An Ex-expat Vibe (i.e. More Visits)

There must be an ex-expat vibe going on at the moment as we found out this week that another couple of friends from Planet Expat were travelling locally, and they came over for lunch on Sunday.  

We spent our last evening in the Middle East with Mike and Kim.  They drove us over the Causeway to Bahrain, and then treated us to supper at Senor Pacos - a great Tex-Mex restaurant. Senor Paco himself (or the equivalent) came out to load us with pressies and drinks on our last visit, as we had been there many times with friends over the years.  I never usually drink before or during a flight, but on this occasion I did sink a few margaritas.

Not only was it quite something to be leaving after 25 years, but also we had had a bit of a stressful moment on the Causeway as we left Saudi Arabia. We came through Saudi Customs and Passport, but the young lad at Passport Control had not seen an Exit-only Visa before and was not prepared to let us out.

The ramifications:  We could not go back to Saudi as we had no Entrance Visa anymore, and we could not progress to Bahraini customs - tantalisingly in view - until Saudi Customs let us out.  We were in No-Man's Land.  Col and Mike went off into an office with the young lad and after about 20 minutes came back with an older man who had no problems, stamped us out and we progressed to the next border.

Some years before that we had been to Mike and Kim's wedding in Jo'burg, my first and only visit to the vast continent of Africa.  We then travelled on down to The Cape to spend two weeks with Roger and Anne.  The Cape is one of the loveliest places we have ever seen and the photo that heads the blog is one that Col took on the strange and beautiful Tabletop - the top of Table Mountain.

And then on Saturday who should ring but Roger himself. We haven't seen him since before lockdown but  he is coming for lunch today and will stay over.

If they had all arrived on the same day it would have been an Aramco reunion.

I am wondering who might turn up next?!  And if we can maybe arrange a get together with Julia the next time we are 'oop North.  We are all getting so old now. Well, apart from Mike and Kim that is. They are still young.

Time rushes on frighteningly fast. I am now the oldest one left on my side of the extended family, and both the girls I shared a flat with my in my student days, Diana and Penny, have gone over that edge.

Damaged children of disobedient Adam that we all are, our lives are so short now, so quickly over.  And we feel the tragedy of it because, as the Bible says, Jehovah has "put eternity" into our hearts. We were made to live forever.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has even put eternity in their heart; yet mankind will never find out the work that the true God has made from start to finish. - Ecclesiastes 3:11

The size of the Milky Way came up in the fascinating last talk the Circuit Overseer gave us, and I cannot get my head round the amount of time it would take to explore that, to find out about it. And yet is only a tiny part of the Universe.

Isn't that why we need eternity?  And even so, we will never find it all out.  It is amazing and wonderful beyond comprehension.  Jehovah truly is the Grand Creator.

VISITS

We not only have the Circuit Overseer with the congregation this week, but we also had a visit from a couple of friends from Planet Expat - Bill and Carol!  Carol and I used to work together many years ago.

We last saw each other 5 years ago, when they were over from the States, visiting.  And given how old we all are, I did not know if they would want to be travelling all the way from the States again.  So it was such a lovely surprise.  They came for lunch and we spent the afternoon together. It brought back many memories, even though we didn't talk all that much about old times.  We have all kept pretty busy in our retirements.

I found a photo of one of our desert camping trips to head this blog - but sadly, for the four of us, our camping days are over  Though if we "inherit the earth" and live forever upon it, as I hope we will, who knows what wonderful things we might be doing then.  Maybe we will be able to camp out on the red sands of Mars one day, for an off-earth weekend?

After they left us they visited Arundel Castle, which we had recommended to them. The gardens are so lovely, especially the walled kitchen garden at the top of the hill, and to step into the Chapel is like entering an episode of Wolf Hall - it's like a time machine.  You will recognise the names on the memorial tombs.

Carol said on fb today they had really enjoyed their castle visit. 

The first C.O.Talk was: MUSTER UP BOLDNESS FOR THE DOOR TO DOOR PREACHING WORK.

There was loads of good advice and good experiences, all so encouraging.  But I would need to muster up some better health before I can get back to it.  I know how important it is, it is what Jesus taught his followers to do when he was on the earth, and it was the way I found the truth myself. It was brought to my door by Ruby and Wilhelmina, all those years ago.

