Rescuing Bruce

I watched a bit of The Secret Life of the Zoo on Sunday afternoon, and was very impressed by the way the keeper rescued Bruce the Praying Mantis from his dangerous lady with a pair of tweezers. They had been - well - courting for about 24 hours non-stop, and now that it was over he was perched on her back, about to try to make his risky exit. That is when she would usually turn around and eat him.

As they said, he had given his all.  I'll say he had!  And the "all" would have included his life if it had not been for those tweezers.

The photo is of an Australian Mantis on Col's thumb. It must be a lad I think, as it is small - and Col remains uneaten.

My short story about a trip on a canal boat is sort of finished and sort of not. Its structure is all there, as is its beginning and its ending, but it still needs quite a bit of writing.  It is the sort of story where nothing happens, so I have to make nothing something. If you see what I mean.

I had been thinking of attempting something scary on the lines of Elizabeth Jane Howard's masterly Three Miles Up.  But Bea said she would like something more light-hearted.

So there was my challenge.

The Captain and I had a walk on Friday afternoon - to the Doctor's, to deliver my BP results, and buy some paracetamol - a kind of classic Walk for the Elderly I guess.  And we walked back through Lobbs Wood. Don't let me stray off the path!" I said, clinging to Col's arm as we walked the 10 paces to the next pavement.  I think I may have watched too many of those videos about disappearances in National Parks in America - I know what happens if you stray off the track. 

Saturday was sunny - and the Captain came home bearing treasure.  A gold ring - not especially old, but definitely gold - hallmarked. 

The month of August is racing towards us at the speed of light, and soon I will be able to feel Autumn (my favourite season) in the air.  It must have been the wettest July on record here, but given the horror of the fires in Southern Europe, I am not complaining.  

And we woke up this morning to wind and rain and waves on the Channel. It is wonderfully stormy. The valiant dogwalkers are out on the Green, as I type.

An Art-Deco Propelling Pencil

On Monday morning this amazing fellow, or indeed lady - or I must hastily add, of whatever pronoun it currently prefers - was in the funnel of the moth hotel.  I couldn't see any details, but through Col's camera  I saw the exquisite detail - the artistry. He/she/it/they reminded me of one of those art-deco propelling pencils that usually sell well on Bargain Hunt.  Its actually called a Yarrow Conch, and it is so tiny.

Which does go to show that, as Solomon said, there is, truly, "nothing new under the sun".    Our inspirations our inventions come from and are inspired by the creation around us.  And it seems endlessly inspiring. I know that after more than seventy years here, I do not want to leave this lovely planet.

And there will be new things right here on the earth... things we cannot yet even dream of I guess. And how will they inspire us?

I hope we will all be there, in the restored earthly paradise to find out.   I know I do keep talking about this, but what is more important?  And I am very conscious that my time to tell people about it personally is running out.  There can only be a few grains left in the hourglass now.

Anyway, the little girls had a fun day on Tuesday - the sea in the morning, the funfair in the afternoon, and a stop off with their great aunt and uncle, during which we played a couple of rounds of consequences.  Wednesday was sunny and they had a morning of Clock Golf on the sea front, with their valiant granny and great-uncle joining them. I am pacing myself as my left foot and ankle are still very swollen and I do not want to push myself into a severe flare-up.  But we, Col, Nute and me did go to beautiful Highdown Gardens in the afternoon and had a short walk. There were butterflies galore and Col got a photo of a Hummingbird Hawkmoth. The flowers were wonderful and the air was full of scent. 

And they treated us to an evening meal at the Arun View on Wednesday night - a rare treat for us. I had forgotten how glamorous the evening staff are there - and so patient and friendly with the children (and with those of us going through our second childhood).

It rainstormed through evening and night and was still stormy on Thursday morning - which did not stop Captain B from leaving at the crack of dawn with a metal detector at every corner.  We played a lot of games of consequences with the girls, and we had lunch together, and later a fish and chip supper with Captain B joining us.

I think the little ones have had a great week - that was the aim of the exercise.   

