A Bracket in Binsted Woods (and a Flare-Up)

This is a Red-belted Bracket that Col took in Binsted Woods.  He heard it had been seen, hunted it down, and shot it - the humane way! - and got this magnificent photo.   And we made this photo our November calendar photo.  

The wild Bracket herds seem to have deserted the woods, alas.  Col has not been able to find one since.

I hope that one day we will be wandering through the Autumn woods of paradise picking mushrooms for our supper. I wouldn't risk it in this system of things, as even experts can make lethal mistakes when gathering fungi, and we are not experts.

Yet, having said that, my father, from Eastern Europe (Belarus/Poland) grew up in a culture where mushroom picking was the norm, and people usually survived it. I guess it was like that here once.

And I need to keep reminding myself that if we are there then we will be full of energy, in perfect health, because I am going through a bad arthritis week - knees, hands, especially left knee.  I don't understand why my knees hurt so much as they are artificial knees, as is one shoulder. That still hurts too.

Did they make them too realistic, or what?

The highlight of Saturday, and of my week, was a shepherding visit from two of the brothers.  Hard to explain how encouraging and comforting it was, especially after a week of pain - I was back on my Zimmer briefly, and even thought I might have to wotsapp them to cancel, or to warn that it might take me a while to answer the door.

However, thank God, the painkillers kicked in, and I was able to let them in, Zimmerless, and was so encouraged and built-up by their visit.  They are so young compared to me (and indeed who isn't these days?), but what wisdom Jehovah can give to all who will come to him and be taught by him. Their visit both encouraged me and taught me.  And I hope to include some valuable information about improving my studying in another blog.  If I do, it should be under the heading of Quail.   For one thing, it will help to keep it clear in my own head.

The care we receive within the congregation - the care that Jehovah and Jesus make sure we receive - is beyond anything "the world" can offer.

And I do feel guilty that I do not deserve all that appreciation and encouragement - but isn't it a reminder that what Jehovah wishes to give to all of us is "undeserved kindness", through the ransom sacrifice of his beloved only-begotten son?

I just wish everyone in the world, especially my family and friends - and my special fb friends like Marcin of Oz - could be gathered safely into the congregation family of the God of all comfort, Jehovah.  I guess I can only keep encouraging them to accept a Bible study course from their local JW congregation.  And hope and pray that they will.

Silver Foxes

  

At the moment I am getting lots of Friendship Requests on my Facebook page.  They all seem - SEEM - to be from men of "a certain age", all handsome, with silvery hair, and all widowed.  They are called "silver foxes" I believe.  I always feel like accepting them as friends, and suggesting that we meet up on the next Dr.Phil episode about Catfishing.

But I don't.  I just ignore them, and would advise anyone else to do the same.  Sadly many people have not and have lost thousands of dollars to these scams - hundreds of thousands sometimes! - scams of which the men in the photographs are innocent, most not even knowing their pictures are being used in this way.

The fox in the photo above - a red one, not a silver one -is innocent too. It is one of our foxes that Captain B photographed.  They come and they go and occasionally raise their children in our quiet gardens. They make the best of the ruined paradise we all have to live in until God's Kingdom comes - even though they are completely innocent of what has gone wrong.

This is the week for our flu vax and our next Covid vax... hopefully our bodies and immune systems will cope.  But, oh dear... we have more medical stuff coming up - and I know we are grateful for it. But I long for the time we all have perfect health, which is something we - the damaged, dying children of disobedient Adam - have never yet known.

Talking of medical issues, we saw George at our family Zoom on Monday - he popped in briefly to say hello having just come back from his first cataract operation. All has gone well apparently, and the second one is scheduled quite quickly.

I remember Jean telling me that her cataract operation gave her back the world of vivid colour she did not realise she had lost.  

I have cataracts coming - we all will, in our current damaged state, if we live long enough - and, IF I live long enough will have to have them operated on at some stage.

Can't say that I look forward to it.  But I am grateful that we still have a National Health Service to do it.

 

A Work of Art

Here is yet another perfect work of art from our Grand Creator, Jehovah, in the shape of a recent sunrise, photographed by Captain Moth-Butterfly.

By some accident I inserted the photo into the text, and as it looks quite interesting that way, I thought I would leave it there.  In any case, I have no idea how to get it out again.  

I hope that we will see unnumbered sunrises and sunsets in the restored earthly paradise.  

We shopped early on Friday morning as, due to poor ordering, I had run out of paracetamol and onions... I seem to live on paracetamol these days... and we bumped into Cousin Elizabeth, which was a nice surprise. Plus the gal who sells The Big Issue was there, so we bought one.  

This month is fairly hurtling along. And can it really be a year since the last bonfire on The Green?  If so, these years are definitely getting shorter.  

And with the bonfire comes The Fair, so I have been looking at the English Channel through a Ferris Wheel, the Jungle Kingdom, and the Ghost Train - all were lit up on mid Saturday afternoon and spinning away.  They looked very pretty in the late afternoon sun.

