The Heatwave

The heatwave continues with more thunderstorms on Saturday night.  But, thankfully, our block has not been hit - yet.  There have been some bad strikes locally though.

We heard from Bob - a friend from our expat years.  We used to see so much of each other in those days.  They are all now in Northern Thailand - a very lovely part of the world, remembering our long ago trip to Chiang Mai.  It was so quiet back then, but now it's apparently like another Bangkok.

So I thought I would look for a photo from one of our Thai trips to head this blog, but then I remembered that the Captain has not yet put any of them in his Gallery.  Our trips to Thailand were so long ago that he would have to digitise them. (Don't ask.)  Or was it so long ago that we had to hire a local painter to portray us there?  Once again, don't ask.  He spent Sunday - a hot Sunday - manning a stall with two other detectorists at a Farmers Fair.  

And he bought his cake and sandwiches home, as the attraction of burgers proved too much. Very good they were too apparently.

Had two anxiety dreams on Sunday night, and woke up relieved to find that I had not left my bag with purse and credit cards outside a London gallery and had it stolen, nor had I forgotten an important commission given to me by an expat friend. That last dilemma took me back many years to Planet Expat when we visited the UK and fellow Brits would give us letters to post, commissions for stuff, etc.  In my dream I had failed to unpack one of my suitcases and forgotten about an important commission involving a large file full of CVs.

As I said, it was a relief to wake up.

We have been sitting out on our balcony of an evening, often talking over the past as befits two old people I guess.  So I used a rather good photo Col took of a recent sunset to head the blog.

We had our usual Zoom sessions on Monday.  And I made an apple crumble in the afternoon, plus did three cards to family and friends who are in hospital - Seppi, Richard and Patricia.  And this morning we saw our Bible student.  

Oh, and Jane gave me some lemon drizzle cake for Col. She is a very good baker, and that is Col's favourite, but not one I usually make as it is not sturdy enough for his packed lunches, which used to have to survive The Dive Boat, but now have to survive The Field.  I plan to surprise him with it when we have our afternoon chocolate.

It ought to be freshly made iced lemon juice in this weather really, but we are such creatures of habit now, and at 3:00 we have hot chocolate.

Freedom at the Boundary

 

I had no time to Hate (763)

I had no time to Hate -
Because
The Grave would hinder me -
And Life was not so
Ample I
Could finish--Enmity -

Nor had I time to Love -
But since
Some Industry must be -
The little Toil of Love -
I thought
Was large enough for Me .

Emily Dickinson

https://allpoetry.com/Emily-Dickinson

I discovered the poems of Emily Dickinson in my first year at Uni - many years ago - and have come to appreciate her more and more over the years.

This is beautiful.  Our lives are so short now, even at best.  I wish I could explain how quickly our threescore years and ten goes by. So why not do something loving with the little time we have?

The divisive spirit of the world, along with our own imperfections, will push us in the opposite direction if we are not careful.  

The photo that heads this blog is of Shadow and his good friend Sophie happy in the Saudi desert. They were very loving animals - a credit to the loving Creator who made them. Alas, alas, that cannot always be said of me, but I am trying to get there...  

"Well, you ARE very trying..."   Was that the Captain's voice rising above the hum of metal detectors, in a distant field?

Not quite so hot on Friday, after a hot and still night. So I felt a bit better - got a tiny bit of energy back. I managed to review the book of poems Captain B just bought me - Freedom at the Boundary, by Mike-Philip Williams.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Freedom-at-Boundary-Mike-Philip-Williams-ebook/dp/B0DWHWHG2S

The review is on there.

Mike-Philip writes very well about the landscape of my childhood.  And I find myself thinking quite a lot about my childhood now - the feel of childhood.  Not of school though. I try not to think about that.

The Captain is not into poetry in the least, beyond possibly "There was a young lady of..."  but he knows I love it.   

Today is really hot again, and it's so still, after a night of thunderstorms and some much needed rain. Armed Forces Day is happening on The Green outside my window and i am typing this to an accompaniment of: Left, Right, Left, Right, as some young trainees march along the sea front.  In this heat!  I hope there is a breeze soon, for all our sakes.

