Arrivals

This lovely moth - a Jersey Tiger - arrived briefly on our balcony - just long enough for Col to get this photo.

And the caravans arrived on the Green on Sunday night - only a few though. A whole procession drove past, then after a while some came back and drove onto the Green in front of our balcony, where we were having a glass of wine before watching the swimming (Olympics).  So I wondered if there was not enough room wherever it was they were going, which cannot have been far, as they came back quite quickly.

It turned out that most of them parked in the car park of the local swimming pool, and by this morning they were all gone. The Council must have been swamped with complaints as it's just about impossible to find anywhere else to park on the seafront in a sunny July.  Our caravaners are still outside. The Police were round yesterday, but if I remember from last time, they get two weeks before they have to leave.

They are quiet enough neighbours really.

The weather is so hot - and beach and Green are full up with holidaymakers. It would have been a perfect day for swimming, if I were only able to go in. But, alas, I can't. If only we had sea pools like they do in Oz - I could get safely in and out of them.

Anyway, I must always remember that every day is a bonus now - and that if we are in the restored earthly paradise, we will be able to swim all we want, in sea, lake and river. The earth will be under perfect management then, and we will swim in the clear, sparkling waters of paradise.

Re-Wilding the Balcony

DAISIES AND DANDELIONS

by me

Daisies and dandelions

Rush from the meadow

Trembling willow herb 

Hides in the hollow

In the next field is penned up

A herd of tame buttercup

Burst through your fence

Don’t you stop!

Spraying will follow.

Col has been rewilding the balcony - see his photo above. Its taken at an odd angle to get in the large wildflower - whose name I have forgotten - that is flourishing there.  We also had some Rosebay Willow Herb, but it has disappeared.

I wrote the above poem many years ago. I was on the train thinking how bare the fields were of wild flowers but how occasionally they tumbled down the unsprayed banks of the fields as if they were escaping from it.  And there was one field that was full of buttercups.  So I was warning them to escape while they could.

I used to write poems to catch the moments as they flew past my increasingly middle-aged self and it began to come home to me just how short our lives are.  Now, of course, I am hoping to live forever on this lovely planet. But I may have to get there the long way round, by the resurrection.

And while it is only the Kingdom of God that can "bring to ruin those ruining the earth", I think we have become more sensitive to the value of it all - many of the roadside verges are left to grow wild now, and the wild flowers are flourishing within them.

But there has been a shortage of butterflies this year - and we no longer get as many moths on our balcony overnight.  Those of us who have been around since the 1960s (and the rest!) will know that there was a time when, after a car journey, the windscreen would be horribly covered in smashed insects.

No longer. I would like to think it is because they have learned about the danger of cars - and never ever underestimate the intelligence in the creation, as the Creator, Jehovah, is the very Source of wisdom. But it does seem more likely that everything we are doing is causing insect populations to continue to reduce.

Which brings me back to the need for a perfect, loving government, the heavenly one.

Moon Compasses

Moon Compasses
By Robert Frost

I stole forth dimly in the dripping pause
Between two downpours to see what there was.
And a masked moon had spread down compass rays
To a cone mountain in the midnight haze,
As if the final estimate were hers;
And as it measured in her calipers,
The mountain stood exalted in its place.
So love will take between the hands a face

https://www.babelmatrix.org/works/en/Frost%2C_Robert-1874/Moon_Compasses/it


The moon photo was taken by Captain Butterfly of course. We sit out a lot this time of year watching the moon on the waters of the English Channel. The sea always makes me think of eternity, the endless waves - and when I picture myself in the restored earthly paradise (it is an undeserved kindness, we can all hope), I often imagine myself beside the sea at sunset, watching the sun set, from the cliffs of Cornwall maybe, my childhood seaside paradise. I hope Captain B will be there beside me - I hope we will all be there, enjoying "the glorious freedom of the children of God".

In the meantime, I am between scans.  First scan done, all went well - we got there early and I got in early.  I now have the appointment for the next one, which will not be nice and may not go so well, as it has been triggered by a problem found in my latest blood test.

Today I must make the cakes for the brothers and sisters who will be at the school next week.  Two batches of marmalade muffins, and hopefully - if  my foot holds up - a trip to Waitrose to supplement it, as I haven't got the time to do any more.  Nor am I able to stand for all that long.  I am baking these muffins with pauses.

