The new Quaker logo doesn't seem to have won Friends or influenced people. We arrived on Monday to a flood of fuming letters sparked by Barry Wilsher’s opening shot.

What is it about this inoffensive little emblem which has so outraged the design sensibilities of Friends?

Eye personally finds it innocuous, if unimaginative. It reminds us of an embryonic cell being pierced, which may have been the designer's intention, indicating the insertion of Quaker values into the human family. Perhaps spirited wall graffiti might have inspired a bolder logo. We were horrified at one reader's suggestion that the design should have gone for general consultation among Friends - it would have taken a century!

Instead, Eye would like to make our own contribution in the informal style we favour. Can readers, especially those who think they could 'do better on the back on an envelope', send us their own designs and we will publish one or two on q-eye.

Looking through the referral statistics for this website is always an enlightening exercise.

Last week I sent a quick note round to a few people pointing out that if you put 'lack of trust' into Google, you get our coverage of Britain Yearly Meeting 2006 in fourth place. Over the weekend, perhaps because of people checking it out for themselves, our ranking has gone up to third.

What does *that* mean?

We see that Catholic chaplains in the NHS are having difficulty accessing members of their flock who are in hospital. The Data Protection Act, it seems, has come between them. It is illegal to disclose personal information to others so patients have to request a visit from a chaplain. And it appears patients are not asking.

Eye wonders about the NHS's track record on the matter of spiritual health. To browse the web you would think that this aspect of patient care is right up there with oxygen and antibiotics. Trusts parade their chaplaincy services on their websites in glowing terms. Some even register an on-call chaplain who could bring Communion to the bedside. In South Devon they have a special handbook listing all the requirements, dietary through to arrangements for death, of every faith (Eye notes we are listed under 'Free Churches' with no particular dietary requirements).
So what are the chaplains on about?

According to The Tablet, where this story appeared, one chaplain reports that his colleagues all over the country experience problems identifying Catholic patients. In his experience only 40% of patients in hospital were asked by staff if they wanted their religion to be recorded or if they'd like to see a chaplain.

Is there a problem here Friends? Are wards shirking in their responsibilities to spiritual wellbeing – after all, it is possibly the most important aspect in recovery. The editor says her Meeting quietly slipped off the chaplaincy rota of the local infirmary after a series of lacklustre meetings in the ward day room. 'No-one ever came' she recalls 'We played the piano to cheer ourselves up. Patients who did peer in turned on their Zimmers when they realised something religious was going on.'
This might be one of those Whitehall targets imposed on nurses which has failed to ignite their enthusiasm. Has any of your Meetings managed to engage with NHS staff to bring about a Quaker presence in the local hospital? Could you treat this as a matter of urgency Friends – the editor's Meeting is back on the rota and she is looking distinctly nervous.

Our Very Short Story competition has galvanised readers into extraordinary efforts. The pile of stories grows and the closing date looms. Our judges are sharpening their critical faculties. But before we get into the Really Serious stuff, Eye wants to share this tongue-in-cheek contribution from Tim Brown of Cambridge who claims to have been told it by his mum many years ago:
An elderly Quaker, let's call him Josh, had attended Meeting for Worship all his life. When well into his 80s, he had a tendency to fall asleep, and sometimes dream, during worship. His wife always sat next to him and sometimes gave him a touch or a tap to wake him up.
One Sunday, Josh's dream was a nightmare. He dreamt that he was a French nobleman being driven in a tumbril to the guillotine. He grew more and more terrified as the tumbril approached the guillotine. Then he found himself on the scaffold with his neck resting on the block and the blade about to drop.
Just at that moment, his wife realised that he was asleep and gave him a tap on the back of the neck with a rolled up copy of The Friend. In life, as in his nightmare, it was a fatal blow and Josh died on the spot.

Don't forget, the competition closes on 21 April.

There isn't much time before Easter if you're still celbrating Lent, but if you want some last miniute advice on fasting, this article by Paddy Ulglow, from Young Quaker this month, has been highly recommended by a reader.

Yesterday, I ventured down to Croydon to join Junior Yearly Meeting for some intense discussion about the media and identity.

Of which there will be more later, but one of the most exciting discoveries came as we tried to find suitable cover stars for an imaginary 'Cosmo for Quakers'. We were frankly struggling a bit, although amongst the Foxes, Denches and Frys there were a few young Friends nominated for their role model qualities.

But, then at last someone said "Laura"! Yes, it's not often an icon of Radio 1 would expect to make it to these pages, but it would seem that, through schooling and maybe more, Laura 'off-of Laura's Diary' is one of Ours.

Jubilation rang out. She may make her living from filling silence, and be most famous for essentially being auctioned off on the BBC, but Laura's charm, humour and friendly attitude to the other sex definitely make her a Quaker role model in the making.

We look forward to seeing her and Gareth at Meeting soon. Quakers on TV are rather in vogue at the moment (see Heaven and Earth on the 30th of April for a glimpse of some in action) - is it too much to hope that Radio 1 might broadcast its first ever Quaker wedding?

