A Bear with a Sore Shoulder

 

A sunrise photo by Captain B from a few days ago when the cloud mass was pressing down on the rising sun, to wonderful effect.

You will have heard of a bear with a sore head. Well I am a bear with a sore shoulder, my good shoulder too, which makes things very difficult as neither arm now has much reach.  GRRR  Grrrrr.  Best stay out of my way, all you hapless hikers.

Col has been sorting through the photos from our long ago tour of Scotland.  How young we look,  And how beautiful Scotland is.  

We spent an afternoon watching the valiant salmon leaping up this high and rocky waterfall.   Where does the time go? 

I stepped out onto the balcony early Thursday morning.  Captain B had left at the crack of dawn for... one of the outer planets, judging by the time his alarm call went off.  Let's hope King Canute and various Romans visited it too and dropped lots of jewellery and gold coins while there.  Now that would be a Detectorist find to change history!

I think we often underestimate our ancestors, forgetting that they were actually nearer to perfection - closer to that perfect start - than we are.  But... horse-drawn spacecraft would be a stretch.

Anyway, the sun was pretty much up and colouring the clouds so I looked towards the West to the river mouth.  And it was lovely.  The light, the blue colour of the sea - there was dark cloud over the river and the light of the rising sun was starting to stretch towards it over the water.  I did thank Jehovah for making it all so beautiful, just for us.  There was one valiant dogwalker with two dogs on the Green.  

It would have been a lovely walking day if i could walk.

Now - Thursday morning as i am writing this - the sun is shining on the ugly block of flats behind us, which are covered in scaffolding (maintenance). And it has become briefly a thing of beauty.

They are building the big bonfire on the Green, so I guess we are in for a bonfire night celebration  this weekend.   And now, Friday morning, there is a wild wild sea, and the balcony geraniums are blowing all over the place.  My shoulder still hurts - GRRR Grrrr - though I should be thankful I can still type.

Its Saturday morning and my shoulder is still very painful.  I may have to appear at the meeting minus the Zoom camera as I don't know if I will be able to get myself dressed and do not want to appear in my jimjams.  Col left early, with his sandwiches and a metal detector at every corner, leaving my breakfast all prepared - oats and and a proper coffee - which I took along with a big dose of pain meds.

Toadstool Time

Here is a Fly Agaric as photographed by Captain Butterfly.  It is a splendid thing, and it is also a red warning light, telling us "I am very poisonous".   

Yesterday was my diabetes eye test - a new thing on my list of medical requirements (which is getting to marathon length).  The Captain dropped me off, and I walked back.  I avoided cutting through the dark fastness of Lobbs wood.   I have - foolishly - watched Mr.Ballen's compelling Youtube videos about people lost in the forest and wilderness and know that anything could happen in those 20 or so steps it takes to cross through it to the pavement on the other side.

We also delivered a copy of Disraeli Hall to a friend who had read and liked Waiting for Gordo.  That was followed by a Billy Bunterish dash to Turners Pies to get something for supper.  Our supermarket delivery doesn't arrive till this morning, and I seemed to have miscalculated meal-wise.  So Col had just found out it was baked beans for tea otherwise.

Going backwards, Sunday morning was the meeting and that was about all I did apart from get Captain Butterfly's supper ready for his return from planet Binsted   Monday morning was spent trying to re-schedule the delivery of my medicine.  I rang Lilian of Planet ExExpat and we had a long chat. She has nearly finished Disraeli Hall.  And I am sending her one of the recent magazines, which is "A Secure Future, How Can You Find It?". We will be trying to get them into as many households as we can, because the world news is heartbreaking.  And surely many people must be wondering about the future.

There are Eco activists out, disrupting all they can, such is their concern about the damage we are doing to the earth. Though I think what they are doing is not helping in the least.  There are so many people displaced, on the move, or wishing they could be, as there seems no way of even keeping alive where they are...    truly truly, as our Creator warns "it does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step".  It is as if the whole system is poisoned, and we cannot put it right.

Which leads me back to the Fly Agaric, which does at least warn us by its distinctive colour... I am wondering if, when the whole world is under the loving perfect rule of the Kingdom of God, will it still be poisonous? Or not?  I can only hope we are all there to find out.  There will be nothing to distress us then.

 "They will sit, each one under his vine and under his fig tree,

And no one will make them afraid,

For the mouth of Jehovah of armies has spoken."

