The Hound of Endcliffe Vale Park - and a part in the School

 

I had a part in the School on Thursday night, and did manage to make it in person. Col helped me get ready, practised the script with me, and chauffered me. Penny joined us, via pixel.

Our Circuit Overseer gave us such an encouraging talk, and we all did our best in our various assignments.

My brief: 6. Following Up

(4 min.) PUBLIC WITNESSING. During the last conversation, the person accepted the Memorial invitation and expressed interest. (lmd lesson 9 point 3)

The script:

HH: Hullo, I was hoping to find you here. I lost the contact card you gave me after our talk last week and I wanted to tell you that I won’t be able to come to the Memorial on Saturday and so I don’t need the lift you kindly offered.

Sue.  It was so thoughtful of you to find the trolley and find me and tell me. But I would have rung you tomorrow just to make sure.  I hope you haven’t run into any problems.

HH.  No. Nothing like that.  My husband has come back early from his business trip and wants to take me out for a meal on Saturday night to celebrate our anniversary. But I haven’t forgotten what we talked about, or the invitation.  I feel I must get back to going to church, to finding my belief in God again, so I thought what I would do is go to the Easter Sunday service at our local church. 

Sue. I hope you have a lovely anniversary dinner.  And I am so glad you have been thinking over what we talked about. And indeed you could go to the Easter service, although that memorialises Jesus’ resurrection rather than his death.

HH.  Oh yes, of course. Well I guess what I could do is go to the Good Friday service, and then come to Easter at your Church.

Sue.  We only memorialise Jesus’ death though, not his resurrection.

HH. Oh. Why is that?  Isn’t the resurrection even more important?  It really made me think when you were showing me how Jesus was resurrected to become a powerful king in heaven.  

Sue;  That is a very good question. Both Jesus’ sacrificial death and his resurrection are of such importance for all of us. So why only memorialise one of them?  Would you look at this Bible verse here, at 1 Peter 2:21, which says: “In fact, to this course you were called, because even Christ suffered for you, leaving a model for you to follow his steps closely.”  To follow his steps closely. To illustrate, suppose you were following a guide over dangerous ground - for example Grimpen Mire from the Hound of the Baskervilles - if you have ever read that book.

HH. Oh yes. It’s so scary!  Though to be honest I always felt sorry for that poor hound.

Sue. Well, bless you for that. I agree. I have often thought if only the Baskervilles had not been so full of superstitious fears and instead had a pocket full of doggy treats and a few kind words for the poor hound the story could have been very different.  No, what scared me was  the horror of Grimpen Mire, because if you took one wrong step while trying to cross it you would find yourself being pulled down into the swamp. And the more you struggled the more it pulled you down. You had no chance.   So if you had to cross that Mire following a guide, a local man who knew every inch of it, would you watch very carefully where he put his feet, or would you decide to take a shortcut instead?

HH.  Of course you would watch every step, and put your feet exactly where he put his feet.

Sue:  Yes. It’s as simple as that. So we try to look at exactly where Jesus put his feet, so to speak. And we notice that Paul quoted Jesus as saying at the Last Supper after he passed round the bread and the wine “For as often as you eat this loaf and drink this cup, you keep proclaiming the death of the Lord, until he arrives.” (1 Cor. 11:25, 26) So is it Jesus’ death or his resurrection we are to keep proclaiming?

HH:  It does say his death. Yes.  This is making me wonder if I really do know the Bible at all.

Sue:  Do you know that we offer a free home Bible Study to all who want one. It can be for an hour a week, even for ten minutes a week whatever suits you. If you like I could call round next week and demonstrate it to you.

HH. Yes, I would like that. Do you still have my contacts?  If so, could you give me a ring and I will check with my diary.

***************

I had wanted to say something about why we are memorialising Jesus death on Saturday the 12th April this year, and not on what is called "Good Friday". It is because Jesus died on the Passover - which was a deliverance that prefigured the ransom sacrifice of Jesus Christ - and the date of the Passover is decided by the phases of the moon. But I couldn't discuss that. I only had 4 minutes, and it is important to keep to time.

The dog in the photo is Ollie, the Hound of Endcliffe Vale Park (in his day). You were in no danger from him, though he did come over a bit Baskerville when people were picnicking with their food at doggie level. But it was only the food that was harmed.

Gloaters Elbow?

One of the chefs on The Great British Menu said that he was "Removing the spice out".  "As opposed to removing it IN" I screamed, hurling my rubber brick at the telly (yet again).  I am well used to doing this every time they say they are "reducing the sauce DOWN", but if this goes on I will soon need a new brick. 

Among the sad headlines is news of a large earthquake which has hit Myanmar and Thailand. There are some frightening pictures from Bangkok.  We have emailed our friends there, hoping they are OK.

So I was thinking about heading this blog with a photo from one of our Thai trips, but they do not appear in Col's photo gallery - unless I can find one of a Thai butterfly.  You will know if I did or not by now.  For the first time I am regretting we don't post pictures of our meals on facebook, as I could have used one of those to head the blog, given I started of with Chefs.