Re the Ghost Train, a popular fairground attraction, it is disturbing how this idea that the dead are living elsewhere, and that we must fear them, or fear for them, persists, when the Bible tells us simply and clearly, as it always has, that the dead "are conscious of nothing at all". - Ecclesiastes 9:5

We need neither fear them, or fear for them, but we can accept the Biblical hope that we can see them again once the time comes for the resurrection, and Jehovah wakes them from the dreamless sleep of death.

The clocks went back on Saturday night and in the very early dark dawn on Sunday morning, the bonfire was still blazing away on the Green, sending clouds of smoke towards the rising sun.

And on Monday morning it is still burning, with large flames. It is a very Mother of All Bonfires bonfire.  Will there be one next year? Will we be here to see it if so?

It is the question that one has to keep asking, in old age.  I do want us to be of course. I want us to live forever on this beautiful planet - in paradise.

Bouquet!

 

This splendid bouquet of Autumn flowers arrived on Monday morning while I was in my usual Zoom session with my siblings.  It was from Alex and Nadine to thank us for taking care of Nute in the wake of her operation.

It was a lovely surprise.  

Monday and Tuesday was an ongoing struggle to work out what blood pressure meds we are both supposed to be on. Either we are confused, the GPs are confused - or as seems more than likely, a bit of both. They are over-worked, and we are, well, youthily-challenged (in case the Thought Police have banned the word "old" and I haven't noticed).

We both still have colds, but are getting back into our routine slowly.  The bonfire is being built on The Green in readiness for Saturday night.  And I am happy to know that I am not the only one who loves Autumn.  See John Clare, below:

Autumn

John Clare

I love the fitfull gusts that shakes
 The casement all the day
And from the mossy elm tree takes
 The faded leaf away
Twirling it by the window-pane
With thousand others down the lane

I love to see the shaking twig
 Dance till the shut of eve
The sparrow on the cottage rig
 Whose chirp would make believe
That spring was just now flirting by
In summers lap with flowers to lie

I love to see the cottage smoke
 Curl upwards through the naked trees
The pigeons nestled round the coat
 On dull November days like these
The cock upon the dung-hill crowing
The mill sails on the heath a-going

The feather from the ravens breast
 Falls on the stubble lea
The acorns near the old crows nest
 Fall pattering down the tree
The grunting pigs that wait for all
Scramble and hurry where they fall

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

I hope that when the time comes, Jehovah will wake the poet from the dreamless sleep of death and he will see this lovely earth again. Maybe John Clare will wake up in the full splendour of Autumn - an Autumn in paradise.  

The bonfire is now built, and enormous, and the fairground is set  up on The Green - I am looking at the sea through a ferris wheel today.  I hope they have a good weekend weatherwise. If so, the fair will be roaring away outside our windows tomorrow night, as fireworks explode.  What the gulls make of it all I don't know.  But quite possibly when they see the bonfire being built they know they are in for a noisy night.

The Bluebottle Bomb, The Badgers, The Fox, and the Invisible Cats

 

Nute has often spoken about the horrors of the Bluebottle Bomb on Facebook. And if anyone thinks she is exaggerating they need to pop round and try experiencing one!  We started out kindly and ecologically trying to catch and free each bluebottle as it appeared, but it ended up with Col on a stepladder trying to vacuum hordes of them out of the lightwell.

The Bomb is courtesy of the invisible cats and their invisible kills - which fester away in obscure corners while being eaten by maggots and - well I find I don't want to discuss the process, useful though it undoubtedly is.

One of the Invisibles - cat, not prey - materialised on our bed every night and slept happily pressed up against our legs, staying calm through all our night excursions (trips to the loo, we are not the young things we once were).

The cat in question, Abra, also impelled me from my warm bed twice on a cold cold morning by sheer force of personality.  To save her ladyship the trouble of using the catflap in the bedroom door and walking a few steps to the catflap in the kitchen door, I got out of bed and let her out of our door, and the hall door that used to divide dog from cat in the old days.

Thankfully I got back into my warm and comfy bed only to find Abra had rematerialised in exactly the same position as before, not speaking or looking at me, just emoting. So this time I opened both doors, followed her through to the kitchen and found what the problem was. All the food dishes were empty, wiped clean.  The cats wanted their breakfast. Which I supplied.

The fox and the badgers turned up reliably for their food every night, the fox to hoover up the expensive cat food that the Invisibles had spurned during the day, and the badgers for their peanuts.

I am still wondering who, or what, emptied those cat dishes over night.  It seems completely out of character for the cats - they spurn more food than they eat.

Storm Ashley was raging on Sunday, giving us wonderful seas, waves crashing outside the window as I attended the meeting in Zoom. It was quite distracting.  I am still full of a cold, but Col's cough has abated a bit.

And in the world, wars continue, real bombs and rockets continue to rain down.  The Middle East seems to be going up in flames, war and starvation rages on in the Sudan, and the conflict in the Ukraine, which is taking such a toll on the Ukrainian and Russian peoples, continues, seemingly with no end in sight.