Micah 4:4

More Mushrooms - Waxcaps

 

An Autumn Haiku:

Autumn MoonlightMatsuo Basho

Autumn moonlight--
a worm digs silently
into the chestnut.

https://www.poemhunter.com/poems/autumn/

I would like to write a Haiku for Autumn about the roaring of the sea, and the low bright Autumn sunlight glinting on the water,  But...

AUTUMN SUNLIGHT

by me

Autumn sunlight--

gleaming seagulls glide

over white horses.

Only it would need to be something much better than that... for one thing, seagulls ride the white horses at any time of the year,  I would need to find an image that specifically suggests Autumn, as Matsuo Basho did.   The only Haiku thing in it is that as the birds are seagulls that should identify the white horses as waves. 

A friend popped in on Thursday with some pressies for me, including a lavender bag she had made.  I love lavender bags - buy them whenever I see them, but haven't been able to shop for a long time now.  She stayed for a cup of tea and a chat, but we kept at a reasonably safe distance.  It was so nice to see her.  The pandemic continues, but in theory with no more lockdowns in sight, and continuing vaccinations and boosters.  The Captain had left horrendously early to spend Thursday on the wild and windswept Hampshire prairies.

We keep in touch with Jacks via weekly phone calls - but we haven't seen each other for a long time.   Her health, like mine, deteriorates.  And Jean and I chat often - via phone and zoom -  and its same same re health.  But we are all past our sell by dates.

How short our lives are now.

Though I must also add that, despite all the aches and pains and problems, retirement has been wonderful so far. I never thought to be involved in the most important work of my life during my retirement. - telling all who will listen about the Kingdom of God.  And of course I have also had the excitement of being published as well.  And although I am as far from a best seller as it is possible to be, it is a great feeling to know that some people really do enjoy my books.

Talking of which, I had two more very welcome visitors Saturday afternoon, for tea and cake - fortunately I had just baked a batch of marmalade muffins - and they went away with a copy of Disraeli Hall.  

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08VTNKZQJ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I have been watching Landscape Artist of the Year, which I am recording.  I love love love watching artists at work. And I happened to look up at the early evening sea and skyscape out of the window, and saw a picture painted by the Greatest Artist of them all. 

And this morning the sunrise is wonderful - great banks of grey cloud pressing down as the rising sun pushes a line of pinky red ahead of it along the horizon of the sea.  Splendid. And if I live for millions of years - which I hope to, and more - I will never see another sunrise exactly like this one, such is the variety and the wonder of Jehovah's creation.

Mushrooms

 

Here is another of the Captain's splendid fungi fotos.  The creation is amazing.

The Captain and I have been watching a series called .  "The Code of a Killer"  It is about the first case in the UK to be solved by the use of DNA identification.  It is a story of brilliant and patient police work, getting the murderer of two young teenage girls behind bars - and before he killed anyone else.  

However, the killer in question has just been released by the Parole Board - after serving the two "life sentences" he was given.  It is troubling after all the effort the Police took to get him safely locked away.  And I can only imagine what the families of the murdered girls think about it.  

It wasn't a calming thing to watch before bedtime, but I am not sleeping well at the moment anyway.

Captain B appeared on screen during our field service meeting on Tuesday, Much to my chagrin he was hanging out the washing in an ostentatious and martyred kind of way.  He waved a sock at us, but mercifully confined himself to one sock.

As Autumn progresses with its bright low sunshine and its stormy seas, I have been thinking about the way the earliest calendars begin in the Fall, which suggests that Adam first opened his eyes in an Autumn garden.  It was a garden that was the very perfection of Autumn.  It was paradise.  Maybe that is why Autumn has a beautiful sadness about it?   But even though that original paradise was lost, we are assured by our Creator that it will be restored, earthwide.  

What else are we praying for when we say the Lord's prayer and ask for God's Kingdom to come, and for his will to be done on the earth?

I have been looking up poems for Autumn. And here is one:

Autumn Fires

by Robert Louis Stevenson

"In the other gardens
And all up the vale,
From the autumn bonfires
See the smoke trail!
Pleasant summer over
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
The grey smoke towers.
Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!"

https://www.thoughtco.com/autumn-poems-4145041

The Increasing of Lawlessness

On Friday, as I begin to write this blog, we get the news that the MP David Amess was stabbed to death in his constituency.  Sir David became the second MP to be murdered at a constituency meeting in the last 6 years, after Jo Cox, M.P, for Batley and Spen was shot and stabbed also while at a constituency meeting.

