By the Sea

 

By The Sea

I started early, took my dog,
And visited the sea;
The mermaids in the basement
Came out to look at me.

And frigates in the upper floor
Extended hempen hands,
Presuming me to be a mouse
Aground, upon the sands.

But no man moved me till the tide
Went past my simple shoe,
And past my apron and my belt,
And past my bodice too,

And made as he would eat me up
As wholly as a dew
Upon a dandelion's sleeve —
And then I started too.

And he — he followed close behind;
I felt his silver heel
Upon my ankle, — then my shoes
Would overflow with pearl.

Until we met the solid town,
No man he seemed to know;
And bowing with a mighty look
At me, the sea withdrew.

Emily Dickinson

https://allpoetry.com/By-the-Sea

As we have lived beside the sea for all our retirement years so far, with a constant view of the English Channel, this charming Emily Dickinson poem seems a must.  It is yet another one I would have loved to have written.  The sea is very inspiring, but I haven't really written poems for years, apart from trying (and failing) to hitch my thoughts into a Haiku.  The beauty of the Indian Ocean was of course one of the inspirations for Waiting for Gordo.  Anyway, I hope to find one of Captain B's sea photos to head this blog.

This one is of the dramatic and lovely Northumberland coast, where some friends of our from our Uni days used to live.

Having expected to wait two weeks for the results of my diabetes eye test, the results actually came in two days - last Friday morning to be exact!   And all is fine.  Any good health news is a rare treasure these days. And it makes me feel that I am sticking well enough to my new way of eating. I do still have my little treats - for example I have a mini choc ice every day - but maybe as long as they stay little treats, it will be ok.

What will perfect health be like?  It is something we, the damaged children of Adam, have never yet known.  But we can hope to, under the loving and perfect rule of the Kingdom of God.

One thing I think about is having energy again - lots and lots. And nothing hurting.  And just at the moment, everything is hurting squared in the wake of my day at Haysbridge - especially my one good shoulder, which is worrying - even though the seating is comfortable, and I am glad I went.  

As I said in a previous blog, this has made me want to get back to the one-day assemblies, but I must make slightly different seating arrangements, via the Room for the Disabled, as I think it was the struggle to get in and out of my seat that has done for me. I do not want to go through this pain again. Also I am anxious in case my one good shoulder does not come back on-line. I have been reminding myself that at my age - late seventies - I should be grateful to still be here.  Because, at the moment, as I said to the nice nurse at the Eye Clinic when she asked me how I was:  "I am past my sell-by date, and feeling it."

The news is so awful, it is often best not to think or read beyond the headlines.  Yet more young man have been stabbed to death on our streets.  The Middle East seems to be going up in flames.  Though prophecy in the Book of Daniel, which covered both world wars assures us there will not be another one. Which is logical as surely if the superpowers go to war again throwing everything they have at each other - which would include chemical and biological weapons as well as nuclear - the earth will be ruined.

And Jehovah assures us, in the Book of Revelation, that He will "bring to ruin those ruining the earth".  And for sure it would be somewhat difficult for "the meek" to inherit the earth and "live forever upon it", as the Bible promises, if it had been ruined!

A Standing Ovation

How did my part in the Circuit Assembly Enter Into God's Rest go? I was assigned the first answer in the Watchtower Summary. And the Watchtower article was You Can Remain Confident During Uncertain Times.

I was given the first question on the considerate grounds that it is painful for me to stand for long these days. Here is the question: What similarities are there between our situation and that of the Jews who returned to Jerusalem?

And this was my answer:

There are many similarities between what they faced then and what we are facing now. For example, many of us are worried about how we can provide for our families in these difficult economic times - will we be able to keep our job, will we be able to find another one if we lose it? That must be a worry for so many heads of households. We may well be worried about our family's safety because of political turmoil and wars. We may be facing persecution, because of our religion or our ethnicity. We may be facing strong opposition to the Kingdom preaching work - work in which we all want to have a share. So it is going to be beneficial and reassuring to be reminded of how Jehovah helped his people deal with these same problems back then.

