Traitors' Gate
2002-11-26 || 8:31 a.m.

I had this sudden terrifying thought last night about why Maria may not be talking to me: maybe she found out what I taught in RE last week.

Last week I had to teach about how the disciples spread the message of Jesus after he died. The piece I was reading had the word 'apostle' in it and I couldn't remember if it meant the same as 'disciple' or something different so I said to the kids I would look it up in the dictionary. As I was doing so I thought about Judas. Anyway, apostle does mean the same, but by then I was away on one telling them that Judas was the hero of the whole story and that there would be no resurrection without him. If he had not betrayed Jesus, Jesus would not have been able to be crucified and so no-one (according to Christian mythology) would be going to heaven. I told them that Judas would have known before he was born the job he had to do and how hard and terrible but yet important it was and that they should never 'diss' Judas! Ha.

Kind of rails against the usual Catholic doctrine I would guess.

I have a Meehan in my class. She's lovely. She's totally devoted to me. Her mother tells me she dresses up like me at home, takes everyone's bracelets and necklaces, winds them around her arms and runs around the house saying 'I'm Ms Vincent, I'm Ms Vincent'.

The Meehans are very good friends with Maria.

Maria just would not understand how I could say stuff like that about Judas.

But I stick by it.

On a totally different note, over here there is, at present, a high profile TV vote to 'find the greatest ever Briton'. Lots of celebraties are crawling out of the woodwork making programmes about people like Shakespeare and Winston Churchill. And the great general public get to vote to officially designate someone with this title.

My vote goes to Kim Philby.