The Great British Menu is finished now, with a fine flourish.  Mind you, I watch all these wonderful chefs with their brilliant varied dishes, but continue cooking the same rather ordinary food day after day. I was much more adventurous in our Expat days. 

The Thai butterfly, taken on one of the lanes off Sukhumvit on our first trip to Bangkok, is a Painted Jezebel.  That earthquake looks devastating as we see it on the News, with likely more problems to come as it has left so many buildings, bridges and dams damaged.

And this earthquake has shown up a new problem - well, new to me.  It seems that a lot of these high rise apartment blocks have swimming pools on the top of them. And suddenly there were floods and waterfalls everywhere as these pools tipped, or cracked, under the pressure of the quake.

It does now come back to me that in The Towering Inferno there was a pool at the top of the building, and - spoiler alert - it came in very useful.  But I had not realised it seems to have become a routine feature of so many buildings.  Will they need to rethink this?

We both had a bad night last night. I was up with shoulder pain etc, as usual.  And poor Col had such a painful elbow that it kept him awake. We took painkillers and watched the last bit of the The Steeltown Murders.  And we did manage to get some sleep, in spite of the sadness of Steeltown, a true story about three young teenagers killed by a serial killer, who went undiscovered until after his death.  Those girls were so young and they did not stand a chance.  The programme did at least take murder and its awful ramifications very very seriously.

I Zoomed to the Special Talk this morning.  It was titled: CAN TRUTH BE FOUND, which is very timely in a world system so full of spin.  I was hoping Col might give himself a day off metal detecting to give his elbow a rest, but no, he was off at the crack of dawn as usual.  I do have my own theory about what is wrong though.

Every morning we play the Ordles - Wordle, Quordle, Octordle.  I am aiming for a draw, he is aiming for a win.  When he does win he pumps his arms in victory.

I have had a few bad Ordling days and lost consistently.  So I think he might be suffering from Gloater's Elbow.

The Number One Bestseller!! and a Flare Up

Col just bought me back a book from the Book Exchange that he walks past on his various trips to the Clinic. I sent him off with a Morse book, and he returned with something called The Secret Keeper, by Kate Morton.

Like every single book published these days it has the words "Number One Bestseller" emblazoned on its front  Every book except my books that is, which is why a note of envy may pervade this blog. Though hopefully I will have got over it by the next paragraph.

I might just post another of my book covers to prove the point though.  Do you see "Number One Bestseller" anywhere on that cover?  If you do, its more than I can.

Anyway, I am so grateful to be in print, properly. And with such lovely covers for my books.  And at my age, I don't think I am up for the whole red carpet bit.

Tuesday was quite busy - for me, these days.  I did three different types of Not Home letters for those who are going out on the door to door work.  And I went through our study material for Wednesday, which is about prayer. And the study on Wednesday went well. Our student says she looks forward to seeing us. And of course it does all three of us good to be able to spend an hour studying the Inspired Word.

The Captain left very early for The Field, with his metal detector and sandwiches - and is hopefully having a wonderful treasure hunt even as I type.  And Bea and Co are coming for a visit next month.

My right shoulder is still bad - wakes me up at least once a night - and I have left a message with Rheumatology asking if the results of the Scan are in yet  - and this evening my right knee has decided to join in.  Very very painful and swollen.   I did have a "busy" morning in that I did the washing, made an apple crumble, and made some veggie and lentil soup.  And maybe that moderate amount of movement has been too much.

Col was at The Field all day, with the lads. I listened out for the clanking of chests full of gold coins as he drove back home - but no clanking, no chests, no treasure. He had a good day out though.

We have had two sea frets today - one in the morning and one late afternoon that is still hiding the sea from us.

The Speed of Light

Col picked me up from the Kingdom Hall on Thursday night and rushed me off home at the speed of light - well, at the speed of an elderly lightbeam zimmering slowly through the universe.  Another bad night on Friday/Saturday.  That is par for the course nowadays and seems unlikely to change, well not this side of Armageddon anyway.

I am now so sleep deprived that I am wondering about trying that anti-depressant again...  it's my age really I guess. I am now nearer eighty than I am seventy.  And that is old.  Yet how quickly it has gone.

I have decided to cheer myself up by choosing a couple of flower pictures to head the blog. The first is one Col took in NZ - so many years ago - of a fuschia growing wild.  Fuschia was one of my mother's favourite flowers.  It grew all over Cornwall where she spent her childhood summers.  And the second is Thrift, which I associate with my own early childhood summers in Cornwall.

That has reminded me of the flower called Honesty, which I loved to have in our garden, when we had a garden. We just have a sea facing balcony now and a blaze of geraniums.  Thrift also thrives there of course.  My mum-in-law Eileen liked Honesty too - and Iceplant - both of which she had in her London garden.

So many layers of memories - so how will it be to have hundreds and hundreds of years of memories behind me - and all of them so happy?   

Monday was a double Zoom session, one with my congregation sisters and one with my siblings. All seems well with all of us, thank God. I now have requests for more Not Home letters, I need to continue to send invites to the block of flats I was given, and start my study for the week - plus think about how to do my part in the School next week. So, thanks to Jehovah, I have a lot of positive things to take my mind off my medical miseries.

