The Special Talk

My two weeks convalescence after the second Cataract operation is almost up, and I am in a strange Limbo.  I can now watch the telly without my glasses - wonderful!  But I still need glasses to do my computer stuff - and to read.  And I sort of need glasses to do this blog, and sort of don't.

Which is because I now need new glasses - obviously.  Apparently Specsavers will ring me and arrange an appointment.

Sunday was the Special Talk, given in the congregations worldwide, and I thought I would just blog a couple of points from it while they were still fresh in my mind - and while I can still read the notes I took.  Well, looking at my notebook, either I took notes, or a drunken spider fell into a bottle of ink and ran all over the page...

Anyway, the title was:  An End to War  How? which obviously follows on from the month-long campaign to offer the magazine with the same title to as many as we could.

I think maybe I will concentrate on the HOW aspect of this question, as what human government has ever been able to end wars?  The Speaker mentioned the UN, which was set up for that very reason.  Has it brought about peace on earth, or are the nations that make it up as divided and suspicious of each other as ever?  And do we still have brutal conflicts everywhere?

So what government can bring about peace on earth?

Please think about these following two Scriptures, promises from Jehovah, the true God, who cannot and does not lie.

At Daniel 2:44 he tells us what the heavenly government, the Kingdom of God, will do. It says:
In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. And this kingdom will not be passed on to any other people. It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it alone will stand forever.

If you look at the context of that promise you will see that it is the heavenly government, the one set up in heaven, the one that rules from heaven, that will crush and put and to all human governments. It will end the times we are living in now, times during which "man has dominated man to his harm".

And here are these beautiful words from Psalm 37:

Just a little while longer, and the wicked will be no more;
You will look at where they were,
And they will not be there.
But the meek will possess the earth,
And they will find exquisite delight in the abundance of peace. - Psalm 37:10,11

Jehovah promises us that, under the loving rule of the Kingdom of God, we will have the abundance of peace, a peace our first parents had and lost, and a peace we, their damaged children, have never yet known.

And as a reminder of what Jehovah is already doing to make peace on earth, the Speaker gave us two personal experiences.

The first was from back in 1978 when the Speaker and his wife were a young married couple and studying the Bible with the JWs. They are a mixed race couple, she is West Indian, he is white British, and that made them an oddity back then, and also - sadly - meant they encountered some hostility.

They went to the International Convention at Twickenham and found themselves in a vast crowd of people from all over the world, all meeting as brothers and sisters. They simply fitted in. It was something that helped to convince them they had found the truth.

The next experience was from earlier this year when they were visiting Newcastle - the city where Captain Butterfly and I first met. They were trying to find their way and looking for someone to ask when they noticed two brothers standing by a literature cart. So they went over to say hello and ask them for directions, but found that neither of them spoke much English.

What they did find out though is that one brother was Russian, the other Ukrainian, and the literature they had was in both languages. And they were united in the same line of thought, and in the same Kingdom preaching work - and in love.

So where the world - the current system of things on the earth - divides us - Jehovah unites us. And he is already doing so - uniting millions of us, earthwide, from "every tribe and tongue and nation", under the loving rule of the Kingdom of God.

The photo above is of my young father, a Polish para. When Jehovah wakes him from the dreamless sleep of death, as I hope so much that He will, my father will open his eyes in an earth that is truly at peace, an earth that is ruled by the law of loving-kindness. And then his real life can begin.

Ladies Who Lunch

Jay came round for lunch on Tuesday - the Captain was busy detecting for the Archeologists - he found a lot of coins too.  We had the usual - lentil and veggie soup, followed by apple crumble and custard.

So I was thinking back to our expat days when I seemed to be cooking all the time - we did a lot of entertaining, there were pot lucks, and other things.

And then there were the days of the BBQ. We had a big BBQ in the garden of our last house and Mike used to come round and start it up and we would cook sausages, garlic bread, mushrooms, etc and people would just turn up.