I hope the beauty, complexity and immensity of the creation can reassure us about the rescue that is already well underway, even the beauty of the bluebottle - see Col's photo of one that heads this blog. It is like a jewel really.

Once all creation is restored to the harmony that prevailed in Eden, we will see them for the wonderful and useful creations that they are.  And, as the Bible promises, all wars will cease.  All the divisions and hatred that leads to wars will vanish under the loving reign of the Kingdom of God, which is now so close.

Already it is teaching millions of us - from "every tribe and nation and tongue" - to live in peace as the brothers and sisters we truly are.

The Return from the North

We have been up North, assisting my sister Nute who is recovering from brain surgery.  We did not help her very much by arriving with terrible colds.  When we set off we were both fine, but by the time we arrived Col had a cold. then I got it, then Nute got it.  Poor old Col got it worst of all and has been coughing non-stop.  It has also got very cold up here which did not help him. We have got too used to the warm South and our warm second floor flat I think. Maybe it is time we moved back up North and get re-acclimatised?

Nute is recovering well, after a couple of worrying glitches. And Col has been a tower of strength - albeit a coughing sneezing tower - as always.  Whereas I feel a bit like that broken reed that Jehovah likened Egypt to when the Israelites were relying on the Pharaoh, instead of on Jehovah.

Isaiah 36:6: Look! You trust in the support of this crushed reed, Egypt, which if a man should lean on it would enter into his palm and pierce it. That is the way Pharʹaoh king of Egypt is to all those who trust in him.

So I feel a bit like that broken or crushed reed, in the sense that I wonder if people can rely on me. If I had had an flare-up while I was there, I would not have been able to do anything, and the poor cold-ridden Captain would have had two invalids on his hands.

I have tried to keep the meals coming. Which has meant making a lot of veggie soups, and making sure there is a lot of fruit to hand.   And it has also reminded me that stir fry chicken and veggies is a tasty and simple meal. I hadn't made it for ages.

We had visits from family and friends and gifts of home made soup, wonderful choccie biccies, cards and offers of help.  Captain B has taken Nute out on some supervised and SHORT walks, and Keith has offered to take over with those.  The difficulty will be stopping her doing too much too quickly.  The body has amazing powers of healing and recovery if we give it a chance to do its work.

She is not like me. She is a gym bunny, dog walker (when they had a dog), and a walker, full stop.  Mind you, I was a great  walker before the family arthritis gene stopped me in my tracks.  And she is not a smoker (not that I am either).  The surgeon said to her that, given her age, they would not have operated were she not so fit.

But three hours brain surgery is a big thing - the general anaesthetic alone is like a sledge-hammer to the brain (apparently) - and then they were actually inside her head doing various procedures. So it is no wonder she is tired.

Anyway, we are all very grateful to those two surgeons.

The photo that heads the blog is of Nute and her husband Ken - in younger days.

We arrived back down on the South Coast Thursday afternoon, after a much easier journey than our drive up North, thank goodness.  The first load of washing is done and we have shopped for the weekend. I hope to do as little as possible for a couple of days.

I have a saga to tell of The Bluebottle Bomb, the Badgers, the Fox, and the Invisible Cat.  But that will have to wait for my next blog I think

Northern Lights

My correspondence with Krysia is bringing back many memories of our mutual convent schooldays.  The Convent schoolgirl me is in the Pic above, middle row, left, next to Sheila and Rosemary, who were cousins

Sheila, alas, is no more, and Rosemary has lived in NZ for many years.

We - my siblings and me and Krysia - were in different years, but all overlapping.  They were not very happy years for any of us, but I am hoping to persuade Krysia to read Karen Armstrong's Through the Narrow Gate as it really does explain the system that formed those nuns - so cold, and so critical.

But there again, two central doctrines of Christendom are The Trinity, and the Immortality of the Soul, neither of which is a Christian teaching.  And its symbol is the cross, which is not a Christian symbol. 

So the nuns cannot have been having a happy time either.  They lived 24/7 in this cold critical atmosphere.  We had loving parents to escape to.  Of course, not all children did, sadly. But some, hopefully, were happy enough at school, negotiating the system with ease, and not letting it get to them.

These negotiations are just not possible for aspergery children as people are such a puzzle to us. And I never felt I quite understood what was going on, from Day 1 to the  Last School Day.  

Well, I bear in mind that when God gave the Law to the Israelites and organised them and their society, he did not jam children together in large peer groups to be taught.  Children were taught first and foremostly by their parents.  God is the very source of wisdom, and takes educating us very seriously indeed, so he knows just how it should be done. But Jehovah teaches us so kindly and patiently.

The Northern Lights have been appearing in Sussex!  We have not seen them yet, but I hope we will.  What a universe it is we float along in - vast beyond human comprehension, and so beautiful.

And then, when you look down, there is the detail of every Autumn leaf - each one so lovely, no two alike.  Each one a work of art.