Fantastic Books Publishing

Us Fantastic authors, or six of us anyway, met up via Zoom on Monday night for a chat about how to market our books - especially by Youtube type videos.  Our publisher is Fantastic Books Publishing by the way, just in case you thought I was calling myself fantastic!  

I can write, but for sure I am not Dickens.

Author James Vigor gave us a great lesson in doing this - though I will need a lot of help from my Resident Tech Expert. And I still can't afford Kate Moss to be me in the video. Its a Catch 22 really, to afford her I need to have the blockbusting bestseller, but to have the blockbusting bestseller I need her to be me in my video.

https://www.fantasticbooksstore.com/

Oh well.  I am just so grateful to be published. I put a lot of work into those books, into making them page turners and I have a few appreciative readers who would happily buy the next one if I can ever get it written.

But I suspect I no longer have the energy.  And it does take energy to keep returning to the world of the book and moving it along.   If only I could get some sleep. Having said that, I do get some, but the pain keeps waking me.  A friend very kindly offered to bring me round some sleep tea, but I had to point out that it wasn't sleep that was the problem as such, it was the pain that keeps waking me.

I got to the Kingdom Hall in person on Thursday night - rather than in pixel form - so I hope I may be back on a regular basis now.  It all depends how the pain goes I guess.

Or whether it goes!

I have been enjoying watching both The Great British Menu, and The Apprentice.  There was an Apprentice first yesterday when Lord Sugar declared both teams "losers" and sacked one candidate from each team.

That could often have been said and done before, but this is the first time he has actually done it - over a Hot Sauce challenge too, which did not  seem like one of the more difficult ones.

Climbing Everest by Cake

The Watchtower study on Sunday was about how husbands can honour their wives. And one way is by being appreciative.  

"Praise your wife for the good things she does. (Proverbs 31:28,29: Her children rise up and declare her happy; Her husband rises up and praises her. There are many capable women, But you—you surpass them all.")"

And I am happy to report that Captain Butterfly scores very high on the Being Appreciative scale - while, being a truthful chap, not claiming that I surpass them all.

Though he might say that my apple crumble does.  And so I had better be humble and admit that it is based on a Jamie Oliver rhubarb crumble recipe - and works well with either fruit.

It means a lot to be appreciated.  For example, on Saturday, finding I had just used the last piece of cake from the freezer, I managed to make a fruit cake.  I had enough of the basic ingredients in to cook something approximate to the Boil and Bake fruitcake in my Crank's recipe book.  I am in such a sad state that it felt like climbing Everest - without Sherpa support and oxygen. 

I had to keep pausing, and resting. But in the end it was done. And there is a natural pause with this cake anyway. You have to simmer half the ingredients in butter and orange juice, then let it cool down before adding the dry.  So I could go and lie on the bed during the waiting stage.

To illustrate my mountain climbing metaphor, I managed to find a picture of a mountain in Col's photo gallery. Its not Everest - as you have probably noticed.  It's in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia.

Anyway, the point of this sizzling anecdote is that the cake turned out nicely - perhaps even better than usual! - and Col was very grateful. He really appreciated the effort, which made the effort well worthwhile.

I know you can buy excellent cake, but there is something about homemade. And anyway, they are what Himself likes.  My cakes are sturdy, not in the least fancy. But as a sister once said, in the days when we had a meal after our main meeting on a sort of potluck basis: "Your cakes don't look much, but they do taste nice".

Ideally of course they should look a million dollars AND taste nice. But, if I can only have one...

And anyway, they have to be sturdy to stand up to the rigours of The Field (it used to be "the rigours of the dive boat, or the desert" in what are now the olden days).

How quickly the years rush us along to that edge... but how wonderful to know that there can be an awakening from the dreamless sleep of death and the hope of seeing this lovely world again.  It is a hope we want to share with everyone.

Which is why we are inviting all we can to the Memorial of Jesus' death on the 12th April.  It is through his perfect life, given as a ransom for the life Adam so tragically threw away, that we have this hope.

Andy Fairweather Lowe and the Low Riders at the Ropetackle

Wednesday was a busy day - for me, nowadays.  Neither the Captain nor I had a good nights's sleep - him constant coughing - me, my pains - so he slept in (very unusual). The pain got me up early, which was good as I had to get ready for the study.  My sister comes at 9:45. I was OK timewise, but was wondering how I was going to get myself dressed without my resident (unpaid) Carer in attendance. I did not want to wake the poor guy, but he did wake up in time, and got me all ready to go and brisked me out the door on the very second of 9:45.

We spent two hours with our student and got back before lunch to find everything set out ready - I just had to heat up the soup and the apple crumble. 

It was an afternoon Zoom with another sister as we got on with our field service together - and hopefully encouraged each other.

Supper was pizza - easy peasy - and then a session watching The Bay - talk about gloomy - but true to life, alas, as the fruitage of the rebellion in Eden becomes more and more evident.

