February Filldyke

Acquainted with the Night

BY ROBERT FROST

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. 

I have been one acquainted with the night.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47548/acquainted-with-the-night

Apparently the Romans used to call the British February "February filldyke" as there was so much rain. And this February has lived up to its Roman reputation.   

So I was looking for rain poems and came across this odd and powerful Robert Frost one - not about rain as such, but with rain in it and well worth a read.  And perhaps it ties in with what I am going to say about "the original serpent".

Last Thursday I got some energy from somewhere. I finished my study for the meeting, watched the Broadcast from the Governing Body, did a bit of witnessing (letters, fb), and made an apple crumble for himself. He had bought some cooking apples in a pointed sort of way when we did our grocery shopping, and so I took the hint.  This Thursday, everything is going to be an effort, and I will have to be at the meeting in Pixel Form this evening as given my hearing aids have packed up on me, the only way I will be able to hear is via the computer headphones.  This new med, which is supposed to be an anti-depressant (though I am not taking it for that reason) is making me both depressed and tired, even though I am sleeping heavily, as though I had been clubbed.

I have an appointment with the Audiologist tomorrow and just have to hope he can fix the hearing aids...

The photo is one Col took of a lovely grass snake. And like all snakes it has such an innocent face, and is very beautiful.   I say that because I want to talk about "the original serpent" - not a snake at all, but Satan the devil - the one who Jesus called "the father of the lie".

The Bible tells us simply and clearly that the whole world, all its institutions, lie in the power of "the wicked one", Satan.  

And it also tells us that Satan is deceiving the whole world.

So down the great dragon was hurled, the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth; he was hurled down to the earth,  and his angels were hurled down with him." Revelation 12:9

If those words are true, then Satan is pulling the strings and is deceiving the entire inhabited earth, and we are being lied to a scale we can probably hardly comprehend.  Wouldn't it explain why there are so many conspiracy theories?  We perceive the hands behind the curtain, and see that they are not benevolent ones, but without knowing what the Inspired Scriptures tell us, we can so easily be persuaded to blame and turn on each other.

And it is so important to know that, while in the poem Robert Frost talks about being well acquainted with the night, the Inspired Scriptures promise us a wonderful dawn is coming.

People sometimes see Revelation as a frightening book, maybe all about the end of the world. Whereas what in fact is does describe is the end of the current wicked system of things on the earth, and the restoration of paradise earthwide.

This is what it promises us:

With that I heard a loud voice from the throne say: “Look! The tent of God is with mankind, and he will reside with them, and they will be his people. And God himself will be with them. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more,
 neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away."

The Foresight Saga - and Prophecy

THE FORESIGHT SAGA

by me

My darling baby

When you grow up

Your life will be wrecked

When your wife runs off

With an architect

You’ll marry again

That’s for sure

And have a daughter

You’ll just adore.

I wrote this years and years ago, for a competition. And it got into the anthology. Mind you, I think that every entry did, so I doubt it is a cause for boasting.

Now, I could foretell Soames Forstye's future as I had read The Forstye Saga, as could anyone who had read it. But if you do want to know what is going to happen next, you need to ask the Creator. Only Jehovah can tell us with accuracy. And he has done so in his inspired word - in both the Hebrew and the Christian Greek Scriptures (Old and New Testament).

In my faraway Convent schooldays, I had - we all had - an intensive religious education. But tragically we were not taught what the Bible actually says - in fact, often we were taught the reverse. And as far as I remember, we never even touched on Bible prophecy. Yet it is so important. Because, through his inspired word, Jehovah tells us:

From the beginning I foretell the outcome,

And from long ago the things that have not yet been done.

I say, ‘My decision will stand,

And I will do whatever I please.  - Isaiah 46:10

Jehovah can tell us what will happen next. And he alone can fulfill everything that he purposes. So he tells us what we need to know to get safely to the restored earthly paradise. For example we have the promise in the Book of Revelation that God will "bring to ruin those ruining the earth".

Now surely it is no exaggeration to say that we are close to ruining this lovely planet? And are there really any human solutions to this, especially given how impossible we find it to work together in harmony?

This article in the online Guardian on Monday underlines the truth of the Biblical warning that "it does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/26/world-west-danger-gaza-ukraine-food-global-problems

I am taking no sides in any of these awful conflicts - the current system of things on the earth works to divide and conquer, and sets brother against brother. Our Creator asks us to be no part of it. But how can any human government, even with the best will in the world, get us out of this tangled horrific web of conflicts and ruination that the article describes?

