The Balloon Moon

When we were sitting on the balcony on Monday night, I thought of the E E Cummings poem which begins:

who knows if the moon’s
a balloon, coming out of a keen city
in the sky–filled with pretty people?

A glimpse of pale moon appeared over the clouds, then it grew like Humpty Dumpty but was veiled in cloud until suddenly it wasn't. It appeared full, pale golden and rather worried looking to shine over the sea, so close to us. I thought again of the Indian landing on its South Pole.  The moonshot above is one Col took from our balcony on some other night, not last night. I don't want to confuse any future astronomers who might be looking at my blog.

Though will my blogposts survive Armageddon, which is imminent?  I can't think why, especially if they might confuse people.  And will we want any reminders of "the sadness that belonged to the world" (Janet Frame)?

The Inspired Scriptures assure us that "the former things will not be called to mind, neither will they come up into the heart." - Isaiah 65:17

Monday was a Zoom morning - talking to local friends and then the usual session with my siblings.  And in the afternoon I finally managed to get the script for my part in the Ministry School written up, and contacted my partner and arranged to go through it together on Thursday.

So I did at least have some achievements for the day.

Apparently tonight - Wednesday - there will be a blue moon.  The moon will be so close to the earth we will be able to wave to the latest rocket that has landed, the one from India.

The Umbrellas of Hamelin - the Book Itself

The copies of my book arrived on Friday afternoon!   I have added one of Col's photos of a parasol fungus. It seems vaguely appropriate. 

Wonderful to see the book at last, and check out the dedication and acknowledgements.  

I dedicated Umbrellas to my siblings and to our childhood friends.  Disraeli Crescent  (one of the short stories in the book) is the street of my childhood, fixed forever in the 1950/60s in my mind. The early years make such an impression, and last so much longer than the later years - especially the years of retirement, which hurtle past.

And it was my chance to acknowledge the Thursday Night Writers Group that Penny set up so many years ago.   We, its three members, are all now published writers.

I also mentioned Peter Hiley's book in progress, in a small postscript to the story Klook and Plukey, as it turns out we have both been busy writing about our schooldays.  The little story is about my schooldays plus the strange shallowness of the Dollybird world of the 1960s.  Pete is an old schoolfriend of Captain Butterfly - and in fact he is the reason Col and I met in the first place, as I shared a room at Uni with Pete's then girlfriend, later wife, Diane.  

Col says he has forgiven him though.   Wait a minute...!!

I would have loved to have shared this book with Diane, but sadly she died some years ago.   But I am so glad I am able to share it with Pete.  One of the Janets and the Mary Jane in my dedication are also no more.  Janet's last rescue cats live on though, happily bonded to Nute and the bungalow. I only wish she could know that. She was so anxious about them, when she knew she was dying.  

I hope they all sleep safe in "the everlasting arms", safe in Jehovah's memory, and have a wonderful awakening ahead of them when the time comes.

We had no idea back then how short life was, how quickly our threescore years and ten would rush by.  There were old people in the world, sure, but we were young people, of a different breed altogether.

Or so we thought.   And of course getting old in the way we do - which is to say getting old, withering and dying - is so hard to comprehend and to cope with because Genesis tells us that our first parents were made to live forever.  We were not designed to cope with this, and, as Ecclesiastes tells us, of Jehovah:

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has even put eternity in their hearts; yet mankind will never find out the work that the true God has made from start to finish." - Ecclesiastes 3:11

Our Creator has put eternity into our hearts.  We want to live, not die.

A Cycling Fish

In my lifetime I have seen the world swing from one extreme viewpoint to the other. For example, when I was young, the most important thing for a young girl was to "catch" her man, to have that engagement ring on her finger.  It didn't matter too much what the man was like - the ring was the thing.  I am not saying that everybody agreed or went along with it, but that was the ethos.  That was what was required. My only other alternative, as a Convent schoolgirl, was to be a nun.  While I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, I knew for sure I did not want to be a nun.  But I always felt I would love to find a wonderful man and marry him. ("And you certainly did that!" I seem to hear Captain Butterfly shouting from his field somewhere in the Badlands of Hampshire.)

Since then we have had the slogan "Women need a man like a fish needs a bicycle".  We are all strong, proud, independent women apparently, who kick bottoms right, left and centre, and do not need a man.  Or so we are told.   And told, and told, and told. Yet surely neither of these extremes is right?  We all need each other: women need men and men need women. It's just that everything is so disordered now, and the anger and accusations of the tragedy in Eden still hang over us.