Given that I seem to be making so many crumbles, I wondered what would happen if I put the word  "crumble" into Col's online photo gallery. So I did - and this came up - an Orange Crumble Sponge that Col took in the Maldives!

Today I am making a fruit cake - as I am down to my last piece of homemade cake, which is now reposing in the Captain's lunch box along with his sandwiches. And he needs another lunch for tomorrow.

I think I experienced another of the "lasts" of old age too - the last outing - on Friday night. We went to see Andy Fairweather Low at the Ropetackle.  It was almost beyond me to cope, I was in such a lot of pain.  But we did it.

He and his band are very good - seasoned musicians - and he still has a great voice - he is our age. But what he does not do is the 60s/70s nostalgia tour that I (at least) was expecting.

He packed the venue - not a single empty seat, well apart from the one next to the Captain, but that is probably because he spent the first hour (before the concert started) coughing.  He did test himself for Covid  before going out in public by the way - and the test was negative.

So a good evening out, but perhaps such things are no longer for me.  Not this side of Armageddon anyway. And afterwards, who knows?  Will we sit listening to music, or will be all be able to get up and dance to it then.

I just hope that the Captain and I will be there to find out.

The Memorial Campaign starts today.  We will be issuing invitations from door to door - letterbox to letterbox - for the Memorial of Jesus' death which will be after sunset on the 12th April  It is through Jesus' sacrificial death that we, the damaged, dying children of disobedient Adam - can have back the life, the perfection, the joy, the paradise that our first parents so tragically lost.

THREADS

This weekend I discovered the Barry Hines movie THREADS.  I found it compelling.  It is set in my hometown, Sheffield, back in the eighties - almost a vanished era for the young I guess.  And it features the Town Hall extension that my father, an architect designed! We see the building functioning as ordinary life goes on, while the political situation as reported on The News is worsening. We see the local civil servants who will be in control if a nuclear war breaks out gather there.

And then we see it blown up when Sheffield is nuked.

It made me feel sad in many different ways.  Threads shows us the people of Sheffield going about their business as the political situation darkens and puts an end to all their hopes and plans - people I knew and worked with - people like me.

And, ironically, the extension - a lovely building - was effectively nuked by the politics of the time. It was planned and designed when local government was expanding.  The Town Hall even financed a Peace Movement then that was going to keep Sheffield safe from being nuked by making it into a Nuclear Free Zone (?).  And there was a Left Wing Bookshop, I remember, which I think it also financed.  It re-booted itself as The Independent Bookshop before it disappeared as mysteriously as the Marie Celeste.  It was closed one day - pretty much with half drunk cups of tea still on the counter.  Which I presume marked the moment that the Council could no longer fund it.

As I remember it, the Peace Movement itself was so riven with division that if one factor could have nuked the other it probably would.  Anyway, politics was changing, local government was being shrunk, not expanded.  And by the time the Town Hall extension was built, it was no longer needed.

So, in time it was emptied and demolished, along with daddy's lovely Registry Office, where Penny and George were married.  It was round, and known locally as "The Wedding Cake".  The Winter Gardens that replaced it are nice, and well-used. But unfortunately the buildings that replaced it were the standard tall glass and steel boxes.

Whereas the lost extension had a pleasant roundness about it - a softness. Someone once described it as "the box which the Wedding Cake came in".  Not just a featureless box in other words.

Anyway my father is in the centre of the picture above, with all the young architects of the 1950's making a valiant effort to build a brave new world from the bombsites and rubble of World War 2.  I recognise Don, and John, and Aziz - all iconic names from my childhood.

It was a sincere effort, after the horrors of two world wars, but of course they were up against the forces of "the world", which are set on destruction.

And as the Inspired Scriptures so rightly warn: "It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step."  We cannot put right what has gone so wrong no matter how much we long to.

But when God's Kingdom is ruling over the earth, will those sincere and enthusiastic young architects in the photo be woken from the dreamless sleep of death, and under the loving and flawless direction of the heavenly government, will they be able to have a part in building the paradise they so much wanted to build back then?

I hope so. Very much.  Think of how lovely some of our older cities are - cities like Rome and Venice for example - built at a time when the human family was closer to its perfect start than it is now.

How much lovelier will the cities in the paradise earth be?

OOTLIN by Jenni Fagan

I must order a copy of OOTLIN by Jenni Fagan. Having read her article about it in The Guardian, I think it will be compelling. A must read. 

Jenni Fagan says:

On the day the Freedom of Information Act came in, I picked up the phone at 9am. It took me 24 years to get my social work files. I picked up a vast heavy load of them. Hundreds, thousands of pages, most redacted in black lest they validate something that would allow me to sue them. I had lived in so many placements, had multiple name changes, foster families, adoptions, children’s homes and hostels. I had been through more as a child raised by the state than I ever thought possible to get my head around.

I had never got to have my say, legally, or otherwise.