There was also a time when we used to go to Robert's villa in town every weekend. He had a cook from the sub-continent who used to cook us wonderful curries.

You didn't need to plan a social life then. It just sort of happened. I used to cook a lot of Thai/Chinese/Indian food out there, but my cooking is very plain and routine these days. Anyway I must find a picture from our expat days to head this blog.  I could only find this one, one of our many gardens, with sprinkler in full flight.  Over here we can pretty much rely on the giant sprinkler in the sky.

Which reminds me that at the meeting on Thursday night we (the congregations worldwide) began our study of Ecclesiastes. one of my favourite Bible books for all its sadness.  And in it Solomon, writing under inspiration, described the cycle of the rain, in such accurate and simple terms.  

He wrote:   All the streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place from which the streams flow, there they return so as to flow again. - Ecclesiastes 1:7

And the book of Job describes it too:  Yes, God is greater than we can know; The number of his years is beyond comprehension. He draws up the drops of water; They condense into rain from his mist; Then the clouds pour it down; They shower down upon mankind.  Job 36:26-28 

So in the UK while we have the gigantic sprinkler in the sky - see the quotes above for how it works - because everything is out of order since the loss of Eden, sometimes we get too much rain and sometimes too little.  Which brings me neatly back to the Kingdom of God, with Jesus as the King of that Kingdom. He can and will bring the natural forces back into the perfect harmony they had in Eden.

Croissant Exupery

I think I mentioned my French detective Croissant Exupery and his admiring sidekick Hotson in a blog some years ago.  But I have now found the actual story and thought I might as well publish it here, as for sure no-one else is going to publish it.  

It was written so many years ago, when us three sisters lived in the same city, and we used to get together for regular literary evenings (and bottles of wine).  It is from my series Wuthering Frights, in which 3 sisters, Currer, Ellis and Acton Bronski, attempt (and fail) to write a bestseller.  This is them trying to go the detective route.

I gave them a brother Branston who - reversing the Bronte polarity - was actually going to succeed - write a best seller and retire to LA - much to his sisters amazement.  I never got that far in the saga though.

I have probably also wondered before in my blogs if there will be fiction as we know it in the restored earthly paradise, only I occasionally have a dream about being in a dusty old library and suddenly coming across a shelf of books by one of my favourite authors - Agatha Christie say (to whose Belgian Detective Hercule Poirot and his sidekick Hastings my Plumbing Detective Croissant and his sidekick owe so much) - a whole shelf of books that I have not read yet!

Of course, I always wake up before I can read them.

But here is the thing.  If Agatha Christie is to live again, as I hope, and will still be writing, as I hope, what would she be writing about?  We only have one story at the moment, which is basically that things have gone wrong and they need to be put right. Can you imagine any other story?  This is after all the story we are living in.

But maybe there are other stories, ones we cannot even conceive of yet,  Or maybe there will no more need for fiction once we are no longer living in a tragedy.

Well, once again, I can only hope that we are all there to find out.

Anyway, here goes:

(WUTHERING FRIGHTS)

CROISSANT EXUPERY – THE PLUMBING DETECTIVE

“Hotson, mon ami, is sumzzing – ow you say – troubling you?”

“Why do you ask, Croissant?”  

“You have been staring at zat newspaper article for – ow you say – ze last half hour, mon ami, Hotson.”

Croissant never ceased to amaze me.   I had indeed been staring at that particular newspaper article for the last half hour, and he had seen it all, from his seat opposite.

We were tucked up nice and warm in his London flat.  He was like a cat, old Croissant, liked his heat.  For myself, I think that a real man should take a cold shower daily and break the ice for a swim every New Year’s Day.  Nevertheless, Croissant Exupery was my good “ami”.  (A little joke that never failed to make his face crinkle up with laughter and his dapper goatee beard shake.)

“Well, Hotson, mon ami, I zink that you have found a case that is – ow you say – up my avenue?”

Croissant never ceased to amaze me.  I had indeed found a case that was right up his street – or “up his avenue” as my funny foreign friend would so drolly have it.

