Balcony - the Return!

The balcony is all planted up now, with new Geraniums and Nemesia to go along with the old.  The Nemesia are not spectacular flower-wise, but fill the balcony with their lovely vanilla scent, while the Geraniums provide the blaze of colour. And both are hardy little plants that stand up to facing the English Channel in all its moods.

I just looked on Google to see if there are any poems about Nemesia.  There aren't, but there is a variety/mixture of it called Poetry, which is rather lovely.

So it looks like I will have to write the poem myself. Though Nemesia/although you are not freesia/it sure is good to see ya  does not really cut it.  Nor does Nemesia/you smell/extremely well.

How about geranium poems? They must have inspired poets down the ages. I went to have a look and found this odd, but appropriate and rather lovely one by Charles Bukowski called:

All That  

the only things I remember about
New York City
in the summer
are the fire escapes
and how the people go
out on the fire escapes
in the evening
when the sun is setting
on the other side
of the buildings
and some stretch out
and sleep there
while others sit quietly
where it’s cool.

and on many
of the window sills
sit pots of geraniums or
planters filled with red
geraniums
and the half-dressed people
rest there
on the fire escapes
and there are
red geraniums
everywhere.

this is really
something to see rather
than to talk about.

it’s like a great colorful
and surprising painting
not hanging anywhere
else.

https://wordsfortheyear.com/2016/08/02/all-that-by-charles-bukowski/

How strong Geraniums are - they stand up to all the English Channel can throw at them, and also to the rigours of an inner city New York summer.  But then their Grand Creator, Jehovah, is the very Source of power and energy.

I am trying to do some Not Home letters - I use pretty little cards and put a tract inside - to give to my siblings who go door to door with the good news of the Kingdom of God.  I am very housebound these days and I am back on the strong painkillers.  But I am still, thank God, managing the basics - the meals turn up on time, the basic housework is done, Captain B does all the vacuuming and window cleaning and balcony work. And I keep up with my studying. And without our meetings, which are all teaching us God's word, how to apply it, and how to teach it, I cannot imagine how I might be feeling now.

As it is, I feel full of hope and more and more appreciative of the gift of life.

The Chocolate Tip

This lovely moth turned up in the Moth Trap Hotel a couple of nights ago.  Its a Chocolate Tip - and an extraordinary creature.  I do wonder what its inner life is like, what its thoughts are - and if it will give our hotel a good review on Tripadvisor.

I have my 6 monthly trip to the dentist coming up this week, which is not something any of us look forward to. I just hope that it will consist of a painful clean, but nothing more. And we have both been asked to sign up for our next Covid jabs, which will be the week after next... will I survive yet another one?  Well, at my age, the question actually is will I survive till next week?

Every day is a bonus from now on. Such a bonus. The gift of life seems more wonderful by the day, even now, in this fallen world, full of tragedy.  

We paid our Spring visit to Lower Trees Nursery to get the rest of our Nemesia and some more Geraniums for the balcony. The Nemesia are not spectacular flower wise, but are wonderfully scented, and they stand up well to the punishment from the sea. The Geraniums, also tough and hardy, provide the spectacular side. We now have a magpie visiting the balcony. The poor thing got a shock when it landed on our railings to find me sitting there.

I got some good health news on Tuesday (a rare thing at my age) when the Dentist said he was "very pleased" with me and the state of my teeth.  That was a after a few severe questions about my lifestyle and tooth-cleaning regime that I answered satisfactorily.  Hurray!

Today I made an apple crumble in the morning - taking the hint from the apples the Captain turned up with - and Zoomed with a friend in the afternoon, Her husband is facing quite a big operation next week, which puts my worries about my teeth into sad proportion.

The Mystery of the Pyjamas that Didn't Bark in the Night

I wanted to say something about that weasel word "adult" (with apologies to weasels everywhere about my choice of words).  Oh and it occurs to me that I must search The Captain's Log to see if he has a picture of a weasel in his gallery.  I did. He had. 

See above.

But when you see, say, a TV programme with a warning "This programme contains adult content", what does that word "adult" mean?

Doesn't it usually mean that it will contain the sort of material that especially dirty-minded schoolchildren snigger about round the back of the bikeshed?  So in this Newspeak context (thank you George Orwell), the word "adult" means "not adult at all".  But the point about the word is, presumably, to imply that anyone who dares to object to vile content is simply being childish, immature.

I do remember how the world and its Movers and Shakers sneered at Mrs Mary Whitehouse. Yet of course she was right - she saw the thin end of a very nasty wedge  - nasty beyond belief sometimes - and spoke up about it. 

Centuries ago, Jehovah said this to the Israelites, words he had recorded and preserved to this day:

This is what Jehovah says, your Repurchaser, the Holy 

One of Israel: 

“I, Jehovah, am your God,

The One teaching you to benefit yourself,

The One guiding you in the way you should walk.