I hope never to forget that I learnt more about what the Bible on my shelf says during that first 20 minute visit than I did in all my years of churchgoing, both Catholic and Protestant.

In the meantime, the best I can do is to continue with my letters - going letterbox to letterbox - which I plan to be doing this morning.

There has been flooding in the UK after heavy rain overnight - Col reported from The Field somewhere in the Hampshire Badlands yesterday that he was sheltering in the car from a torrential downpour.  While here the sun was shining, but the wind was so strong that I was not able to sit out on the balcony and study - books blowing about too much.  It was beautiful though, with a splendidly whitehorsey sea.

It is such a wonderful world, there is such power in the creation, yet such tender beauty too.  

Sugar Daddy Hunt

While browsing some 60 Minutes Doccos on YouTube I came across this one:  SUGAR DADDY HUNT, WHEN YOUNG WOMEN CHASE RICH OLD MEN.

I wondered aloud if I had left it too late for such a lucrative career.

 "I'd say so." said Captain B. 

"But, on the other hand, I might be OK, given how bad their eyesight would be," I mused.

 "It'd have to be really bad!" said Captain B, putting paid to my career aspirations.

And a good thing too when I think of what money cannot buy.  We are doing a lot of balcony sitting these days watching the sunsets - see the pic above, for example.  And we spent Friday night talking about old times, our travelling days, and occasionally holding hands over the geraniums.  No matter how rich the terminally short-sighted elderly billionaire who fell for my charms might be, no matter how many jewel-encrusted solid gold zimmers he promised to buy me, he could not share all these memories with me.

Col and I were talking about our trip to Scotland, to that amazing old hotel at Durness; seeing the Milky Way in the Tasmanian sky - such clear clear skies  there, the next stop being the shimmering ice of the empty Antarctic. And he knew and remembers my parents and I knew and remember his, Ron and Eileen, my in-laws.

You can't buy that fifty plus years of shared memories.  And it makes me wonder what 500 years of shared memories will be, 5,000 years?  We will have so much to talk over then as we sit watching the sun set.  That is what I hope we will have, as it is the hope the Bible holds out.

And talking of 50 plus years of marriage, we are certainly in the Medical Stage.  One of us is always having to take our blood pressure for our GP. This week its me.

Oh dear. But I am indeed very grateful to be here still, and we have the Circuit Overseer week coming up, starting today, which is something to look forward to.  

The Gallant Moths Fly On

Moth Season continues on our balcony - and above are some of our recent guests: 3 Dusty Thorns and a Dewick's Pluvia.   I hope they have given our moth hotel a good review on TripAdvisor.  They are photographed by Captain Butterfly of course, not me.  I doubt that photos of my lens cap, or my thumb (with an oddly tilted English Channel behind it) would be of much interest.

The little creatures go about their business as best they can in this lost paradise, with all sorts of confusing lights in the night to mislead them. They are gallant soldiers indeed.

In the meantime, we, the human family, have just devised a new form of warfare, a new way to hurt and kill each other (and any other little creatures that happen to be in the way).  Pagers and suchlike devices have been sabotaged and are exploding all over the Lebanon.  The particularly cruel thing about this is that they are often being held by hand and to the face when they explode.

We all have these devices in our homes... how many more of them have been booby trapped... and what is going to happen if one goes off on a plane?

The world becomes more dangerous by the minute.  Both sides in the conflict that has taken technological warfare to another low, are doing terrible things, and both are ignoring what our Creator is so clearly telling us.

In horrid harmony with this, the News on Thursday was talking about the issue of workplace violence - just how much of it our service providers are now facing.  And that includes fractured skulls and broken bones!  One BT engineer reported that he was kneeling down trying to fix and restore peoples internet (I assume), when he looked up to find a lady looming over him with a hammer in her hand, about to strike him down.

Satan, the ruler of the present wicked system of things on the earth, is setting brother against brother, sister against sister, with ever increasing success.

What will protect us from getting swept up in it and turning on each other?  Our Creator, Jehovah, will IF we turn to him and let him teach us.

This is the fruitage of God's spirit:  "the fruitage of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control. Against such things there is no law." - Galatians 5:22,23

We need all these qualities to endure until the end of the current wicked system on the earth, and we need a strong faith in Jehovah's promises that all the hatred and violence will soon come to an end, and paradise will be restored earthwide.