The Door in the Wall

The above moth is a Brown Tail, which seems an odd choice of name, given it has a wonderful white fur ruff, rather than a brown tail.  We have had quite a few of them on the balcony so far.

The little girls (plus parents) arrived on Saturday afternoon, an afternoon of wind and rain and a storm on the Channel. They were so disappointed and stood at our window looking longingly at the beach.

The littlest one quickly recovered and colonised Captain Butterfly for an hour or so of computer games while we chatted over tea and cakes.

We woke up Sunday to more rain - and more news of people in such trouble on Rhodes, fleeing from wildfires in scorching heat.  We do need a government that can even this out - not too much rain, just enough; not too much heat, just enough. So that government can only be the heavenly one, the Kingdom of God.

I am re-reading H.G.Well's short stories, and had forgotten about The Door in the Wall.  Only surely that expresses a longing for our lost paradise, Eden? And yet H.G.Wells was not a believer at all.  I think it would be fair to say that he was basically atheistic.

But he did come to realise how short our lives are, and to lament it.  I have published this quote in my blog before, but it seems well worth repeating:

When he (Wells) was seventy years old, Literary London gathered together to celebrate, and he made a speech in which after thanking everyone for coming, he said:  "Yet all the time I will confess that the mellow brightness of this occasion is not without a shadow. I hate being seventy.... Tonight I am very much in the position of a little boy at a lovely party, who has been given quite a lot of jolly toys and who has spread his play about the floor.  Then comes his nurse, "Now Master Bertie," she says, "it's getting late. Time you began to put away your toys."  I don't in the least want to put away my toys..."

From Michael Coren's biography of H.G.Wells: "The Invisible Man  The Life and Liberties of H.G.Wells". 

I am - well - over seventy - well over seventy in fact, and find life more and more interesting every day that passes, as Wells clearly did. Isn't that just what we would and should be feeling if, as Genesis tells us, we were originally made to live forever on this wonderful planet?

My foot is still painful - whinge whinge - and I don't feel right. But how right can we expect to feel in our late seventies, damaged children of Adam that we are?  I don't know, as I have never been here before. 

Anyway, my heart sank to find Sunday morning grey and rainy too. Not on my behalf, as its the sort of weather I love - I can safely admit this here as my blog has a very small readership.  I realise that most people want sunshine all day and every day.

But it was very much not the sort of weather the girls and their parents wanted on their sea-side holiday. However - by breakfast time it was sunny and much calmer and remained so. What a relief.  As I am writing this blog, early on Monday morning, I am looking out on a cloudy sky. But the sea is still, and it  could well clear up and turn into a sunny seaside day.

Nute arrived Monday afternoon and we had a fish and chip supper together - little girls included.  Plus a fresh fruit salad and ice-cream. It is the first time we have entertained since lockdown I think, at least on that scale.

And I have my dining table back!  Col cleared it and polished it, which was a good thing as there were seven of us.

Answer July!

Suddenly the moths of July are all over the balcony.  And, as I seem to be having an Emily Dickinson moment, here is another poem from her, an observer and praiser of the creation.

ANSWER JULY 

Emily Dickinson

1830 –

1886

Answer July—
Where is the Bee—
Where is the Blush—
Where is the Hay?

Ah, said July—
Where is the Seed—
Where is the Bud—
Where is the May—
Answer Thee—Me—

Nay—said the May—
Show me the Snow—
Show me the Bells—
Show me the Jay!

Quibbled the Jay—
Where be the Maize—
Where be the Haze—
Where be the Bur?
Here—said the Year—

https://poets.org/poem/answer-july

Had Emily asked July  "Where be the moth", it could have pointed her to our balcony.  The photo above, taken of course by Captain Butterfly, is of one of our recent visitors - a Rosy Footman.  Our July has had storms, and a frightening heatwave in Southern Europe.  It has been cooler here, for which I am grateful.  

The family visitors should start arriving today, all being well.  The little girls love being by sea and playground, as I did when I was young. Well, there was no playground in the wild Cornwall of the 1950s, nor was one needed. The large and empty sandy  beach with its fascinating rockpools was enough.  

