Being wise.

Wise Owl?

I met a person yesterday who introduced me to another person I had never met. I was left totally speechless as my friend introduced me as my wise friend. I had never considered myself as a wise person. 

In fact, I have always deep down seen myself as a bit of difficult person to have to live with. I set myself very high goals and never allow me to reach them. This, in turn, means that I frequently cause my friends annoyance at how I waste the talents I have.

It is worse than this, I have many talents I no longer or infrequently use. it is therefore important that I cherish the friends I have who accept me as I am.

I am fortunate that I have friends and that many of the so-called friends on Facebook are indeed very real friends to me accepting what I am.

I spent much time after the above comment was made considering once again friendship and the importance of being a true friend to those who consider you such.

it was Augustine who said.

"I would rather have speeches that are true than those which contain merely nice distinctions. Just as I would rather have friends who are wise than merely those who are handsome."

For me, a friend is a person who does the knocking before they enter rather than after they have left.

I know very little about American Baseball other than it looks a lot like a game we played as children and called it, "Rounders."  But I remember as a youth reading a true story in one of the comics I got every week and found a quiet corner to read in one sitting, which would be a long sitting my having difficulties with words appearing all confused. 

In his first seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Jackie Robinson, the first black man to play Major League baseball, faced venom nearly everywhere he travelled. All kinds of missiles came towards at his head, illegal throws that good have caused him injuries from fellow players, brutal epithets from the opposing dugouts and from the crowds. 

During one game in Boston, the taunts and racial slurs seemed to reach a peak. 

In the midst of this, another Dodger, a Southern named Pee Wee Reese, called timeout. 

He walked from his position toward Robinson at second base, put his arm around Robinson's shoulder, and stood there with him for what seemed like a long time. 

The gesture spoke more eloquently than the words: This man is my friend.

Cherish the friends you have they are your most treasured possession.  My apologies to all who read this and take the time to comment on my page. I have for very personal reasons called a short timeout on facebook. I hope in the near future to return my old annoying self.

A little stoicism.

Life can get pretty hectic and stormy when you least expect and then in the midst of it all you spend a little time with young people and the innocence of youth touches your inner being and you feel that life does not look so bad.

Yesterday in my enthusiasm I turned up at the school garden club a day earlier than expected but hey, let us just have an extra day at it. I thought I would clear out the dying sunflowers and prepare the bed for some more planting.  Before chopping them all down I got out my iPad and we had a little lesson in drawing a sunflower. I have spent a year learning how to master, and still much learning to do, a painting app on my Ipad. They watched and before my eyes had a go with all the confidence of youth.

 

So what for me at present seems very hectic and stormy is possibly more about me that reality. Youth deficiency again is getting to me. So after some further toil, I eventually weaved my way home in the late afternoon thinking that life was not so bad it all depends on how you looked at it. Then I realised I had left all my tools at the last place I had been so another mile to contemplate just that.

I thought about the tale that could only happen in the USA.

Driving through Texas, a New Yorker collided with a horsebox carrying a horse. A few months later he tried to collect damages for his injuries. 

"How can you now claim to have all these injuries?" asked the insurance company's lawyer. "According to the police report, at the time you said you were not hurt." 

"Look," replied the New Yorker. "I was lying on the road in a lot of pain, and I heard someone say the horse had a broken leg. The next thing I know this Texas Ranger pulls out his gun and shoots the horse. 

Then he turns to me and asks, 'Are you okay?'

So back to school for me today again this time on the proper day. Apple trees to prune sunflowers to clear up and maybe some leeks to plant. It is indeed a hard life, all got to be done in time for me to stream the apple conference and see what wonderful new gadgets are coming our way.

Have a great day.

To find a little peace.

Give me peace.

There have been many times in my life that I have found myself in the need of a little peace, as do well all from time to time. All of my friends seem to be aware when it is best that I go and have a walk on my own. My wife made commented as we walked yesterday that she knew this to be the case and that she was aware at other times that I was very happy to have company as long as the company did not want to speak the whole time or duration of the walk. I acknowledged that this was very preceptive of her and as I walked onward I mulled this over.