I suffered from lifelong brainwashing telling me I was the issue. I’ve never met an abuser who owned what they did, or a system that wanted to be accountable.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/aug/12/jenni-fagan-ootlin-a-memoir-childhood-in-care


I wondered what photograph to choose to head a blog with such a sad subject... maybe I should look for a reassuring paradise earth pic to remind me and any readers I may have (and I welcome every one of you) that all this sadness is only temporary, and  that our Creator has promised us a time on the earth when "the former things will not be brought to mind, neither will they come up into the heart". So I have found a photo of a Flowering Dogwood in the lovely Nyman's Gardens, which Col took earlier in our retirement.

Col is having a bit of an odd week.  Rachel Riley is missing from Countdown.  She is not on for three weeks apparently!   A nice young maths teacher is doing her job. He is so much nicer than any maths teacher I have ever had, with the honourable exception of Mr. Capps and Mr. Hughes.  Mr. Hughes was too kind to be scathing about my lack of maths skill, and while Mr. Capps was brilliantly sarcastic about the lack, he did it in a way that made me laugh as well as the rest of the class.

However, the substitute teacher is not Rachel, so Col is pining.  On the doubleplusgood side, he is enjoying the athletics which are on this weekend.  And there are various rugby and football matches on the telly as well. He can tell one match from another - a special skill that lads seem to have.

He is having to do a lot of work looking after me at the moment.  I am managing some sleep, for which I thank God, but I wake up in such pain that I can hardly use my hands and arms.  It does get better once I can get my meds down with breakfast, made, as always by Captain B.  He was at home on Saturday - not metal detecting - amazing.  He was out Sunday though and so needed his usual Sunday sandwich lunch. I had a dream Friday night in which he was leaving, very early, with no lunch as I had forgotten to make it.  

I had a rare outing last night. We went to Worthing to see Gordon Buchanan on his Lions and Tigers and Bears tour.  It was well worth it - very entertaining, very fast moving, very funny, and some great photos.  It was quite painful and difficult too, but only because of the current status of my arthritis.

It resulted in me dreaming this morning that Captain B came into the bedroom to tell me he was leaving for The Field, and he had a cat in a cat carrier in his hand.  I was just trying to work out what was wrong with that - the vet would not be open that early? - and hadn't got round to the fact that we hadn't got a cat before the real Captain arrived to tell me that breakfast was ready.

My dreams are very odd at the moment, but after so many almost sleepless nights I guess my brain has a lot of catching up to do.

.

Four Ducks

 

Four Ducks on a Pond,

by William Allingham

Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;
What a little thing
To remember for years-
To remember with tears! 

I know I have posted this poem before but we had some spring-like days and it is my favourite spring poem. It is such a paradise earth poem. I do love Spring and Autumn, but my rather unsociable introvert personality prefers Winter to Summer.

Although having said that, my childhood summers were a wonderful oasis from the horrors of school. The summer holidays seem to go on forever back then. And we always seemed to be outdoors. Even though we lived on the edge of the inner city, there were lots of places to play - the parks, the bomb sites, and of course the moors - only a bus ride away.

And for some reason this poem makes me think of washing blowing on the line. All the mothers hung out their washing to dry back then, which was ecologically very sound. And I imagine us all doing that in the paradise earth - billowing washing lines blowing in the Spring breeze, white clouds scudding across, ducks on the pond!

And the ducks will be happy too. They will be safe. We won't be eating them, and no predators will be after their darling little fluffy chicks. I am trying not to remember an awful "nature, red in tooth and claw" moment at the Arundel Wetland Trust when a giant seagull...

I will leave it there. And look forward to a time on earth when such moments are no more.

We got to our Bible student on Wednesday morning and had a lovely session with her. We are talking about the creation - how we learn from it, and copy it. For example, the shape of the Japanese bullet train was inspired by the shape of the Kingfisher.

Now we often, and rightly, praise the inventors of all these marvelous things. And much credit to them. I am sure I could look at a Kingfisher for eons and never come up with a toy train, let alone a bullet train. And if it was up to me, we would still be trying to reach the moon by horse and cart. But do we ever stop and thank the Grand Creator, Jehovah?

The more we learn about the wonders of creation, the more we should. This world, this universe we float in, is a miracle, and it will bring us more joy and happiness than we can now imagine. And that is what our loving Creator, Jehovah, wants for every one of us. And this is what we so much want our Bible student to know.

LANDLINES by Raynor Winn

As you will know, if you have been reading my blog, I am loving Raynor Winn's books.  Nute gave me The Salt Path, and that got me hooked.  I have now read The Wild Silence, and am in the middle of Landlines. 

This is from Landlines:

Small meadows of tall grass being invaded by an army of tractors, trailers, redders and silage blowers which savage a hundred acres of land in ninety minutes. The fields are stripped bare of grass and with it every living thing that existed within them, no time for wildlife to escape or insect life to move on. It feels as though we're witnessing an Armageddon for a large area of biodiversity. Like so much of the farmland in this country, this isn't privately owned land. It belongs to one of the huge corporations, so the silage isn't stored in the neighbouring farm buildings, but transported for miles to a vast dairy unit beyond Lancaster.  For the corporations, biodiversity isn't part of the equation and certainly can't be balanced against the desire for higher and higher profits.