It was a dangerous sea though - very dangerous.  So our parents must have had to keep a very close eye on us.  Which of course you have to do with any small child near any kind of water anyway.

Didn't sleep at all well Wednesday night, and woke up Thursday morning with a very painful foot. So its back on the paracetamol. It is being a bit of a medical week again as I am composing letters to my GP about my eyes and to Dermatology asking for more meds if they can't give me any more appointments and running them past Captain B, who usually does some editing - and improves them, which is quite annoying given that I am the English Grad. He is Science - Zoology.

The meeting on Thursday night was so good, so comforting, so upbuilding.  How do people cope without this teaching?  The sad answer is that more and more are simply not coping - and no wonder.

The Father of the Lie and the Daughter of Time

The Djokovic/Alcaraz Wimbledon final on Sunday was brilliant - one of the best  ever I would think. The old contender - known as The Greatest in the World - and the young contender, just twenty.

In the end the young Carlos Alcaraz won, but it went to the full five sets, including one tie-break, and it was not clear up to the last game who was going to win it, it was so close.  Well done both of them.

I had paced my Zoom Convention attendance so that I would be free to watch it with Col. And my timing was almost perfect as he got back from the Field (metal detecting business) five minutes before the Final started, and just as we were singing the last song.

What would be an appropriate pic for this blog - something that I can find in the Captain's Gallery?  There are so many moths with so many strange and wonderful names that I feel there ought to be a genre called The Novak, or The Carlos, or The TieBreak somewhere... must go and have a look.

After a search, I came up with the above - not a moth at all, but my young mother-in-law Eileen playing table tennis.  That is as close as I can get. 

I hope the Captain and I will see our parents again when the time comes for the resurrection.

The Zoom Convention has been very cheering and comforting, which I do need, as the news is so distressing, the weather is so strange, and the lack of medication is causing me some problems - left leg very swollen and painful, and the skin condition is a torment.

Anyway, after that health bulletin, here is something which I hope will be more interesting - a quote, from Peter Hitchens, in his online column. I saved it thinking I might be able to share it in a blogpost.

"If you have enough power, you can make people believe things which are not true. And your lies may last for centuries, or even forever.

Yet it need not be so. One dark winter’s afternoon, long ago, in the age of steam trains and suet puddings, one of my prep-school teachers (I think it must have been the fearsome Mr Witherington, withering by nature as well as by name) pressed into my hand a small green book which would turn my whole world upside down.

‘Read this,’ he said. ‘It will teach you to understand history as it really is.’

The book is called The Daughter Of Time by Josephine Tey, herself a rather mysterious woman about whom we know astonishingly little.

The title is a reference to Sir Francis Bacon’s remark that ‘Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority’, which should be better known."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11966835/PETER-HITCHENS-reveals-detective-novel-taught-NEVER-believe-says.htm

Its nice to find a Josephine Tey fan, as sadly I don't think she is read much nowadays.  Yet she is a great storyteller.  I thoroughly recommend her books to get you absorbed in the world she creates.

But it is so interesting what Peter Hitchens says about the power of the lie.  And that quote.  Isn't it so true that as time goes by what we have been told by authority - by the earthly powers - sometimes turns out not to have been the truth at all?   Because who holds the reins of power on the earth at the moment?  Isn't it Satan the devil, the one who Jesus himself called "the father of the lie".

And it is the Bible that has warned us about that from the beginning.  And hasn't "the world" - the world system controlled by Satan - tried to destroy our faith in the Bible?

My recent reading of the last of Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel reminded me of how cruelly both Church and State treated those who tried to tell people what the Bible actually says.

And once you know what it does say, the message itself impels you to tell others.  For one thing, it promises a time when the earth will no longer be ruled by Satan, but by the loving Kingdom of God.  And Jehovah, the Creator, is the God of truth.

Exercise Patience. (and Planetdust)

Friday it rained for most of the day - a steady sort of downpour which we need. But apparently Spain and much of the continent are suffering from a fierce heatwave.  By Friday evening it was blowing up quite a storm here.