So do we have hope? Can we trust God's promises of true peace and security on the earth under the loving rule of the Kingdom of God? You can be very sure of it if you study Bible prophecy, and see how much of it has already been fulfilled. You can go to the site JW.org and put "prophecy" into the search engine, and find an immense amount of information. Very reassuring information too.

And I thought more spring flowers - snowdrops today, taken from Captain Butterfly's photo gallery - would be appropriate to head this blog, and so hopeful. Up they come each year, each one a little miracle.

In one of his poems, Dylan Thomas, speaks of "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower". That force is the spirit of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah, the Source and Sustainer of all life. The beauty and perfection of his work is all around us, even after 6,000 years of imperfection and human rulerships on the earth.

There is another factor too, which I hope to address in my next blog. Who is really pulling the strings, which ever government gets elected, or seizes power? These are not human hands by the way.

An Ear Fail...

I chose this photo of Crocus at Small Dole as we drove past some crocus - crocuses, croci? - among the drifts of daffodils, on Friday.

It was a medical day - 2 trips to the surgery - and my appointment at Southlands. 

My ears, or hearing aids, or both, failed mid meeting on Thursday night so I heard little of anything else. I could read along with most of it of course, but felt so depressed about it all.  Presumably it was my ears, as the hearing has come back - pretty much - but it leaves me wondering what will happen next.

The late seventies is strange and frightening new territory, with that edge - Philip Larkin's "huge and birdless silence" - looming closer and closer.

I am on a different (and unexpected) new medication for my skin condition, which is also apparently an anti-depressant, though I am not being given it for that reason. The doctor warned me that a side effect was nightmares, and so to take it a few hours before bedtime.

I did, and had strange and vivid dreams - and woke up with a very dry mouth, feeling a bit as if I had been coshed. Last night I could not sleep at all. I was intending to  take the tablets for the prescribed month and then decide whether or not to stay on them - but if they stop me from sleeping, I will have to stop taking them.

But on my sleeping-like-I-had-been-coshed night, my dream did not turn into a nightmare, for which I am grateful, as it could have. I dreamt that I saw a gang of ladettes, one of whom set a house on fire. I decided to speak up by giving a witness. And when I revealed that I was a JW, the chief ladette said "Well, I guessed you weren't scouting for a TV Documentary".  By which she meant, she guessed I wasn't anything interesting, anything that would interest her.

And the dream faded and vanished.  For which I do thank God, as I had prayed not to have any nightmares.

But how I wish everyone would at least hear us out.  Because when they do, they will find out what the Bible is actually saying, the wonderful future it promises us, right here on the lovely earth, IF we will listen to our Creator now.

Travelling Years

Now I am in my non-travelling years, my housebound years, I suppose, I find I have been thinking about our past travels. So I have searched Captain Butterfly's photo gallery and found a couple of photos for this blog.

I have picked one from the Tabletop - the strange and lovely land at the top of Table Mountain.  The other is from the Maldive Islands at sunset.  I loved the islands at night - hot, but without the fierce tropical sun, and so quiet, apart from the sound of the waves - the sound of eternity. And there was the smell of blossom everywhere. I tried to do the beauty of it some justice in Waiting for Gordo.

I am glad we were able to do our travelling back then, because things were not so crowded, and flying was not as difficult and stressful as it became.  In our last travelling years, you had to arrive so early at the airport, and go through so much security - all of it absolutely necessary of course - that I was exhausted before we even started.  

I can remember when it was just that bit more informal, more relaxed. 

For example, on my one and only trip to Africa - South Africa, after apartheid - just as we lifted off from Jo'burg on our way to The Cape, the pilot of our plane told us the time we would be arriving in Harare, He then laughed heartily at the panic of those of us not used to his style, as we all assumed we had got on the wrong plane, and realised it was too late to get off - without a parachute anyway!

The staff then sang what was apparently a rude song (in Africaans) to welcome a family travelling with us who were moving from Jo'burg to The Cape. It was a jolly journey. And the pilot got us there safely and to time.

On another flight to the Maldives - Air Transylvania(?)  - before The Wall came down anyway - one of our party of divers, the prettiest American wife, was actually at the controls of our plane at one stage. You could see her in the cabin driving it while the pilot had his feet up reading his newspaper.   While I would like to think they had autopilot, I don't know. It was a very small plane.  But the pilot and the diver got us there safely and on time. And who could ask for more?