“Croissant, you never cease to amaze me!  This case is indeed tailored to your exact specifications.  This poor lady – a Mzzzz (I pronounced carefully) Kimberley Butterworth – was savagely attacked, and nearly drowned.  Apparently, she was having a bath at home, when her estranged “husband” (I fear the said lady was no better than she ought to be!) burst in, and forced her head under the water.  If Ms Butterworth's pooch, a Pit Bull by the name of Terminator, hadn’t happened upon the scene, I fear that Ms Kimberley Butterworth would have been no more.”

“Mon ami, Hotson,”  Croissant was leaning forward eagerly, his dapper goatee beard a’ quiver.  “Did the lady  - ow you say - say anything?  Was she able to speak when they found her?”

“Croissant, you never cease to amaze me!  She did indeed speak.  She told Constables Boot and Shoestring that her "husband" - and I put some careful inverted commas around that word - had held her head under the water in the bathroom of their semi, and everything was just going black, or rather peach, which is the colour of their bathroom suite, when Terminator rushed in and saved her.”

“Aha, Hotson, mon ami”, Croissant lay back in his chair, his eyes satisfied, and his goatee beard looking rather smug (as well as dapper).  “Aha. There you have it. The mystery is solved. That bathroom was NOT in - ow you say - Notting Hill.  It was nowhere near Notting Hill. She was not attacked zere, nor was any denzin of Notting Hill involved in ze attack.”

Croissant never ceased to amaze me!

“Croissant, you never cease to amaze me!  You are quite right.  As ever.   The attack was NOT in Notting Hill, and no denzin of Notting Hill was present during the attack.  But how did you know?

“Does Croissant Exupery, the Plumbing Detective, not know his – ow you say - plumbing, mon ami Hotson!!   As soon as I heard it was a PEACH bathroom I knew. Do you think that there is a single peach bathroom anywhere in Notting Hill?  Would anyone from Notting Hill set foot in a bathroom with a peach suite?!  I knew the crime could never have taken place there.”

Croissant never ceased to amaze me, and I ….

“Yes, Currer, what’s your point here?”  Ellis rudely interrupted.

“Come on Ellis, its simple enough. Weren’t we all watching Cadfael, (if such was his name) the other night. You know, the medieval monk who’s a botanist…”

“Yes, I know.” That was Acton, chiming in  “The corpse always has a flower in its hair or is sprinkled with some unusual kind of pollen , and Cadfael can solve the crime because he knows so much about flowers and pollen and things.”

“Exactly. So all we need for a successful series is a detective with a speciality and a few quirky character traits.   Hence” – and she bowed to them in a stately manner –“Hence Monsieur Croissant Exupery, Plumbing Detective.”

Acton and Ellis looked at her in amazement.  And then cast their minds back to last night when they had indeed watched Cadfael solve a whole series of grisly murders because the Bleeding RagWort had been late flowering that Medieval Spring.

Could she actually be on to something for once?

“Currer, you never cease to amaze us”, they chorused as one.

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

Now of course this is not only very silly, but probably very out of date too. Peach bathroom suites may have come right back into fashion among the Literati and Glitterati of Notting Hill, maybe Notting Hill itself has gone out of fashion, for all I would know about it.

And for the first time ever, I am regretting we don't take photos of our food as otherwise I would surely have an array of croissant photos from our Paris trips.

I am at a loss here. Maybe I can find a peach?

AHA! A Peach Blossom Moth from the Captain's Gallery. That will do nicely.

And indeed his photo gallery never ceases to amaze me.

The Pile of Stones

By Friday my eyes seemed to be coming back online, though I felt a bit seasick. I can't see very well with my glasses now, as obviously I will need a new prescription once the healing is done. I can watch the TV without glasses now though!

I got back into it a bit on Saturday - zoomed to field service in the morning and then made an apple crumble for himself. And I zoomed into the meeting this morning and really appreciated the Circuit Overseer's final talk - A Pile of Stones.