Anyway, this meditation seems like a good opportunity to use one of Col's underwater photos to head the blog.  The problem is I am spoilt for choice for wonderful underwater photos, but can't find a single one of a fish riding its bicycle.  Believe it or not.

I am trying to work the Fish Riding Bike theme into my current short story, as it is a watery one, set on a canal.  Maybe one of my characters can be thinking about the various pressures on men and women to conform to whatever the current standard happens to be.  

Could my character be looking forward to what the Bible calls "the glorious freedom of the children of God" - the freedom that our first parents had, and so tragically lost, along with the perfect partnership that we, their damaged children, still long for?

I hope the lovely anemone fish above will suffice.  They are from the Maldives.  We saw, in a recent Attenborough documentary, how the little fish families work together and support each other, and rely on each other.  Isn't that exactly what we, the human family, should be doing? 

And Jehovah, our Creator, is already teaching millions of us - from "every tribe and nation and tongue" - how to do just that.

It is hot again and I have been out on the balcony doing my studying and trying to catch some Vitamin D for my poor old bones.  The Green is noisy during the summer holidays, with the playground very popular, and there is a lot going on at the beach.  Yet I quite enjoy it all, as I enjoy the silence of winter, and the roaring of the winter storms.

My new book has been on my mind. I am looking forward to actually seeing a copy - and am wondering about how to achieve some sales. I am not a natural publicist, to put it mildly.  And I am also a bit apprehensive.  How will the stories read?  I always aim to make people want to turn the page and find out what happens next. But have I achieved that?

We heard the news yesterday that India has landed a craft on the moon - the first to be landed on the South Pole of the moon!  That seems so amazing I don't understand why we haven't heard more about it.

THE UMBRELLAS OF HAMELIN

 

My new book THE UMBRELLAS OF HAMELIN is now available:

https://mybook.to/UmbrellasOfHamelin

Its official launch will be at M.A.B.L.E. (Fantastic Books massive Autumn book launch), which will feature, among many other things my brother and I on Zoom, talking about our writing. The little video is very short, and we do try to make it interesting, i.e. not to go on about our writing processes too much.

Details of the launch are here: 

https://www.fantasticbooksstore.com/m-a-b-l-e

The blurb for the book is this:  Get ready to embark on a journey through the best of storytelling with Sue Knight's short story anthology, The Umbrellas of Hamelin. From convent schooldays to the rainforests of South Island, New Zealand, to a future world with only one shopper left, these stories will give you chills of fear, then make you laugh aloud. Above all, they will keep you turning the pages.

While I would love to think that I have achieved "the best of storytelling" I fear that may be wishful thinking. But I do hope it will keep you turning the pages.  That is always my aim, as that is what I look for in a book - one that will take me into its world and keep me wanting to know what happens next.

And, accidentally, I find myself suddenly right on trend as Till They Dropped  (the short story that ends the collection, even though I wrote it first) tells the story of the last shopper left alive, in a world that has become a gigantic shopping mall, run by AI machines. 

The cover design is by the artist Bea Burchill (Aunt Bea).  She said if I wrote a short story she would illustrate it. I think she was trying to get me writing again.  So I wrote "The Umbrellas of Hamelin", and she illustrated it, beautifully. The publisher liked her illustration so much he has made it the cover!

I am now in the process of writing another short story, at Bea's urging, about a canal boat trip.  I need to get back to it. I know where it is going, but am at a bit of a loss how to get myself and my cast of characters there.

But whether I can write another collection I do not know...  it will be fun trying anyway.

The English ladies lost at footie to the Spanish ladies. But it was an exciting match (I only saw the last half hour having been at the meeting at the Kingdom Hall), so well done to both teams.  And the media has been full of the terrible story of the conviction of the nurse Lucy Letby for the killing of babies in her care.

It is hard to imagine a more brutal betrayal of trust.  I have been trying to blog about it, but what she has been convicted of doing is so awful that it is hard to find the right words.  I have one in draft, but I don't know if it will ever see blog daylight. 

An August Midnight - and the Turn of the Year

An August Midnight (1901)

by Thomas Hardy

I

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
On this scene enter—winged, horned, and spined—
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;
While 'mid my page there idly stands
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands...

II

Thus meet we five, in this still place,
At this point of time, at this point in space.
—My guests parade my new-penned ink,
Or bang at the lamp-glass, whirl and sink.
"God's humblest, they!" I muse. Yet why?
They know Earth-secrets that know not I.

https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/an-august-midnight

A dumbledore is either a bumblebee or a beetle. The longlegs must of course be a daddy longlegs. And why does Hardy feel they are in some way more privileged than him, that they know "earth-secrets" that he does not? Could it be because they never fell from perfection as we did? They have had to live in - and adapt to - a fallen world because of what our first parents did, and what we, their damaged children have done since, but none of it is their fault. So I guess they have a quality of innocence that we do not.