I did not worry about flying in those days. But I would now.  The older I get the more fragile and the more wonderful life seems.

And we got to see some places before they filled up - like Chiang Mai for example. It was not a tourist hotspot when we stayed at the old British Embassy (then owned by our Thai friend's company). We had it to ourselves, apart from the staff, who cooked us a lovely breakfast every morning. We pretty much had beautiful Chiang Mai to ourselves too.

And we got just a glimpse of the old city - no more than that I guess - on our first visit to Bangkok in that the roads were not yet choked with traffic. We could wander down the Soi our friends lived on and watch birds and butterflies, and the waffle man could drive his cart to their backdoor so we could have fresh waffles for breakfast.  On every subsequent visit, Bangkok - including the little lane they lived on - was as choked with traffic as every other city is now.

Of course, it is tourists like us who help to cause all this - yet we are needed for economic reasons - which is the central dilemma of Waiting for Gordo.

There are many places I would have loved to have seen of course. and never did.  And I had hoped we could travel round the UK quite a lot in our retirement...  However, IF we "inherit the earth" as Jesus promised, we will have all the time in the world. And who knows where we might go and what we might see then? There is an immense, ever-expanding universe out there.

But we do need to be meek - not meek as in a character trait, but meek towards our Creator, Jehovah, prepared to seek for him, to find him, and to be guided and moulded by him.  He will help us every step of the way.

Today is my Zoom day - two double Zoom sessions with friends, one a.m., one p.m.  We had our usual Zoom family get togethers on Monday, and all seems well.  On Tuesday, we travelled to Rustington, to do our fruit and veggie shop - no plane journey involved, just a pretty drive past a rather grey and swirly English Channel. The daffodils are everywhere - valiant creatures.  And isn't each one of them a miracle of beauty and engineering?  How often do we stop and thank their Creator, Jehovah, for them, for all the beauty he has made for us, and for all the beauty he will make for us?

Have you Ordled yet?

I thought it might be nice to see some early daffodils. They are starting to appear both outside and in the shops.  Our orchid table is still doing well, though the African violets are not flowering at the moment.

Captain B and I compete at Wordle/Quordle/Octordle every morning after breakfast.  So first question of the day is usually: Have you Ordled yet?

I am aiming for a draw - best for marital harmony in my opinion - but Col likes to win. And strangely, given he is the science graduate - I am on the arts side - he often does.  Which seems unfair somehow. He beat me on Saturday, though I did win on Friday.

It seems frivolous even to mention this, given the news...  the war, if war it is, continues in the Middle East, causing immeasurable suffering.  And the headlines yesterday were about the death of Alexei Navalny, a political prisoner, in a Russian gulag.  God knows what the poor man went through before he died.

And:

A woman who flew a British girl to Kenya for female genital mutilation was defended by the victim in court after being slapped with a seven-year jail sentence.

Amina Noor, 40, who was born in Somalia but moved to Britain when she was 16, took the three-year-old to a 'clinic' while she waited outside as the horrific procedure was carried out.

Medical experts who later examined the child found she had suffered severe mutilation of her genitals, which would have caused significant bleeding and extreme pain. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13094103/Woman-jailed-flying-three-year-old-British-girl-Kenya-female-genital-mutilation-DEFENDED-victim.html

The mutilated 3 year old, now a young woman, who will have pain and medical issues for the rest of her life, and who must have gone through unimaginable pain at the time, spoke up for the accused lady saying she was not able to resist the pressure from her community.

Which is very likely true. But suppose this had been taken seriously and prosecuted years ago, would that have given her the incentive to stand up to the pressure, or maybe even given those who are pressuring mothers to mutilate their children to have some second thoughts?  

Will this prison sentence help, or will it deter other victims from coming forward?   I truly do not know. I cannot see the perfect way to deal with this.  But doesn't it all, yet again, demonstrate that we, the children of Adam, cannot successfully rule ourselves?  As the Hebrew Scriptures (Jeremiah) warn, "it does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step".  It is the heavenly government, the Kingdom of God, alone that can and will put things right on the earth.

It can and will heal all mutilated children - and it will heal their mental and emotional scars as well!  

Here is a beautiful promise from Isaiah 65:17:

For look! I am creating new heavens and a new earth;

And the former things will not be called to mind, Nor will they come up into the heart.