He started with an image from Derbyshire, the moorland country of my childhood. The image was, of course(!), a pile of stones, one of the many heaped up on the high moor tops so that people could find the path even in a heavy fog. It is possible to die of exposure out there in Winter so in the days when people walked everywhere they were vital. 

The image I have found is one Col took on the Longshaw Estate in Derbyshire. It is of a natural stone formation, but gives an idea of the amazing landscape - the landscape I grew up with. We used to go out there for picnics on sunny (or at least non-rainy) Sundays. The terrain kept us children completely occupied while our mother could have some well deserved me-time fully absorbed in a book.

She often used to make a Victoria sponge to go along with our sandwiches. At the time we preferred the sticky jammy creamy sugary concoctions from the bakers - oojy goojy cakes we used to call them - but now I would pass all of them by to have a slice of her Victoria sponge. 

The point about the talk was how much Jehovah appreciates those who serve him.  How we can stand out in a world where so many people neither know nor want to know their Creator.  It reminded us how God will treasure our every prayer, our every attempt to tell others about our wonderful Creator.  He stores all these things up in his memory.  Also we were reminded how understanding he is of our failures and weaknesses. How, if we keep picking ourselves up and trying to do better, Jehovah will not hold any of our failings against us.

Here are two key Scriptures. Firstly, 

Psalm 103:12 tells us this of Jehovah:

As far off as the sunrise is from the sunset,
So far off from us he has put our transgressions.

Can sunrise and sunset ever meet? A vivid illustration of how Jehovah will let our transgressions go.  The crux here is are we doing the same with others, especially with our brothers and sisters in the congregation?  Or we cherishing resentments, harbouring grudges?

I am uneasily aware of some big failings here, though I am working on it. But...

And Hebrews 6:10 assures us that  God is not unrighteous so as to forget your work and the love you showed for his name by ministering and continuing to minister to the holy ones.

That is very reassuring for all of us who can no longer do what we did, be it because of age, health problems, family problems, whatever.

Though it is a sad thing to me that I spent the first half of my life neither knowing nor serving my Creator.  And I realise how much happier I would have been, and how much happier I would have made those I love, if I had only listened to the truth sooner than I did.

As Ecclesiastes says: Remember, then, your Grand Creator in the days of your youth.

If I have any young readers, I assure you that this is perfect advice, from Jehovah, who wants nothing more than for you to be happy - to enjoy life forever.

The Bow in the Cloud

 

Here is the rainbow that shone over the archeologists last Tuesday week - photographed by Col of course.  It is the bow in the cloud that first appeared after the Deluge of Noah's day.

Our ex-Bible student - the lady of the flowers - has asked me to let her know how the eye op goes, so I hope I will be able to ring her in a day or two and tell her it has gone well - gulp.  Maybe we can re-start our Bible study in time.  We so much want to help her. She is a very kind, hospitable lady.

Medical matters continue to occupy time and energy which is almost inevitable at my age.  Monday was spent trying to find out why I have not yet got a date for my next delivery - of the stuff that has to be delivered, signed for, and popped into the fridge.  It took an age, and turns out to be a problem at the hospital end, with Rheumatology.  Can I face trying to call them?  Not yet.

Tuesday morning Captain B chauffered me to the surgery - blood test - and I was able to do some field service via Zoom in the afternoon.  Then in the evening it was the meeting, moved to Tuesday as it is the week of the Circuit Overseer's visit.

Having the meeting day moves always throws me, as I build my life round the rhythm of  the meetings.  Not that it takes a lot to confuse me these days...  well, it probably never did, but at least I now have old age as an excuse.

I restocked the freezer with cake - marmalade muffins this time - so that should see the Captain's packed lunches through my convalescence.

My next cataract operation is today - Wednesday as I am writing this.  I am hoping that Col will be able to post this tomorrow noting that it has gone well... I am just longing for it all to be over.