The Sea Bass

Jim popped by with a sea bass on Friday and Col prepared and cooked it for us.  I did the "sides" - new potatoes and peas - and set out the trays with the desserts  (yoghurt and berries), but I could not face tackling a whole fish and its reproachful eyes.

Yet, hypocrite that I am, I had suppered the night before off some crispbread and Waitrose tuna pate - which is delicious, and Nute assures me is also Zoe friendly.  And it did not look at me with reproachful eyes. Someone else had faced those eyes on my behalf.

But how much better to eat fish caught at sea, and really fresh, than eat farmed. The poor bass was very nice I have to say.

The photograph above is, of course, from the Captain's Photo Gallery, and is of a Big -eye Bream (I couldn't find a bass), taken in the Maldives, many years ago. We certainly did not eat it. I hope nobody and nothing did, and that it lived out its life in peace.  But who knows, given that we, the whole earthly creation, are still living in the tragedy of the loss of Eden, and nature will continue "red in tooth and claw" until the loving Kingdom of God transforms the whole earth into the paradise of peace it was always meant to be.

This has reminded me that there was a time when I could gut and cook fish - and, urgh, pigeons and rabbits, when I was living with Pete and Diana, when they were young marrieds, and when Captain Butterfly was coming a'courting.  Pete, having left our cave of a morning looking very manly indeed, would bring them home slung over his shoulder and we would prepare them.  We were all very short of money and ate what we could back then.

And also, despite an intensive religious education within Christendom, I had no idea about God's laws on blood, the eating of.  None of us had. The prohibition against eating blood was given to Noah, and hence to all the human race, as every one of us on the earth is descended from one of the three sons of Noah. It has never been repealed, but was enjoined on the Israelites under the Mosaic Law, and was also enjoined on the newly-founded Christian congregation.

We are having some sunny September days, and I am still able to do my studying on the balcony in the mornings.  And we sat out on Monday night with a glass of wine and watched the full moon shining a path across the English Channel. Who would not want to live forever on this lovely planet when it is the paradise it was always meant to be, and we are perfect and living, not damaged and dying as we are now?   I hope that the Captain and I will. I hope we all will.

I sang "By the light of the silvery moon" to it. Well, I say "sang"...

It seems that three of our friends from Planet Expat will be in the UK later this month and we are hoping for a get together and catch up.

Frosted Orange

 

This splendid Moth, a Frosted Orange, turned up on our balcony last week - a new guest for our Moth Hotel.  I haven't yet managed to find a way to wind him/her into this blog, but there is still time to do so.  

A fb friend posted a dream they had, a dream full of anxious wondering about her brother - why had nobody heard from him, why had nobody contacted him, where was he living?  Only of course to wake up into the world in which he died very young, many years ago.

We do not forget the loss of those we love, as it is a loss that should never have happened. And it reminded me of a dream I had many years ago about my granny, whose rambling cottage and garden was our childhood paradise.

In my dream I found myself back in Nabbs Cottage, knowing that I had not been there for many years, and knowing too that my granny had been dead for many years.  But when I went through to the back kitchen, there she was, making herself a cup of tea.

I saw her as middle-aged in my dream. as she would have been when I first knew her. I asked her why she was there, what she was doing.  She said, sadly and matter-of-factly, that she couldn't think of anywhere else to go after her funeral.

Of course, I do hope to see her again, in the restored earthly paradise... time will tell if me and my gran will be there. 

Saturday was my appointment for what I had thought was for one procedure but turned out to be for another altogether.  The doctor who saw me was as puzzled as I was, as I did not have the worrying symptom that had apparently been ticked by my GP on her list.  I have a strange feeling that somewhere else in the quiet Saturday hospital was another puzzled patient wondering why she was being offered treatment for a symptom she did not have, she having been allocated MY symptom, me having been allocated HERS.

It is all too much of a puzzle, and meant I had to undergo a second - seemingly pointless -  painful (and undignified) examination.  I will wait for my GP to contact me when she gets the report from the hospital and hope that she can sort it all out. I know how relentlessly busy GPs are, and how easily, under those circumstances, a wrong box can be ticked.

What is sad is that as I was given an all-clear, I should be feeling both gratitude and relief. And of course I am relieved. But I had already got my all-clear as far as this was concerned... well I thought I had.  Anyway, if I am getting too much medical attention rather then too little, I ought not to complain about it.

