Black Humour

It gets me in trouble at work.  Regularly.  But it also keeps me sane.  I have a dry, black and decidedly cryptic sense of humour.  Some things just make me smirk.  My favourite this last couple of weeks - the unknown delegate who uploaded a picture of him and his mates at a train station with pints in their hands instead of his smoking cessation certificate.  Another who uploaded his smiley photo.  And my favourite of today - "grow your own staff nurse" !!

I haven't answered the email yet. I can't quite bring myself to do so. I have a dear friend whose wise advice, gently probing questions, generous heart and pockets and reflective honest spirituality I have so appreciated over the years.  She knits, and has a knitted family of doll like characters.  I am ashamed of my humour when I tease too much.  But it's sharpened my appreciative hunt for things like "knit your own nativity", knit your favourite star wars character" and this one - grow your own staff nurse!

What do you need to do, I wonder?  Plant a student? Put said trainee on the rack - I think the NHS does that kind of torturous pressure already according to my medical friends. I have daffodils in pots at work.  Should I try to find "staff nurse" bulbs next time? 

But it's actually serious I see:

"Care workers are being encouraged to apply for an Open University course which allows them to train to become nurses while continuing to work full-time in the health service.
Training takes four years, and there is a particular drive to expand the university’s nursing programme in rural areas where health boards struggle to attract and retain workers."

Oh well, it made me smile.  That's good 

Morning's minion

Today was a brightly polished type of morning.  Sparkling with frosted roofs, grass and distant hills.

A bright, fresh, clean, patterned light sort of day.  I didn't have my camera - just my phone as I was trying to log up some miles before church.  It's not often I see a heron up close - they are usually standing on the weir, patiently fishing.  It made my morning, as did warming up with a coffee and a book before church.

Minion - no not the blue and yellow thing but Gerald Manley Hopkins beautiful salute to the falcon.  He is a poet whose rhythm and love of the outdoors have resonated with me.

"I caught this morning morning's minion, king-

    dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

    Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

    As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding

    Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!"

Race at your pace

My friend has got me hooked on "Race at your Pace"  It's a medal a month challenge for walkers, bikers, swimmers and runners.  The medals are solid, well crafted things, shiny with snowflakes, or Christmas holly, frosty blue, raspberry red or the black and silver skating on ice January one.  I never won anything at school.  They didn't give prizes for reading and being away with the fairies, thinking.

So getting a medal as a middle aged adult is a thing of beauty!  I'm ridiculously pleased with them.  It was hard to swim 5 miles in December and hard to tackle 125 walking miles in January.  It got me out the bed, supplemented the medication that has kept me stable for 9 months now.  It's built muscle and must be keeping my lungs in order too! The medals now hang, like Christmas decorations, off the rack that holds the CD player and my CD collection.  They clink if I hit them and occasionally I have to say I have put one round my neck.  Because they mean a lot to someone who carried inadequacy as a teenager who came from such a sport loving family.

I'm a bit of an evangelist for them too.  I now have two friends in addition to me who are taking on their own challenges.  It featured in conversation at the doctors - her receptionist has done couch to 5K and hated it.  Remarkable.  It's easy to talk about things you love and find helpful.  Which I guess is why I find it easier to talk Jesus via books.  Because the tottering book stack grows.  Because I can't not read.  I have tried - a little - to limit the books.  Because of the expense.  But I'm curiously book hungry, word hungry. And I love it when I get to share.....my passion in life!!

Mindful?

Grey swirly skies and a peachy hue splodged with the palest blue.  It's warm and toasty for January and I think the birds are confused: they are certainly singing their hearts out.  I bird watch with my ears a lot of the time, so I "spot" robin, song thrush, blue tit, woodpecker (and spend ages trying to find him in the trees) canada geese on the sticky flooded fields, and a jackdaw fly past.

I tried to walk from Budleigh to Sidmouth but the path is closed due to a collapsed culvert apparently and the alternative path up to Otterton is like walking on solid, sticky, slippy chocolate mousse.  Boot imprints and dog paw prints.  It's not my idea of a nice path so I veer off at White Bridge, and decide that instead of trying to walk to Sidmouth I will go with what's in front of me, see what presents, rather than be a tiny bit grumpy.  Well that's the theory as I slide along.....

