The Catholic Church today caused widespread controversy when it issued a statement urging the Government to overturn a law made two hundred years ago.

Clive Adams, standing outside Saint Johns Cathedral in Norwich, read the statement: “The Catholic Church is unable to comply with the Slave Trade Act, the 1807 Act of Parliament abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire. This law is incompatible with the teachings of the Bible and we cannot in clear conscience operate under such restrictions. We ask the government to consider an opt-out clause in revised legislation.”¹ Adams, an unpaid volunteer reporting to Cardinal Michael Osborn, denied that he himself was a slave.

I was rather surprised last year when people started asking what songs I’d been playing at my birthday party.

I’m pleased to say that I’m prepared this year and have already uploaded my playlist to iTunes. Enjoy.

I don’t think my birthday last Thursday could have had more of a Monty Python theme if I’d tried. A few weeks ago B booked up tickets to see Spamalot, the West End musical based on the Monty Python film “Holy Grail.” She also hid away a copy of “The Very Best of Monty Python,” a small book with pictures and scripts from the Python series.

On Saturday we hosted the first Thanksgiving dinner at Chez Darlington. Due to the size of our kitchen this became a bit of a logistical nightmare but we persevered.

Well, I say “we” but pretty much all the cooking was down to B with me in more of a motivational role, insisting that the spinach and cheese casserole smelled really good and that the turkey looked great. I got the easy job as it was true!

To most readers here I think I’m right in saying that the [Markets in Financial Instruments Directive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiFID “MiFID”") won’t mean much. It’s some new Europe-wide legislation designed to help regulate financial transactions.

Stop yawning. Please. Come back! This isn’t going to be completely dry and boring, honest.

So, anyway, one of its major elements is a concept called “best execution.” This isn’t a choice between a firing squad or a noose. The idea is that a trader has to be able to prove that they made the best deal, with the right people, at the best price. (On a serious note, I think this is a sensible idea, I’m just not convinced that regulation is the right way to achieve it.)

I was amused when, while working in North Carolina in 2003, I visited some friends for Thanksgiving. All their neighbours introduced themselves and then, on finding I was English, apologised. “It’s not our fault, we didn’t vote for him!” Stood amongst those liberal, well travelled and smart people it was difficult to reconcile this with the fact that they lived in a country that had a president that was none of those things.

Last night we went to the Royal Albert Hall to see the Secret Policeman’s Ball, a charity gala in aid of Amnesty International. Despite the great cast — everyone from The Mighty Boosh to Eddie Izzard — beforehand I was worried that the “charity” aspect would take too prominent a position compared with the comedy. Obviously there’s a need to make people remember what the show is all about but often these events become preachy and, ultimately, a little dull.

I’ve been reading the magazine Wanderlust for a few years now. It’s a great magazine with interesting stories about places that are often well off the beaten path — my kind of travelling! A couple of months ago I took the unusual step of writing a letter. It came in two parts, a comment about my time in Cuba (in response to someone who said he couldn’t find any night-life) and a second, longer piece about my time in Gdansk, Poland (as a counter-point to their piece on long-weekends for less than £100).

It seems like only last week that I was at a friends wedding (in fact it was just over two weeks), but on Tuesday two more friends tied the knot.

I’ve known R since my time in Norway. We met up a few times in Oslo and continued when we both returned to London. She had dreams of travelling, going back to Norway or Paris, or, generally, elsewhere. But she drifted back to her home-town, Bristol. Later, T, a Polish tree surgeon, moved into the flat-share she was living in. She jokes that while I tried internet- and speed-dating, she just stayed at home but had greater success.

I went to see “An Inconvenient Truth” last night, a film about Al Gore’s global warming lecture tour.

It’s very well done. Gore delivers the talks with humour — he introduces himself link this, “I’m Al Gore, I used to be the next president of the United States” — confidence and passion. (If he’d had this passion in the presidential campaign things could have been very different!) Even for someone that agrees with the message there are some scary statistics. Perhaps even more scary is the lengths that some politicians go to to avoid acknowledging the problem, much less doing something about it.