I looked back over the duration of my life to this point and made a little discovery that I must have noticed before. When choosing what to do in life I have most if not always chosen to do things that I can do alone. I have never been afraid of my own company or the inward-looking that brings.

I never took part in sports that involved teams I always chose those that could be done alone. Even my job as a minister meant spending a great deal of time in the company of a great many people but still operating as an individual.

returning to my walk and my pondering I thought that much of my time alone, my Tai Chi and my study and meditation times were the moments that secured my greatest inner peace. I never agreed with the title, "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner." I found those long runs a great source of inner peace.

What is peace? it is not just the absence of war or inner torture, peace is something that is positive it is a time of harmony and a contentment with life. This can even be the same for nations and countries. 

It deeply concerns me when I hear leaders say that what we need are armed guards at church and synagogue services of worship. What have we come to and how can we ever find true peace if we need to have armed guards?

Her is a rather frightening fact.

Since the beginning of recorded history, the entire world has been at peace less than eight per cent of the time! In its study,  of 3530 years of recorded history, only 286 years saw peace. 

Moreover, in excess of 8000 peace treaties were made, and broken. 

In such inner peace becomes more important. What do I mean by inner peace?

1) The absence of suspicion and resentment. Nursing a grudge is a major factor in unhappiness, and that is a sure sign of a lack of inner peace. 

2) Not living in the past. An unwholesome preoccupation with old mistakes and failures leads to depression. 

3) Not wasting time and energy fighting conditions you cannot change. Cooperate with life, instead of trying to run away from it. 

4) Force yourself to stay involved with the living world. Resist the temptation to withdraw and become reclusive during periods of emotional stress. 

5) Refuse to indulge in self-pity when life hands you a raw deal. Accept the fact that nobody gets through life without some sorrow and misfortune. 

6) Cultivate the old-fashioned virtues, love, humour, compassion and loyalty. 

7) Do not expect too much of yourself. When there is too wide a gap between self-expectation and your ability to meet the goals you have set, feelings of inadequacy are inevitable. 

8) Find something bigger than yourself to believe in. Self-centred egotistical people score lowest in any test for measuring happiness. 

In other words as Lao Tzu constantly reminds me, "Go with the flow."

Remember.

Poppy day in the UK has passed in the last few days so from now until November 11th poppies will be on sale and people will wear them. I was raised in a family that had mixed feelings about poppies. My mother wore a red one my father a white one. I have since those days shown my deepest respect to both understandings and both sides of this debate.

So do not be surprised if you see more poppies from me, I always love painting them, of both varieties.

Sitting on my study floor as I write is the red poppy wreathe that will be laid at the memorial. There are many many ways of remembering and all should be respected.  But here is a tale of a strange kind of remembrance that I find very moving.

It was a deep sense of gratitude that prompted an old man to visit an old broken pier on the eastern seacoast. 

Every Friday evening, until his death in 1973, he would return, walking slowly and slightly stooped with a large bucket of shrimp. The seagulls would flock to this old man, and he would feed them from his bucket. Why?

Because many years before, in October 1942, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was on a mission in a B-17 to deliver an important message to General Douglas MacArthur in New Guinea. But there was an unexpected detour which would hurl Captain Eddie into the most harrowing adventure of his life.

Somewhere over the South Pacific the Flying Fortress became lost beyond the reach of radio. Fuel ran dangerously low, so the men ditched their plane in the ocean. 

For nearly a month Captain Eddie and his companions would fight the water, and the weather, and the scorching sun. They spent many sleepless nights recoiling as giant sharks rammed their rafts. The largest raft was nine by five. The biggest shark ten feet long. 

But of all their enemies at sea, one proved most formidable: starvation. Eight days out, their rations were long gone or destroyed by the salt water. It would take something special to sustain them. 

That something special happened.  In Captain Eddie's own words, 

"Cherry," that was the B- 17 pilot, Captain William Cherry, "read the service that afternoon, and we finished with a prayer for deliverance and a hymn of praise. There was some talk, but it tapered off in the oppressive heat. With my hat pulled down over my eyes to keep out some of the glare, I dozed off." 