Dusk

 

She Sweeps with Many Coloured Brooms

by Emily Dickinson

She sweeps with many-colored brooms,
And leaves the shreds behind;
Oh, housewife in the evening west,
Come back, and dust the pond!

You dropped a purple ravelling in,
You dropped an amber thread;
And now you've littered all the East
With duds of emerald!

And still she plies her spotted brooms,
And still the aprons fly,
Till brooms fade softly into stars —
And then I come away.

https://allpoetry.com/She-sweeps-with-many-colored-brooms,

Col's photo and the poem seem to go together well.  And the poem reminds me of how my parents wouldn't draw the curtains until the very last of the sunset had disappeared - till brooms fade softly into stars, as Emily has it.

And I hope so much that one day we will all sit together again, watching the sun set.  And that we will see sunsets without number - and every one of them will be different, such is the variety and immensity of Jehovah's creation.

It is being a busy weekend, for me, these days.  I was actually out on the doors yesterday, doing three return visits, courtesy of a brother and sister who picked me up and chauffered me and came with me to the doors - my voice is not too good, due to this lingering cold.  But it did make me realise that my days of going door to door really may be numbered, in that after being kept quite a long time at one door talking - or being talked to - I nearly fell over when I tried to move again. My legs and back just can't take it.

Then we went to a garden party in the afternoon - nice group of friends, all ages, including a tiny of one year old, crawling happily round the garden.  And Col and I sat out on the balcony later, over a glass of red wine, until it got dark. We talked a bit about old times and all our memories, but also about what we are doing now - for example, Col's latest find, what he calls a "hammy", a silver hammered coin, many hundreds of years old.

We both agree that it all underlines how short our lives are now, how quickly they go. But he is not yet ready to think about what the Bible has to say about it.  One day...?

And he supports me in being a witness in every way - even donating his last big container of milk from the freezer so I won't have to stop off at the Supermarket on the way to the Kingdom Hall - as today I am on Tea and Coffee Duty.  These days I am so feeble that even doing that seems like climbing Everest.  But I will have support, and my kind chauffeurs of yesterday even offered to take over and do it. But I think its best I do what I can for the congregation now, as it is not much these days.

Maggie on the Balcony

 

I found this photo, of Maggie on the balcony, from their recent visit.  Maggie, NOT a magpie.  We do have a lovely view of the English Channel - and plenty of tasty moths. But fortunately Maggie had no predatory intentions towards them.  She and Dave once lived in a flat in the city of Melbourne, the gateway to Tasmania.  We visited once. I don't remember that they had a balcony, though it was a lovely flat, very spacious.

She is a movie star now, or at least has starred in one movie. And she is also in some rock star videos!  It is amazing what some of us ex-Expats are getting up to in our retirement.

We have more family visits coming up at the end of the month.  And it reminds me of our first summers here, when we had visitors non-stop.  It was fun, but the truth is that we could not cope now.  We may be seeing Roger again, before the end of the year though, and if so, that would be lovely.

I just got some more territory to work - via letter. Some local flats, so I hope and pray I can reach someone there.  Surely what is happening in the world is making more and more people stop and think.  And I have to think and pray how to help them to do so in my letters.

Col rang from The Field - not yet open, he got there early. 

Today is yet another blood test, followed by the dreaded scan next week.  Then I have an audiologist appointment. Then I am hoping for a few weeks minus medical appointments, but of course a lot will be dependent on the result of the scan.

I walked to my blood test today - HOLD THE PRESSES!!!  It is hardly a long way, in fact I did the whole thing there and back in about 35 minutes - got there early, was seen early.  But it's my back, so painful. However the last time I drove, it was so difficult to find anywhere to park.

The problem is that the building work has not yet started at the Clinic - everything awaits on the Insurance Claim I guess  - so there are a few less parking spaces and it makes all the difference.  Anyway, I can now sleep the rest of the day away if I want to - apart from getting Col's tea and getting to the Kingdom Hall tonight.  Oh and we have a box of peaches and nectarines arriving at some stage, so I must stay awake for that.