If only you would pay attention to my commandments!

Then your peace would become just like a river

And your righteousness like the waves of the sea.

Isaiah 48:17,18

Those words are as true today as they were then - as they always will be.  If we will listen to our Creator and do our best to follow his guidance, we can have peace even now, in this dangerous and fraught system of things on the earth. And we can have "the glorious freedom of the children of God" in the restored earthly paradise - peace without end, like the endless waves of the sea.

Re the heading of this blog, Bea and I have been in correspondence about some mysterious pyjamas which have turned up in her luggage. They do not belong to her, and they do not belong to us.  It may need a Sherlock Holmes or a Jonathan Creek to solve "The Mystery of the Pyjamas That Didn't Bark in the Night".

Could I write that one up?  Nothing has come to me yet. Except of course that it would be much more mysterious if the pyjamas DID bark in the night... hmmm...

It was such a lovely Spring morning - sunny, but cold.  My walk from car to Kingdom Hall took me past cherry blossom blooming above flint-knapped walls and birds hurtling about with twigs in their beaks.  The drive back was past a turquoise sea, calm under a tender blue sky with  a scattering of fluffy white clouds in suspension.

Captain B is at home today, which is nice.

Bluebells and Cuckoo Flowers

 

These are some flower photos Col took on Sunday.  Will we manage a bluebell walk this year?  If so, Jacks will certainly not be with us. It used to be a regular thing for the three of us, along with our trips to London and Chichester.

We talked to her very briefly on the phone, and she is not doing well at all. She does not want any visitors so we can't call in. Not that we would while we still have these lingering colds anyway - when Col isn't coughing, I'm sneezing and blowing my nose.

Her oldest son is living with her, so she is being well looked after. We have had some lovely friends in our time. But have we ever had a friend like Jackie?  Its hard not to think of, in the words of Janet Frame, "the sadness that belongs to the world".

Growing old is to travel into a strange new country.  And Jacks is a couple of years ahead of us in the journey. None of the medical professionals who help us with it - and for whose help we are very grateful - can know what it is like as they have not been there.

Many people have written about it, and poets down the ages have lamented the shortness of our lives, the inevitability of our death. The "world" - the current wicked system of things on the earth - is of course determined that we should believe that there is no problem, that we evolved - that the tragedy we are living in is normal.

It is not. It is a tragedy.  But we are not abandoned to it.  Our Creator's original intention was that our first parents should enjoy life forever in the earthly paradise. And that is what He is offering to every one of us, their dying, damaged children, right now.

Think of bluebell walks in the restored earthly paradise...

... and what about cuckoos?  When the Kingdom of God is ruling over the earth will they still be pushing other chicks and eggs out of their nest?  Will they be building  their own nests?  Or maybe their enormous chicks will be benevolent big brothers and sisters, there to help their adoptive parents and their younger siblings?

Anyway, the thing is, please let us all be there to find out. Because the very first chapter of Genesis tells us that nature was not created "red in tooth and claw with ravine", and both Hebrew and Christian Greek Scriptures promise us that the Kingdom of God will restore that peace earthwide.

And Jehovah always fulfills his promises.  Isn't that the very meaning of his name?  There will be so much to know, so much to find out.  And all of it will be joyful and wonderful.

Bea and Co

As we are now.  Captain Butterfly in the foreground wielding the camera, me lurking behind him, saying "Make me look like Kate Moss, only lovelier." Him saying: "But the age of miracles is passed, my dear".

Our first family visitors of the year came in the shape of Bea, Simon, and cousin Elizabeth.  They joined us for lunch on Saturday, Bea and Simon being on their way back up North, having done a brief family and friends tour.  We haven't really entertained since the family was over last year.  Our social life has been pretty much nil since Lockdown. We are not recluses, both being busy with our own things, but we live in a different way from the old days when we had people round most evenings (in our expat life), then at least at the weekends. I guess we both need and like a quiet night in these days.

I know I do.

We were only providing a sandwich lunch - to fit in with their arrival times, dependent on the traffic, which on a sunny Saturday on the South Coast can be bad!  As indeed it was. They all made it and we had a long and leisurely lunch: cheese and chutney (home-made chutney, made with Captain B's own fair hands), ham and mustard, and tuna pate and lettuce sandwiches, plus some lovely sweet tomatoes from Waitrose, followed by lemon drizzle cake and mini millionaires' shortbreads.

And Col took Bea for a short walk to the sea. She has an art project on that requires a photo of our beach stones. She is the artist whose illustration provides the cover of The Umbrellas of Hamelin.

I hope we all enjoyed ourselves. I know the Captain and I did. 