Back to Captian Rickenbacker talking "Something landed on my head. I knew that it was a seagull. I do not know how I knew, I just knew. Everyone else knew too. No one said a word, but peering out from under my hat brim without moving my head, I could see the expression on their faces. They were staring at that gull. The gull meant food...if I could catch it." 

The rest, as they say, is history. Captain Eddie caught the gull. Its flesh was eaten. Its intestines were used for bait to catch fish. The survivors were sustained and their hopes renewed because a lone seagull, uncharacteristically hundreds of miles from land, offered itself as a sacrifice. 

You know that Captain Eddie made it.  And now you also know that he never forgot. Because every Friday evening, about sunset...on a lonely stretch along the eastern seacoast you could see an old man walking white-haired, bushy-eyebrowed, slightly bent. His bucket filled with shrimp was to feed the gulls to remember that one which, on a day long past, gave itself without a struggle like manna in the wilderness.  

Remembrance is and always will be a very personal and moving matter for every individual and each act of remembrance will be filled with many memories and each and every one must be respected even if it is of a seagull.

An adventure.

I was asked last night why at my age I was still out there doing all those things I get involved in. I only had one simple little answer and that was, "You cannot spend your life just sitting about."

The minute I said I remembered a tale that was true but makes me laugh every time I do remember it. 

it was the story of a man called Larry Walters, a 33-year-old man who decided he wanted to see his neighbourhood from a new perspective. 

He went down to the local army surplus store one morning and bought forty-five used weather balloons. That afternoon he strapped himself into a lawn chair, to which several of his friends tied the now helium-filled balloons. He took along a six-pack of beer, a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and a BB gun, figuring he could shoot the balloons one at a time when he was ready to land. 

Walters, who assumed the balloons would lift him about 100 feet in the air, was caught off guard when the chair soared more than 11,000 feet into the sky, smack into the middle of the air traffic pattern at Los Angeles International Airport. Too frightened to shoot any of the balloons, he stayed airborne for more than two hours, forcing the airport to shut down its runways for much of the afternoon, causing long delays in flights from across the country. 

Soon after he was safely grounded and cited by the police, reporters asked him three questions. 

"Were you scared?"  "Yes." 

"Would you do it again?" "No." 

"Why did you do it?"  "Because," he said, "you can't just sit there." 

It is so very true, you cannot just sit there.    I know some of my friends find going from the living room to the kitchen a strain and they have to sit down for the next two hours to recover from the experience. But they have done it because we need to hold on to our independence for as long as we can.

This selfie was taken yesterday as my friend and fellow member of the Freuchie in flower team decided to brighten up the roadside leading out of the village planting polyanthus and pansies to welcome or say a cheerful farewell to those entering or leaving the village.

The roadside was hard and difficult to turnover but once completed we felt a sense of achievement. We are both of an age when we were also aware of our present situation of, " youth deficiency". 

But you cannot just sit there. I like to think that at least once a day I have done a little something that makes a difference to the life of somebody else. Even if it is to just make a friendly gesture to somebody on my friend's list.

Have a wonderful day.

Prepare for the worst.

Yesterday I spoke of all the tasks that have come my way because of my increased involvement in the village life and community. While out walking yesterday I was in a very reflective mood and talking with my wife and walking companion about the regrets and measured successes of life.

One of my regrets was rather strange, to say the least. I regretted my last preaching occasion. I had been persuaded to conduct two services in two churches some miles apart. I spent considerable time preparing for these services but on a Sunday morning there I was with the prospect of preaching in two churches with no sound system and my voice as it now was.

That was partly why it was not a memorable occasion although I could no longer use the full range of delivery of the past and my voice no longer had the same ability to express emotion. The real regret was the memory now of my last services is of two churches with a total congregation of about fifty people all almost of the age when getting to church must have been really difficult. Rather than taking with me the memory of a very full church that seated one thousand people and giving of my very best.

I am aware that every one of those fifty beings deserved my best and sadly they did not get it. 

