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.