What human government, even with the best will in the world...?

Despite a bad night I did suddenly get some energy from somewhere on Thursday, but will it last? I made the effort required to contact the doctor, got another sample in, though it has done me no good - no diagnosis or anything.  I am wondering if this is going to be my new normal - if it is all in fact caused by my crumbling back.

Then I managed to do some much needed housework, and put the rubbish and the recyc out. Someone has fitted an new handle on our bin store, one that works!

Thanks.

And I did the rest of my study for the evening meeting.  Plus I had to go to the meeting via Zoom as Captain B and Jim were very late back from The Field and not only did not I not feel equal to driving myself in the dark, but also I needed his help to get dressed to Kingdom Hall standards.  

They say old age is a second childhood. And, yes, there are now times when I need help getting myself dressed.

I paid for all the energy on Friday morning as I woke up with a swollen, blistered and painful left ankle and had to lurch from bed to zimmer frame to make sure I stayed upright.

I am in what is a Catch 22 of old age. To support my crumbling back, I need to do regular exercises; but when I do, my other joints become swollen and painful.  Heading further into my late seventies is all new territory - scary, painful, strange - but I am so grateful to still be here. 

Anyway, I did make it to the meeting today - for some comforting teaching - and even managed a quick shopping trip afterwards, I got some rhubarb and have made a crumble, as the poor Captain is only having chicken veggie soup for his tea, so I think a crumble (his favourite dessert) and custard will make it a much better supper.

A Time Travelling Spider

Either a spider fell into a glass of wine, wobbled itself out, fell (through a timewarp) into an inkwell, and then, hitching a ride on the Tardis, arrived in Haysbridge and ran all over my Circuit Assembly Programme with its inky feet, or it could be that I tried to take some notes at the time.

It's very hard to tell.  But I need to know as we are going to be discussing what we learnt at the meeting at the Kingdom Hall tonight. And if I am to contribute anything I need to work out what my spider scrawl says.

The spider heading the blog was taken by Captain Butterfly, of course - locally. I thought it had a scholarly look about it.

The Assembly theme was "Enter Into God's Rest", and the theme scripture was Hebrews 4:11: Let us therefore do our utmost to enter into that rest, so that no one may fall into the same pattern of disobedience.   

One thing that the spider and I clearly wrote is that we need to build and keep strong faith in Jehovah's way of doing things.  We only see a small part of the picture  - he sees the whole.

I seem to have written down "Habbakuk 8:8  Do not harden our hearts but let Jehovah motivate us."  Unfortunately Habbakuk has only 3 chapters, so either the spider and I got the book wrong, or the verses wrong, or I simply cannot decipher the reference.  Excellent principle though. In fact, without Jehovah motivating us and energising us, how could the worldwide witness to the Kingdom of God be given?  We could not do it in our own strength.  

I did not even know what the Kingdom was until those two Jehovah's Witnesses called at my door all those years ago.  So how could I have told others about it, even if I had realised I was supposed to be doing so?

It has just dawned on me, it is HEBREWS 8:8!  Which is about the "new covenant".  Now that makes sense though I cannot now remember the exact point being made, but clearly it was hard for some of the Jews of Jesus day to accept the new covenant, bringing Gentiles into the fold. 

And I have also noted Hebrews 12:1, which says: So, then, because we have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also throw off every weight and the sin that easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

The sin that so easily entangles us is a lack of faith, a loss of faith.  We will need to trust in Jehovah with all our hearts more and more as the current wicked system of things on the earth approaches its end.  So we need to strengthen our faith now, by continuing to read and apply God's word.

So there are some lovely points to dwell on.  And I will also note that the closing talk was FIND JOY IN YOUR SERVICE TO JEHOVAH.

It would be easy to miss that if we were not careful, and get bogged down in all the difficulties and hassles and stresses of life as it is now.  Yet we only have to endure to "the end".  And that end comes either at the end of our own life, and our lives are so short now (I cannot tell you how quickly 70 plus years flies by!), or until the end of the current wicked system of things on the earth, at Armageddon.

After Armageddon, IF we have the privilege of being here, things will just get easier and easier. For one thing, we will be heading back to life, instead of dying as we all are now.  