I was reminded of one of my very early services where I had prepared and prepared and had retreated to my room and preached the sermon at least seven times making little corrections and changes. To be on the safe side of life I had also prepared a number of cards with bullet points on them just in case I had a mental block.

I was very fortunate in that I have never in my life experienced butterflies in my tummy prior to addressing a congregation on any other group. So I was well prepared. But the inevitable happened. I was still not used to mounting the pulpit stairs dressed and a preaching gown so I tripped and dropped all my cards. I retrieved them and got myself into the pulpit ready to deliver. I looked at my preaching cards and saw that I had forgotten to number them and they were all out of order. I laughed and told the congregation of my dilemma and threw them all back on the floor and preached what I still consider one of my best.

In life, I have ever since been prepared for the worst and given of my best.

I learned this from a preacher I held in high esteem who I had the pleasure of training with. I remember the day he like me got caught up in his robes but on leaving the pulpit not entering it. He tripped and fell out of the pulpit and landed on his knees in the nave of the church where in a flash he pronounced, "Let us pray."  The congregation bowed their heads and all embarrassment had passed.

Prepare for the worst and expect the best and the best you will give.

I am awake I have another day.

This is the age

Of the headers and the half-read page.

And the quick and instant mash

And rush the mad dash. 

The quick fake tan.

Everything to happen in a short span. 

The noisy bright night

That makes nerves tight

The short plane hop

Hardly time for a  brief stop. 

Cat naps

Until the spring snaps

Everything in short span.

The Big  Celebrity Shot

Being in a bad spot.

The brain train 

With the brain drain

Onward another day of the run.

And the fun is done.

 

So my life seems to have taken a violent turn. From being retired and doing nothing but my own thing. Walking when I want to. Going here and there and sitting at rest and having early nights.

Yesterday life hit me with a bang. I spoke the other day of waiting until other things had come and gone before considering Christmas. There I was yesterday sitting making a phone call to order a twenty foot Christmas Tree that I am responsible for having erected in the centre of the village in time for erecting prior to Christmas. Today I await delivery of the wreath that will be laid on the War Memorial on the eleventh of next month. Oh yes, and those Christmas lights lying on my study floor waiting to be checked before they go on that tree.

Then while sitting after evening meal an email pops into my box, can I organise somebody to attend a  Memorial Service and Civic reception at the start of next month? I was worried about my head spinning it has reason to do so.  I need a course in Time Management.

Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. 

The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when you stop to examine it. 

We wake up in the morning, and behold your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! 

It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. No one can take it from you. It is not something that can be stolen. And no one receives either more or less than you receive.

Moreover, you cannot draw on its future.  It is impossible to get into debt! 

You can do no more than waste the passing moment. 

You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you. 

You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it, you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of the inner you. 

Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness, the elusive prize that we are all clutching for, my friends, depends on that. 

So use it wisely and do not squander this precious thing called time. 

I am busy but it is a wonderful feeling to once again feel that I am making a small contribution to the community in which I live and move and have my being. 

Thanks, I give for music and meditation that make all of this possible and the many friends some who as yet do not know they will be putting up a Christmas tree. 

Have a great day.

New People

Now I wonder.

Yesterday I spent my first time in the school garden with the young people of the school. I thought this will be fairly straightforward. I will meet them and we will decide what has to be done.

The children stormed out of the building and I found myself surrounded by children. Almost immediately one of them said to me, " You have a very scary voice why is it like that?"

This is one of the reasons that I am never very keen on such things as Facetime of Skype especially with people I do not know well. It is also a reason I text and email more than I would ever call a person. I had to explain to all the children that I used to be a minister and this involved a lot of public speaking and preaching and often without the aid of a microphone. That I also sang a lot. That now I had no working vocal chords and had found a way to speak to them without using such and this was why it sounded so gravely and a bit scary.

One young lad looked at me very seriously and said, " What a shame old man." I laughed and said to them all, "Right I am Ralph I am here to help you learn about gardening and to turn this school garden into a place we can all enjoy. You can call me Ralph, or Mr Taylor or as my own students used to call me Mr T. But we will have less of the old man."