If you read the first paragraph of this Watchtower on the website JW.org, you will see where I got my answer from. I did not rely on my own wisdom here!

Anyway, how did it go? Well, think: standing ovations, bouquets hurled at the stage, cries of Encore Encore, and a beautiful creature (me), very similar to Kate Moss only lovelier, stepping forward to take the applause with a modest smile... "Wake up, you're dreaming!". That was Captain Butterfly interrupting my reverie.

Actually, it went very well. I managed to get on and off the stage without fainting, nor did my two new front teeth fall out and land with a clunk on the stage the moment I arrived on it.  I managed to get my answer out correctly without losing my voice through sheer panic and standing there like a foolish goldfish* opening and shutting my mouth but saying nothing. And all of us involved got kind applause from our friendly audience afterwards.

And my partner, though very nervous herself, was a tower of strength, and sailed through her part.

I feel very happy to have done it, even though today I am in such pain I can hardly walk round the flat. I am so glad that the young elder in charge patiently coaxed me into doing this. And SO grateful that Jehovah supported me through it all.  And it makes me realise I will have to find a new strategy if I am to get to the next Assembly.  There is I think a special room for the disabled and I must ring up and ask about it at some stage. I would need to have some kind of special chair plus my trusty zimmer frame, as I think it was the painful struggle to get in and out of my seat that has done for me.

*No offence intended to Goldfish by the way, who are intelligent creatures, sensitive and - as I am sure an offended goldfish is pointing out even now - much lovelier than many of us damaged children of disobedient Adam, "while mentioning no names", with a meaningful fishy look at myself.  I found some golden fish on Captain Butterflies' website gallery to head this blog - though they are not actually goldfish. They are blue-striped snappers I believe and are probably from the beautiful Indian Ocean.

Walking on the Grass

Wednesday morning was my diabetes eye test - won't find out the results till later, but will hope for the best . It was my usual Zoom session in the afternoon, and the Brighton rehearsal in the evening. I was given a lift there and all seemed to go smoothly. We all went to time - slightly under, which is the ideal really, as it means none of us has to rush through our answers.

Though even that tiny outing - a tiny bit of walking and standing - has left me in such pain this morning - left knee. I have to pray that I can make it on Saturday and not let everyone down.

We were talking about the earthly paradise in the meeting at the Kingdom Hall on Sunday - paradise meaning a beautiful park or park-like garden, just as the Garden of Eden was - and I was thinking about the parks of my 1950s childhood. Sheffield was - and is - a city of parks and trees, and us kids used to take ourselves off to the parks to play regularly, and probably more and more so as the bomb sites (our original playgrounds) began to be cleared and re-built. Though I seem to remember it was the Town Planners of the time who devastated a vast area of lovely stone-built houses and gardens to build a monster high-rise hospital just at the end of our road.

For sure, it was needed though. I just wish such lovely houses hadn't been demolished to build it.

Anyway, what I was remembering was that there were acres of well-groomed lawns in these parks, but we the public were not allowed to tread on them. There were signs everywhere saying: "Keep off the grass". And we did.

Then one day, the signs came down. It was quite strange at first, being able to walk on the forbidden grass.

I also thought of how we do try, as best we can, to carry out the commission our Creator gave us - to turn the whole earth into a beautiful garden. In spite of our imperfection and living in such a destructive world system, we have made some lovely gardens. My father always made his garden beautiful, and productive. It makes us happy to do so.

So the photo above is of the beautiful gardens at Arundel Castle, in tulip time. And the question is: If we can make such lovely gardens even now, how beautiful will the earth become during the Thousand Years when the whole earth is under the loving and perfect rule of the Kingdom of God?

Why not be there to find out?  Jehovah is extending his invitation to everyone.  As the last book of the Bible tells us:   And the spirit and the bride keep on saying, “Come!” and let anyone hearing say, “Come!” and let anyone thirsting come; let anyone who wishes take life’s water free. - Revelation 22:17

Important Research - Sofa-ology

 

 

After some intensive sofa work, I can say our newly foamed cushions are working well. We had a bit of drama though as Col decided that the risers on it - which were put on for me - are too high, and I know they are not comfortable for guests. So as we had newly risen plumped up cushions, the thought was that I could probably manage without.