On Sunday, Himself was doing SUSSAR training in the morning, then detectorising in a field, somewhere, and I had a morning in Zoom, joining the Chi congregation for the special broadcast from the Governing Body.  Our congregation watched the live version on Saturday morning, so obviously I could not join them at the Hall.

We had some lovely video updates of our brothers and sisters round the world, including the small congregation on the Falkland Islands, and then two talks from visiting members of the Governing Body.

The first talk was very appropriate being titled: DO NOT TIRE OUT  and the second was about the need to keep awake spiritually: KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN

What an antidote it was to the bad news we woke up to on Sunday, hearing that Iran had chosen to retaliate to the attack on their Embassy by droning Israel, and now America and the UK is getting involved, on Israel's side.

None of them are listening to our Creator, the God of Abraham, or none of this would be happening.

And the age of miracles has not passed. We are surrounded by miracles, as we always were. Every flower is a miracle of artistry and engineering. Tiffany jewellers at their finest could not create one of them. And the progress of tiny egg, to caterpillar, to pupa, to butterfly is a miracle in plain sight.

And please look up into the night sky on a clear night.  This sparkling immensity did not come from nowhere.  Think of having forever to see all this and learn about it and above all to enjoy it.

That is what our Creator is promising us - is holding out to us. Isn't that what we want  - to enjoy life forever?

The Great Stink

I have chosen a discreet and tasteful photo of a Stinkhorn Fungus (taken by Captain B of course) to head this blog.  Their Latin name is Phallus Impudicus, and they are well named, so I had to be careful in my selection.  This is a young one. Col assures me that they don't actually stink at this stage.

The reason for the choice is that Col and I watched a programme on Sunday afternoon about The Great Stink, which hit London in 1858 - less than a hundred years before I was born. The Thames had become a giant sewer, with all the city's waste being discharged into it, including sewage, waste from slaughterhouses, tanneries, etc. There had been warnings from a young doctor and a scientist that these were the conditions for a cholera outbreak. Although it was not well understood at the time that cholera - a fearsome disease - came from the polluted water getting into the water supply, not from the miasma, or stench itself.

The stench, I guess, was the warning, to be wary of the water.  And at that time many of the poor who lived by the Thames were taking their water from the river - the river of sewage - as it was their only source!  Then came a baking hot summer - the hottest on record, possibly. It went on for weeks and weeks.

In the steaming hot summer of 1858, the hideous stench of human excrement rising from the River Thames and seeping through the hallowed halls of the Houses of Parliament finally got too much for Britain’s politicians – those who had not already fled in fear of their lives to the countryside.

Clutching hankies to their noses and ready to abandon their newly built House for fresher air upstream, the lawmakers agreed urgent action was needed to purify London of the “evil odour” that was commonly believed to be the cause of disease and death.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/04/story-cities-14-london-great-stink-river-thames-joseph-bazalgette-sewage-system

This of course led to the creation of the vast sewer system that serves London to this day. 

Bazalgette's work ensured that sewage was no longer dumped onto the shores of the Thames and brought an end to the cholera outbreaks; his actions are thought to have saved more lives than the efforts of any other Victorian official. His sewer system operates into the 21st century, servicing a city that has grown to a population of over eight million. The historian Peter Ackroyd argues that Bazalgette should be considered a hero of London.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink

What an engineer he was!  And thank God for him.  But given we are hearing every day of sewage being dumped into our rivers, lakes and seas, it is hard not to wonder if The Great Stink and all the attendant medical dangers could return.

Shouldn't it be so clear by now that, as the Inspired Scriptures warn us, it does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step?

Even our best, most sincere, efforts to put things right have only a limited success. It all comes back to our need for a perfect, and loving, worldwide government - the heavenly one - the Kingdom of God.  It is the government whose coming we pray for when we say the Lord's Prayer.

Storm Kathleen and The Speckled Wood

Storm Kathleen was causing stormy seas on Saturday - and it was blowy.   But it wasn't cold, and so I did sit out on the balcony to do my Watchtower Study in the morning. It is a beautiful study article "Jehovah has tender affection for you".  

Col, feeling a lot better, both kneewise and coldwise, left early to do marshalling. It earns money for SUSSAR, which has to finance itself.  He then had a Moth Walk in the evening - well, not so much a walk but helping a group of people set up their moth traps in the woods. They chose such a stormy evening that not a moth was seen, beyond one Col found by the light of his torch.  But he decided not to go out a'detectoring on Sunday, so we had Sunday lunch together after I got back from the Kingdom Hall.  He had chicken veggie soup and apple crumble and custard.

Monday was two medical appointments - oh the joys of old age.  Blood test in the morning - yet another - and a face to face visit with my GP in the afternoon. He is a nice young chap I had never met before.  He was running very late, but he did examine me, and put my mind at rest about one worry.