They all laughed and we got around to business. Before long I was just one of them being bombarded with, "Can I do or Why do we do this."

Things I had just replanted seemed to magic themselves out of the soil and the newly cleared bed was a sandpit.

Such is the life of putting yourself in the firing line. 

This voice is a great handicap and has become something of an Achilles heel to me. But I do not think it will be in the school garden again.

I remember when I was told I would never speak again and was determined that would not be so. I learned a great many jokes tales about voices determined to tell them.

Now might just be such a time to share one.

A man with a very bad stuttering voice wanted to purchase a budgie and he wanted it to be a blue one.

On entering the pet shop, he met a man who had a very strange way of talking almost as if he was talking from the back of his voice and through his nose.  

The man with the stutter with great difficulty to the other that he wanted a blue budgie. The shopkeeper told him they were all in the back shop. On getting there the man with difficulty pointed out the male and female blue ones. The customer struggled to make a few comments but then asked if any of them could speak.

A voice from the birdcage came out loud and clear, "I can and a lot better than you two."

I am aware in most circles this is not PC but remember I am the one with the voice problem who sounds a bit like Rod Stewart with a Scottish twang. I am surely allowed to tell a tale against myself.

Have a wonderful day and remember there is never any expert who always get s it always correct. I speak, not as well as others and I have all the time to think how I am going to say things so have become more of a thinker. Let nobody say to you , "you will never manage this."

Have a great day.

Oh to be young again.

I had a fun filled night last. Was out having a drink with my friends or maybe even out for a night on the town clubbing and making plenty of noise? 

The answer is of course no. I was out in the dark with my head torch on digging holes in a grass verge so that the members of the local scout group could pop six crocus bulbs into each hole. The crocus bulbs were all in a large basket so easily got to. But the scouts thought it would be better to make little bundles, chaos prevailed.

it was a really fun night and I enjoyed being part of a scout troop once again. Once all the little bundles had been planted up and the holes firmly closed we made a final check of the area to gather any unplanted bulbs. 

I then organised the scouts, both male and female, so different from my days as a scout into a straight tight line along the starting point then we did what could only be described as a little rain dance over the ground as a last goodbye to the bulbs until they pop their heads out in an array of colour in spring. 

I wait in anticipation and look forward to seeing the joys of our labour.

How different from the two surveys I read about young people in the last week.

Both surveys were taken by religious groups concerned about their effect on the lives of young people like those I spent my evening with.

80% of high school students leave the church, never to return.
70% of teens never read a Bible.
63% believe religion is out of date and out of touch.
40% read the horoscope column daily.
93% know their birth sign.
58% of teens believe students should have access to contraceptives.
25% of high school students contract some form of Venereal Disease.
42% of teens say there are many ways to God.
60% question that miracles are possible
28% feel the content of the Bible is not accurate.

The group that did this survey went on to say that this was a very frightening survey and evidence of the slip of youth into the depths of despair.  I am making no comment at this moment I leave you to come to your own judgement.

The second survey is an even more recent one and in the opinion of the group that carried out the survey even further evidence of the decline in youth.

65% of all Christian students are sexually active.
75% of all students cheat regularly.
30% of all students have shoplifted in the past three years.
45-50% of all teen pregnancies are aborted.
A high percentage of teens are alcoholics and more are heavily involved in the consumption of alcohol.
Many try to commit suicide daily
10% of students have experimented with or are involved in a homosexual lifestyle.

It would be remiss of me not to say that if some of those are accurate there is some cause for concern though I am not sure of the gravity of concern because I, unfortunately, could not find the questions that were asked and that might have played a large part in the answers given.

So as I head off to face my day a meeting with the previous secretary of the Community Council and a later meeting with the school headteacher am I feeling concerned about what I read?

Not at all because I am full of the joys of my encounter with the young people of the village. I left them feeling that the world was in good hands and they sounded very much like my friends did at the same stage in life if not even more concerned about the things we need to be worried about.

Have a good day and rest easier there is much to rejoice in and much to hope for. 

