Shining?

Yesterday my two most extravert colleagues were organising the work Christmas meal.  It's a hotel affair with a disco and a magician.  I heard the words "it'll be great to dress up" and my heart sank.  I can't think of anything I like less than parties and dressing up!  Maybe fancy dress? I feel such a fraud and so very awkward for so very many reasons.  I never was a dress up child and I am not a dress up adult.  Yet, I am not confident enough to just be even after all this time, in such situations.  I've done it for a family I really love and an evening of politeness and feeling awkward was worth it - they were worth it. I had a laugh with one of the managers when I admitted I shopped like a man - if I like it and it fits, I will buy either two of it or in more than one colour - on the basis that you will never see it again. Hence I have two navy polo shirts, two short denim summer shirts and body warmers in two colours!  I know!  She told me her friend was like that - favourite shops were mountain warehouse and M and S.  I had to concur.  To a general chorus from the office of "oh I love shopping" I had to admit I would rather buy books than handbags any day.

I have just finished "customising" my recycling bin and dustbin with the reduced price stickers of squirrels and kingfisher my friend found for me in retaliation for the cats stickers I gave her one Christmas for her wheelie bin.  It was a frustratingly crafty thing involving scissors, but I hope now that squirrel nutkin and friends will alert the bin men so I don't have to play "hunt the bin" down the street most Fridays.

Ordinary life.  It's humdrum.  The morning was errands for parents, including wielding a lump hammer to break up the collapsing wooden garden furniture to take to the tip.  I discovered that this was my great grandads hammer and that he wasn't the farm labourer I thought he was (that was nans side of the family) but a master mason, or "brickie".  He was part of the team that built the Middlemoor police station apparently.  Great grandad, if he followed the family traits, would have been short and solid to swing that lump of wood and metal.  It was fun for a very short time.

I wonder what relevance all that is to God sometimes.  But I'm reading the bible book of Kings, and something jogged my memory - God cared about poisoned stew, a broken (loaned) axe and a desperate widow whose hospitality was strained to the breaking point