Swallowtail

Came back after the Thursday meeting to the news that the wreckage of the Titan has been found.  It seems it imploded at depth.  Awful though that is, at least the passengers were not trapped in it, for days,  waiting for the air to run out. It would have been so quick I guess they would hardly have had time to realise it was happening before it was over.  I hope so anyway.

And well done to all for finding the wreckage of a small craft in such a vast ocean and at such a great  depth.

There have been some very unkind and unnecessary comments about this, one apparently from a Guardian columnist.  In the face of the families grief and worry, is this the time, if there ever is a time, for unkindness?

Though, to be fair, isn't the columnist in question a communist/marxist?  And maybe kindness is considered to be "bourgeois", or makes you a "terf", or whatever the current wrong thing to be is.  

I hope the beauty and the complexity of the Swallow-tail moth, found on our balcony on Friday morning (and photographed by Captain B), will reassure all of us that we have a Grand Creator, One who loves his creation and who can remember and resurrect our dead loved ones.

In his poem, In Memoriam, mourning his lost friend, Arthur Hallam, Tennyson found great consolation in the creation.

The new and fashionable Theory of Evolution seemed to have made everything meaningless, but the beauty of the creation helped to bring him back.  And so he ended the poem on this note of hope:

Whereof the man, that with me trod
This planet, was a noble type
Appearing ere the times were ripe,
That friend of mine who lives in God,

That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.

https://www.online-literature.com/tennyson/718/

The divine event to which all the creation is moving is the restoration of paradise earthwide.

And I hope that Arthur Hallam is safe in God's memory, every hair of his head numbered, and that he will be awoken from the dreamless sleep of death when the time comes.  He will be very very touched when he reads In Memoriam I think

I woke up late on Thursday morning, unusually these days. As it says, in that poetic evocation of old age in Ecclesiastes, "one gets up at the sound of a bird".  I am old, and I am usually up and about at dawn, even if it takes me a while to be able to get showered and dressed.  So it was a bit of a scramble to get ready for my hospital appointment - six monthly routine Rheumatology - to see the nurse this time. She was a nice Filipino lady, who showed us photos of her beautiful and productive garden. She was worried about the possibility of a hosepipe ban.

She said my blood results were fine, for which I am very grateful.

I was thinking about Communism/Marxism on our drive to the hospital as we wended our way through traffic and waited in queues.  

"You see", I said to Captain B, who was chauffering me, "If England was a Marxist State, and you were Big Brother, Comrade Colin, there would be no traffic. The roads would be cleared for us so our motorcade could roar through unimpeded."

"Indeed", he enthused, "I, Comrade Colin, would have the road to myself. Excellent."

"Along with your wife, Comrade Susan." I added reproachfully.

But something about his profile made me wonder if he was considering another Comrade at his side, come the day - Comrade Rachel of Countdown. For sure, it would be the one occasion when she would not be able to risk turning down his proposal.

What a relief it is for both of us - Rachel and me - that he has no political ambitions whatsoever.