This way and that.

I watched a group of great tits just like the ones in this painting yesterday. I think there might have been between twenty and thirty of them they seemed to be very busy flying this way and that. My first noticing of them was when I heard the noise from a bush. Then all at once they flew out of the bush and up into a tree where they sat for a few seconds then without any seeming signal they all in a group moved to the little wall I was passing.

Then they were off back to the bush, then the wall and back to the tree.

Hectic behaviour that seemed to be achieving little or nothing. Of course, I am not aware of how birds interact or how they decide what and where they go. I am aware that they have to eat in a day the equivalent of a third of their body weight to be able to maintain the activity of searching for food.

It, therefore, seemed strange to see them burning off energy is what looked like a useless pursuit.  I am sure there is somebody who will be able to put me right on this behaviour but they did look like the actions of many humans.

A weakness of all human beings is trying to do too many things at once. 

I certainly know that I fall into this and although friends and family frequently tell me to do otherwise I get up each morning wondering how I will manage all that has to be done. 

I frequently end up like those birds and this scatters effort and destroys direction. It makes for haste, and haste makes waste. 

So we do things all the wrong ways possible before we come to the right one. Then we think it is the best way because it works, and it was the only way left that we could see. We set up a routine that we are sure is productive but yesterday having watched those birds I came home and looked closely at my painting method and realised that even in this I was using the scatter effect.

Every now and then I wake up in the morning headed toward that finality, with a dozen things I want to do. I know I can't do them all at once. 

So what do I do? I used to go out and run a few miles. 

While running off the excess energy that wants to do too much, my mind would clear and I see what can be done and should be done first. I also saw what could never be done and did a reschedule. 

I do the same to this very day though no longer running walking achieves the same end.  Otherwise, I end up like that chicken trying to cross the road but more like a headless chicken. 

I hear somebody asking but the time taken up walking could be used to more productive use of the time doing some of those tasks?  But then I would not have the energy or will and even less might get done.

So is it the case that once again nature is not so silly. Was it exercise time for those birds? Having eaten they were now getting stronger to face the morrow?

I am off to spend my day trying hard to meet all the things that need to be done and achieved. have a great day my friends.

No it is not!

You see a painting of a Robin and some Holly with a little snow and most people hear the word Christmas in their ears. It seems that there are now so many things that can prompt us to think of certain days of the year and the sooner the commercial retailer can turn our attention to it the better.

I read the other day there that retailers are already happy with the pre-Christmas sales that they are getting excited about a good one. I already see people mentioning how many days it is to the event. My daughter yesterday asked what I was doing on the day because her in-laws had already begun making preparations.

But wait just a moment have we not still got the oncoming changing of the clocks, Halloween and so many other celebrations before we get there?

It seems we are all predominately rushing towards this one event and in the process wishing our lives away.

So yes this painting would make a nice card and yes I should have them ready in plenty of time but I still have many things to do prior to then.

Days to live and jobs to do. What is more the reality we might not get to that date so why spoil others days thinking about it?

There are more important things to think about. For example, Why did the chicken cross the road?

I found myself thinking about this yesterday as I watched and listened to people talking about gifts for people in the shop where I was looking to purchase a new pair of winter boots.

So why did the chicken cross the road?

Here are some of the answers the famous people of history might have given. Go on have a smile and think up others life is to short to wish it away.

John Locke the philosopher,  "Because he was exercising his natural right to liberty. "

Machiavelli, "The point is that the chicken crossed the road. Who cares why? The ends of crossing the road justify whatever motive there was."

The Bible, "And God came down from the heavens, and He said unto the chicken, "Thou shalt cross the road." And the Chicken crossed the road, and there was much rejoicing. "

Charles Darwin, " Chickens, over great periods of time, have been naturally selected in such a way that they are now genetically predisposed to cross roads 

Or he might also have said, It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees." 

 Martin Luther King, "I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question. "

Plato, "For the greater good. "

Aristotle, "To actualize its potential. "

Albert Einstein, "Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference." 