Working for The Friend isn't often like working for Heat - I haven't been this excited since we were allowed to use free photos of Angelina & Brad at Davos.

We Quakers have testimonies but, as our Northern Friend Grigor McClelland points out, circumstances alter cases.
Grigor has always endeavoured to act in accordance with the testimony on sacraments but has found himself in two situations over the years where he was obliged to take holy communion. Once in the war when his Friends Ambulance Unit spent a weekend at a black college, and in 1952 attending the Baptist Church in Moscow’s Red Square. ‘In both cases,’ he recalls, ‘the congregation was large and the visitors were specially welcomed and prominently placed. Any refusal to take the bread and wine could have been badly misinterpreted.’

According to that delicious comedy actress Victoria Wood, the British are a nation of campers and caravanners (and canal boaters). If this is true there is a treat in store over Easter being sponsored by Guildford and Godalming MM which they are calling a 'Raft-fest'.

Tony Haynes, a Farnborough Friend, lives on a boat and explains how this event comes about.
'We used to help run a boat-trip business but we had a lot of trouble with local youths throwing stones at the boats and vandalising the canal. To combat this we formed a Canal Watch Scheme with the canal authority and the police. But in a Quakerly way we wanted to do more than just police the situation.' So now there is an Easter raft race which everyone with a vessel answering to this description can take part. Eye notes that local army units are helping out with marshals and first-aiders.

We take our Quaker hats off to our readers! No sooner do we mention in this column some missing piece of information, or gap in understanding of an issue than hey, presto! A reader - or several - rushes forward with the desired material. We are most impressed that after mentioning Professor V.H. Mottram (scientist and Quaker pacifist) and the second edition of his book The Physical Basis of Personality - which is missing from the library at FH - some of you offered your copies to Eye.
This all stems from the rumbling controversy concerning a designed or evolved universe. Martin Mottram, the professor's son, who is an occasional contributor to The Friend, reminded us of his father's contribution to the debate in the forties when it started out as a 'nature versus nurture' disagreement. The eminent professor, a physiologist, experienced a profound dilemma on this matter. After his first edition in 1944, he published a second to which he added a 'Recapitulation and Coda'. Science was his business, but he was also a Quaker. The soul could not be omitted from his deliberations.

So Eye has been struggling with the Coda, helped a little by the editor who has an old interest in how the soul behaves in the body. Together we studied this extraordinarily pertinent book, and although space is limited here we feel you would like to see this gem from an unblinkered scientific mind - The 'saints' in moments of mystical insight seem to discern beneath the personality an inner self which partakes of the nature of ultimate reality, by whatever name they may call this reality - God, Allah, Yahweh, Brahman, the Absolute, Love, or Wisdom. And this familiar thing which we call self, this assertive, greedy and sensual thing compact of egoism, selfish desires, odd moods and passions, and of outstanding characteristics which we dub personality is an imposture and delusion. So I throw out the suggestion that the real 'I', the core of our being, that thing so alien from the everyday 'I', is a spark, an atom of the fundamental Reality in the Universe, but that its activities are conditioned, moulded and determined by inheritance and nurture. A persona is thrust upon it by our genes and our upbringing.

• The book has been gifted to the FH library by Mary Friend of Bristol. She tells us: 'I bought it as a biology student in the 1950s. It is amazing how much of the seminal work of genetics arose around the war time period. His final chapter puts the Quaker point of view clearly - and very much basically as I still see it.'

Dropped into our news editor on Saturday and it seemed important enough to share...


QUID
(Quaker Union of Investors and Depositors)

1 April, 2006


PRESS RELEASE

This year we celebrate our one hundredth anniversary, because we were established in 1906.

We feel that it is timely to draw Friends’ attention to what we do:

Membership is available to treasurers of PMs and MMs who have been extant for at least 14 years. We have a junior section for beginners with lesser service.

We supply backs of envelopes for the keeping of accounts (we are proud of being pioneers in seeing the recycling opportunities with used envelopes). We did supply cigarette packets for the same purpose, but this has been discontinued as part of our support for the no-smoking campaign.

We are concerned that treasurers are an endangered species, and we steadfastly resist the attempts by nominations committees to organise culls every three years.

We organise recuperative week-ends where treasurers are strengthened in their resolve to resist all expenditure and robustly pursue income.

We do not participate in any way in treasurer training; we believe that treasurers are part of creation (possibly of intelligent design).

Our reputation has given rise to expressions such as “we are quids in” – meaning that we have achieved a positive financial outcome – as will always be the case when one of our members is “doing their thing” (see we also use modern speak).

For those of you who like anti-Bush jokes, there is a sublime one circulating on the internet at the moment, author unknown. We'd like to share it with you:

At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator. At a morning press conference, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement. The FBI is charging him with carrying weapons of math instruction.

'Al-gebra is a fearsome cult,' Gonzalez said, 'they devise average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.

'As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say "there are three sides to every triangle".'

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said 'If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes.'