And our new C.O, gave us a beautiful encouraging talk on Tuesday night.  The title was: Love, a Perfect Bond of Union.  I hope to be able to blog a couple of points from it when and if I get back to blogging.

Operation done, hopefully a success, different from last time, new system, and more post-op pain.  But v v grateful to have it over with.

A Place of Fear and Despair

"The truth is, for people like my friend’s kid and the thousands like her, school is a place of fear and despair."

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/apr/20/absentee-students-should-make-us-ask-what-is-school-for

This quote from the above article stopped me in my tracks.  Yes.  I can still remember that awful moment when the lovely long Summer holidays ended and the first day of a new school year began.  I can remember how I felt every Monday, come to that.  Not a lot better.

And the quote below is from an article about another school bullying death.  The Guardian article says this about the death of young Harvey Willgoose:

The couple (his parents) were threatened with prosecution and fines if they did not get him to All Saints – Harvey was asked if that was what he wanted. They said they had asked for alternative provision, but were told it would not work. “We engaged with the people who we were told to engage with, we were guided by them and we did everything they asked,” says Mark.

Everyone they were in touch with made them feel as if they were the only ones, says his nan. “I really can’t believe that we took it all,” she says. “We feel so guilty.” Since Harvey’s death, Caroline posted on social media, asking if other parents were suffering too. Hundreds of parents got in touch to say they were going through the same thing.

The family want the government to explore more pragmatic, alternate provisions for children like Harvey. “School, as it is, is not for everybody,” says Caroline. “There should be something else in place for the kids that can’t go.” Forcing children, threatening them and their parents simply won’t work, says her husband. “You’ve got to get to the bottom of why.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/08/harvey-willgoose-family-campaign-for-change-knife-crime-school

So his parents sent him to school, as ordered.  And he was murdered by a fellow pupil, stabbed to death.  No wonder he was so scared of going.   

Even without knife crime - back in my day - school was a One Size Fits All arrangement. And you could expect many years of unhappiness if you did not fit.  

Caroline Glyn wrote very well about it in her book Don't Knock the Corners Off.  School taught me that my corners would simply not come off, even though I would have loved them to (back then) so I could fit in - and I learnt to avoid people as much as is possible - not very possible in a school setting of course.  Which did not make becoming a Jehovah's Witness easy.  But I have Jehovah's help with that.  He knows and cares for each one of us, and understands that we are all different - and never asks from us what we cannot do.

He can surprise us when we find out what we can do though!  I remember my mother saying, of me, that she never thought there was anything in the world that would make me stand up and speak in public.

Well, Jehovah did. Without making me, or forcing me, but using his spirit, his congregated people, and his spirit-inspired word to teach me, gently, without nastiness, without criticism.

And I have surprised myself.  He makes us feel useful and worthwhile.  My schooldays made me feel the exact opposite.

I know that no human government can set things right on the earth. Only the heavenly government, the Kingdom of God, can.  But surely we can do better than this, than to force so many children into years of unhappiness - and now,  even into deadly danger?

Because Jehovah knew and loved Harvey, he sleeps safe in "the everlasting arms", safe in God's memory, every hair of his head numbered - and he has such a joyful awakening ahead of him, into an earth ruled by the law of loving kindness.

I so much hope his devastated family, who did everything right, everything they could, know that he is not lost to them and that he will be woken from the dreamless sleep of death when the time comes.

The photo I found for the blog is of a School of Maldivian Blue Stripe Snappers.  It seems a much gentler sort of school, but given that nature is "red in tooth and claw" since the loss of Eden, I can't be sure.

However it leads me on to make the point that when young Harvey next opens his eyes, nature will no longer be red in tooth and claw. The Kingdom of God, the heavenly government, will do what no human government can ever do.  It will have restored the peace the prevailed in Eden earthwide.

It will be such a joyful awakening for Harvey when it comes.  I am hoping very much that I will see my parents again then too.

A Surprise of Orchids

This splendid orchid arrived in the post from Ann-marie!  A wonderful surprise.   And a great addition to our orchid table, which is not much in flower at the moment.