Talking of Insurance Claims reminds me of an excellent cartoon I saw years ago, either in The Spectator, or Private Eye.  A broker is on the phone to his client, he is holding an enormous document with gallons of small print, and he is saying excitedly:  "You're in luck! Being attacked by a hippopotamus while riding your bike underwater is the one thing your policy does cover you for."

A Poem for July, a Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky

A BOAT BENEATH A SUNNY SKY

Lewis Carroll

A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July —

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear —

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream —
Lingering in the golden gleam —
Life, what is it but a dream?


https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43907/a-boat-beneath-a-sunny-sky

This poem has such a haunting quality. And I too was a child who was entranced by the Alice books - they helped to influence my own writing.

This is a quote from a review of "Till They Dropped" on my Amazon page:  A very dark Alice in Wonderland reimagined through a dystopian lens of corporate greed, consumerism, killer robots, and out-of-control technology. Intelligent literature for grown-ups - highly recommended!

I hope my writing has something of the beauty and power of Lewis Carroll's - just something.  And I hope I have created a world as believably as he did in the Alice books.  Or almost.  I am not the writer he was, but I would love to be.

And aren't we, the damaged children of disobedient Adam, as insubstantial as a dream?  We, who were supposed to be perfect and living, are dying from the moment we are born.  Our lives are over before we know it - even if we make our threescore years and ten.  Given my age, I am thinking about this rather a lot.

And one day I hope we will all, right here on this lovely earth, know what it is to be living, not dying. I doubt we can imagine the happiness of it.  And of course I hope that Lewis Carroll and Alice and her siblings will be there too.

Till They Dropped also appears in my short story collection The Umbrellas of Hamelin, a collection of stories I wrote over many years.

It has been sunny - but I have been so full of this cold I have actually felt a bit shivery.  I feel like Vera in the Giles cartoons of old, all bundled up on the beach among the sunbathers.  My field service group is doing hall cleaning and hospitality this month, so I did stay on to help a bit with the clearing up, and volunteered for tea and coffee service next Sunday.

I have some medical stuff coming up, we have an invite to a BBQ on Saturday, and an invite to do a couple of return visits with some siblings also on Saturday. If I can only get rid of this cold...

Teaching Tech

 

This exquisite Swallowtail moth - photo by Captain B of course - is yet another example of the miracles that surround us - see the script of my dialogue in the School below.

It has been rather a tense week - this dreadful cold and cough, poor old Col being down with it too - and worrying about my part in the School which involved me having to explain to a householder how to install an app on their Smartphone.

What could possibly go wrong?!  I said to Col that I felt I was getting too old for the School and maybe should retire, but he thinks it is good for me and encouraged me to continue.

So I did, and this is the talk that my householder and I delivered last night.  I am not sure that I completely followed the brief. I wonder now if it should have been a return visit. I kind of assumed not as the point I was working on was how to set up a return visit... anyway this was it. And my point about the miracles of creation that surround us is always on topic.

Following Up

(4 min.) HOUSE TO HOUSE. Tell the person about the JW Library® app, and show him how to install it. (lmd lesson 7 point 4)

4. Make an appointment. At the end of each conversation, try to confirm a specific time when you can speak with the person again. Be sure to keep the appointment.

Sue:  Good morning. I was just admiring this beautiful fuschia you have beside your door. It was my mother’s favourite flower. It reminded her of her childhood holidays in Cornwall. Do you happen to know what variety it is?

HH:  No. Sorry it was here when we came. But it is lovely. Was that why you rang the bell?

Sue:  Well, no. I am one of Jehovah’s Witnesses and I wanted to talk to you about the Kingdom of God.

HH:  Oh.  Do you know, I would love to believe we had a Creator, and a loving one. But I can’t really, the world is in such a state.  And anyway, if God wants me to believe in him, why doesn’t he get you to show me a miracle. I would have no problem believing then.

Sue:  I am so glad you shared that because I can show you a miracle right now. In fact we have been admiring it.  Look at just one of these blossoms.  Isn’t it more lovely than the finest Tiffany jewel, and with better engineering than our most expensive computer - in that this grew from a tiny tiny seed coded with so much information that it not only produced this little miracle, but is programmed to produce more seeds, more miracles of beauty?

HH:  Well, when you come to think about  it, it does seem miraculous.