But the knowledge Hardy was seeking for was there in the Bible.  And I hope that the day will come during the Thousand Years when Jehovah will wake him from the dreamless sleep of death, and he will learn about his loving Creator.

Thomas Hardy loved and praised the beauty of the creation and certainly saw and lamented the sadness and cruelty of the current system of things on the earth. So it will be such a joyful awakening for him - on this lovely earth, with all the sadness, all the cruelty, gone for good.

The moth in the photo is a Box tree.

It seems we are also, finally beginning to understand and accept that insects too have feelings, emotions and fears.  They too are living in a tragedy.  Will the horrible treatment meted out to insects on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me out of Here now stop?  Please, please may it, Ant and Dec, should you be reading this blog.

Col is really enjoying the ladies footie, with the England team doing well. It seems the the Lionesses have made it through to the final, and will play Spain.  The match is to be Sunday, so I expect our lunch will be in front of the telly to roars of GET YOUR SPECS ON REF!!!!! plus HOWLS of triumph or rage.

I hope both sides do well and get lots of... er... runs, or whatever it is they may require.  I am hoping that if I shout ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY!!!! at the screen every so often that will show willing.

Thursday I had an appointment with the Audiologist at Boots  - a nice lady - who has cleaned my hearing aids, turned up the volume,  and suggested that I probably need my ears syringed. Indeed.  My arm is still very sore from the second shingles jab I had on Tuesday - I feel as I have flu. I reacted badly to the first one, but this one is worse.

Hopefully the medical bulletin ends here, with me reminding myself that, at my age, every day is a bonus for which I should be, and am, very grateful. And that I am also very grateful for the NHS - still functioning, but under severe stress.  Rather like me in a way. We are both old now.

I feel we have reached the turn of the year, or what marks it for me.  When I came out of the meeting at the Kingdom Hall last night, it was dark - the week before it wasn't.  The year turns again when the day arrives I don't have to put my headlights on to drive back from the mid-week meeting. IF I am still around, I must remember to note the day in my blog.

I have a Bible study to go to this afternoon, and must have a look at the material we will be going through: What is God's Purpose for us?  

Michael and the Dodo

Col is back from a weekend camping in deepest darkest Dorset - with the metal detectorists.  He seems to have had fun and has found rather an interesting silver ring which will be appearing on his blog at some stage - linked to this via The Captain's Log.  I am glad to have him back.

I am still trying to work out a review of Michael Blencowe's amazing "GONE, Stories of Extinction", one that doesn't simply involve my quoting the whole book in a series of blogs.  Just for a start, there are copyright laws...

It is so well written, making a subject that could be unbearably heartbreaking both fascinating and educational, and somehow, in spite of everything, positive.  Positive even though the author cannot see any hope, any human solutions to the crisis engulfing both the animal creation and us.

And in that I can only agree with him.  We are in such a mess and its getting worse.  But I am certain that Jehovah will, as he has promised, "bring to ruin those ruining the earth".  Have any of God's promises ever failed? They never have and they never will. Isn't that the very meaning of his name?

Anyway, here is another quote, from the chapter on the Dodo:

"A few weeks earlier I had sat watching a dodo dancing awkwardly in Brighton city centre. Some poor soul, dressed in a furry, orange dodo costume, was handing out flyers promoting a new local takeaway, part of the global Dodo Pizza franchise. The dodo resurrected again, an absurd creature, a bird too stupid to survive, complicit in its own extinction. By caricaturing the dodo we have distanced ourselves from the crime we committed. The dodo was a bird, a wonderful bird that lived in an island in the middle of the ocean. And we killed it."

So, by promoting the theory of Evolution - and it is just a theory  - has the world worked to distance us not only from our Creator and what he is so urgently telling us,  but also from what we have done to the animal creation that He entrusted to our care?  

Why have we been so destructive? What is the force propelling us, the force that seems set on destroying every beautiful animal along with the whole planet?

I know of no better explanation than the Biblical one, nor any other explanation that gives hope, real hope.  

And I must keep thinking about this review, as I want to have it ready to publish after M.A.B.L.E. - my publisher's online book launch this Autumn. Its just possibly I may pick up a few more blogreaders during the sessions, as the publisher is going to feature our blogs. You can find the details here:

https://www.fantasticbooksstore.com/m-a-b-l-eri

I am trying to define why it is that I find GONE positive in spite of the story it has to tell.