I have been feeling rather stressed recently  - all the medical stuff I guess and lack of sleep, never mind the awful News.  And this was a perfect tonic.

You can see the original perfection of the creation in a flower.  And in a rainbow - I add that as I hope my next blog will start with a recent rainbow photographed by Captain Butterfly.

Captain B rang me from The Field - the Archeological Field - on Tuesday morning to tell me he was sheltering from some monsoon-like downpour.  Even though he was not far down the coast from me, we did not get it. We had a perfect Autumn day, sunshine (gentle), blue skies, white clouds, and a soft breeze.  So it was a variable day on the South Coast.  Which no doubt accounted for the rainbow.

And on Wednesday we, a sister and I, visited our ex Bible student, for coffee and a chat.  What will come of it I don't know. But she needs the truth so much.  There again, don't we all?

Thursday morning I seemed to get a bit of energy back. I made the usual crumble - apple - for himself, finished my studying for the meeting,  and I even revamped my Go Bag, which the Governing Body recommend we all have. It is not a wonderful one - I have so many medications now that in case of emergency I will simply have to grab my medicine box in the kitchen. But, hopefully, it is better than nothing.

More hopefully still, I will never have to use it!

And I had a double Zoom field service session and got a lot of Not Home letters and cards done to take to the Hall last night. Col kindly chauffered me - and helped me get dressed.

They call old age "a second childhood", and they are not wrong.  Its just that you don't have the cuteness and the appeal that you (hopefully) had the first time around.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

 

I just found this by Robert Frost:


Nothing Gold Can Stay
By Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148652/nothing-gold-can-stay-5c095cc5ab679


The above moth is a Gold-ribbon Argent  It too comes and goes from our balcony in its season.  Photo courtesy of Captain Butterfly as always.

Our first parents probably opened their eyes in an Autumn garden.  And I often wonder how lovely that garden - the garden of Jehovah - must have been, given how lovely autumn gardens can be even now, after generations of imperfection and damage - after, as Robert Frost puts it so beautifully "Eden sank to grief".

Ok, I too will try for an Autumn poem, bearing in mind that I am not Robert Frost, just inspired by him.

Falling

by me

Autumn sweeps

fallen leaves

before it.

red and gold.

I totter ahead, 

into winter

ice in my road.

It won't last, no...

But Autumn will come again.

Season upon season, 

world without end.

Amen.

I feel as if this just needs small changes to make it come out right - or at any rate so much better - but, as I said I am not Robert Frost.  I also wanted it to convey the thought that I too hope to have season upon season, Autumns without number - to "inherit the earth", and live forever upon it, as the Bible promises.

I spent Monday morning in Zoom sessions with firstly a friend, and secondly my scattered siblings.  And in the afternoon I made the Captain's sandwich lunch for tomorrow, also a veggie and lentil soup, and a fruit jelly.

Today was a Zoom session - field service - and along with studying and doing some witnessing (letter/email), I must clean out the fridge.  The Captain is off archeologising today - so if he makes any exciting finds I will only see them in photo form. And if they are really exciting I will try to blog them.

Attercliffe of Bangkok

ATTERCLIFFE OF BANGKOK

by me

Banana palms fruiting

Machinery chugging

Behind corrugated fences

Coconuts lying redundant

On the grass

Helicopters

Bright butterflies

On clear blue skies

A long wait for the Sheik

Who talks and talks

Hours go by

In the grassy dark of palms

a thin white cat

eats duck I bought.

I wrote this on our first trip to Thailand, many, many years ago. It is about waiting for the Captain as he did some business connected with cameras in the unglamorous downtown area. It was all fascinating though, back then. The city was not yet one solid traffic jam. We could walk down the little Soi off Sukhumvit where our friends lived and see blossom and butterflies and snakes. That tells you how long ago it was.

The photo is of Cabbage Palms not Banana Palms, ones that are growing just down the road. The Captain doesn't have the photos from our Thai trips in his gallery. They were so long ago!

