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Sofa Portraits is a series of images showing my daughter, Isabel, as she watches television.
These portraits portray the flawed physicality of childhood and its mental and physical freedoms – but also the constraints that are applied by the adult world – the furnishings Isabel is so often pushing against, the dress determined by the educational system she is now part of, or even the attitudes to her physical self-expression as she watches television.
TONY BLAIR has admitted that his Christianity played a “hugely important†role during his premiership but he was forced to play down his religious conviction for fear of being seen by the public as “a nutterâ€.
In his most frank television interview about his religious beliefs, Blair confesses he would have found it difficult to do the job of prime minister had he not been able to draw on his faith.
The admission confirms why Alastair Campbell, then Blair’s director of communications, was so wary of the prime minister mentioning religion. “We don’t do God,†he once said.
In a documentary to be broadcast on BBC1 next Sunday, Campbell now says of his former boss: “Well, he does do God – in quite a big way.â€
The former spin doctor reveals that Christianity was so important to Blair that “wherever you were in the world on a Sunday you had to find a churchâ€.
In The Blair Years, the former prime minister, who is expected to convert to Roman Catholicism soon, compares the differing attitude to religion in British politics with that in America.
“It’s difficult to talk about religious faith in our political system,†he says. “If you are in the American political system or others then you can talk about religious faith and people say ‘Yes, that’s fair enough’ and it is something they respond to quite naturally. You talk about it in our system and, frankly, people do think you’re a nutter. They sort of [think] you maybe go off and sit in the corner and commune with the man upstairs and then come back and say, ‘Right, I’ve been told the answer and that’s it’.â€
Blair once tersely denied that he prayed with President George W Bush in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, although Bush said his decision to go to war was “a mission from Godâ€.
The 28-year-old Hamilton man has just found out he could have five kidneys, instead of the usual two.
Mr Nordstrom, who captained his side to a club rugby competition win this year and also played for the Waikato B team, made the discovery on Monday when he was admitted to Waikato Hospital with a kidney infection.
“The doctors took a scan. Then I had to get a second one done. They wanted to have another look.”
Doctors had found one duplex kidney and one triplex kidney. Instead of having one tube or ureter joining each kidney to the bladder, Mr Nordstrom had two tubes on the left and three on the right.
Accordingly, the duplex kidney has two parts and the triplex has three parts, meaning it is quite likely Mr Nordstrom has five kidneys altogether.
“It was a real surprise,” wife Leianne said.
Despite the situation being “highly unusual” Mr Nordstrom said for 27 years he never knew any difference.