With a team effort - effort being the word - we got them off.  I sat down. I tried to get up... a hopeless struggle, but I could manage it if I propped two cushions against the arm and sort of levered myself from there.  Col then decided the answer was to buy more risers, but half the size.  He ordered them online, they came the next day and, after another titanic struggle, they were fitted. I can now leap on and off the sofa like a gazelle - an elderly arthritic one, but I can do it. And it will be now be more comfortable for our rare visitors.

We were quite hospitable in our day. But times have changed.

And if my blog readers have dozed off during this dullard bulletin, then I plan to be joining you in Slumberland, at every opportunity, as I continue my intensive research into the new sofa cushions.

We had the rehearsal at the Hall on Saturday, after the Training Session for the Literature Carts.  It all went smoothly - and the Training was interesting and fun as it involved lots of little role-playing scenarios.  Those on the literature carts need to be able to deal with any situation that comes up - but always with, as the Bible says, "mildness and deep respect".

Anyway, I will be very glad when it is next Monday, and my moment on the Big Stage has come and gone.  As long as it has gone OK of course and I haven't fallen over, forgotten my lines, or disgraced myself in some way...   oh dear.  Clearly I was not made for a career in the Theatre.

I searched the Captain's blog picture gallery for: sofa/pillow/cushion, and came up with the Panamic Cushion Star, taken on his Galapagos Dive Trip.  It is more spectacular than our cushions, which are a dark blue.

Storm Isha seems to have come and gone locally, causing wonderful stormy seas here, but doing a lot of damage elsewhere.

Bittern!

IN THIS OLD HOUSE
by me

In this old house all is still within
And nothing moves inside us
Except the thing that eats the bones
Can they isolate the virus?
She pulls the skirting board away
To show a heart stopping display of white
So we’ll call the specialists to her home
As the deadly stuff eats up her bones
But if Rentokil will not suffice
Her bones will lock in blocks of ice
The value of her house will tumble in a trice.

I wrote this poem many many years ago, when my mother, crippled by the family arthritis, was still alive. I had been staying with my parents in their retirement bungalow and had just visited a Uni friend who had lived in Thailand for many years. We had stayed in her old house in Jesmond, which she and her husband had kept as a student let. And we found that it was full of dry rot - we found this fierce white fluff behind the skirting boards.

So, as that was in my poetry writing days, I conflated the two things in the poem. I am not saying it is a wonderful poem or anything - I feel I should have drawn more of a poetic conclusion from it somehow. But there it is, what I wrote at the time. Plus it seems a good excuse to blog one of the Captain's amazing fungi photos - a white one - a Coral Fungus.

My mother, when completely crippled and effectively living and sleeping in one of those special chairs, said that she sometimes used to dream that she was a child again, running and skipping about. 

And I so much hope those dreams will come true when and IF Jehovah wakes her from the dreamless sleep of death. Then she will be completely healed and full of energy.

As Isaiah promises:

"At that time the eyes of the blind will be opened,
 And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.
 At that time the lame will leap like the deer,

 And the tongue of the speechless will shout for joy..."
- Isaiah 35:5,6

In the restored earthly paradise, the lame will leap like the deer.  It will be such a joyful awakening when it comes.

However, at the moment, I, as a damaged child of Adam, am creaking about like well, not at all like a deer - an elderly tortoise maybe?  And Captain B sent me a short video - very short - about Psoriatic Arthritis, which it seems I have - along with everything else.  It's getting to the stage now that when they ask me at the hospital to give them a list of the conditions I have and the medicines I take, it might be quicker to list the ones I don't have and the medicines I am not taking.

I do feel guilty about what I am costing the NHS and try to do what I can to keep as healthy as I can.  And, interestingly, by sticking to a diabetic diet I am also (apparently) doing the right things for the P.Arthritis. Apparently it is a good idea to avoid wheat completely... so maybe my occasional treat of a slice of wholemeal bread (Abel and Cole) will have to go.  Apparently Vitamin D and K are very important too.