Frosted Orange... still no clever way of weaving this little creature into the fabric of my blog has come to me, so I'll just let it sit there, telling us of the beauty and complexity of the creation.  And I hope it will help me to keep firmly in mind that the Creator, Jehovah, who can make this exquisite creature as well as a universe so immense, so awe-inspiring we cannot get our heads round it, is more than capable of restoring the whole earth to paradise, and us, the children of Adam, to the life and perfection our first parents lost.

OUCH! (or The Not So Little Mermaid)

The flare up continues - both feet - zimmering painfully around - dreading my arms, hands and shoulders joining in.   On Wednesday morning, the pain was so bad in my right foot, but at least the left foot was back on line. 

You will remember Hans Christian Anderson's Little Mermaid, who when she got her human feet found they were as painful to walk on as sharp knives.  So for me this week, think: Little Mermaid, only an older, fatter version, with none of the fairytale glamour.

Actually it is such a sad story in so many ways, if I am remembering it right, all predicated on the idea that we were all brought up with (in Christendom), that we have an "immortal soul".  In the story, mermaids do not, and so the poor mermaid princess pays a terrible price for trying to obtain one.

Yet the idea of the immortal soul is NOT a Christian teaching - the Bible tells us simply and clearly that we ARE souls, and we can and do die.  When God breathed life into our first parents, they became living souls.  But from the moment they made that tragic decision to cut themselves off from their Creator, their Source of life, they became dying souls. And they did eventually die and return to the dust of the ground from which they were created.

That is our tragedy.  We, who should all have been born of perfect, living parents, are all born of imperfect dying ones - through no fault of our own. So we are imperfect and dying from the moment we are born. The poor little mermaid had no need to envy our condition, nor replace her comfortable tail with painful feet.

The photo above was taken by Captain B.  It is a Mermaid's Purse - the nearest thing we have seen so far to a mermaid on our local beach.

Anyway, my mind was taken off my pain and self-pity by a visit from two friends. We had tea, cakes (marmalade muffins), a nice chat, and did some work together, we shared ideas.  And I had my usual double Zoom session with another friend in the afternoon, all of which really really helped.

Once again I ask myself, where would I be now, what state would I be in, if I had not talked to those two lovely Jehovah's Witnesses who called at my door in my Northern hometown all those years ago?

We are offering free home bible courses to all who will accept one... Jehovah, the God of all comfort will help and sustain all who will come to Him.

Left foot still very painful this morning, so I will be attending the meeting tonight in Zoom. I need to try to get it right as I have a hospital appointment, following on the two scans, coming up that I need to attend.

Cobalt Crust, Continuing Flare-up, and Emily

We picked one of Col's Cobalt Crust photos for September in our 2024 calendar, which is fungi based.  I am starting to wonder what the 2025 calendar should be about, if we are going to do one. This kind of fungus reminds me of the underwater world with its amazing, colourful sponges - also much photographed by Captain B.

Maybe a Sponge Calendar?

The balcony was wonderful on Sunday morning before the meeting.  Lots of cloud, very dark on the horizon over the sea, but with the sun coming through above, and shining on the geraniums and me.  I hope that one day I will be able to thank Jehovah for all this from a perfect heart. I hope we all will.

I had to Zoom to the meeting and appear in Pixel form as my right knee was too painful to walk or drive.  And by Monday morning - now - I am in such pain - left foot, right leg, that I have had to cancel my morning appointment with the Clinic for a mysterious jab they want me to have.

The siblings and I had our usual Zoom session - all seems well and we had a lovely chat.  And four more of my books have been bought!  That is good news for a non-best seller like me.

It is a greyish sort of day, not cold, the sort of day I love. apparently being the only person in the world who does not want blazing sunshine every day.  It seems a cruel irony that i spent 25 years living in the desert, given that there are many people out there who would have really appreciated the desert climate.

I am now going to have to correct an earlier opinion about my being the only one who does not love constant sunshine, as I have just found this poem by Emily Bronte:

Fall, Leaves, Fall

Emily Brontë

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.

https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/literary/poems-poetry-about-for-autumn-keats-frost-classic

I hope she means it.  Maybe I will be able to ask her one day, if we both "inherit the earth", and live forever upon it.