It is extraordinary how much division and hatred politics can cause. And why the young killer targeted him I do not know.  Sir David seems to have been known as an excellent and caring constituency MP.  Which, very depressingly, could be why. He was accessible, kept in touch with his constituents, and was therefore an easy target.   I imagine much the same was true for Jo Cox, also known as a caring MP by her constituency - helpful, available and therefore easy to target.   

What is it these killers want?  A sort of Hitler/Stalin/Mao figure instead?!   If they succeed in killing off all the politicians who do not surround themselves with an armed militia, isn't that what we will get?

When asked by his followers, how they would know the sign of his presence, this is one of the things Jesus told us to watch out for:

• "And because of the increasing of lawlessness, the love of the greater number will grow cold." Matthew 24:12

There has been lawlessness since Eden, when our first parents decided to rebel against God's law.  But what we were to watch out for is a startling increase in it, worldwide.   The Book of Revelation explains why this would be.

And certainly in my lifetime, I have seen this increase.  Here is just a small thing, but... when I was a child in the 1950s (almost pre-history now), the milkman called every day, left the milk and picked up the empty milk bottles.  On Friday we used to leave his money out with the empties on the front step.  Every Friday, all along the road, there would be the milkman's money on the front doorsteps.  Its hard to imagine that would work now.

Also wouldn't there be glass all over the place, as vandals went down the road smashing bottles as they went?

Also we children did not need a housekey.  The back door was usually unlocked. And if it was locked, the door to the basement cellar was always open, so you walked through the cellars, past the dark bit (never explored) at the bottom of the cellar stairs and up to the unlocked cellar door.  I made that entryway a focal point of my first book Till They Dropped.   You would not knowingly leave a door unlocked in a city these days I don't think.

This is not by the way a call for the return to "the good old days". They were not the good old days. We had just been through a second world war - and bomb sites, shellshocked survivors, and DPs ("displaced persons" like my father) were everywhere. I am just noting the increasing of lawlessness in the small details.

Pat rang on Saturday and we had a long chat. She is still waiting on a date for the first of her knee replacements, and is of course in a lot of pain.  Poor Pat.  I remember it well!  From my experience, it is not a nice process, but is well worth it.   

She too is asking what is wrong with the world.  The Bible answers.  But will people listen?  Jehovah is reaching out to everyone.  

Autumn Leaves

It was fun to find myself crunching through piles of Autumn leaves when I did my little walk on Wednesday - to the post box and back...  and of course it reminded me of my childhood Autumns. I found a lovely fungi picture from the Captain's blog to provide an essence of Autumn.

Sheffield is a city of parks and woodlands and big trees, and we used to crunch through the leaves looking for conkers. I still feel excited when I see them, as if I have found a treasure.

Maybe I can find my poem about Sheffield and let it see the light of day here:

OCTOBER IN SHEFFIELD by me

Leaves so lately green lie on greener grass

On mossy stones the squirrels pass

To deeper shades of grey and green

Into woods where Winter waits

And breathing nearer shakes the trees

Now we start to feed the birds

The squirrel wears her Winter furs.

And now, in the Winter of my life,  I am trying to help others to find treasure, the pearl of great price that is the good news of the Kingdom of God:   “Again the Kingdom of the heavens is like a traveling merchant seeking fine pearls. Upon finding one pearl of high value, he went away and promptly sold all the things he had and bought it." - Matthew 13:45,46

This treasure was bought to my door, in Sheffield, over 30 years ago, by two elderly ladies (who were probably younger than I am now), with Bibles and Watchtower magazines.  And all I can do is to try my best to share it with others.

Ear Ear (Covid Booster)

I learnt a lesson on Monday, when we drove to Chi for our booster Covid shots.  Just as we began the queueing - all very efficient by the way - my hearing aids suddenly told me that their batteries were about to run out.  And so they did. I spent my time not hearing any instructions, and not seeing much either as I had forgotten to put de-mister on my glasses, and wearing the mask makes them steam up.  Thank God the Captain was on hand to steer me through and hear and see for me.

And the volunteers and medical staff were all very kind and patient.  I do thank them too.

