Locked room mysteries

This is the year I finish the book pile, this is the year of solid savings- enforced - I need a new boiler and they aren't cheap. 

I am still - 8 months later - finishing "40 days John" which has been so good.  But a little reflection goes a long way - bit like too much sweet stuff at Christmas although that normally kicks me into the swimming pool!  Not at the moment as my asthma has flared up nicely.

so, a bit of post Easter reflection which is fairly dozy due to steroid and lots of ventolin.  But it gets me writing.....

The disciples are in a locked room. At best, an atmosphere of fear, anxiety and terrible loss with a candle-flare of hope: this morning brought good news.  Just a shame the key witness is an "unreliable, fairly emotional woman!" The usual males reported similar oddities too but not so much drama. 

So what are they doing here?  They are Jews - I suspect they are praying the evening service, and arguing the law/prophets/writings; the days readings.  And Jesus of course.  He'd taught them to do this style of thinking and they probably hadn't lost the habit even in grief.

What on earth did it all mean?  And they see him standing there in their locked down room. "peace be with you - hello" But more than that - he says it again amidst the predictable uproar. Hugs, shouts? tears?  You fill in the blanks - I did, standing watching from my corner

My response isn't for sharing.  But I talked to him too.

"Subjected to his service Angel Wings"

Yes, well I remembered the quote but had to look it up.  Milton, Paradise Lost.  I studied it at A Level so many years ago but today it was hauled into consciousness.  Although I remembered it as conscripted to his service.  It seemed appropriate..

So, yesterday we had our works Christmas dinner.  A very nice meal indeed crowned by a chocolate tart with caramel icecream.  But in a pub with no alcohol free beer.  I don't have a taste for sweet fizz - I started on ginger beer and a pint of blackcurrant and soda but graduated to a pint of guinness with Christmas dinner. It was going to be a long afternoon!! I'm not very good at "vertical drinking" - and especially feel awkward when the conversation's getting rather slurry around me and the nice lads in the paint shop start giving me one arm hugs....I slide off for a gin and tonic with my colleague/boss in the slightly more sober/older corner and later I think it's time to leave and let them get happily plastered before one of the happy crew spikes my drink!!! All paid for by the firm and something a firm can claim back they tell me.

I make that 3 - 4 units of alcohol in four hours. Which of course is not much but enough to make me feel thoroughly utterly seedy this morning! Heading out to swim and then to spend the very generous Christmas voucher in marks and spencer.  I doze over a saturday early costa coffee and drift into the Cathedral to kill time before the shop opens.

Which is where angels come into the picture.  I wish I had a camera with me or at least my phone.
Paper sculpture angels greet me!  I stroke the soft feathers glued to the card edges of the wings, and notice the wings themselves are comprised of downward facing hands.  Child size hands.  Little child size.  Slightly bigger child size.  And written on the fingers of the hands, words like "hope" "difference" lots of values.  I do have a notebook but I obviously don't have a functioning brain as these are the only words I can remember.  But I remember the stories written on the palms of the hands: "I want to be an astronaut" "I want to work in a cafe and give people drinks" " I want to be a doctor and help people get well" "I want there to be less plastic" "I want children to have a roof over their heads" "I want people to be kind to animals"

Go see the angels.  It's a beautiful cathedral, a lovely antidote to death by adverts and Christmas songs

Hopeful

Two newly weds, bustled, hustled by sellers, crowd into a court of magnificence.  The young man has cradled and smoothed the wings of a dove - a poor man's "thank you" sacrifice.  The young woman cradles her newborn, jostled in the reverence space. Youthful, grateful, hopeful. A healthy first born son!

Wonder, pride, awe - in a word heavy day full of sights, sounds, smells.

And pushing purposefully through the crowd, an aged man, wisdom wrinkled. Simeon asks permission to hold the new baby.  Long promised and hoped for. A promise and guarantee of completed purpose.  His thin worn skin against a new little one's freshness, baby fingers wrapped around his age twisted fingers.

What must he have thought?  I can't imagine the mix of hopeful longing that resulted in the promise of this looked for rescuer.  "A light for revelation to the gentiles, his own people's glory" Huge words.
Simeon's words strike too, a sword in the middle of his joy.

God's timing - impeccable as always.

So it's advent and the above is a small attempt to put into words a little bit of Christmassy reading.  The town is full of racing santas in lycra and woolly hats, red with cold and festive.  It's an annual santa race for charity they tell me.  Santas crowd out costa, I am tempted to cry "Bah humbug" as I wanted a pre church coffee in peace. And there's a massive queue.......

cake and Christmas

This week's joke has been vegan Turkey,  It's not often Kev the senior project manager and I agree.  Currently Tofurkey has made me smile and him rant!! Tofurkey..what a smile inducing name...I like vegetarian food but somehow it seems wrong to call it turkey??