Dr. Seuss:, "Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why he crossed, I've not been told! "

Lao Tzu, "The chicken crossed the road because he was going with the flow."

Why do we jump from one celebration to another so fast? because the retailers are getting media sharp and want us to.

have a wonderful day and remember the clocks change soon.

The last shall be first.

I attended a quiz night last night something I have not done in years. I decided many years ago, like my very good friend also did, that quiz nights were not our scene.  If you are not interested in celebrities, and I most certainly am not, and if you do not watch soaps and reality television, which again I do not, then normally quiz nights are not for you. So we gave up on them years ago.

This one was more about the garden awards for the village. Those who had spent their time making their front gardens look beautiful, those who had the best hanging basket, they were awarded a trophy. There were prizes for the youngest and so it went on. It was marvellous to feel the spirit of the village and the pleasure that all the work was done to make it look good brought.

I am ready to roll up my sleeves and get going again to try and keep hold of that gold award. 

The quiz? Yes, it was very different from any quiz I had ever attended and it was not easy but there was a real sense of togetherness and that is what counted.  

I learned another great lesson last night. I have always been the kind of person who when I take on a task I get in there and do it. I fly on the seat of my pants and learn as I go along. So far in life, this has worked for me. Last night I met a number of people who over the years had been there and done and they had valuable advice which I will pay heed to. Then I will bash in and get the job done. 

There is a lovely tale that says this better than I ever could. I hope I have not told it before but if I have it is worth another hearing. 

A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp. 

The manager picks it up and gives it a rub, a Genie comes out. 

The Genie says, “I’ll give each of you just one wish” 

“Me first! Me first!” says the manager, after all, it was me who thought to rub it. I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.” 

Poof! She’s gone. 

“Me next! Me next!” says the sales rep. “I want to be in Hawaii, relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas and the love of my life.” 

Poof! He’s gone. 

“So it is your turn now,” the Genie says to the manager. 

The manager stops thinks and contemplates then he  says, “I want those two back in the office after lunch.”

There are sometimes in life when it pays to let others go before you. To take account of their years of experience and learn before you leap.

Have a marvellous day.

Be quiet and sit still.

I went back in time yesterday having a reason to be back in the old haunting grounds I decided to do what used to be one of my favourites runs on the high and often very narrow track along the coastal path. The views from this little track are stunning and yesterday nature showed itself in all its glory.

beautiful clouds filling my head with castles in the sky and the sun kissing the tops of waves and warming my face. A wonderful interruption in what has been a rather harrowing time.

I did what I am never in the habit of doing, I stopped at the halfway point and took a seat at the beach bistro and had a coffee. I sat outside and watched the sea.

The wonderful peace was shattered by the arrival of three mothers with their children. They gathered all the spare seats and gathered around the table next to me. To hear excited voices and the chatter was not at all unpleasant. Watching these children run back and forward around the tables where trays of hot food and drinks were being served was another thing altogether. 

I finished my drink and left thinking back to when I was the same age and in similar situations with mainly my gran.

I would never have been permitted to run around under the feet of waiters of other customers. I would have sat at the table and stayed there until finished then I would have asked permission to leave the table before heading off onto the beach to run around and have fun.

Yes, we live in different times and I wholeheartedly approve. But I do often ask the question, "Will some of these children end up being like the person who does not want disabled people to get in their way?"

Life is full of interruptions, many of them full of joy and pleasure, many filled with challenges.

How often we wish for our daily routine to go on as the day before without the everyday interruptions that make us feel uncomfortable. The interruption of an illness or an unexpected event or something worse.

But take heart every interruption can so easily become a learning and thought-provoking experience. It has been from the interruptions of my life that the next challenge has arisen not the ongoing routine of every day.

Today my day is to be interrupted by a meeting of those responsible for the garden and playground at the local school. I am meeting with them today to make plans for the" School Garden Club" my latest challenge. 

Attending meetings is never my greatest joy in life, though I do seem to be attending more and more, the challenge of being surrounded once again by chattering and excited children looks like a wonderful sharing opportunity.

Have a marvellous and challenging interruption full day.