Of course I have been in lockdown during my hearing aid year(s) and have not until yesterday realised that I need to travel with spare batteries. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

Sunday was the last day of the Circuit Overseer's visit, and we had two talks from him at the Sunday meeting.  The first, the public talk, was Can Love Conquer Hatred?   And the second - a special talk - was Have You Come to Understand Everything?

Re the second talk, you would think it would be a very short talk, consisting of the answer "No",  However that was not the point.   To summarise that talk, assuming I got the point, Jehovah gives us the amount of knowledge we need to make the right decision. But will we listen to Him?

A point from the first talk was this.  God is love. And the rebellion in Eden was a rebellion against love.  The result:  the tragedy of the last 6,000 years of human history.    I was reading today about brutal assaults on our Russian brothers and sisters in Russia... yet all they have done is try to tell all who will listen about the Kingdom of God.   Well, the authorities there are demonstrating how much we need that Kingdom's loving rule.

My Sunday afternoon job was to cook the mince and make a cottage pie for Col. It helped to use up some of the bag of potatoes he gleaned too.  It turned out OK.  And reminded me of the Darts Era in Saudi when we had a darts night every Wednesday (Wednesday was Friday night there, as the weekend was Thursday and Friday).  Dave and Maxine and Bob and Sai (if she was in Kingdom) used to come round and I used to make a giant cottage pie, served with plenty of veggies, and ice cream to follow.

We entertained a lot in those days, and I cooked a lot.  My cooking skills seem to be deserting me now, along with just about everything else...

Past my Sell-by Date

We have lots of extra Zooming as the C.O. is here.  And I was able to get a difficult letter of condolence, re the death of Rhi's sister, written during one of the field service sessions.  I decided that I really wanted to say something about the Biblical hope for the dead, which is immensely comforting.  These kinds of letters and cards are very hard to write, but i found it so much easier that I expected when I did it during the field service.  

Today - Thursday as I start this blog - I hope to devote the morning field service to replying to Bruce, the South African gentleman who received one of my letters, by a rather circuitous route.  

This is a month of medical appointments for me - spilling over into early November too.  It was Chiropody Friday morning.  I am past my sell-by date and need more maintenance by the day to keep me creaking along.  The Chiropodist was so young, and so kind and thoughtful. And we had quite a good chat while she was tackling my feet.  She too loves the Maldives.

Today Col's alarm clock went off at some unearthly hour - I hadn't slept well anyway - and he set off for the vast Hampshire prairies, for metal detecting purposes.   I had the field service in the morning, and I watched the October broadcast in the afternoon.  And I got a lot of dozing on the sofa in front of the telly done.

The News is dreadful really - food shortages and petrol shortages, caused in some measure by panic buying.  And apparently we may be facing a worldwide energy crisis.  Here in the UK some Eco warrior types are giving green issues a bad name by blocking motorways - and there was apparently a machete attack - machete! - in Richmond Park.  The Captain and I lived near Richmond Park when we were young.  It was lovely. But I feel I would not want to go there now.

How much we need the loving perfect rule of the Kingdom of God.  

DISRAELI HALL or The Ego Has Landed

Facebook and its related sites crashed in some mysterious way on Monday, but seem to have reappeared this morning. (Tuesday as I am starting this blog)  I was just about to pop a parchment ordering some carrier pigeons onto the next Stagecoach heading for Old London Town, but, as I said, facebook is back.

I found this review of Disraeli Hall on my Amazon page - from a real author too!  He seems to find it sadder than I had meant it to be. I give Sarah (my heroine) a very hopeful ending. And I also hope it is funny as well as scary.  But the book started with my thoughts about the lost childhood paradise of Nabbs Cottage, so maybe even though I did not manage to re-create Nabbs in any way (which was originally my intention), I did convey that feeling of loss.  

But the book is not a lament for the good old days. The good days lie ahead of us - as I hope Sarah's do - if we will only listen to our Creator.

Anyway, my kind reviewer begins:

"Unlike some authors I won’t name, Sue Knight doesn’t write the same story twice. Her new novel doesn’t resemble the delightful, dream-like but unsettling Waiting for Gordo or her beautifully constructed Till they Dropped. Once again there are dream-like sequences and there are pleasing, sometimes bewildering, intricacies of plot structure, but this is quite a different book from its predecessors. It combines elements of Gothic romance, murder mystery, and angry regret at the progressive destruction of traditional life and communities by the inexorable march of money-fuelled modernisation..."