And Attercliffe is the industrial area of my Northern hometown - once among the world's foremost producer of steel. Now of course the steel industry has gone elsewhere and Attercliffe has been transformed, is quite glamorous in parts. But in my childhood it was roaring steel mills, blackened stone and constant busyness.

Heavy rain on Wednesday, once again lying in sheets on The Green - and still it rained. I had a double Zoom session with my sisters in the morning which was so encouraging. How would I feel now if I did not know the truth - Christianity being called "the way of the truth"? And Col chauffered me to the Hall on Thursday night. An excellent meeting, of course, with an encouraging little talk from a member of the Governing Body.

They always end by telling us how much they love us. And I can feel that love in the way we are taught and organised so carefully and so gently.

There is a special campaign this month using the Watchtower magazine An End to War HOW?

You will find it featured on the website JW.org. And today is a special day at the Kingdom Hall, with lots of witnessing being done. I hope to join in, in my small way, from home, and via Zoom.

Col left early for The Field where he is now waiting for it to open. It apparently sounds promising and is in good detecting condition, so hopefully he will have a happy and interesting day.

The September Calendar Moth

My favourite month has just arrived, right on time.  So I am seeing another September. They are all a bonus for me now.  To be fair, they always were, but you don't think about that when you are young.  Well, unless you are the poet Philip Larkin. He never forgot that it would all end in his death.

He will be SO happy if and when he is awoken from the dreamless sleep of death, not only to see this lovely earth again, but to know that this time he is not dying, but living.  And living joyfully too.

Anyway I note that we chose a picture of a rather horridly named Blood Vein Moth for our September calendar. The moth is lovely, of course, but the name is not.   Like so many moths with Autumnal colours, it could have been called The Autumn Leaf, or Autumn Gold, or. well - just to pull a name out of a hat at random - The Lovely Susan.

This is making me think of the fascinating task that Jehovah gave Adam of naming all the animals.   And isn't that what all work should be, creative and satisfying, and completely worthwhile?

We live in such a damaged world system now, yet even so it is easy to see how satisfying creative work can be.  In a small way, I enjoy doing this blog.  Trying to find the right poem, the right photo, etc.  Trying to make it interesting for anyone else who wants to read it (even though our lives are so quiet in this latter stage), while making it a useful reference for us.

I slept well on Monday night - thank Goodness - but it was a night of strange and stressful dreams.  I was at a massive Dental Clinic, worried because I had forgotten to bring my head, so how were they going to clean my teeth?  The Dentist was so drunk he could hardly stand up - so he may not have noticed the missing head. And the Clinic was full of ducks, and was set in a kind of Wetland Sanctuary, which included badgers in a pond, diving like otters.

And then I was in a massive train/bus station, trying to find a number for a taxi to get me home. No matter what I did, or who I asked, I could not find that number - and it began vaguely to dawn on me that this might be one of those frustration dreams...  after that I seem to have decided that, in that case, as it was a dream, I would be able to walk home, and I left the baffling Dentist/Station/Bus Terminal situation and set out to walk. There was snow on the ground, I remember, and I had no idea which way to go.

So what does that all mean?  According to Sigmund Freud I guess it would be all about sex, as he seemed to think everything was.  I have always thought that probably said more about him than about anybody else, but then I am not a psychiatrist.

I guess at that point I must have woken up.

We got a phone call from Roger on Tuesday afternoon - a lovely surprise, but also a reminder of how things change.   Roger was a constant guest in our expat years, and one of the regular Ramadam lunchers too.

And we have stayed with him in South Africa - when he took us on a tour of the lovely Cape, driving for days down that amazing coast.  And he has stayed with us here in our retirement by the sea many times. But this time we are not seeing each other.  He is only here for a few days, to help a member of the family through a difficult time, and neither of us is up, to say, meeting halfway for lunch at the moment.

I was able to send love to Anne and to Bruce though.