On the mudflats a rare white stork searches for food, drive, like so much of our wildlife, to the very edge of existence...

The photo that heads the blog is of a white stork at Knepp Estate.  Which is certainly rare as far as the UK goes.  Knepp is a re-wilding project, and storks are one of its big successes.

But why do we have a system on the earth that requires us to destroy the planet we live on, the only planet we have to live on?  I know of no better explanation than the Biblical one - and we offer a free Home Bible Study to all who want one.  You can find details on the site JW.org.

I did get some sleep on Saturday night. The pain in my shoulder had me up at about 11:30 (we had gone to bed early, early start for Captain Metal Detector in the morning) and I sat up, had some tea, watched some telly, till it subsided. Then went back to bed and did actually sleep.  

Lots of dreams - I suppose my mind was trying to catch up.  I only remember one really odd one in which I saw three meteors hurtle to earth, one in a great blaze of fire outside our house (not our flat?) and two more, a little further away.

And I remember trying to explain to Col what I had seen - that this wasn't a case of someone throwing fireworks, it was actually a blaze of fire coming out of the sky - and thinking that well, he would realise that when all the fire engines started roaring along, and he turned on The News. 

Was this a prophetic dream?  Well, no, given that we were given the complete Bible 2,000 years ago, which is all we need to get us through to the start of the restoration of paradise earthwide.  So I am not worrying about a meteor strike - even in the dream it didn't frighten me. 

And it is Armageddon that will usher in the time when the repair of the earth begins. And then there will be further revelation.

Maybe Jehovah will give us another poem as lovely as the Song of Solomon then, who knows?  And we will learn new things - things we cannot even imagine now.  But once again, may we listen to our loving Creator now, and all be there to find out.

On the Threshold of Spring (and of Too Much Information)

 

The Trees (1974)

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

by Philip Larkin

https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/the-trees

The above picture is not really the kind of tree the poet is writing about, but I thought I would post it as a memorial to our lost pine.  Once it is balcony weather, I will be missing it, as will the birds who used to perch in it.

When I go for the odd drive/outing, usually for medical purposes these days, I note the skeletal trees everywhere, each one a work of art, and think that soon they will be covered in a fuzz of green, as the new leaves begins to grow and shape themselves.

Dylan Thomas spoke in a poem about the "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower".  That force is the spirit of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah, who is the Grand Creator.

We are surrounded by miracles.

I also wonder, sometimes aloud, if one day, a thousand years from now, Col and I will be wandering through some lovely woodland and come across the fragment of a road and remember that once we had to journey on it, many times, for hospital appointments.

Sickness will be a thing of the past then.

On a more mundane level - and as sickness is still prevalent among us damaged children of Adam - I have tried the new med and it has made me really ill. I spent most of early Wednesday morning in the loo and then, to my horror, when I rang up our Bible student to check that she was OK for the morning study, she told me all the plumbing on the estate had packed up!  Not one of her 3 loos was viable.

NOOO!!!!  Not that morning of all mornings.  Anyway, she still wanted to see us - was looking forward to it - so off we went.  Although it did not seem there could be anything left inside me, I took two instant imodiums before we set off, just in case.  (Sorry if this has all headed into the "too much information" arena.)  When we drove in we had to squeeze past two gigantic tankers working on the drains, and as we left we drove past two more tankers driving in, the original ones having left, presumably with a full load. 

Quite a problem. I only hope it's sorted now. We have the privilege of taking all these things for granted until they go wrong - just as we take having clean water coming out of our taps.

And once the whole earth is under the loving rule of the Kingdom of God, everyone will be cared for properly - it will be managed perfectly, with love.  I hope so much we will all be there to find out just how wonderful it will be.

The Wild Silence

Col had ordered Raynor Winn's next two books for me  and they arrived on Monday.  I have already got well into The Wild Silence, and am so looking forward to Landlines.

The central metaphor of The Wild Silence is the parallel with the damage we are wreaking on the planet and the damage being done by the illness that is progressively damaging the author's husband, Moth.  Yet it is not depressing - quite the opposite. It is absorbing and inspiring.  And such a good read that I am going to have a struggle to get my necessary studying and housework done today, instead of spending the whole day on the sofa with her books.

I am in a lot of pain too, and got minimal sleep, so the sofa option is very tempting.

What I must do is get this blog finished and published as I try for ten blogs a month.  I need to do some housework.  I also need to do my studying for the day - see the weekly schedule for meetings on the site JW.org.  Plus some witnessing - I have two blocks of flats to write to, along with another email to Bruce of South Africa.  Oh, and some lentil veggie soup for us this evening.

If that does not sound like a satisfying meal for a man back from a hard day in The Field (resident detectorist on local Archeology Site) then please bear in mind that it will have chicken added to it and become a chicken, lentil and veggie soup. And I have his favourite dessert - apple crumble - for afters.

And in any case, the Captain threw my plans into disarray by coming back early for lunch.  I threw the soup together hastily and have a baked potato and some salad he can have for his supper.