We both take a Vitamin D tablet every morning, and looking up Vit.K it seems to be leafy veggies that are important.  I am fairly good on my veggies - veggie soup for lunch most days - but can certainly try to up  the total.  I have a lovely stir fry cabbage and carrot recipe from Madhur Jaffrey that I have made for years, and have already made a couple of times this year. I must keep at it. Maybe it is something I will make weekly from now on.  Especially now I have found some lentil rice in Holland & Barrett that I like.

Our sofa cushions came back from the Stuffers on Tuesday.  I spent some of the afternoon on the sofa giving them a test run. Exhausting work, but someone has to do it. All seems good. While I dozed over my testing work Captain Butterfly escaped through an open window and flew off to the Wetland Trust where a bittern - a bittern! - had been seen. He managed to see it, twice, and even snatched a photo.

If you want to see it, it is on his current blog - linked to this blog via The Captain's Log.

I have never seen one - or heard one. I would love to hear a bittern BOOM.   

Talking of such things, Winterwatch and Chris Packham are back.  Something positive amidst all the tragic and gloomy news.  The natural world - the creation - is so wonderful, so interesting, and there is so much to learn about it.  We, the human family, are only at the beginning - well, in fact we are still waiting to be got back to the beginning, the starting line of perfection and paradise earth when our real learning, our real accomplishments and our real happiness will begin.

Not long now hopefully.

Dust of Snow

Dust of Snow
by Robert Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44262/dust-of-snow

This seems to describe another paradise moment, when the beauty and the grace of the creation reached the poet's heart and gladdened and comforted him.  So I will search the Captain's Photo Gallery and see if I can find an appropriate photo. I did manage to find one of a crow in snow, on our beach, though not this year, not yet anyway. And I added another crow pic as well.

He - Col, not the crow - was off early on Sat, a'detecting as usual. I have started my third course of antibiotics, and so did not feel wonderful.  Will they work this time?  If not, what?

It was a cooking day in that I made a wokful of cauliflower curry in the morning and an apple crumble in the afternoon. That is the Captain's favourite dessert.  And I also did my Watchtower study for the Sunday meeting.

From Sunday's Scriptural thought for the day:  By giving Elijah these assignments, Jehovah helped him to focus on positive things.

Yes.  One of the many ways in which Jehovah looks after his people is by keeping us focused on the positive.

Given that the Captain and I are now past our sell-by dates and into the death zone, I have some powerful negatives to dwell on, if I am not careful.  And as for the news... we seem to be at war in the Middle East again, as the troubles there spread and spread. Knife crime is rampant on our streets. And the whole sordid Jeffrey Epstein business, of which I read only the headlines, ought to be demonstrating to all just how corrupt the whole system of things on the earth is.  

Which is exactly what the Bible has warned us - from Genesis on.  If people don't see it now, will they ever be willing to see it?

To come back to the positive, the Book of Revelation also assures us that our Creator will restore the whole earth to paradise and obedient humankind to the life and perfection our first parents so sadly chose to throw away.  We are not abandoned to this tragedy.

It is a good thing that the dead are, as the Bible assures us, "conscious of nothing at all".  Because if our first parents could have seen what has happened, what is happening, to us, their damaged children... well, I can't imagine.  But they will never know the full scope of the tragedy, which is a mercy.  And we will never know them, our first parents, which is a sadness. 

Well, it is Monday morning and no dust of snow as yet - in fact it is a sunny morning down here on the Sunshine Coast. And I ask myself yet again how it was that my gloomy weather-loving self ended up down here with all this sunshine.  

Anxiety Dreams

Ahead of my part in the School last night, I had an anxiety dream, one in which I was at the Hall and realised, 5 minutes before I was due on the stage, that I had forgotten my script. In my travelling years, I used to have a regular dream about getting to the airport only to find I had forgotten to bring my passport.

Why? Why do this to myself? 

Anyway, here is my script. It was for the Informal Witnessing part. And I found it quite difficult to do. For one thing, the partner I was allocated was my age (i.e. like me she is Youthily-challenged, or, in OldSpeak, she is old.) And the remit was:
Show a person who has young children how to find information helpful to parents on jw.org. 