So I look forward to tonight and being reminded of all the things the spider and I seem to have made illegible notes about. As an excuse, I do remember that I was so nervous about my upcoming part on the stage beforehand, and so relieved afterwards, that note-taking took a bit of a back seat. But I did listen, and was very glad to be there.

So much so that I am hoping to make it to the next one, via the Room for the Disabled.  I will be able to have my trusty Zimmer with me that way, and hopefully will not have the struggle in and out of my seat that caused me such a problem last time.

The Recorders Conference and the Ruby-tailed Wasp

It was the Recorder's Conference on Saturday.  I was so worried about not being able to go, but after a prayer, and a dose of painkillers (acting in harmony with my prayer) I did make it.  It was a good day out, as always. We connected with a lot of old friends: Mark, Nigel, Neil and others. And Michael Blencowe and Clare did their usual brilliant job of organising and compering.  Everyone involved did, plus the caterers who produced an excellent veggie buffet.

I was a little sad about the wasp survey, in which the wasps had to be drowned and then sent in to be recorded.  Hard to imagine a butterfly, or bee, or fluffy kitten(!) survey being conducted in the same way.  But... Mark put me right by pointing out that wasps are not endangered.  And we all sometimes have to kill insects.

Which is sadly true.  We had to have a bees nest in our Saudi garden destroyed.  It was not only their home, but it was a work of art.  Our garden was small, but we inherited our friends' gardeners. They needed the work, and they made our back garden their base during the days. They had other employees in camp they worked for, but they kind of came and went from our back garden, so we left it to them. But then the bees turned up. They were aggressive little stingers.  One gave me a rather painful sting as I fished it out of our pool at the front - gently and carefully. Which made us worried what a swarm of them might do if they set about our gardeners having their lunch under the wasp nest tree. So we could not risk in on their behalf.  Plus they were the breadwinners for their extended family back on the sub-continent - no welfare state to fall back on if they became ill. No sick pay either.  I felt very bad about it though.

Anyway, here is a rather beautiful ruby-tailed wasp, photographed by Captain B, if I remember rightly on one of our trips to the Wetland Trust.  It will help to show that not only are wasps useful, but they are marvelous creations.

I keep thinking of the restored earthly paradise, when everything will be in its rightful place, doing the job it should be doing, and the original loving harmony of Eden will prevail earthwide.

Bees and wasps will buzz happily about our lovely gardens, doing their job, and coming to us for help if they ever need it.  That picture of the paradise to come needs to stay in my mind, as I am finding being in my late seventies rather difficult and painful.  And, as the Bible tells us, hope is a secure anchor.

The Week of Two Cauliflowers

glum cauliflower buds flowers to fractal shoots it's Romanesco

by John Anderson

https://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/fractals_in_every_floret_1370043

Hold the presses!  I got my shopping list in a mess and have ended up with two cauliflowers.  I will now have to come up with a couple of recipes to get them cooked asap.  But Wednesday was a cooking day anyway in that after my usual morning Zoom with a friend, I made an apple crumble, plus made up Col's packed lunch for tomorrow.

Thursday morning we were up early - the Metal Detectorist had to get to his Field - and it began to pour with rain after 7 o clock - monsooning it down. Will it be falling as snow further North, as they have forecast snow for this week?  Apparently it was. It has not been cold enough here for snow, yet.  Captain Butterfly rang glumly from his Field a couple of times - rain, rain and more rain, and two bits of gold found - but not by him.

I made a sort of cauliflower curry in the afternoon - using up the older of the caulis - and even doing that exhausted me. Though having had two reasonably good nights sleep has given me back some energy and I managed to get the beds changed, the sheets washed, and a trayful of marmalade muffins made to re-stock the freezer for the packed lunches.

And I finished my study for the Thursday night meeting. We, the congregations worldwide, are just starting to study Psalms - specifically Psalms 1 to 4.

The Book of Psalms begins:

Happy is the man who does not walk according to the advice of the wicked

And does not stand on the path of sinners+

And does not sit in the seat of scoffers.

 
But his delight is in the law of Jehovah,

And he reads His law in an undertone
 day and night.

 
He will be like a tree planted by streams of water,

A tree that produces fruit in its season,

The foliage of which does not wither.

And everything he does will succeed.

This is a lovely simple and powerful image - the tree planted by streams of water, reminding us that God's word is as essential to our life as water is.  I couldn't find a "tree planted by streams of water" in Col's gallery. But I did find one of a tree he took on his Galapagos trip, so I thought that might be quite interesting.

