Scandals, porn and gossip – is there any hope?

I was out for an evening jog. After two miles, the old coastal path became an arthritic and cracked limb: loose stones, potholes and seaweed-tuft puddles covered the route. Then it happened – my scandal!

A huge stone gave way underfoot sending my lofty frame into a nosedive, my arms and legs fraying against gravity like a seagull smacked by a golf ball. Would I break my right arm, had I broken my left foot? I stumbled for eight strides, but levelled out and kept on running (until the pain was unbearable).

The New Testament word skandalon, from which English gets its word scandal, means a “stumbling block”; and while the coastal stone was granite, it was my John Cleese impersonation (Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks) that became a stumbling block of another kind.