We've had sporadic heating in the office and none (business as usual, poor blokes) in the factory and the bay doors all open. So cold.  They wear woolly hats and fingerless gloves. And moan.  The bosses don't seem to care or do anything - it's been like that for five years. Surely isn't legal.
So christmas chocolate biscuits from me lasted two days!  I know it's not December yet but this year, for the first time in ages, I am excited about Christmas. Maybe because I get a decent holiday break, maybe because at last I am in a permanent stable job - no pun intended. The work is slowing down and the piles of metal are ending up in the paint shop and turn into HSBC, Greggs and Jobcentre plus frontages. It is really interesting to walk through from metal shop to decal application to despatch. I try to ask questions - what are you doing, what does this do, what project is this (95 signs for crossrail, all screenprinted the same)

I don't like dark mornings.  Even back on medication.  I feel more together but still have to prise myself out of bed, and I am grateful that I am having to learn to be a little gentle because God and I don't talk much in winter - he talks I suspect I grunt!!!  But a lot of reading gets done.

I'm loving the Tom Wright on Paul book -see previous post.  It must have been like walking on a tightrope, trying to reconcile his Jewish background with the explosion of Jesus-the-messiah honouring faith into the gentile/pagan world.  How radical he was.  All those women he worked with, all the households where the faith must have played absolute havoc with the power structures and norms and cultural festivals and practices..

I'm trying to turn my house into a tidy place that feels warm and welcoming for advent - I need to save for a new boiler and I know I need more windows, so it's budget and candles to tart the place up.
Cheap gentle light...

Weird wild weather

I caught this morning's deluge full on, that will serve me right for reading Tom Wright for an hour!!  What an excellent book and no, shamefully I got it in hardback from Amazon....I know!  An excellent biography of Paul the apostle and less dense and obscure than the last book of Tom's I tried (and failed) to read.

It's a fabulous historical "who-dunnit" of a book, tracking the man, his mission, his character and putting him in context.  And the book smells beautiful - I truly love sniffing books, always the first thing to do with a new book.  Quality ink and paper smell delicious, particularly hardback.  How sad to admit that.

So today the river that is the flood relief channel is a torrent of milk chocolate, covering the posts and decking of the new little bridge and sweeping down towards the mill on the Exe.  I watched four-swans-a-struggling across the basin by the waterfront.  Such bulky birds but they looked graceless and harrassed.  And then my friend and I watched seven or eight coots paddling for all they are worth to avoid being swept back down into the weir.  Little earnest things, the swirly currents kept sucking them back into the flow and one of them just let go and let themself be carried along.

Writer's block?

I've had a couple of months off writing.  And I am not sure quite why.  Somehow I think I have hammered myself into the ground like a tent peg in sunbaked soil.  A phone call from a concerned friend gave me a few pointers to the load I'd been trying to balance on my fairly narrow shoulders.  I cried with relief!  So nice to be listened to!  So here are the months more fun things.  I got my 2 mile swim medal, decorated with orange autumn leaves and little pumpkins and a funky tangerine ribbon.  Yesterday I learned my muscle heavy frame means my legs sink when I swim - which is one reason for a dreadful crawl stroke!  So many lengths over a month...

Meeting a long lost college friend and her lovely wife, and laughing, talking and oh eating - particularly iceland's version of cheesy posh potatoes. So good to catch up on 35 years of life.  I think that being fed and being listened to are my recipe to happiness.  It doesn't take much.

Being told by the "boys" at work that they want me to come to the drinking/pool playing/large roast dinner eating affair that is the factory non official Christmas meal, and being told that as a non drinker (ish) I was very welcome. And buying a new Christmas tree to replace the one that looks like a disfunctional toilet brush!!!!  Talking of which, I will never be quite the same after hearing yesterday that occupational therapist friend used nutella to teach bottom wiping to children!  A "nice dollop of it on plastic" hmmm what if they eat it?????? Oh dear another good reason but I do like nutella.

Books - what am I going to do now that Tombland is the last Shardlake book as the excellent CJ Sansom is so ill with cancer?  It's a brick of a book, but slow steady reading is such a joy, and I knew absolutely nothing about Kett's rebellion.

So I have broken the writer's block at long last...

Brrrrrrr!

Autumn is definitely here!  I have finally given in and put socks on in the evening as well as at work.  Which feels like a definite defeat - I love bare feet but not achingly cold ones...  I have just bought a five pack of bright new toes and heels socks from Waitrose as they were a nice evening stroll away and previous experience tells me Tescos socks fall apart and M&S are completely useless. (my homegroup leader threw her m&S socks in the fire one memorable homegroup evening last year)  Let's hope for the quality sock experience.

Meanwhile at work, the metal shed roof has sprung a leak in the graphics shop and I'm told by the vinyl department that their heating was condemned 10 years ago and they have portable heaters.  It seems our bosses don't feel the cold and put the heating on in December.  I should be used to that and currently don't mind wearing a jumper to work in the morning. It's better than being sweltering hot as we were four or five weeks ago.

I love the beautiful low, slanty yellowing light of Autumnal evenings where sitting in a chair in the garden with a cuppa after tea seems very special.  Evening strolls in the light are so much appreciated and I can't say I am looking forward to wrap around darkness.  Joy over conkers and colours in the trees, sweet chestnuts and crisp fallen leaves to crunch over and having the Devon beaches slightly less ram packed make me happy.  I am so grateful to have functioning legs and lungs and the energy to enjoy using them!