The Balcony and The Shark

The photo above top is our balcony, soon to disappear behind scaffolding as the next section of Maintenance gets under way.  When it will re-emerge, who knows?

Captain Moth-Butterfly rang me from The Field on Thursday morning to say that the ground was rock hard (not surprisingly as the heat wave continues), and that he would likely be home earlier than usual. We are having some splendid sunsets - see his photo of same.

Thursday I had a part as householder in the School - a 5 minute part, without script. I had to rely on the sister who was my partner to guide me through it and give me all my prompts.

It seemed to go very smoothly - and I think I can take a lesson from the way she organised it. The Scripture we were using was the beautiful guarantee that Jehovah gives us in Isaiah 55:11:

"So my word that goes out of my mouth will be.
 It will not return to me without results,
 But it will certainly accomplish whatever is my delight,
 And it will have sure success in what I send it to do."

Jehovah assures us that all he purposes will be fulfilled.  Isn't that the very meaning of His name?

Penny joined us for the talk, and it was lovely to see her - or her picture - on Zoom.

The competition in my current Spectator is particularly good this week, so I hope no-one there will mind if I reproduce two of the brilliant, and winning, entries.

The brief was: To summarise a film in limerick form.  And here are two of the winners:

The Austrian scenes are aesthetic,

Von Trap kids are cute but emetic,

   There's oodles and oodles

   Of schnitzels and strudels -

Don't watch it if you're diabetic.

(David Silverman/The Sound of Music)

The Mayor is a miserable toad;

The Cop has an honourable code,

   The Expert gets beaten.

   The Captain gets eaten,

The Shark? Well, it gets to explode.

(Paul Freeman/Jaws)

Yes, in both cases.  Jaws was a tragedy for the poor old shark.  And I was remembering seeing The Sound of Music with the girl I currently shared a flat with in the olden days (when I was at Uni).  Back then, if you were a girl, as we were - nowadays are any such distinctions allowed? - you had to say at the end which part made you cry.  Which we dutifully both did.   

I quite enjoyed it.  But in all honesty I don't think any of it made me cry.  I don't remember her actually crying either.  Which was not something you could admit at the time and stay within the realms of girlhood.

Anyway, under the loving reign of the Kingdom of God, there will be no more cause for tears - apart from tears of joy. And sharks will be safe from us, and we will be safe from them. We will share the planet in perfect harmony, as our Creator intended.