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.