The storm continued on Saturday. Wonderful. I was out on the balcony, in between sessions of the Exercise Patience Convention.  There was an interesting Symposium "What Creation Can Teach us About Jehovah's Timing" that I hope Captain B might want to watch with me. It covers Sea Creatures, Birds and Insects among other things, all of which he is quite passionate about.

I was watching the gulls - wonderfully designed flyers - battle the storm, sometimes just resting on a cushion of wind, sometimes being blown backwards, or upwards. You get a bird's eye view from our balcony. 

One of the talks from the Saturday morning session of the Convention was: Why Beware of Instant Gratification.  I was especially interested in that as I had happened to see part of a documentary about Woodstock during the night - I guess I must have been up taking my painkillers. (the lack of medication is beginning to kick in).  And it was fascinating.  That was in 1969 I believe just before the whole Peace/Hippie thing began to go all Charles Manson.

Woodstock did seem a peaceful sort of Assembly though the size of the crowd was terrifying. And as for loos... I do not want to think about it.  Nobody had realised how many would turn up, but the local people rallied round and somehow people were fed and watered and cared for - even though the whole Festival turned into a sea of mud. But the ever present factor was drugs, and people spoke about the instant gratification they can give, how they make everything seem brighter and better and calmer - for the moment.

But... there is no free lunch - grateful as I am for my prescribed painkillers.  And the whole Charles Manson thing and the drug problems of today were waiting in the wings.  We have such a longing for paradise though, for joy and peace.  

In her song "Woodstock" Joni Mitchell sang  We are stardust, we are golden. And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

For all the powerful efforts "the world" has made to make us think that the first chapters of Genesis are just a "creation myth", I don't believe we have ever forgotten, or stopped longing for that beautiful garden we lost, the Garden of Eden, Paradise.

But can we get ourselves back there?  Can we turn the whole earth into a paradise of peace?  We have certainly made some beautiful gardens - see Col's photo of the garden at Nymans above.  Jehovah has let 6,000 years go by during which that question has been answered.  Not only do we not have peace on earth, but aren't we on the verge of bringing the whole planet to ruin?

We cannot rule ourselves. We need our Creator, Jehovah.  Only the ransom sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the loving rule of the Kingdom of God can restore that link so fatally broken in Eden, and turn the whole earth into the beautiful, perfect and peaceful garden it always should have been.  Then, and only then, will we have exquisite delight in the abundance of peace. (Psalm 37)

And to return to the Joni Mitchell lyrics for the moment, yes, we are stardust. We are made from stardust - well from the dust of a planet at any rate.  As Genesis has always told us: And Jehovah God went on to form the man out of dust from the ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life,and the man became a living person.

We are made from the dust of ground - the dust of the earth.  I have a feeling that stars and planets are slightly different things, and the earth is a planet, revolving round the sun, which is a star.  I guess I ought to Google it.

Stardust does sound prettier than planetdust though.

Flower Carpets

A new moth appeared on our balcony. It was a Blue-bordered Carpet.  It is, of course, very pretty. And I guess it is of the carpet variety, though that does NOT mean it will eat your carpets!  It refers to its carpet pattern.  A cherry picker also appeared at balcony height, holding two guys who are trying to pick up on all the bits the Maintenance Crew left undone. Snagging. Very noisy, but it has to be done.

We went to the lovely Chalk Gardens at Highdown on Monday - see the blog photos. It was only a short walk as it started to rain, but I can only do short walks anyway. It is a wonderful maze of a place and bursting with butterflies and blossom. We saw Red Admirals galore, various Whites, a Painted Lady, and a Comma perched on a bench.

Today should be two Zoom witnessing sessions, plus a doctors visit for Himself - to get the results of the blood test. Why they can't do this over the phone, I don't know. Unless  - gulp - there is some bad news to break...  hopefully that is not the case here.