Col kindly chauffered me to the afternoon appointment as it was not in our local surgery and parking is difficult there. And when I came out I found him busy photographing a Speckled Wood which was posing on the bushes in the carpark. Our first Speckled of the year.  See the beast itself in the photo above.  Once again, I wonder if they remember their caterpillar life. I hope so, as then it would be like one of those wonderful dreams when you find you can fly.

There was yet another storm blowing last night - I was up in the early hours taking some emergency painkillers (as I so often am these days) - and the wind was howling and the rain was lashing down. I don't know which storm it was, but I will call it Storm Speckled Wood for the moment.

We found we had made the national news this morning as our river has burst its banks.  They will be evacuating those who live in the basement flats along there - or so I assume. The warning for others is to stay above the ground floor of your house.

It has been storm upon storm and I guess it was just too much for the river in the end.  My bro in Sydney emailed a few days ago to tell us that the flood water in his area of the Northern beaches has reached the end of his street.

The weather is, of course, one of the many things our first parents found they could neither manage nor control when they made the fatal decision to cut themselves off from their Creator and go it alone.

But we know that Jesus has the authority from his Father to control the immense system of the weather, as he calmed that violent storm on the Sea of Galilee.  The account of it is at Mark 4:37-41.

It ends this way: But they felt an unusual fear, and they said to one another: “Who really is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him.”

It would greatly benefit us if we would think urgently about that - about who Jesus really is - as it is only through the ransom sacrifice of his perfect human life that we can have back the life, perfection and paradise that our first parents so tragically lost.  

The Ministry School

The pic is, I hope, giving you the subliminal message: BUY MY BOOK, PLEASE.  It was inspired by the two house of my childhood and I hope it is both funny and scary.

I was on the School on Thursday night - first part - a 3 minuter - the brief is on the website JW.org under the heading of: Library, then: "meetings". But basically it was about being flexible when witnessing, being prepared to go with what the person we are talking to is interested in, not what we have set our minds on telling them.

So this was the script I wrote for last night. I set it in a hospital waiting room.

Sue:  I hope you don’t mind my asking, but what time is your appointment?

HH:  It was for 10.00 o clock. They are running late today aren’t they?

Sue. They are. I am before you, so they are running well behind.. But they are always so busy.  I have brought some studying with me. I thought it might cheer me up to read what the Bible has to say about the time when there will be no more illnesses, no more sicknesses. (My intention at this point being to read Isaiah 33:24, however...)

HH:  The Bible may make all sorts of promises for all I know, but shouldn’t we be more concerned by what we are doing to this lovely planet?  We are making it very sick, terminally so I fear.

Sue:  You know that is a very good point.  Even if we were to come up with a wonderful worldwide NHS that offered a cure to everybody, it wouldn’t be much use if we had damaged the whole planet beyond repair in the meantime.  Is this something you have always been concerned about?

HH:  Well yes, More so as I have got older. 

Sue: And for sure you are not alone in that. I think many people would agree with you. But would you be surprised to know that the Bible has something very important to say about that.

HH.  Yes I would. I thought the Bible was all about going to heaven.

Sue:  When in fact it is telling us what is going to happen here on the earth.  If you had created this lovely planet would you allow it to be ruined by the greed and violence of some men?

HH: No, of course, not if I had the power to stop it.

Sue:  And our Creator, whose name is Jehovah, is the one who does have the power as he is the Almighty God. And more than that he has actually promised us that he will. May I show you this verse from Revelation, the last book of the Bible.  Revelation 11:18 ends with this assurance, that Jehovah will “bring to ruin those ruining the earth”.

HH:  To bring to ruin those ruining the earth.

Sue. Yes - a simple and clear promise. But back then when it was written down, two thousand years ago, would it have seemed possible we could bring a whole planet to ruin, let alone the only planet we have to live on?

HH.  No.  In fact I don’t think we could have imagined such a thing even a hundred years ago! But clearly we are going to.

Sue.  True. If we are left to ourselves we are.  But it is so reassuring when you understand that we are not abandoned to this.  I am sure, like me, you will have said the Lord’s prayer in your childhood and asked for God’s Kingdom to come.

HH.  Many times.

Sue.  So I would love to show you what the Bible says about that Kingdom, and what it is going to do here on the earth. But I see that the lady ahead of me is back at the reception desk making her next appointment, so they will be calling me in at any moment.  Are you a user of the internet?

HH.  Yes. I can google things and do email. But that is about it.

Sue:  Good for you. That’s great. So please may I leave this little card with you. You can use it to get to the website JW.org and if you put “The Kingdom of God” into the search you will find a wealth of Biblical information.  I have put my email address on the back if you have any questions - and I would love to know what you think about it.  Yes, they are calling me now, I will try not to take too long.

