartooning.

10 Comments

1. I was offered the opportunity to take part in 40 days of prayer for the bargain price of $9.98. For this much money I would get daily e-mail updates which I could forward on to my friends for free. They would not need to pay $9.98. I’m no businessman, but it seems to me that if you’re going to run a profitable 40 days of prayer you need to get everyone paying their $9.98.

2. A ‘wholly owned subsidiary’ of the Carphone Warehouse Group contacted me to say that they would be very happy to have a link to their site on my website, and in fact they would go as far as to write a whole page of information that I could post onto my site with a link to them. All for free. Unfortunately they “are not currently in the position of being able to exchange or return links”. Much as I’d enjoy participating in such an attempt to manipulate the search engines I have declined to respond to the unsolicited e-mail. Oddly enough I had thought, until now, that the Carphone Warehouse was a legitimate and above-board sort of company.

3. The Amazon internet company had a special offer whereby one could have a FREE trial of their ‘Amazon Prime’ service, which promises to send things out on a next-day-delivery basis. I can confirm the results of the trial based on a sample of one: The goods do not arrive the next day as promised, even if you wait in all day for them. Suffice to say it is not a service that one shall be continuing with.

Posted by Dave at 11:35 am on September 26, 2008 and filed under Mundane, Slightly grumpy.

8 Comments

Thought I might do a diagram on the subject. If anyone who attends such occasions can help me via the comments (or via e-mail if you don’t want your comments published) that would be super. So, deanery chapter meetings:

• What happens?
• What subjects get talked about?
• What do you like and/or dislike about them?
• The chapter clerk: How are they chosen and what is their role?
• Any other comments

No need to answer all of these - just any that seem appropriate. Many thanks in advance.

Posted by Dave at 10:49 am on September 17, 2008 and filed under Ideas appeal.

26 Comments

The Daily Mail under the editorship of Paul Dacre is the last popular stronghold of Christian Britain. … Dacre’s Mail is virtually the last friend Bible-believing Christians have got in Fleet Street.

An article on VirtueOnline that brought a smile to my face and a little bit of joy to my heart. I’m not linking to the site for religious reasons, so you’ll have to copy and paste:

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=8967

Posted by Dave at 4:36 pm on September 10, 2008 and filed under Religion.

34 Comments

Jon Birch has said kind things about the dullest blog in the world, a not-very-interesting project of mine from the 2003 era. Jon keeps a good blog over at the asbojesus with his cartoons and in-depth discussions and suchlike. He was talking about it all at Greenbelt but I unfortunately missed the talk owing to not remembering whether I knew about it or not.

A while or so ago I transferred the dullest blog to its own domain, the idea being that it would be easier to manage and I could get rid of all the spammy comments. I had planned to restart it, but lost interest. I have a whole suite (what a good word) of half-unstarted projects, of which this is one. Maybe, if I am struck by some sort of whim, I will restart it at some point.

Today I found that the dullest blog has its own group on Facebook. Good heavens. I thought everyone had forgotten about it. Anyway, I just joined the group.

So, I’m posting to tell you about a Facebook group I have joined. The dullest blog continues, just in a different form.

Posted by Dave at 11:12 pm on September 4, 2008 and filed under Mundane.

14 Comments

Hello.

This is the return of the Cartoon Blog. Sorry once again for not writing anything here even though we got back from being away nearly a week ago. Dull explanation: I haven’t been 100% well all of the time, and my wife still had some time off so last week I was only really working on a part time basis meaning I had to prioritise certain tasks of which this blog was sadly not one.

Greenbelt was marvellous, as ever. The Church Times had a tent in which some of my work was displayed and it was great to see people enjoying it. It was good to meet so many people including a number of readers of this blog.

Neil took a couple of pictures of me grinning inanely. I posted a few photos from Greenbelt on the Church Times blog and have since posted one or two cartoons.

Continued apologies to those who are still waiting for me to reply to an e-mail. I haven’t really recovered from pre-Lambeth, let alone the time I was at Lambeth, on holiday, Greenbelt, post-Greenbelt etc etc. I will aim to get on top of everything this week, but… we shall see. Sooner or later I think I may just have to admit defeat and resign from the internet.

Nevertheless I am starting September with high hopes. I plan, amongst other things, to do a bit more drawing on this blog as there has been a lack of it, and also make some long-overdue content updates to CartoonChurch.com. Thanks for your patience.

Posted by Dave at 5:03 pm on September 1, 2008 and filed under CartoonChurch progress, Mundane.

2 Comments