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.