Off-Topic (Again)

I have spent a lot of time going through emails and post since my holiday. Rather like the old gold-rush prospectors I have found a small number of nuggets among the dross and I shall try to share them with you in the next few days. Suffice it to say that the new régime running the courts is producing ideas and whizzy new schemes as fast as its Powerpoint jockeys can put finger to keyboard.

So back to today's paper and the sad news of the death of Cardinal Sin, the Archbishop of Manila in the Phillippines. His name was extraordinary for a priest, but even more so once he received his red hat.

There is a tale that I find irresistible about the Irish cleric who was found to have a teenage son, for whose existence there could only be one non-celestial explanation. He duly resigned his post and went abroad - some wags with more wit than taste suggested that he had gone to take up a missionary position.

The truth , I am told, is that he went to Manila to prostrate himself before the late Cardinal, and to cry:-

"Bless me Sin, for I have fathered".