HH: Don’t worry, take the time you need. I am going to look up that website now, on my phone.

Ruefully though I have to admit that I am no good at all at witnessing to anyone in medical situation, which is a shame as I am now in so many of them... it is something I need to pray about. All I seem to want to do in such a situation is to get out of it as quickly as possible. It usually goes like this:

Doctor/Medic: (looks up from file as I enter the door). And how are you today?

Me: Fine thank you. Can I go now? Bye.

Really one can only cope with doctors, hospitals, treatments, wards, etc, when one is strong, fit and healthy. But that is never when they want to see you.

Well, in consolation, I come back to Isaiah 33:24 which I mentioned above, as it promises us that when the Kingdom of God is ruling over us no resident

 will say: “I am sick.”

It is a promise to hold on to, especially in old age.

Chicken of the Woods

Our April Calendar pic is a Chicken of the Woods taken by Himself some years ago.  I think it is sometimes edible - depending on which kind of tree it is growing on.  But I would not risk any kind of mushroom gathering this side of Armageddon. Even experienced mushroomers can make deadly mistakes. And not only am I inexperienced, but my eyes are not what they were.

"Mushroom? What mushroom?" "Tree? What tree?" CLUNK!! 

However, one of the things I imagine doing in the restored earthly paradise is wandering through woods on a beautiful Autumn day, trug in hand, picking mushrooms for supper.  Maybe with the odd truffle added...  

When you think how lovely an Autumn woodland can be even now, what will it be like then?

In the meantime, the News gets worse, and the pressures mount, pressures large and small.  On the small side, we have two cars, which seems sadly essential these days - and both of them are hors de combat. Mine was towed away on Wednesday and has not yet returned, and, just as we were about to set off for the Kingdom Hall this morning, Col's car refused to start.

It picked its moment perfectly given it was Easter Sunday, a Bank Holiday, with everything closed, to be followed by Easter Monday, a Bank Holiday, with everything etc.

The AA came out, again, always reliable, thank Goodness, and pronounced it to be the battery, which is apparently in bad shape. In fact the AA guy could not understand how it was still running until Col explained how much he drives it. Three times a week he drives it to - well judging by the time his alarm goes off - Timbuctu or thereabouts. So it is always being charged.  However, because of his bad cold and cough he has cancelled the last three detecting sessions, and the car has not been out for a week. And the poor old battery saw its chance and quietly expired.

While we are still in the Easter season, I wanted to get back to Jesus' words.  At the last Passover supper, "as they continued eating, Jesus took a loaf, and after saying a blessing, he broke it, and giving it to the disciples, he said: “Take, eat. This means my body.” And taking a cup, he offered thanks and gave it to them, saying: “Drink out of it, all of you for this means my ‘blood of the covenant,’which is to be poured out in behalf of many for forgiveness of sins." - Matthew 26:26.27

And, as a Catholic Convent schoolgirl, I used to go to communion and take the bread, but not the wine. Now I take neither, but attend the Memorial (on the day of Passover) and watch them being passed round.

According to the Bible, we should either take both, or we should refrain and just observe. So it is extraordinary how we managed to do neither.  But what confused us was the idea that all good people go to heaven, when in fact the Bible tells us that it is the earth the meek will inherit, and can live upon forever. And then of course there was the strange doctrine of transubstantiation - which surely the church no longer holds to?

I hope to return to this subject in future blogs.

In the meantime, Col's knee is still painful and swollen, and my left ankle is painful and swollen. We would just about make one passable person between us. But we do have Col's car back. Thanks to the AA.  And we got our Waitrose delivery yesterday, so we don't have to go out.

And always always thanks to Jehovah for the gift of life, for the hope of life in perfect health in the paradise earth, and for the gift of the sea, which this morning is rather grey and stormy with white wave tops breaking and breaking.

Lord Smartphone

PLEASE BUY MY BOOK.  It is a collection of short stories, some of them very short, but all of them page turners, or such was my aim.   Talky Tin - which stars our fierce Saudi cat, Whites - is very short indeed, and is also anthologised in Kaleidoscope.

Advert over, so I can get to the main subject of the blog, as I want to say that I hope I never meet the inventor of the smartphone, Lord Smartphone, or whoever he may be.  The thing is driving me mad. It suddenly told me that all the messages I had recently sent had not been sent. So I found a resend button and resent. It seemed to have sent them, but then the next day, it told me it hadn't.  Maybe it was invented by Lord Spitephone?

Then I found a little airplane at the top and it turned out I was in something I didn't even know existed - Airplane Mode...   When I think of the effectiveness and simplicity of the old horse-drawn phone and the system of phone boxes...  and I started to worry about Dr.Who and his phone box Tardis. How would that work as a mobile? Then I remembered it was actually a Police Box!  (Not that you see any of them about now, nor any Policemen.)