I am in the throes of some violent flare-ups at the moment - my "good" shoulder, then my right hand, then my right leg, and now my right hand again. I am going to rest everything as much as I can today, not even getting dressed.  I am back on my trusty Zimmer frame.

Don't tell him Pike!

Sad, sad news on Monday. Ian Lavender who played Private Pike (Don't tell him Pike) has died.  He was the same age as me.  He was a wonderful actor, and a part of many of our lives.  He made us laugh so much.  And his death only underlines for me how short our lives are now.

The pic, from Captain Butterfly's photo galley is of a Pike, in Ian Lavender's honour.

And I hope that when the time comes, during the Thousand Years, he will be woken from the dreamless sleep of death and see this lovely earth again.

I only just made it to the Kingdom Hall for the Sunday meeting, arriving as the singing began. My left hand was playing me up and it took me a time to get myself dressed in reasonable order. Could not get my socks on though.  Col had left very early for The Field, or he would have been there to help.

There was a great adaptation of David Copperfield on the Telly during the afternoon, the one with Rodney Trotter (Nicholas Lyndhurst) as a wonderfully creepy Uriah Heep, and Maggie Smith as Betsy Trotwood.  Oh and with Zoe Wanamaker, playing Miss Murdstone, a similarly ruthless character to the one she plays in My Family.

Surely Copperfield is Dicken's masterpiece?  I sat spellbound and sometimes sobbing over it all afternoon. And did not fall asleep once!

Apparently Col has sent off for a Contraption to Help Me Get My Socks On.  I only hope I can work it when it arrives, otherwise I will be needing a Contraption to Help Me Use My Contraption to Help Me Get My Socks On.  And then, if I can't work that, I will need... And so on ad infinitum...

We had our usual family chat on Zoom on Monday - all seem well, and we had lots to laugh about.  One of the invisible cats - possibly Abra, maybe Tabs - was visible in bits as she walked all over Nute and did her best to jam her typewriter keys. They were/are such shy cats, yet they settled down so well with Nute.  I wish Janet  could have know that, she was so worried about them.

I hope she will know, one day.  And as just at the moment I am really feeling "the sadness that belongs to the world",  I must try to keep strongly in mind the happiness, the healing, that lies ahead when the whole earth is being transformed into paradise under the loving rule of the Kingdom of God.

Drab-de-berry

 

FEBRUARY

by Edward Ward (1667-1731) 

He who would, in this Month, be warm within,
And when abroad, from Wet defend his Skin,
His Morning’s draught should be of Sack or Sherry,
And his Great Coat be made of Drab-de-berry.

I had to look up "Drab-de-berry", and apparently it is cloth made from high quality French grown wool from the Berry region.

Though whether we are going to need all these aids to warmth I do not know, given January has been unusually warm.  Who knows what February will bring? I was hoping to find something fabric-related in Col's photo gallery.  He certainly took many photos of Thai silks in the Jim Thompson shop on our first trip to Thailand, but that was over thirty years ago, and all I could find is this rather lovely photo of a Drab Looper Moth - which I think is as close as I am going to get to Drab-de-berry.

My good shoulder is coming back on line, thank God.  Life is very difficult without it. I am still getting little done and keep falling asleep though, as I had a lot of sleepless nights due to the pain.  Col is at home this Saturday, busy watching two rugby matches. He is not out metal detecting!  HE IS NOT OUT METAL DETECTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is almost worth a tabloid headline in itself.  Although that would be much too positive as the tabloid headlines are so distressing. Where to start... there has been another acid attack in London, this time on a woman and her two young children. They are badly hurt, as are several brave passers-by and police who intervened and tried to help.  And the two children, well teenagers, who stabbed and killed one of their teenage friends have been sentenced to whatever life imprisonment means these days.  

And the wars go on - with talk now of conscription!  Even after two world wars, we, the human family, have not learnt how to stop fighting and killing each other.  Isn't it more than time to admit the truth of the Biblical warning that "it does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step"?

It was back to the Kingdom Hall on Thursday night - and how much I needed to hear that perfect, loving teaching from God's inspired word.   We, the congregations worldwide, are just finishing another study of the Book of Job, and I seem to have got more out of it than ever before - a much deeper understanding. And the powerful lesson is to trust our Creator.  He loves us and is rescuing us, but we do not see the big picture, any more than poor Job did.

The rescue promised in Eden is so close now.