I guess I could have begun my talk with: "Aren't you the lady I read about in the tabloids who gave birth in her late sixties?"  

But as you see from the script below, I didn't. Wisely I suspect.  The photo that heads the blog is from my faraway travelling years. It is of me (I guess) in a swimming pool, with an amazing view out over North Island NZ, on what I think was our last trip there. We had the pool to ourselves. We were the only guests and the owners had gone out for the evening. We had the run of their house. There was a level of trust there then that I remember from the England of the 1950s, when you could still leave the milk money out on the front step.

Anyway, as we are trying and trying to tell people, paradise, the paradise earth, lies ahead of us - so we need to look forward not back.   And here is the script I prepared for last night. My partner and I practised and practised.

Sue: Are those lovely little girls on the swings your grandchildren?  

Partner: No they are my great nieces actually. Twins. Cute, but quite a handful.  We are just down here for the holidays and I thought I would give my nephew and his wife a day off to do their own thing while I entertained the girls.  

Sue: That was thoughtful of you.

P: But I am feeling a bit anxious about it now, as clearly there is another storm brewing. I was relying on the beach to entertain them this afternoon. We were going to look for shells and look in the rockpools.

Sue, Yes, children love the beach at any time of year don’t they. It is the best playground there is. But I see what you mean. We are in for yet another storm.  It’s  going to rain non-stop apparently, starting any minute now, looking at those clouds.

P  It’s difficult to keep them entertained indoors, especially in a holiday let. 

Sue. I don’t know if you have ever played Consequences?  It’s a paper and pencil game and needs no space at all. My nephews and nieces used to love it.

P.  Yes, We used to play that when i was a child. I had forgotten all about it!  Thanks. I think I will give it a go.

Sue, I hope they will like it.  The only problem is that if they do, when you have done it ten times and they want to keep going, the novelty does wear off.

P:  Well, I can sit them down with their computer games, or in front of the telly at some stage of course.  If I can find anything suitable. It all seems so violent, or really just so awful these days, not what you want for children at all.

Sue: I know what you mean. It’s as if a bit of poison has been added to everything.

P  Do you know, that is right!  But I wonder why so many people don’t seem to notice.

Sue:  Looking back, I think because it was done gradually, bit by bit.  You and I can remember the earliest childrens’ TV programmes for example. Think Muffin the Mule.

P: Yes, I do (laughs)

Sue  The contrast between now and then is shocking. But the main reason I notice it is that I am a Jehovah’s Witness and we are taught from God’s word all the time, and it is so loving and so perfect, and as the Bible tells us, it always benefits us. So I notice how the world and its media seem to be constantly trying to lower our standards and pull us away from our Creator.  And listen, if you are looking for something for the children to watch this afternoon, we have an excellent website JW.org - and we have a lovely series of short videos for children.  Can I give you the link?

P.  Thanks, but I don’t know if they would be interested in anything religious.

Sue:  May I just show you one. See here.  It’s very short, from a series called Caleb and Sophia. it’s called Love Your Neighbour.

They watch it

P:  Oh. That’s very good actually, very well done. I think they might like it. And they will learn something good too!

Sue:  There are so many lovely videos for children on here. They might like the one about Noah’s Ark for example. I love that one.   May I give you this card with the link on it. I will just write down that you go to JW;org. Then to Library, then to video, then to the children’s sections.  And I have put my email address on the back and I will add my phone number in case you have any questions about accessing the site. In fact, if you have a moment, I would love to know if they enjoy Caleb and Sophia.

P: Thanks.  I will. Oh - is that the rain starting. Come on girls, we will have to go. And thanks again. You might have saved my afternoon.

Herding Cats

The heading of this blog gives me an excuse to post this photo of our lovely fierce Whites once again. The collar is because he had to have a rabies tag.  And that means I can also mention - again! - that he features in two of the stories in my recent collection The Umbrellas of Hamelin.  He is in fact the star of Talky Tin.

But the main point of this blog is that  one of our recent Scriptural thoughts for the day really underlined for me the strangeness of the intensive religious education I had in my faraway convent schooldays.