But would Lord Toosmartforhisowngood have cared?  

Or maybe its just that I am Lady Notsmartenough-forherphone?

Poor Col had a terrible day on Thursday - huddled up in blankets and hot water bottles, coughing, and dozing (when he could) in front of the telly. I attended the meeting in Zoom, only venturing one very short comment, as I didn't want all the coughing plus the machine gun fire from whatever terrible war or James Bond movie he was coughing in front of to get through my headphones into the meeting. By the way, why do the villains always waste so many of their bullets on Bond? Surely they know by now that they can't kill him?

The Captain is much better this weekend, but now I am going down with the cold - sore throat and slight coughing.

There was a laser light show on The Green on Saturday night. It was probably quite noisy but the design of our flat is so good - the living rooms, kitchen/dining/lounge face Green and sea, and the bedrooms face to the front, to the road, which, in our sleepy seaside town, is usually quiet at night.

The remnants of Storm Nelson were still blowing the balcony geraniums about on Friday.  I ventured out onto the balcony to finish my Memorial Bible reading, and to do the Watchtower study, but had to retreat after about 20 minutes - it was too blowy  Lovely though, wonderful waves - the sea was both roaring and sparkling with sunshine.  The sound of the sea is surely the sound of eternity. A wonderful sound that makes me think of the time when the whole earth will be the paradise it was always meant to be.

One of the things I imagine myself doing is lying on cliffs above a beach - a Cornish style beach of my childhood - listening to the sounds of the endless waves. I am watching a warm gentle sunset,  knowing I have unnumbered sunsets ahead of me - and not one of them will be the same.  The variety and the immensity of Jehovah's creation is beyond comprehension.

Storm Nelson

Storm Nelson has been blowing all day.  The poor Captain is down with a terrible cold - so has been home all day wrapped in a blanket, with me bringing him hot water bottles and hot drinks. I will be attending the meeting in Zoom this evening.

My car is still sick - and has necessitated a lot of complex phone calls today - poor Col coughing away. The previous garage who seem to have replaced a part they should not have are going to refund some of what they charged us.  Col's car is in trouble too - a broken window (don't ask) - that he is hoping to be able to fix himself.

The News is so awful - so awful -  that it seems almost wrong to blog about anything else sometimes.  Children are suffering so much - the children in Gaza, in the Ukraine, and those here at the (un)mercy of bad parents, our "care" system, and our secretive family courts.

Surely the truth of the Bible's warnings about "the world" - the current wicked system of things on the earth - should be more evident by the day?

On a very minor note, us Fantastic Books authors have had a couple of Zoom Sessions recently, trying to find ways to publicise and sell our books. It is not easy. Fantastic gave my book "Waiting For Gordo" such a fabulous cover that I know it would fly off the shelves in an airport bookshop - fly, ha! - by virtue of cover alone. But, alas, it is only the Megaliths of publishing firms that can afford to get their books in there.

We are all grateful to Fantastic Dan for publishing us - we all enjoy writing. And it is lovely having people enjoy what we have written.  Like when I make cakes - my only other creative endeavour at the moment - I enjoy the process of making them and knowing that others enjoy them.  

The Memorial and the associated Bible readings, which I have not finished yet, have set me thinking about how, in my Catholic youth, we used to take the bread at what we called "holy communion", but never the wine. Only the priest got that.  I never remember any of us questioning it. I certainly didn't. And in any case the answer would probably have been the usual "It's a mystery".

At the last Passover supper, "as they continued eating, Jesus took a loaf, and after saying a blessing, he broke it, and giving it to the disciples, he said: “Take, eat. This means my body.” And taking a cup, he offered thanks and gave it to them, saying: “Drink out of it, all of you for this means my ‘blood of the covenant,’which is to be poured out in behalf of many for forgiveness of sins." - Matthew 26:26.27

I don't take either now, which I hope to explain in another blog. But surely if you take the emblems, it should be both, not just one of them?

Michael Blencowe Redux

If Michael Blencowe comes to a venue near you, do go and hear him. Or if you are local, sign up for one of his walks.  You will learn so much while being entertained.  I have already praised his wonderful "GONE" in previous blogs, but here is another heads-up for it.  I wish everyone would read it out of respect for the beautiful creatures we have so callously wiped out.  He brings them back vividly, and in the face of the sadness, entertainingly, in that he keeps you reading.  Maybe we will get them all back when the earth is under the loving rule of the Kingdom of God?

I hope we will all be there to find out.