I have chosen another Cornish photo from Col's gallery - the view of Praa Sands beach from the house my granny used to own there, many years ago, the house where we spent our childhood summers back in the 1950s.   I can remember nothing about the house, but I remember the steep garden steps. And I remember the wonderful beach vividly.  I chose it because Raynor and Moth are busy re-wilding a neglected farm in Cornwall.

And the book is a reminder that what is needed is not neglect, just letting things run wild, but careful and loving stewardship of the land.  Which is the wonderful occupation Jehovah gave our first parents - to turn the whole earth into paradise - a beautiful garden.

We constantly try to restore the harmony they lost, but we are up against two impossibilities. Firstly, we were not designed to rule ourselves, but were designed to freely accept and follow our Creator's loving law, his perfect standards of good and bad.  And, secondly, the hands that really rule the world are bent on destruction. They are not human hands, and they are much more powerful than we are.  Ephesians 6:12 spells that out for us, clearly and simply.

And is there anything in the tragedy that has been human history that should cause us to doubt the truth of that warning in Ephesians?

February Fill-Dyke

Apparently the Romans in Britain used to call February "Fill-dyke", as it was such a rainy month.  We have had a fair amount of rain this Feb.  It was raining on Thursday morning as I started this blog - the balcony geraniums - sturdy creatures - were blowing about in the salt wind, still flowering, and there were white horses on the Channel.

As snowdrops are rumoured to be appearing - not that I have seen any yet - I have put in a request for a snowdrop photo for this blog - from Col's photo gallery.

Things in the Middle East go from bad to worse it seems, as hostages are returned as bodies, and as Palestinians return to the bodies of their families buried under the rubble of their homes.

Once again, I ask what the world's religions have been teaching their people.  We have, for example, the perfect advice in Psalm 37 that, if taught and applied, would have avoided all this death and suffering.

No wonder Jesus taught - and teaches - us to be "no part of the world" - to stay out of its divisive politics and its cruel wars.  The world will turn brother against brother, sister against sister, over and over. And it has had such success that we have already had two wars so terrible that they were called World Wars.

On a personal level, I had yet another bad night, and am still agonising over whether I should start on the diabetes medicine or not. I was hoping to manage without it, and thought I was doing OK.  But...  I am scared that once I start on it I may not be able to come off it without my blood sugar count surging.  And also I am afraid of what it is going to do to my poor old digestive system, already somewhat in turmoil due to having to take max painkillers and inflammatories pretty much every day this year... however, this is verging on "too much information", so I had better stop.

Had a long chat with Bea on Saturday. She is going through it too. But on the doubleplusamazing side one of her granddaughters is now appearing on Coronation Street - one of the extras at The Rovers saying "Rhubarb, Rhubarb" as they tuck into Betty's hotpot.  Amazing really, as that is such an iconic show.

My Sunday was happy enough  - the meeting via Zoom - yet more lovely teaching - and I made a lamb hotpot (not up to Betty's iconic one of course) for himself. who had left at the crack of dawn to join the Detectorists in The Field. He is back to watch the Rugby match - in fact he is watching now.  He has an amazing ability to be able to tell one rugby match from another... a skill which I am completely lacking.

The Salt Path

I

Back From Australia by John Betjeman

Cocooned in Time, at this inhuman height,
The packaged food tastes neutrally of clay,
We never seem to catch the running day
But travel on in everlasting night
With all the chic accoutrements of flight:
Lotions and essences in neat array
And yet another plastic cup and tray.
"Thank you so much. Oh no, I'm quite all right".

At home in Cornwall hurrying autumn skies
Leave Bray Hill barren, Stepper jutting bare,
And hold the moon above the sea-wet sand.
The very last of late September dies
In frosty silence and the hills declare
How vast the sky is, looked at from the land.

https://allpoetry.com/Back-From-Australia

I wanted to recommend The Salt Path by Raynor Winn again.  I have read it twice now, it is such a good read.  And I have found a photo of a path in Cornwall to head this blog. Its from Col's photo gallery, of course.

Apparently the book began when she wrote an article for The Big Issue about the backpackers walk she and her husband, Moth, took after they had been made homeless and jobless, and her husband had been given a terminal diagnosis!

Yet it is in no way a depressing book - quite the opposite.  And I plan to put her next two books into my next book order. Col does the Amazon order online.  I would be interested to know if they stayed in Cornwall, having walked the coastal path. It is such a lovely county - well conveyed in the Betfeman poem above - and full of early childhood memories for me.

Our Bible student, with whom we spent Wednesday afternoon, has just re-read Neville Shute's "A Town Like Alice".  It is years since I read it, but I guess I should read it again.  It is a book that sweeps you along.  It was made into a successful movie too.

The News goes on being tragic, as no lessons have been learnt, not even from the horrors of two World Wars. 

Bea and I were talking about war today, because she is giving a talk this afternoon which  will include the subject of Armageddon.  I was wanting to let her know what the Bible says about it, as there are so many misconceptions.

