Books and Sweet Beetroot

This may be a rant!  Rant warning ahead!  I have been reading Dr Rangan Chatterjee "The 4 pillar plan" - how to relax, eat, move, sleep"  I saw this book advertised while flat out on the sofa at New Year feeling extremely poorly.  The book was the bit of my parental christmas money that hasn't gone on my "new boiler fund"  I'm really enjoying reading it.  He packs a lot of facts about nutrition and health into a very glossy book with lovely photos.  A very good January read that has me wanting to minimise sugar intake, walk 10,000 steps (when I am well!) and sleep better than I was doing last year. It probably needs to be taken with a fair pinch of salt but liking the approach so far.

This isn't the rant.  That ire is reserved for Tesco beetroot.  I absolutely adore beetroot and putting a bit of colour along with the jacket potatoes seems a great idea.  It wasn't until I was idly reading the pack to see if I could recycle it that I discovered that malt vinegar was an ingredient - of course! AND SUGAR. WHY?? Beetroot is a beautiful, naturally sweet veg.  It's started me reading food labels.  Ham chunks from Tesco?  Honey - well ok, maybe, but SUGAR again!  I'm a pretty passionate cook and usually buy ingredients, not ready made meals and one of the two resolutions this year is to cook something different each month.  (The other is to blog regularly) I must admit I rarely read labels, but Dr Chatterjee and trying to kick the weight that being on steroids and antidepressants will add makes me a bit more wary.  I am aware the white evil stuff is everywhere and cutting down is going to be a bit challenging - I like my chocolate too!

The other downside of having been on steroids and still being on an increased asthma med dose which presumably contains a steroid, is it's tilted my bodyclock.  I am awake blackbird early - except in this season, blackbirds doze later than me.  I crept into town for a Saturday coffee at 7.30am because costa was warm - unlike my house at the moment, which is waiting a new boiler (any excuse will do for a Saturday coffee) and then walked around the cathedral.

I loved this art installation.  In fact it made me cry: it's called Open Heaven.  It does indicate the cross, the reconciliation Jesus achieved, but actually on the step down Jesus makes, in love, to rescue us so we can talk to God, anytime, anywhere and be welcomed.  For me it bypassed a lot of over thinking and a tendency to worry that I "don't get it" properly.  That's what art does, I think, speak to us in ways we hear clearly.  Especially for someone who grew up reading cereal packets, newspapers, sweet wrappers absolutely anything anywhere!

New Year Reading

This year I've once again set my Good Reads reading challenge.  I've done this for a few years now, it's the extreme sport challenge for readers I think - you set how many books you'll read and I love it!  Someone pointed out that if I read 52 books ( - I didn't) that is one a week.  I've opted to read 40 this year - which is some amount of books! Given that I have a stack of unread ones by my bookcase and a library card, this should be very achievable.

I've had an unfortunate start to 2020, having had one of the worst asthma flares after a chest infection that I have had for 10 years.  Not good.  But lots of time for reading.

So here are the recommends:

Ann Cleeves: Wildfire (Shetland series) I haven't read any of the others but if this is the last one the rest must have been excellent.  Twisty plot, interesting characters, evocative descriptions of Shetland scenery and way of life.  Loved it and have ordered another in the series from the library.

Lindsay Davies: Time to Depart (Falco series)  One I hadn't read from fairly early in the series.  I love these books - a Roman "private eye" in a seedy run down quarter of Rome who romps his way through a murder or two.  The humour is excellent - slightly tongue in cheek smutty and the main characters and host of minor folk make me smile.  I think from watching Mary Beard on Roman culture on TV that her portrayal of the dark, grimy "lived outside on the street" overcrowded life of the Roman ordinary folk is pretty realistic.  Life can't all have been marble and hot baths!

Adam Hamilton: Making sense of the Bible.  After a quick chat with a preacher who recommended him.  This is a second hand copy so I have no idea if it's available still.  I'm really enjoying this.  Lots to think about.  So much more substantial than (in my opinion) Rachel Held Evans "Inspired" which left me uninspired and very cold.  He is very fine on the development of the scriptural "canon" and raises all the questions I'm currently asking - and suggests some helpful ways forward.  But what clinches it for me is his obvious love and respect for the Bible and for Jesus, wanting to follow Jesus more closely has to be a hit for me! I suspect he's controversial but I have heard most of the material in RE classes years ago and come across versions of this over time.  Very well worth a read.

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.