Sue:  In fact we are surrounded by the miracles of creation, all of which witness to us that it has a Creator, as the Bible says: “a Grand Creator”, whose name is Jehovah.  But how can we know who that Creator is, what he wants for us, and what he wants from us?

HH:  Given you are called Jehovah’s Witnesses, maybe it’s you?

Sue:  For sure that is what we want to tell you. You are absolutely right there. But how do we know? Where do we get our information from?

HH:  I am pretty sure you are going to say from the Bible.

Sue: Right again.  And that is why we try to encourage everyone to accept a personal Bible Course, so they can find out for themselves.  Would you be interested in thinking about this?

HH:  Just for a start, I don’t have a Bible.

Sue:  No problem.I see you have an android phone.

HH: Yes, I was just about to make a call when you knocked at the door.

Sue: Oh, I mustn’t keep you long then, but if you would like I could show you how to upload an app onto your phone that will include not only the Bible, but a wealth of Biblical information.  Would you like me to?

HH:  Why not? 

Sue:  So if you go to Playstore, then type in JW space library - then install - it should come up.  Lovely. Now if you go to this little library icon at the bottom and press it, you can go down the list to brochures.  What I really want to draw your attention to is this publication “Enjoy Life Forever” as it is what we are using alongside the Bible in the Course.  And that is exactly what our Creator wants for us - that we should enjoy life forever. As we now both have this on our phones, would you like me to call again and we could spend maybe 15 minutes showing you how this Course works?

HH:   Yes, if you like

Sue:  When would be a good time to drop in - the same time next Saturday?

HH:  Well, I am usually at home on Saturday mornings, so the same time would be fine.

Sue:  Thanks. I will look forward to that. (We then exchanged names and phone numbers.)

I had prayed to Jehovah to help me with this, and of course he did. In one way by supplying me with a brilliant householder, in one of my sisters, who got me through it, correctly and to time. We just had 4 minutes. And my cold held off for those vital 4 minutes. Did Jehovah hold it back? If so, I am very grateful.

Especially as this morning I am back to a cough and a sore throat. And feeling sorry for myself.

Can we even imagine how wonderful perfect health will be? It is something that we, the poor damaged children of Adam, have never yet known. But, one day - well, please please go to JW.Org, the Library, the Brochures and have a read of "Enjoy Life Forever".

The Ash Bud Moth

 

The little Ash Bud is one of the recent visitors to our balcony.   I hope it is prospering somewhere out there after its stay in our Moth Hotel - an AirBnB indeed. Will it be (a) eating ash buds, or (b) looking like them.

I find I don't know. Yet in my childhood, I feel sure I would have known what an ash bud looked like.

John, from Oz, sent through a wonderfully scary short story he has written for a competition.  

Like my "Till They Dropped", it ends up in the dark part of the cellars of our old family home - 5 Disraeli Crescent in the book. Clearly it remains a powerful memory for all of us.

It is quite a different story though.  Mine is the Alice-in-Wonderland version.

Col and I are both down with bad colds - I can't talk, only croak.  And Col is not wonderful either.  He did his stewarding duty on Sunday though, at the boat race thingummy near Lancing, and I attended the last day of the Convention, in pixel form.

Here, from a demonstration at that Convention, was a thought provoking question, from an older sister (like myself) to a younger sister, who is very anxious about something.

The context is the reassuring advice at 1 Peter 5:6,7, in which Jehovah tells us that he will help us if we will only listen to him and tell him all our troubles in prayer:  "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time,while you throw all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you."  

The older sister then asks the younger one: "Are you prepared to throw all your anxiety on Jehovah, or just some of it?"

It is a question to make all of us think.  And it reminded me of a previous talk, I think from a Circuit Overseer visit, when he cited the same Scripture and asked us another pertinent question. When we have tackled whatever the problem is to the best of our ability, do we then "THROW all our anxiety" about it on Jehovah, trusting in Him to help us through.  Or do we put it down, and then pick it up again?

It is still something I am wrestling with. Its not, I hope that I have any doubts about Jehovah's ability to solve whatever problems we have, its that I doubt myself. Am I really doing all I can to solve it? Am I really doing all I can in Jehovah's service?

While I am someone who lives with high anxiety levels, that does not mean that my anxieties are not valid...  what a stressful world system this is.