And of course I long for the day promised in Psalms when there will be no more war, but a true and lasting peace earthwide, under the rule of the heavenly government, the Kingdom of God.

Come and witness the activities of Jehovah,
How he has done astonishing things on the earth.
He is bringing an end to wars throughout the earth.
- Psalm 46:8.9

Astonishing things indeed, as what human government, no matter how well-intentioned, has come anywhere near to achieving that?

Sky

 

 

Emily Dickinson

The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
With ease — and You — beside —

The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —

The Brain is just the weight of God —
For — Heft them — Pound for Pound —
And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —

https://allpoetry.com/The-Brain--is-wider-than-the-Sky

Some recent sky shots from our evening balcony.  And what an outstandingly marvelous creation the human brain is.  I think I am right in saying - given I heard it somewhere (so who knows?) - that Charles Darwin acknowledged that the capacity of the human brain was a big problem in his Theory of Evolution - as is human language.

Whether that is true or not, would he actually believe in his theory these days, given how much more we now know about the complexity of the human brain, the complexity of even a single "simple" cell?

I feel sure he would have a big re-think.

The creation is telling us of its Grand Creator as clearly as if it spoke.

We are in the middle of a fierce heatwave here - but after all it is midsummer, the Solstice just having come and gone.  We had a lovely breeze from the sea Monday and Tuesday which made such a difference.  There has been torrential monsoon rain in parts of the country, but not here, yet.  And today is supposed to be the hottest June day ever. Last night was still and stifling, but today there is a small breeze which is making all the difference.  However it is still very very HOT.

We got to our student this morning and she had a good sized fan going for which we were so grateful.  Next week we start learning what the Bible says about the dead - where they are now, and will we see them again. And if so, where. We hope it is going to resonate with her, as she says she has no idea, and never really learnt much about it in religious lessons at school.

As a Catholic Convent schoolgirl, in the 1950s, I learnt about all sorts of terrible - and unBiblical - destinations for the dead.

I have a double Zoom field service this afternoon, which will be about all I do, as the heat is flaring up my arthritis horribly - see my recent blog "The Lamb" - and I am ashamed to say that I would have been more than happy if our student had cancelled this morning. But I am very glad she didn't as we had a good study.  

But my limbs are not only painful but working very badly. I have just managed to drop and smash the butter dish all over the kitchen while making the Captain's sandwiches for tomorrow.

You would think making sandwiches was easy enough - but these days - alas...

A Flower for Victoria Climbie, Maria Colwell, Preston Davey, Zarene Rose Frame, Star Hobson, Elsie Scully Hicks, Sara Sharif and so many others

On yon hill where the cold wind blows

Lies my darling Zarene Rose.

The Welfare said they'd take care of you.

It wasn't very often.

They took you away in a cradle

But brought you back in a coffin.

Geordie Frame, brother of the New Zealand author Janet Frame, wrote this sad little verse for his young daughter Zarene Rose.  The baby is said to have died in her sleep while in foster care, having been taken away from her parents by "the Welfare".

Were her parents competent to look after her?  Not very, going by Janet Frame's own account of her brother and his wife.  But... was The Welfare any more competent?

The verse is quoted in the biography of Janet Frame by Michael King.

And of course a flower for the poet Lemn Sissay and the writer Jenni Fagan, who both survived a childhood in Care, and somehow managed to write about it so powerfully in My Name is Why, and Ootlin.

The torture murder of Preston Davey at the hands of his adoptive parents, and in plain sight of the authorities, is the tragic inspiration for this blog.

Oldham Council - in whose care Preston was - say no staff have been disciplined or sacked following the infant's death but insist an independent child safeguarding practice review is being carried out and will report in due course.

No surprise there then.  Another review,  another "enquiry", and things will go on much the same - well, will likely get worse alas, as broken families, chaos and violence increase everywhere.