And I would have posted a photo of the Dodo above, had we not extincted the poor creature many moons ago.

When paradise is restored, here on the earth, under the loving reign of the Kingdom of God, will we get the Dodo back?  How I hope so.  So IF I am there and IF I am blogging then, I could have a dodo photo heading my blog. I could even have one of the lovely creatures sitting beside me as I write this under a shady tree, or in whatever habitat the Dodo prefers.

It would be like being in Wonderland - only infinitely better, as the Dodo and I would be in the paradise earth, enjoying "exquisite delight in the abundance of peace".

A Strange Cloud, and farewell to The Harvester

We were just driving off to Rustington about 10 on Thursday morning (to do our fruit and veg shop) when I happened to look back. "That's a strange looking cloud", I said to Col, who at the time wasn't interested. I never connected it with the two emergency vehicles I had heard screaming along earlier. But on the way back we saw a great plume of smoke rising up alarmingly close to home.  I had seen the first plume like an odd grey storm cloud in an otherwise clear sky, then driving back we saw what it was! Something was on fire - something big.

For a moment  (spoiler alert) I felt a bit like the nameless wife in Rebecca, during the early morning drive back to Manderley that ends the book - the one where they see the red glow on the horizon, although it is not quite time for sunrise.

That is one of the great fiction moments.

It was not our flats.  The massive Harvester pub was on fire - ablaze in fact.  Nobody, thank God, was hurt.  We were told to keep our windows shut, but the smoke was not blowing our way, so I was able to sit out on the balcony with my studying.

The Maui wildfires in Hawaii were raging at the same time - devastating the city and killing at least 67, but that total will almost certainly rise.  How do you deal with fire on that scale?  We - the damaged children of disobedient Adam - are living in such a tragedy.  We need the King, the ruler, who can control the natural elements, who can prevent all these tragedies.  We need him urgently. Which is why we pray for God's Kingdom to come and for God's will to be done here on the earth. 

The photo is of an appropriately fiery sunrise.

I have been talking to Linda, via email, and she says she may be able to pop over and see us when she has a day off. It would be great to catch up. We go back a long way and have not seen each other for ages.  We were together on Planet Expat many years ago.

Lifeguards

We chose another of Col's beach shots for our August calendar - see above.  Our beach is probably as safe as a beach can be, being so shallow. If you want to swim when the tide is out you pretty much have to wade halfway to France.

And there is another difference between childhood and second childhood. No more swimming or paddling in the sea, alas.  As I have Knew Knees, I cannot get myself up if I fall and therefore I could drown in just a few inches of water.

Nevertheless, the sea is always dangerous even for the young and fit, and we do have the river mouth, with fearsome currents as the tides come and go.  I love to watch it from the little pier.  And so we need, and have, lifeguards.  Surely a truly worthwhile job - for the young.

Monday was sunny, Tuesday was grey and overcast. They say that the big heat is coming back, which I know is what most people would want, so I am trying not to selfishly wish it away. On Tuesday I made a rhubarb crumble.  I turned out well - though I only risked a spoonful (diabetes).  It is nearly on the same level as The Fat Cat crumble, which is my standard of crumble greatness, being even better than my mother's.

And now, on Wednesday, my Zoom session day, it is starting out sunny. Col is on the balcony - on a stepladder (at his age!) - photographing the moths on the wall.  We have had a couple of new moths recently - well, new to our balcony, that is.  And we have a lovely Brimstone today.

The one new to science has not turned up yet, for us to name it - so the "Singing Susan" (just to pluck a name out of the air) - remains undiscovered.  It will of course, be a stunningly beautiful moth.  Though actually they all are, all exquisitely made, all exquisitely designed by Jehovah, the Grand Creator. 

The world sadly is determined we should neither praise nor thank Him for it, and it is promoting the theory of Evolution as hard as it can. Yet the truth of Genesis will remain, when all theories are long gone. 

 Listen! Someone is saying: “Call out!”

Another asks: “What should I call out?”

“All flesh is green grass.

All their loyal love is like the blossom of the field.

       The green grass dries up,

The blossom withers,

Because the breath of Jehovah blows upon it.

Surely the people are but green grass.

The green grass dries up,

The blossom withers,

But the word of our God endures forever.”

-

- Isaiah 40:6-8

 The word of our God endures forever.

The Singing Sands

I finished Josephine Tey's The Singing Sands yesterday. So above is a picture of our own sands, which don't sing. and I guess if they did they would be drowned out by "the grating roar" (to quote Matthew Arnold) of the sea at high tide.