Which leads me to tell, or possibly re-tell?, a medical anecdote from my past. In my expat years, I was at the Company hospital to get the results of a recent test, not blood.  The doctor greeted me, turned to his computer, looked intently at the screen, looked very worried at what he saw there, and called the nurse in.

My heart skipped a beat, thinking he had some bad bad news to tell me and needed the nurse for support.  However, it turned out he couldn't work the new computer system the whole company was struggling with at the time, and needed the nurse to help him find my test results.

When found, they were fine. Thank God.

The Speaker at the Sunday meeting started off with an interesting illustration, that of how you tell the real coin/banknote from the counterfeit.  He pointed out that rather than trying to study all the various forgeries, you should make a close study of the real thing.

And this was in the light of Jesus'powerful warning at Matthew 7:21-23:

“Not everyone saying to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of the heavens, but only the one doing the will of my Father who is in the heavens will. Many will say to me in that day: ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and expel demons in your name, and perform many powerful works in your name?’And then I will declare to them: ‘I never knew you! Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness!’"

This is why it is of vital (literally) importance to study the Bible - to find out what it actually says. 

This warning seems especially powerful as I have just finished Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light, the third and final part of her Wolf Hall trilogy.  The horror - the cruelty, including the random casual cruelty to the animal creation, is shocking. I don't know how she coped with the research. And the people carrying out those horrors claimed to be followers of Christ. The countries carrying out those horrors claimed to be Christian.

And some died in such torment because they were simply trying to teach people what the Bible actually says.  

We offer a free home Bible study, or online on JW.org, so you can find out, if you want to.  Having just read the Mantel book makes me realise what a privilege it is to be able to do this.  

FIFTY YEARS

Col and I celebrated our Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary on Friday. It began in - I guess appropriately - a crumbly way.  Col had a blood test, and I spent the first hour of the morning chasing up my elusive and still missing arthritis medicine.  But we went to The Arun View for lunch and treated ourselves from the fish menu - sea bass for him, a whole plaice for me - along with drinks and a coffee afterwards.  Plus I walked all the way there and back. Which would have been nothing a few years ago, but now felt like climbing Everest.

It was a beautiful sunny day - as I hope you can see from the photos Col took - and very very hot.

But, from the vantage point of Saturday morning, the walk was a bridge too far, even though we had plenty of stops on the way, as I was in quite a lot of pain and barely able to hobble about. However, at least it reassured me that I am not being a wimp when I can only last 30 mins on the door to door work.  Any more, and I cripple myself.

Col had to spend ages on the phone on Saturday morning trying to find out why the current credit card statement makes no sense,  and I had to ring and leave messages with Hospital and Supplier to point out that in spite of all the promises and interminable phone calls, I still have neither my medication, nor a delivery date for it.

The Suppliers say the hospital has told them they cannot send the prescription until I have a blood test that was requested on the 22nd.  I keep telling them that I had the blood test on the 19th and the hospital appointment on the 22nd which confirmed that the test was OK and I could continue with the medicine.

I can only suppose that I have been confused with another patient, or else someone has ticked the wrong box on a form somewhere. But it is hard for me to sort it out.

Things are falling apart.  Jehovah has allowed 6,000 years to pass since the loss of Eden, while we, the human family, tried to do things our way.  Surely that is time enough for us to realise the truth of the warning in the Hebrew Scriptures that "it does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step". (Jeremiah 10:23)

We had a violent thunderstorm on Saturday afternoon, which provided some much needed rain.  There were flood warnings in some parts of the country.  Which is another thing - we need a government that can perfectly control the immense forces of the weather. And that can only be the heavenly one.

The Roaring of the Sea

Our Calendar photo for July is of our beach in a storm.  Oddly appropriate as I was out on the balcony at the weekend in a warm windstorm, listening to the roar of the waves on the pebbles.  We had rain on Tuesday, which we do need. And it has really cooled down. Which is fine by me.

Though they have had rain at Wimbledon which they could have done without.

I have been reading Michael Blencowe's book, chapter by chapter.  It is compelling, and entertaining - very entertaining, this being Michael - but the story he has to tell is heartbreaking.