I hope those who did not survive being cared for in this way sleep safe in "the everlasting arms", held close in the memory of the most loving Father, Jehovah, and that they have such a joyful awakening ahead of them when the time comes  to wake the dead from their dreamless sleep.  They will wake up from a nightmare into the peace and joy of the restored earthly paradise.  We are promised that "distress will not rise up a second time", so all nightmares will be gone for good.

And it seems a horrendously perfect ending to this sad blog to have just heard that the man who threw a toddler into the crocodile enclosure in Cambridge has been released on bail.

HE HAS BEEN RELEASED ON BAIL.   The toddler is in hospital, seriously injured.   Whether the child will survive is not clear. But God bless the owners of the crocs who risked their lives going into the enclosure to save him.  At least that has given the child a chance.

The Police have told us we are "to refrain from speculation".  But its hard not to speculate about just how many toddlers this man will be allowed to attack until he is safely locked up somewhere.

Well, as our speaker at the Kingdom Hall reminded us today, "it does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step".  (Jeremiah 10:23)   And surely surely there is no excuse for not seeing the truth of those words, after the ongoing tragedies that human rulership is causing on the earth. 

We need God's will to be done on the earth, not that of imperfect humans.  

The Speaker today brought back another memory from the past. He was African, from the Congo I believe.  One of our last holidays in our travelling days was to South Africa for a friend's wedding.  It was my first and only time in Africa - and we fell in love with the beautiful Cape.  At that time - 20 years or so ago - there were a lot of Congolese immigrants living there, selling things at the roadside.  We stopped and bought some wooden carvings and found that they all seemed to speak English well - as did our brother today.

He spoke from the heart too.

The Dreams of Old Age

 

Are these the dreams of old age? Or just dreams?  I recently dreamt about my childhood home, which appears as 5 Disraeli Crescent in my books. And on Tuesday night my dreams ended with me sorting out breakfast for my mum-in-law Eileen, who was staying in a kind of B&B that did remind me of somewhere but the dream faded too quickly for me to work it out.

I know I was heading back to the dining room/kitchens as she wanted more butter on the strange collection of things on her plate, although they already had loads of butter on them. And she wanted more banana bread.  I remember being surprised that she liked banana bread and woke up wondering why I hadn't made her some.  I have two very good recipes.

Its too late now by the way, as Eileen died many years ago. I only meet her in the occasional dream.

So I put "banana" into the search engine of Col's photo gallery, and it came up with a lot of rather dazzling photos of Banana Reef in the Maldives (from our travelling years), so I thought, why not?

Last night my dreams were about the past too, but they have faded away so quickly I can't remember even a glimpse of which bit of the past turned up.  It surprises me how little I think and dream about our 25 years in the Middle East, years which gave us so much. But clearly what happens when we are young impresses itself much more deeply into our memory.

We are sitting out regularly on our balcony at night now, with a glass of Captain B's homemade wine for him and decaff coffee for me. Though lately I have been having a glass of wine too - but try to ration that to twice a week. The weather has stayed coldish overall and this morning it is grey and cloudy.  I love it all. The beauty of Green and Sea never fails.  And our balcony flowers are splendid.

Could we ever get tired of the creation?  It changes constantly and can be so heartbreakingly lovely.  Well, I hope that the Captain and I will be enjoying our evening glass of wine/cup of coffee/ together a thousand years from now, a million years from now.  I hope we will all "inherit the earth" as Jesus promised, and live forever upon it.

When I think of all I have already learnt in just... well... a lot more than 39 years lets say... in fact, double it, and...  it's hard to believe given the Captain and I were a young married couple just yesterday... to get back to my point, when I think of all I have learnt in my 70 plus plus plus years, I wonder what it will be like to look back from the vantage point of 1,000 years and think of what I have learnt then!   

THE KIDNAPPING OF MRS CAPTAIN BUTTERFLY!!!!

To quote Beachcomber, who, after his startling headline:  FORTY HORSES WEDGED UP CHIMNEY!!!!, simply wrote "The story to fit this sensational  headline has not turned up yet", I will also say that the story to fit my sensational blog headline has not turned up yet. 