For example, some - maybe many? - believe that it means the end of the world.  Whereas the Bible tells us it is the time when Jehovah puts an end to the present wicked system of things on the earth. And after Armageddon, the restoration of the whole earth to the paradise of peace it was always meant to be will begin.  

So it will in fact mark the beginning of the real life, the life our loving Creator. Jehovah, always intended for us.  It is urgent  that we listen to Him now, as Armageddon is imminent.

My shoulder has improved - but now my right leg is very painful - a legacy from those childrens' chairs at the Conference!

The Recorders Conference - another Last for me?

The years are hurtling around again, as it was the Biological Recorders Conference on Saturday.  This seems like a good moment to pull one of Col's butterfly photos from his Photo Gallery, as he used to walk a Butterfly transect as a Recorder.  I am spoiled for choice, but have decided on a rather splendid Clouded Yellow.

I only managed half of the session, in that we had to leave after lunch - everything too painful - but we got to attend the talks Col was most interested in - one about moths, and one about a cricket called a Wartbiter (thus). Don't ask.

Michael Blencowe was there, the author of the wonderful and heartbreaking LOST.  I wrote this about his book in a previous blog:

"The author starts by taking us to the Booth Museum - just down the road from here. He manages to capture the strangeness and fascination of the Booth. It is well worth a visit by the way. And he also skewers the Victorian obsession it commemorates in a couple of sentences:

"Victorian society was enthralled by the natural world and they demonstrated their admiration through coveting, collecting and categorising it. Birds, butterflies, ferns, eggs, seaweeds, shells,you name it - if the Victorians could get their hands on it, they'd kill it, skin it, stuff it, press it and pin it."

Michael takes us all over the world, from Alaska to New Zealand.  He describes the valiant, hopeless and heartbreaking struggle of the vanished Stellar's Sea Cows as they tried to protect each other from the slaughter."

We have been living in a tragedy since the loss of Eden... and the animal creation has suffered so much. Michael has done a valiant job of commemorating those animals we have lost through our greed and our selfishness.

And a real positive about the Recorders Conference is to see how many people do care for the creation and are trying to help.

It was nice to see a few more from our old Butterfly days.  And the veggie buffet was good - hot bhajis and samosas, and various cold spreads and dips and veggies.

But...unless some wonderful new cure and repair for arthritis and its damage is imminent, I think that will be my last Recorders Conference.  For one thing, I can no longer cope with the dining room we have to eat in. The seats are so low - designed for children and their healthy little knees (the venue is a school) -  and I am still paying for the wrench of getting myself on and off their low dining seats.

I never thought about this aspect of old age - the saying goodbye to things, not realising that they are lasts.  I had my last swim in the sea when my sisters were down a few years ago, and that may well have been my last walk and paddle on the beach.

However, to end on a Doubleplusgood note,  I hope to live forever in the restored earthly paradise, and who knows what we will be doing then - new things as well as old. And re biological conferences, we will all be learning how to take care of the earthly creation perfectly, as the Kingdom of God will be restoring the peace and harmony that prevailed in Eden worldwide. For one thing, it will co-ordinate all our efforts perfectly, and there will be no politics - large or small - to get in the way and make our lives miserable.

And it will give us such joy to be able to care for the earth and all that is on it.

The Orchid Table

Not only is our orchid table doing well, but I came back from the Bible study to find that Col had bought me some daffodils, some sparkly wine and some truffles.  A lovely surprise!

And our Bible student had a vase of tulips her daughter had bought for  her, so spring, or at least its flowers, are in the air,

And how many more springs do I have?   I am very far into my seventies now.  Of course, I am hoping for unnumbered springs in the restored earthly paradise. But that is not up to me. It is only our Creator who can give us back the life and perfection our first parents lost. And it is only through the ransom sacrifice of Jesus Christ that I can inherit the earth, and live forever upon it.

I am very tired as the pain in my shoulder wakes me in the early hours.  Pain Clinics? They have been suggested. But am I now in too much pain to attend one?  Is this a common medical Catch 22?  And just to add to my stress my diabetes med has just arrived and I really do NOT want to be taking it.  My measurement is down by a point, which is good, and both my feet and my eye tests were good.  

I don't know what to do.  I need to pray about this.

On the doubleplusgood side, though the pain in my "good" shoulder is still keeping me awake at nights, I do have some function back in it. Which is very encouraging. I thought it might have gone for good.

My fellow Fantastic Books authors are busy in cyberspace at the moment as we all try to publicise our books.  Its not easy to follow all the techie stuff, but interesting and hopefully some of us will get some sales out of it.  

And to end as I began, with the Orchid table, it has a lot of history. It used to stand in the summerhouse at Nabbs, covered in newspaper and windfall apples, gradually rotting away. Then when my parents were young married, in search of furniture, my father put new legs on it - very 1950s legs, which it has to this day. Then later, when the Captain and I were young marrieds ourselves, Ron, my father in law, restored the top for us.

So many memories... so what will it be like having lived say 800 years on the earth, building up layers of completely happy memories, and learning all sorts of new and wonderful things?  I hope we  will all find out one day - approximately 880 years from now!