Reading it has given me a strange feeling. I am sure I read it when I was young, in my teens, but remember nothing about it beyond the little rhyme that sets the mystery:

The beasts that talk
The streams that stand
The stones that walk
The singing sand...

There are two missing lines, and the poem ends That guard the way to Paradise.

So once again I see a lament for the Garden of Eden.  But I think it gave me a strange feeling as reading it was like being transported back to my youth. It is so much of its time.  

Anyway, I want to quote from the book, as it is this mysterious poem about the way to paradise, found scribbled on a newspaper by a man who - apparently - has died in an accident, that sets our sleuth on the trail, which takes him to Scotland, with its mythical paradise Tir nan Og. And the author, who was Scottish, has this to say about the paradise of the Gaels:

Looking out for Tir nan Og. Which as Mr. Grant might know, was the Gaelic heaven.  The land of the eternally young. It was interesting, wasn't it how each people evolved their own idea of Heaven?  One as a feast of lovely women, one of forgetfulness, one as continuous music and no work, one a good hunting grounds. The Gaels, Mr. Tallisker thought had the loveliest idea. The land of youth.

Two things strike me there.  Firstly that people confuse heaven and paradise, which it is important to know are, according to the Bible, two different places.  Our first parents lived in paradise, in the Garden of Eden, and the wonderful prospect put before them was turning the whole earth into a paradise and living forever upon it.

Heaven is where God and the angels are, and of course, those who are the saints - the holy ones. The hope for most of us is to live forever in paradise, right here on the earth.

But I love the idea of "the land of youth".  Yes, that  would be paradise, as we were never meant to get sick and wither away and die, as we do now.

That would have meant nothing to me the first time I read it - not only was I very young, but I had no idea about where or what paradise was back then.  So that was a whole new aspect of it.

And also I saw a very different way it could have ended.  So could I work that ending into a book of my own?  

My energy has gone out like the tide, only with no prospect of its coming back in this side of Armageddon.  And whether I will be there the other side remains to be seen.  As Jesus himself said:  But the one who has endured to the end will be saved.

And after Armageddon, in the paradise earth, if we do write fiction, we will have new stories, ones we cannot even imagine now.  At the moment it seems our only plot is the one we are living in: Things have gone wrong, they need to be put right.

IF I do manage to write it, I wonder if  I could call it The Singing Susan? If I did though, the Captain would probably point out that the Singing would have to be in inverted commas.

Mine is the kind of singing best drowned out by a loud and pebbly tide. 

Childhood and Second Childhood

Having spent a week with the little girls, it got me thinking about my own childhood - from the vantage point of my second childhood. Here we are in our serried convent school ranks. I am at the end of the middle row, left side. Of the two little girls next to me, one grew up to be stunningly, model-style, beautiful, but is, alas, like so many of my contemporaries, no longer here. The other is now a grandma and a New Zealander.

It is a vanished world.  But how quickly our lives go by. What was it Thomas Hardy wrote:  A dolt is he who memorises, lessons that leave no time for prizes.

And yes, it took me nearly forty before I began to understand why we are here and what is happening, and I am still learning.  So just as I began to know what I want to be when I grow up (the question "grown ups" always asked) I found I was drawing my old age pension and no longer even able to hop on a bus. Or to hop, full stop.

But now I hope to go on learning forever. learning Jehovah's way of course, which is a pleasure. And always something to be looked forward to.  I add that because surely I cannot be the only person who spent a fair amount of their childhood in dread of school?

This second childhood is weird. But then was it ever meant to happen to us this way, with this painful, bewildering decline?  The first chapters of Genesis tells us that we were originally made to last forever, not just for the few decades we do now.

August has got off to a rainy and stormy start.  Wednesday was, as ever, my Zoom day - one friend in the morning, one in the afternoon - 2 zoom sessions each time.  And poor Col had a dental check up, then shopped afterwards.  He came back with cooking apples, which means he would like a crumble.

Wednesday night was his Detectorist Meeting. The FLO was there - Finds Liaison Officer to us civilians.  I usually get to see her once or twice a year when she comes to the local museum and I am deputised to take the club finds up to her - the ones that are reportable.

It is a regulated process, with finds being logged, and so a picture of history is continually being built up.

Today I have a couple of cooking jobs on hand - making a carrot cake and an apple crumble.  Plus finishing my studying for the meeting tonight. And such is my feeble state that will completely wipe me out I fear.

A big difference of course between first and second childhood is that in the first you are bursting with energy, and the adults around you tend to wish you had rather less. Then, when you grow up and really need that energy, where is it?  Gone, gone with the wind... oh and talking of digestive matters... but, no, I won't.

That surely comes under the heading: Too much information.