It said: 

I will put enmity between you and the woman.​—Gen. 3:15.

Soon after Adam and Eve sinned, Jehovah gave hope to their descendants by means of a remarkable prophecy. What he said is recorded at Genesis 3:15: “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He will crush your head, and you will strike him in the heel.” The prophecy appears in the first book of the Bible. But in one way or another, all the other books of the Bible relate to it. Just as the spine of a printed book binds all the pages together, the words recorded at Genesis 3:15 bind the content of every book of the Bible into one united message, namely, that a Deliverer would be sent to destroy the Devil and all his wicked followers. What a blessing that will be for those who love Jehovah! A study of the Bible will help us see how the prophecy is fulfilled and how we can benefit from it.

So I had this intensive religious education within Christendom, Catholic wing, yet I was taught nothing at all about this vital prophecy in Genesis.  In fact, I knew nothing about the Bible prophecy in the Hebrew Scriptures, which we knew as the "Old Testament".  We knew about Noah and his Ark of course  - my sisters and I used to play Noah's Ark with those shoeboxes you used to get - maybe still do. (Its a long time since I bought a pair of shoes.) That was a great game, loading our collections of china and glass animals into our shoebox arcs.

I lost my whole collection when we moved back to Sheffield from London, including my lovely pink glass horse, when I was in my thirties. We picked the wrong movers, and quite a lot of stuff "disappeared". 

But - back to my religious education at school - we were given no defence against the powerful currents of "the world", which have been so tragically successful in persuading people that Genesis is just a "creation myth" and that the flood of Noah's day was simply a local affair, not a worldwide one as the Bible makes very clear it was.

That way people miss both the warning and the promise of the wonderful things to come.  They are not warned, and they are not comforted.

Sunday morning Col left early again, but not before he had cleared my windscreen of frost and also got me into my socks. Which is why I was able to drive to the Hall, and why I did not appear at the meeting with one sock on my head and the other on my arm.  They call old age a second childhood - and, well, yes, alas, so it is. Yet again I need help in dressing myself.

Monday afternoon it started to snow.  Lightly - but it was snow.  And I got together with a congregation sibling to practise our part in the School on Thursday. I feel nervous about it as (a) I am so tired from this wretched infection that I found it hard to write, and (b) we are now using a different format/approach. I have read all the instructions, but am not confident I have got it exactly right.  Anyway, it will all become clearer as the year and the Ministry School continues.

The young elder in charge of those of us who are answering the questions at the Assembly Watchtower managed to get us all together for our first rehearsal. There are two more to follow.

It must be rather like herding cats, trying to get us all in the same place at the same time, outside the usual meetings.  

A Haiku Attempt for Twenty Twenty Four

I have chosen a wintry scene - Endcliffe Park in the snow some years ago - for this blog, as I am in my winter season and I am feeling a bit down at the moment.  I am in my late seventies now, and in my family we do not go much beyond eighty, if we even get there.

The beauty of Winter, of the creation, is so reassuring though, telling us as it does of its Grand Creator, who made this so lovely, just for us.  But but but  - age and medical matters are making me feel a bit melancholy. 

Hence:

A Haiku (failed) for 2024

by me

Twenty Twenty Five 

waits in the wings

of this new year

when it comes

will we be here?

Could I shrink that into a Haiku? For sure Matsuo Basho could. But I fear it is beyond me.

Medical matters : finally the hospital lab has found what is ailing me, and I am back on the antibiotics.  The doubleplusgood is that they did use the right ones the first time - just not enough. So it's more of the same. But the saga of getting the things so I could begin to take them took all day Thursday and many phone calls - and culminated in Col and Jim calling in for them on their way back from The Field in the evening, in the dark, in a raging storm.

Yet it should have been such a simple arrangement. The GP rang me the night before and assured me she would email the prescription to the Pharmacy next door so I could call in after 9.00 on the Thursday morning, pick them up, and start the course.

Ha!

The girl at the Pharmacy was very sympathetic - and knew me quite well before the day was done.