And it is so well written it is almost impossible to choose a quote...  what I would need to do is to type out the whole book, in blog after blog,  but apart from copyright issues, what I want is for everyone to buy, read and recommend it.

Things seem to be heading back, slightly, to pre-lockdown levels, in that my job this week was to make a salad and a dessert for the Detectorists' summer BBQ on Wednesday.  After some thought, I made an apple crumble, with custard - and a three-bean salad.  

A lot of today has been taken up chasing up the elusive medication - hospital says its up to the Supplier, supplier says it is up the Hospital.  So far, I have got nowhere.  And I feel rather like a tennis ball at Wimbledon must do, as it is batted backwards and forwards over the net.  Col is saying the next thing is to go down to the Hospital tomorrow and try to find someone to speak to about it... which is such a depressing thought.  And probably impossible anyway.

On a much more cheerful and positive note, I found the Exercise Patience Convention on Youtube - an American sibling has posted it there - and I spent this morning at the Friday morning session.  Patience is part of the fruitage of God's spirit and it is something we all need very much.  

And, as one of the speakers reminded us, we all have very good cause to be grateful for Jehovah's patience.  

The One that Got Away

"There is a Magpie Moth on the balcony." Captain B greeted me when I got up on Saturday morning. I tottered out but could not see it, I thought because my eyes were blurry from the drops.  But no. It had flown off.

But not before Col had photographed it  - though the photo above is from a previous year.

There is a great cartoon in my current Spectator.  A kid is talking to his schoolteacher, giving him the Classic Excuse, updated: :  "The boy who self-identifies as a dog ate my homework, sir."

For the first time in recorded history - as far as I am aware - it is considered wrong to say that there is a difference between men and women, or a difference between boy and dog, or indeed between girl and cat - if, that is, it is true that some schoolchildren are self-identifying as dogs and cats and being allowed to get away with it.

In fairness, I have to say that the nuns of my 1950s childhood convent school would never have let us get away with that.

Are there even weirder things to come as the current wicked system of things on the earth comes to an end?

After a  lot of prayer, I did get out on the field service on Saturday morning, but it was a very stressful drive, going across the roundabout of terror. The traffic was really heavy.  I do wonder for how much longer I will be driving.

We are delivering invitations to the Exercise Patience Convention of Jehovah's Witnesses, which will be this month for us.  And I feel glad for having done it.  The afternoon was taken up with making a veggie chili, and sandwiches for the Captain's Sunday lunch. He was marshalling, not detecting. It was a fund raiser for SUSSAR. 

We have taken to sitting out on the  balcony every evening now watching the sea, and the children playing on the Green.  The little playground is such a magnet for them. Though we were both remembering that when we were tinies, the beach itself was the playground.  

A thought I took from the meeting yesterday:  

"Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth.   Others and not your own lips." - Proverbs 27:2

Going back to my youth again, this advice did prevail. It was considered wrong and conceited to "blow your own trumpet".  But I notice that now we are encouraged to be proud of ourselves - in fact we are encouraged to say how proud we are of ourselves on every possible occasion.

Yet whatever good qualities we have come from our Creator, who made our first parents perfect. So perfect that even now after 6,000 years in freefall from that perfect state, we all have some good qualities, and some amazing potential.  So let us be proud of the work of Jehovah, our Grand Creator, but be as modest as we can about ourselves. 

It is looking depressingly as if this week too is going to be taken up with medical matters.  My special med, in the painful injection pens, has run out and I am having trouble getting the next delivery. The problem seems to be with Rheumatology at the Hospital, according to the Suppliers.  So we have spent quite a bit of the morning holding in phone queues, and I have left a message, as requested, and am hoping they will call me back.  The NHS seems on the verge of toppling from overload.  We will really miss it if it does go. It was a noble idea, free health care for all, at the point of need.

But in the end it all comes back to the warning in Jeremiah that "it does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step".

The heavenly government, the Kingdom of God, will do what no human government can do, as it will restore all its subjects to perfect health - something that none of us damaged children of Adam has yet known.