Placido Domingo

I will write now before going dancing; I'll be too tired later. Am continuing to read Josephus' Jewish Antiquities. It is so like the History Channel. There is copious detail on the century or two before the author's lifetime. From Antiochus' defilement of the Temple in 167BCE until the Temple's destruction in 70CE takes up more space than the whole of Jewish history from Adam till Antiochus. If there's records extant you can base your story on something. For TV there's few moving, talking pics of historical events before WW2. That's why Arthur Smith called the History Channel the Hitler Channel.

It (Josephus' Antiquities) is written, though, with the same tone throughout; a catalogue of power struggles, jealousy, conspiracy, great battles and massacres. 'Jewishness' seems to require nothing more than correct observance of a mass of peculiar rituals. The law must be observed to the letter to avoid God's wrath. That is the beginning and the end of Jewish morality. So much for those who would dismiss 'literalist' interpretations of sacred texts as a latterday 'fundamentalist' aberration. Josephus was a Biblical literalist.

I went to Calverton Car Boot in the morning, hoping to interest potential distributors in joining my team. (for details see www.telecomplus.org.uk/rowland ) A largesse of cards to stallholders may yield results. An e.mail from a charity/ community fundraiser prospect has just popped up. I thought, at the Car Boot, how horrified Gerrard Winstanley would have been; the Sabbath defiled by an orgy of Buying and Selling, the only capital offences in his 'New Law of Freedom' - Read 'Paradise Delayed' when it is published. All will be explained.