This is Michael's website:   https://michaelblencowe.com/

The anti-depressants I was put on came with a warning: "People say they give them nightmares, so don't take it just before bed".  I followed the advice, but also prayed to Jehovah that I would not have any nightmares, because when I was a child, I used to have terrible ones and do not want them back.   So when a nightmare situation promptly started up in a dream I tried to give a Kingdom witness to the threatening person. And, as they were not interested (a common experience, alas), the bad dream melted away along with them.

The tablets obviously affect specific areas of the mind as I have had repeated dreams - barely remembered - about the home of my childhood, which appears as 5 Disraeli Crescent in my books. I must point out again that I am not taking anti-depressants because I am depressed - I am not, not in the Clinical sense - but because they may help with one of the very painful manifestations of arthritis. It works for some apparently.

Thursday was my last night on the tablets, and yet again 5 Disraeli turned up, in circumstances which could have been nightmare-ish.

In the dream, I was walking through its dark cellars, up the steps to the cellar door, to the house which turned out to be locked. Spoiler alert: It is where my long short story "Till They Dropped" ends back in space and time, in the dark cellars of Disraeli Crescent.  This story ends the collection in "The Umbrellas of Hamelin".

So the potential for a nightmare was there. But the dream door was so flimsy I could kick it open. And when I found that it had been boarded up, the boarding turned out to be cardboard - also easily kicked through. So I got back home, and was not trapped in the dark cellar.  For which I thank Jehovah profoundly, although I also don't want to be presumptuous and think that He is carefully monitoring my dreams, as if I was so important...  

But I can't overstate how much Jehovah cares for us through his congregation - and how much he wants to extend this help to all who will accept it.  An obvious example, is that the Kingdom Halls were closed and we were into Zoom meetings a day or two ahead of the official lockdown.

So the dream was not a nightmare.  But there was a sadness about it. There was the house of my childhood, empty of people apart from someone who had made the kitchen a studio and was painting in it. Could it have been my brother in law Ken - a painter, who died just before Lockdown and so is painting nowhere now?  Maybe the sadness of missing him got into the dream too.  But some of our old furniture was there. It gave the feeling of people a long time gone - of a house that had not been a home for a long long time. As indeed it hasn't been as the University bought it from my parents and turned it into a Department of Something or Other. 

So the sadness was natural.  It was, as Janet Frame put it, "the sadness that belongs to the world".

And I have no wish to go back.  I want to go forward into the restored earthly paradise and meet all my family again, my parents, my uncles and aunts - and the family I never met - the ones who were cut off from us by the Iron Curtain that clanked down across Europe in the wake of World War 2.  Will they be there?

Will I be there?  Captain Butterfly and I were at the Memorial of Jesus' death last night, the night of the full moon, the night of Passover, to be reminded of all that his sacrificial death made possible - and that it is an undeserved kindness being offered to all the children of Adam. 

And I got to hold the Captain's hand through the prayers.

 

A Hebrew Character in Memorial Week

This lovely moth is the Hebrew Character I mentioned in my previous blog. Nice that it should turn up in Memorial Week. I know the Memorial isn't until Sunday - but we start our Memorial Bible reading this week. The Hebrew Character it is named for is  nun, I think.

We had our Monday Zoom session on Tuesday, if that make sense. We are discussing a joint project, writing-wise, spearheaded by Nute who has the most presence in the world of writing - and who has won some awards. 

I found a fragment, written so long ago I typed it on a typewriter, and it envisages South Yorkshire as a separate republic ruled by First Comrade Arthur. It was that long ago. Anyway, I have re-typed it and we will see if we can do anything with it. I find I do have King Arthur pulling the sword out of a barrel of Stones, which I still quite like.

But those are vanished days - ancient history to the young.

Col and I had a rare outing - rare that is for my housebound self - on Tuesday night - to hear Michael Blencowe speak on "Butterflies of the South Downs".  He was on top form, as usual. It was both funny and informative.  Showed me how much I still have to learn about even the local world of butterfly though.

There is so much to learn, so much to know - so much happiness ahead for all those who "inherit the earth" and who will live forever upon it.  And it all becomes possible through the ransom sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which will be commemorated this Sunday, the 24th March, in your local Kingdom Hall, after sunset. It will take about an hour - and no collections are ever taken at our meetings.

I would love you to go, and to hear what you thought about it. It is the most important day of the year for us.

A Dingy Flat-Body

Taking those invites (to the Memorial of Jesus' death) round our block of flats last week reminded me of just how I am deteriorating.  I managed ten in all, yet not so long ago, when we first retired, I was knocking at every door in the flats, then in later years, if we had a lot of invites left I would take a bundle and put one through every letterbox.  This year, all I managed to do was to place ten - one on the ledge in each hallway, one with neighbour who I met in the Hall, and I left one with the workmen.  I had to do the last two hallways the following day.