And hopefully it never will.  But what made me think of it is that the Captain and I just started watching a new series (well, new to us), on one of those App thingummies we have on our TV. It stars Trevor Eve and John Hannah, which is what made us think it might be worth a watch.

It stars Trevor as a sort of hostage negotiator - it's called Kidnap and Ransom (I think).  It's compelling and scary - if implausible.

So I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened had Col been a high-flying exec when we worked in the Middle East, and I had been kidnapped - and the call came.

Kidnapper:  (sinister)  "We have your wife.  The price is a million dollars."

Captain B: (indignant) "A million dollars!  I'm not taking her back for less than 2 million, mate! And I want it in used notes." (slams phone down).

The Kidnapping of Mrs Captain B would have been a very short TV series.

The photo is of the young Mrs. Captain on one of our Cornish holidays with the Merrits - so long ago.

Well, me and my shoes made it to the doctors on Friday - paid for it, painwise, on Saturday though.

Col was at home Saturday and Sunday - most unusual, and, with a lot of help from Pen we sorted out a very short Youtube video presentation for Waiting for Gordo.

After some thought, I decided to read the dedication, as it involves the word Shoal (the short video we have chosen as a background is one of a Maldivian shoal taken by Captain B in his diving days) and then the small preface which appears under the title the book had originally - Small Island.  If Fantastic Books approves it, then in time it will appear on Youtube and maybe I will sell a book or two. Who knows?

I hope to be able to blog it soon.

The Lamb

 

Guardian Pick

60

Rheumatoid Arthritis is agony. It isn't 'oh my dad has a twinge of that in his thumb', it's an auto immune disease that includes pain so extreme that the touch of a sheet can make you shout, and flu-like fatigue. The meds are often toxic with severe side effects. There is no cure, just management. It causes lung and heart disease (as I discovered last year, needing emergency heart surgery after 15 years with RA). It's quite well known that cold damp weather can trigger it but not many people know that heatwaves are also a powerful trigger. So yes, here's another group of people who have a very bad time in the heat. (Apologies to anyone recently diagnosed, this isn't meant to scare. Push for help, many hospitals now favour early intervention with the powerful meds. Accept them if possible).

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/29/people-disabilities-heatwaves-uncomfortable-safe-climate-crisis#comment-174763135

I found this comment under a Guardian article and was sad at how accurate it is, as clearly the writer is going through it.  I have had rheumatoid arthritis since my late thirties, though it took a while to diagnose, as the family kind we have is apparently sero-negative (I hope I have the term right). They do now have a test to diagnose it.  It was a doctor in the A & E Department of our company hospital in Dhahran who first told me it was arthritis. I had been rushed in by ambulance, I was paralysed down my right side and they thought I had a stroke.  The Saudi doctor took one look at me and said "You have arthritis", and referred me to Rheumatology.  Where I still attend -  just a different hospital now.

Interesting and worrying about it causing lung and heart disease, as both my mother and her mother - severely arthritic - died of heart attacks. And I have had a pulmonary embolism.  At the moment my immune system is mounting a vicious attack on my skin, which is painful but not lethal - yet...

Well, I wondered about what photo could head this rather dismal medical blog and decided to put "lamb" into the search engine in Col's photo gallery.  I was thinking of the promise of perfect health in the restored earthly paradise and me (hopefully there) gambolling about like a Spring lamb. But what came up was The Lamb Pub. So I have used that.

The pic probably suggest more Drowning ones Sorrows than Gambolling about, but as it is a pretty pub - a popular spot for lunch - and a nice photo of a happy place - it might cheer this blog up a bit.

The pigeons have left the balcony and hopefully found themselves a nest site elsewhere.  Springwatch, fascinating as ever, is showing us so many nests this year - but also so many tragedies that go along with them, as nature is still "red in tooth and claw", and will be until God's Kingdom is ruling over the whole earth, restoring the peaceful and perfect balance of Eden worldwide.

Me and my foot have to get to the docs for yet another blood test this morning, hopefully not arriving shoeless - and Col has a visit with the FLO (Finds Liaison Officer to us civilians) at the Museum later.