The old road up to Otterton is collapsing a bit more each time I walk it.  It's lined with curly, crinkled brown beech leaves and some kind of nut mast or case, I am not great on tree identification.  I could lump up the road to Ladram and Sidmouth but actually it's been a frantic week - and January isn't a time when I or anyone else seems to abound with energy.  Grey. So I march down to Otterton mill for tea and cheese scone (got to be better than the sandwich I brought with me)

Beaver spotting along the river on the way back.  Apparently they have been re introduced.  I can't see one.  Woud be very surprised and delighted if I did though. And the question of the day - where do the Budleigh beach huts go in Winter?  Who spirits them away.  Are they flat-packable?

Roman Exeter

I've always had a fascination with arms and armour and Roman soldiers.  Today I dipped into the museum as it was bitingly cold outside and I had a freeish Saturday morning.  I am really not sure if I have ever seen the Roman Exeter exhibits before, but for an hour I stared at strap ends, belt buckles, helmet hooks and a rusted dagger frame lost by legionaries visiting the bath house adjacent to the cathedral green. So early. The dagger reconstruction clearly portrayed the military men who occupied this city back then.
I remember the bathhouse when it was briefly excavated - I was small and it was probably in the 70s.  I wish I could remember it more clearly.

There were legionary burial finds with pottery and bits of glassware, little statuettes found in cremations in holloway street.  Mosaics and fragments of tile and hypocaust - Roman central heating.  Fragments of a beautiful blue glass vessel - a modern reconstruction showed it with a charioteer ramping across it. (I love glass, particularly blue and green) Knife handles with snarling animals.  Glass and amber beads, bowls of my favourite red samian ware, and jet bracelets, shale bracelets, gold finger rings.

Broken combs and an elaborate twisty handled mirror, tweezers and needles, a wooden shovel. It's a beautiful museum and I am embarrassed that I visit so rarely.

Teasmaid?

Brrrr. That's a more wintery morning temperature.  Lying in bed I contemplate the teasmaid.  As you do when you are 1) on your own 2) too lazy to get up and make a cuppa.

Mum has Dad - he's quite happy to potter around and make tea first thing whenever that is. But when I was living at home, my grandparents gave them a teasmaid.  I googled it - they are apparently "enjoying a revival and have retro styles available".  I remember it hissing and gurgling and I could hear it from my own bedroom, it woke you up before the blare of it's light and alarm. What a bizarre and excellent invention!

I'm not that desperate for tea!  I think about having a house robot - watch the excellent film"I robot" and you might cautiously welcome this idea until the "upgrade" happens and the first duty of the robots is to destroy not protect humans.  Because we are wasteful, violent and flawed. Hmm, interesting.

Should be a possible system somewhere?  My friend has "Hive" which controls her heating from the phone.  Can't be that hard to switch on a pre filled kettle?  What about "Uber" style "rent a butler"?
Oh sod it I will get up it's really not that cold......

All is calm...

Christmas wrapped up!  New Year approaches....nothing like stepping outside to observe, in the greyness of the morning that the daffodils are shooting tiny green barbs into the light of day.  That makes me happy.  Currently they fight their way through the greenery of the last of the winter pansies, which were a pretty mixed effort.  Some pots flourished, some languished and it was the same for the ones planted at work.  I guess it's light or water or maybe just a poor batch - Somewhat lacking green fingers, I like to watch them emerge blinking into day sleepy faces on a ruff of colour.

Walking home from town I pass my favourite beech hedge.  It's been fairly brutally pruned lately and the curls of crunchy bronze leaves cling to the clean chopped edges.  I love the soft cotton, silk feel of the new growth as it pushes out the old dead leaves in spring and can't resist stroking the leaves!

There are left over leaves to sweep this afternoon and the Christmas tree to put to bed for another year.  Yes I know it's not 12th night but the coloured lights and nativity scene will stay in their fireplace places. Our "over Christmas shutdown" list from our manager included the instruction to take down the tatty tacky and thoroughly illegal lights and tinsel.  Don't tell the management of the NHS apparently as the lights haven't been checked for a while.

Clearing the clutter in the bookshelves is booked in too.  Setting a reading target on Goodreads of 50 books will give me an aim.  It's an aim I usually achieve and getting the mix of books right depends on the library and charity shops as well as the spiritually more deep and chewy books of church and lee abbey. I know someone at church who reads in a disciplined fashion - biography, spiritual book, novel, non fiction.  Truly impressive! Far too orderly for me: my friends know that planned spontaneity suits me better!