THE GATHERER

Bishop Noel Jones, brother of famous actress and model,  Grace Jones , stunned a London crowd when during his sermon he suddenly asked, “Can you love someone you don’t respect? Can you respect someone you don’t love? Same question in reverse order. Well, before you answer, it may interest you to know he's been divorced for 20 years and heads a 17,000 member church, The City of Refuge, California – USA. He's also a grand-father and his children are happily married.  At first, my reaction was, why try to teach on love when you've clearly failed at it? But it occurred to me, that by virtue of hindsight he may actually have good lessons on how to have a successful marriage. Perhaps people who say they are  lucky  with their marriage are just being sincere.  Back to the question – if your answer to both is, no, then you’ll agree love and respect do correlate. And if respect must be earned and ...

I thought it wild but attainable, Brazil to beat Japan four nil, Germany 2006 World Cup. A £10 bet on that score line at the bookies would return £110. More encouraging was a friend’s telephone call that morning saying he won huge by predicting correctly results of 10 accumulated football matches. It was a period of celibacy for me gambling wise, but today the unction had return. Two hours later, Brazil won the match scoring 4 goals, save for Japan’s Tamada uncharacteristically scoring first.  4 -1 it ended, illusion of being £100 richer gone; reality is, I had lost my tenner… again. The actual danger of gambling surprisingly lies in winning a bet. By this, you enter into ‘Self Hypnosis’ – convinced beyond doubt it works, becoming addicted. I had once won a couple of hundreds on dog-racing, which began two-years of daily stakes, believing fortune would shine on me again, especially when people around me testify to winning a few quid here and there. ...