It was all complicated by a violent storm - still Henk I suppose - and my car developing a worrying light on its dashboard.  A stressful day altogether.  And we woke up on Friday to the news that there is flooding everywhere.  I also got another email from the remote pharmacy to whom my prescription had been sent asking me plaintively when I was coming in to pick it up. It was supposed to have been cancelled Thursday morning, In fact I stood there at reception watching the lady at the desk cancel it, at my request, and re-route it to the local Pharmacy - the one in the same building.

It then took the rest of the day to get the prescription re-routed to the pharmacy next door - within a few feet of the reception desk.  Or possibly a few metres or litres or whatever it is we are to call them these days.

But these really are "first world problems", and I am very very grateful to have the NHS to do all this for me.  The GP I dealt with - everyone I encountered - was lovely. And kind.  So even if it does take time and doesn't go to plan I am so grateful for it.  But what is happening to the world?  Or is it just that I am now so used to the gentle efficiency of Jehovah's organisation?  Talking of which, it is the first rehearsal of my part on the Big Stage at noon today. There will be at least two more I believe, so that - please God - all will go smoothly on the great day.

And also I need to pray - I do pray - that I will make it as far as the Kingdom Hall today to be at the rehearsal. I have been woken by violent arthritis pain and hope I am not in for one of those debilitating attacks that mean I can't even make it to the front door of the flat if anyone rings the bell... let alone drive myself to the Hall.

Col left very early to join Jim and the lads at The Field - for metal detecting purposes. He helped me on with my socks before he left.  It is quite a tricky and painful performance when I have to do it for myself - if you ever saw the Prince Regent trying to dress himself when Blackadder wasn't there to help him you sort of have the idea - and today I don't even think I would be equal to it.

I am starting to wonder if the poor guy is not entitled to a Caregiver's allowance...

My Socks Have Gone Bonkers

As I ended my 2023 blogging with a wonderful but sad poem by Thomas Hardy, I thought I would begin 2024 on a different poetic note. I want to recommend a book of charming and funny verses - the sort that children will enjoy, and that parents will enjoy as they read them to their children.

In fact, you need to read them out loud to fully appreciate them.

The book is: "My Socks have Gone Bonkers" by Dale Neal. And here is a small sample from one of the poems in the collection: "My Grandad Burt's an Alien", which begins:

My grandad Burt's an alien
he came from outer space
with a dodgy hip in a rocket ship
to save the human race.

His skin's as green as a green skin bean
with shades of mushy pea,
and his beard is grey
as is the way for an OAP ET...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/My-Socks-have-gone-Bonkers/dp/1912053470

This blog could also have been called: We Had Coffee with Jackie!!  Which we did, on the last day of the year.  She has been a voice on the phone for over 3 years now, but we did finally get to see each other and talk. Maybe we will be able to drop in sometimes during the coming year and have a coffee together.

I now have short hair and she has long hair. It was the other way round the last time we got together.  But Jacks' hair is as neat and contained as ever it was. And mine still manages to be untidy, even though short.  

Storm Henk began to rage on the first day of the new year and continued its raging on into Tuesday.  So much rain.  It likely would have been better in the long term had it fallen as snow - but equally as disruptive I guess.

There has been a serious earthquake in Japan, which is being followed by a series of aftershocks. And the conflicts of 2023 rage onto into 2024, and will do until the time comes when God's Kingdom is ruling over us and restoring peace earthwide.  How much we need it. But we are at any rate another year closer to it now.

It continues to amaze me that even though I had an intensive religious education in my faraway convent schooldays, we never studied Bible prophecy, nor did we know what the Kingdom of God was, nor what the Bible says it will do here on the earth.

Momentous events lie just ahead. Everyone urgently needs to know that.

The photo - one of Col's of course - is a Cup Fungus. It is the January picture for our 2024 calendar.  We did a fungi calendar this year.  It was my idea as I remember being amazed at the shape, colour and variety of all the fungi around us when the Captain began to photograph them. So I thought that others might be equally amazed.

The creation is wonderful in its complexity, beauty and diversity. But for the moment, "the original serpent" is still in the Garden.  Not for much longer though.  As I said above, the Bible tells us of momentous events ahead.