If I - if all of us - have the privilege of being on the earth after Armageddon - whether we come the long way round via the resurrection, or find ourselves sitting dazed in a heap of rubble a couple of seconds after the event, won't we feel even then, so early in The Thousand Years, as if an immense burden has been lifted off us?

And that will just be the beginning of the increasing happiness that lies ahead.

The Oz Magpie

 

Talking to my siblings on Zoom reminded me of a time we were visiting John and family in Oz and we met an Australian magpie with her baby.  We were in a beautiful reserve, near Sydney I guess, and it rained suddenly, so we took shelter in a sort of open pavilion, just the four of us.  Then a magpie and her baby came in.  They settled down on the back of a bench, and I saw the mum watching us.  After a while she flew off, leaving her baby there, and kept returning to it with food.

I felt she had decided we were safe babysitters, which we were. Smart lady.  I have no idea why some people use the expression "bird-brained" to mean scatty. Birds are very smart creatures.  As I remember it, we stayed there, on duty, until mother and baby left.

Col and I have both come down with bad colds - and are both back to coughing non-stop.

At the moment I am in the middle of attending the Brighton Convention - in pixel form. I have the American version - the teaching of course is all the same, just the Speakers are different.

The drama is wonderful.  Well it is, so far, the best Convention ever. They always are, as they get better and better.   

I have been studying the Bible among Jehovah's congregated people for over thirty years now, and don't know how many times I have read through it, as we study 2 or 3 chapters a week. Yet I keep finding new things, and getting a deeper and deeper insight into what Christlike behaviour is.  And I also often get a painful, but necessary, reminder of how I seem to heading in the opposite direction, rather than improving.

So here is an interesting point, one of many, that was brought out at the current Convention.  Jehovah told the Israelites this:

For Jehovah your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of streams of water, springs and fountains flowing in the valley plain and in the mountainous region, - Deuteronomy 8:7

God was not only bringing his people into a beautiful land, but he was also going to care for that land. His eye would be upon it.  And the Speaker used the comparison of a young couple, expecting their first baby, who are decorating a nursery for it, making everything not only right but lovely.

Jehovah was going to entrust his only-begotten Son, the firstborn of his creation, the most precious of his creation, to a faithful young couple living in this land. He was making sure that both the people and the land were in the right condition before he did so.

The drama also bought home to me how young Mary and Joseph were - and yet how faithfully they cared for the child entrusted to them, even though they too were the damaged children of disobedient Adam.

So, quite coincidentally, this blog has turned out to be all about trust.  

Who ate who?

 

This is a Poplar Hawk Moth that appeared on our balcony last week.  It is a fearsome giant, so I wasn't too worried about the magpie eating it, more worried that it might have eaten the magpie.

I got myself into a spiral of worry as I am back on the work, in that a couple of friends kindly took me on three return visits. So all I had to do was to drive myself to the Hall. Or so I thought. It was all complicated by its being Armed Services Day on the Green, and barricades going up on the roads, cutting our flat and its parking off.  

However, we managed to work that out, and had three interesting visits - at least two of which we can call in at again.

This is the week of our Convention at the AMEX Centre in Brighton.   I will only be attending in Zoom, but I am really looking forward to it.  I plan to watch it on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, days when Captain B should be out a'detectoring.

Do I wish he would attend it with me?  Of course I do.  But, God bless him, he drove me round to a sister who has just had a knee operation on Monday afternoon to deliver a little care package - including a present for her cat.  I know how painful knee operations can be!

I had hoped to be out on the seafront on Tuesday morning handing out some of the remaining invitations to the Convention at the weekend, but had to cancel as - well, too much information really. I will just say that I could not risk being too far from the loo.

So I decided to work on my part in the Ministry School for Thursday week so that it would not be on mind during the Convention. Col has showed me how to "install an app" on my Smartphone, so I am feeling rather techy and geeky at the moment.  But it means I will have to juggle Smartphone, and script on the platform - Ms. Bean Rides Again...

And writing that has made me realise that I will not add the brochure: Enjoy Life Forever to the mix. That would be mayhem. But the point I am working on is arranging to call again, so maybe what I can do is offer to bring the brochure round and make a firm date and time.

I woke up this morning feeling as if I am getting a cold. My throat is sore and I feel shivery... I wonder if that is the reason my system was so upset yesterday.