Still Waiting for Gordo

A fb friend from Oz asked me how the book sales are going. The answer is that I am still waiting for Waiting for Gordo to become a bestseller. Which made me think I ought to try for a bit more publicity, hence the photo of the great cover they gave me for Gordo. If my publisher were big enough and rich enough to get his books into the airport bookshops that cover would sell it like hot cakes.

I have a lovely review in a dive magazine from someone who bought it to take on a dive holiday, thinking it was a book about diving. It isn't. And in his review he warned people about that, but he also said that once he started it, the book got to him and he had to finish it. And that is exactly what I aim for in all my books, to keep the reader wanting to turn the page, to immerse them in the world of the book.

The book wasn’t long enough to divert me from diving for too long, but my vaguely unreal paradise surroundings did match the atmosphere of the book nicely, and the story has an unsettling dream-like quality that gets to you.
The plot might seen quite slight, but there are hidden depths there.

https://divernet.com/scuba-diving/waiting-for-gordo-by-sue-knight/

I did work to try to convey the beauty of the Maldivian islands - while making it clear that the serpent is still in charge of the paradise garden, without any overt preaching. And without being boring! So I am very grateful for that review.

However I am not in the airport bookshops and I remain a non-best seller, but am continually grateful to be published at all. And to have some reviews - a few, but positive.

Well, it is now September so where has this year gone to? And I love Autumn by the way, my favourite season of all. It rained all day on Thursday, and the weather caused Captain B to leave The Field early! He then kindly volunteered to drive me to the meeting at the Kingdom Hall. If he hadn't, I would have attended via Zoom, as my foot while at lot better, was not up to driving.

This morning though I paid for my hobbling and zimmering of the last two days. As I tried to leap nimbly out of bed - well, when I say nimbly I mean creaking slowly and painfully - I found that my right knee had pretty much seized up. I slept well though, which I badly needed after the last two nights.

The News continues to be terrible, and I do realise this makes the Kingdom preaching work ever more urgent.

Here is the inspired definition of love, from 1 Corinthians 13: Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous. It does not brag, does not get puffed up, does not behave indecently, does not look for its own interests, does not become provoked. It does not keep account of the injury. It does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails. 

Suppose everyone in the world was at least trying to do their imperfect best to live up to those standards...

Pioneers - and Underwings

This splendid Clifden Nonpareil spent Saturday night in our moth hotel.  It is also known as the Blue Underwing - Captain Butterfly's photos demonstrate that well.  It is very large. You would not necessarily want to meet it down a back alley on a dark Saturday night... unless you were sure it was in a good mood.  We have had a lot of moths recently, and if anyone doubts there is a Grand Creator, please look at your local moths, the strength, the delicacy, the engineering, the artistry.

After some thought and prayer I have signed up as an auxiliary pioneer for September, which means I have to do a 15 hour minimum of the preaching work. As I can no longer go door to door - I can barely go room to room some days - I checked that there are plenty of flats available for me to write to.

And I usually try to keep a count so that I know I am roughly on the 15 hours anyway - which seems shamefully little seeing as how I am retired. But I am also so tired and sleeping so badly that everything seems such an effort. Hopefully this will kick start me a bit.

We are offering a Bible study to everyone we can contact.  I hope never ever to forget how wonderful it was to find out what the Bible really says (as opposed to what I was told it said) - and I so much want to share that knowledge.

There was a ton of activity on the Green over the weekend - people setting up football pitches, bbqs, a giant family picnic going on all afternoons, and awnings - as if people were making the last of the Summer.  I guess the schools went back on Monday...  and all these years later I can still remember that sick feeling of fear as the first day of the new school year arrived.  It is sad that many children may have been feeling that way yesterday.

Monday morning - back to school day for so many - was overcast but warm and the Channel was calm.  The day started, as so many of days in late retirement do, with one of us (Captain B in this case), trying to make a phone call to the doctor. In the end, he gave up and went up to the surgery himself - it is not far - and all is in hand.

And today starts with me having a medical appointment in the morning... mercifully it is by phone, to get the results of my scans. I say mercifully as my right foot has taken its turn to flare up and it is v.painful and, obviously, making it difficult to do even my usual hobble round the flat.

Things do not seem as bad as I feared scanwise, but I am being referred to two different hospital departments, just to make sure.  Col also had a medical appointment.  Poor old NHS, we are really using up a lot of its time.