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08VTNKZQJ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I am thrilled that he likes my whole oeuvre - all 3 of it - really thrilled. What you want when you write a book is for people to enjoy reading it.  I have to hope he found it quite funny too - though admittedly he does not say so.  He liked my villain, Ava Maggs, though she is not too villainous. I have left it open just how bad she might have been. To me she is the classic office politician. They do well in their careers - as she does - but can cause a lot of unhappiness.  They also have an almost unerring instinct for the politics of any situation, for where the real power lies.

It is the Circuit Overseer visit this week, and he gave us the first of his talks last night - as our midweek meeting is moved to a Tuesday in the week of his visit.

The talk was entitled: Jehovah loves those who love his Son.   And think about it. Don't we love those who love our children?   

But how do we show Jehovah that we love his only-begotten son, Jesus, who is the first born of his creation?  Wouldn't it be by listening to him and obeying him?   And what was Jesus' final command while he was on the earth?

The Gospel of Matthew ends this way:  

"Jesus approached and spoke to them, saying: “All authority has been given me in heaven and on the earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of people of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit, teaching them to observe all the things I have commanded you. And look! I am with you all the days until the conclusion of the system of things.”"

The end of the current wicked system of things on the earth is imminent, but it has not come yet, so this command still stands.  Which is why we go house to house - or letterbox to letterbox at the moment - with the good news of the Kingdom of God.

An Elephant in the Room

On the first of October I turned over the calendar pages. Calendar 1 is Oz Underwater from Sheryl and Ian (in the dining room), and Calendar 2 is Captain's Butterfly's pictures of his Butterfly and Moth year (in the kitchen).  And his October pic is a splendid Elephant Hawk Moth (see above)  So as Col was flying the coffee machine in the kitchen Friday morning. I was able to say: "There's an elephant in the room!"

I spent some of Friday afternoon on the balcony, listening to the roaring of the sea in the soft Autumn sunshine.  And in the morning we watched a video sent round the cousins by cousin Phil.  There were my parents, my granny, my uncles, my aunts, a young me and my siblings, and many of the cousins.  One scene may have been set on the beach at Praa Sands. 

And it was great to see cousin Richard again.  He died so young.  I hope I will see him again though, when the time comes for the resurrection.

There was a fierce storm all day yesterday - the sea roared and thundered - wonderful - though not so wonderful for those, like the Captain and Jim who were out in it all day metal detecting.  Jim gave us a bag of apples and pears from his orchard and some fresh eggs from his flock of hens and ducks. And our neighbour from upstairs came down with a lovely yellow rose (pot plant) for me, and their keys, as we are going to keep an eye on their flat when they are away.

The news is still full of the Sarah Everard case.  Apparently at least 80 women have been killed by men since Sarah was kidnapped and murdered on her way home...  at least?!  Can that be right?     One of them was another young woman on her way home.  Sabina Nessa was a primary school teacher, brutally attacked and killed - targeted by a stranger while walking to a friend's house in London.  Two lovely young woman with so much to live for - the sort of people the world needs more of, not less of.

And two more devastated families.  Actually four more, as don't these killers devastate their own family too?

But what is especially frightening about Sarah's kidnap and murder is that it was done by a serving police officer.  He stopped her and accused her of breaking Covid rules - they are so byzantine that even someone who has to be as careful as me can't be sure they haven't stepped over them at some point.  He said he was arresting her, handcuffed her and put her in his car.

What chance did she stand? He is seen on CCTV showing her his warrant card.  And we know that to resist arrest is a crime.   It comes back to this: Who guards the guardians?  Who do you call for help if it is the police who are attacking you?

So what is the answer?   Is it more Feminism?  Well, the Metropolitan Police Chief is a woman - Dame Cressida Dick.  Our Home Secretary is a woman - Priti Patel (I don't think she is a dame yet, but I guess she will be in time).  Has it helped?

Doesn't it come back to this in the end, that when our first parents decided to unplug themselves from their Creator, their Source of life, and set their own standards of good and bad, they set in train the tragedy that we, their children, are still living in?

No system we can have is perfect.  There will be no perfect government until God's Kingdom, the heavenly one, is ruling over the earth.  And what we are trying and trying to tell you is that it will not be long.  We are all in "the valley of the decision". There is no fence to sit on here.