The moths have returned to the balcony, including one we have not had before - the rather unkindly named: Dingy Flat-body - see photo above.  Could it be called the Velvet Cloak instead?

It makes me wonder what a giant extra-terrestial moth would call me if I went and got caught in its Person Trap...  but no, I don't even want to think about it.

Appropriately enough for Memorial Week the moth on our wall this morning, under the balcony light, is called the Hebrew Character. It flies in a single generation during March and April, and is attracted to the light.

Col kindly chauffered me to the meeting at the Kingdom Hall yesterday - for the Special talk - The Resurrection : Victory Over Death.  It was a wonderful talk, so comforting.  

Among the verses the young brother giving the talk, quoted was this, one of my favourites, as it is such a clear promise of the awakening from the sleep of death, and of its being such a joyful one:

      “Your dead will live.

My corpses will rise up.

Awake and shout joyfully,

You residents in the dust!

For your dew is as the dew of the morning,

And the earth will let those powerless in death come to life." - Isaiah 26:19

Queen Emma

We were watching a programme about the conquests of King Canute, when his Viking army/navy sailed to the UK and ended up making him king.  The previous Roman occupation made an appearance as London was able to hold out against King Canute because of the immense walls the Romans had built hundreds of years previously.  Some of those walls stand to this day.

There is a joke currently doing the rounds on facebook, saying that, if England is to be invaded again, can it be by the Romans, as we badly need all the potholes in our roads fixing.

Canute and the rightful heir to the throne, Edmund, fought each other to a standstill in the end, with  slaughter and cruelty on both sides.  And they agreed to sort of rule together.  However, Edmund was very quickly killed - but not it seems by Canute, but by an act of treachery from someone on the English side, someone well known for previous treacheries.

It all reminded me depressingly of some aspects of expat life - well, all life as it is now really.  The backstabbing, metaphorical as well as literal - even over the smallest of prizes.

Canute himself made a good King apparently. He made a very sensible dynastic marriage with the British Queen Emma - and I had no idea till I saw this that we ever had a Queen Emma! - and England had a welcome period of peace under his rulership.

But what a tragedy it has all been. Human history I mean.

I couldn't find a "Queen Emma" in Col's photo gallery, so I hope one Himself took of a Queen of Spain Fritillary will do.  I feel sure Queen Emma was lovely too.

There was a great confusion about my Audiology appointment in Worthing on Wednesday morning.  It turned out they had cancelled it, I assume because I had an emergency appointment when my hearing aids failed. Though they assured me at the time that the second appointment was still going ahead. Luckily we checked ahead before we set off. The Captain's idea, and a very good one.

At any rate they have re-scheduled it.

I have taken some invitations round the block - just one in each front hallway - and hope and pray that someone will come.  I must remind myself to go round again on the Monday after the Memorial and remove any that haven't been taken, which I hope won't be all! and put them in the recycle.

The Memorial will be after sunset on Sunday the 24th March at your local Kingdom Hall. You will be so welcome. And there is a special talk about the Resurrection, which will be given here this Sunday at 10:00. If you want to go to that, you will need to check the time with your local congregation.

The title is: The Resurrection, Victory Over Death".  And it will be a lovely reassurance that the dead will not be forgotten during the Thousand Year Reign of the Kingdom of God.They have such a joyful awakening ahead of them. I hope I will be there to see it. I hope we will all be there.

POLYCRISIS!

Polycrisis is a word apparently coined in the 1970s.  It was needed to describe many global threats happening at the same time.  And does anyone have an answer to this supercrisis?  It would clearly need a united, one-world government to even begin to think of tackling it all.  But can you imagine the horror of a human one-world government - George Orwell's 1984 come to life?

It would probably lead to a new word having to be coined - a Polypolycrisis maybe?

Which is why we need the heavenly government - the Kingdom of God - for whose coming Jesus taught, and teaches, us to pray.  You can be taught by it and cared for now, if you wish - the good news of the Kingdom is being taken worldwide, as Jesus prophesied it would be:  And this good news of the Kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations and then the end will come. - Matthew 24:14

The end being the end of the current wicked system of things on the earth, not the end of this lovely planet!  And our Speaker at the Hall on Sunday pointed out that the fact we need a new word to describe the system in which we are now living, surely fits exactly the time of the end as described in prophecy in the Inspired Scriptures.  

Sadly, although we had a ton of religious education at the Convent, we never touched on the vital matter of Bible prophecy.

The lovely starfish that heads the blog was taken by Himself on Paradise Reef in the Maldives.  As the Kingdom of God will soon transform the whole earth into the paradise it was always meant to be, it seemed appropriate.

The earth is so lovely.  I am looking out over a rain-soaked Green with one valiant waterproofed dog-walker and beyond to a grey Channel and sky. And it looks beautiful.