A chilly day at the list rites of an Ashes summer yesterday, the car said 9.5 degrees as we drove away from Southampton. Bit of a disappointment, though the Australians were very good.
The biggest cheer of the day was reserved for a sign. Crickets 'decision review system', like almost everything else in sport these days, has a sponsor. So whilst the crowd are waiting for a decision, Natwest flash up their subliminal advertising on the big screen, until 'Out' or 'Not Out' appears. One decision yesterday was reviewed, overturned by the umpire almost immediately, and the players were all ready to resume but the big screen was still ticking through it's pre-programmed message. It then went into a countdown, intended to raise the sense of drama (#fail), and then seemed to get stuck, and went round the loop a couple of times before flashing up Not Out, to a loud and ironic cheer.
Natwest probably lost a few customers in the process.
If you take a long time to tell people what they already know, when they'd rather be getting on with something else, it doesn't tend to go down very well. Which makes me wonder how many Natwest moments we have. Sticking to a pre-programmed liturgy, regardless of context, can be deadly. Stop me if you catch me doing it.
Where does that leave the Lord's Prayer?
ReplyDeleteIt may be a question of how its used, though there's a place for repetition as well. There are older folk who can't string a sentence together, but start them on an old song or a well-used prayer and they are word perfect. So repetition has its place, but that's different from settings where people are determined to get from one end of the liturgy/sermon/lecture to the other, regardless of whether it's actually going well, or how people are responding.
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