Birthday Party at 36

No actual photos exist from the event but perhaps a few memories. You might remember a joke directed at you that you didn't like the sound of. You might remember salmon falling from your chop sticks onto your trousers. You might remember a room full of people you almost know. You might remember the willingness of your loved ones to take up positions of service. You might remember the story of my dad running over a cat. You might remember meeting for the first time or for the first time in a while. The world is not entirely relative; some things are shared.

I remember the perspective of the table stretched out in front of me. A table lined with candle-lit food warmers like a road heading both ways out of the present into the past and future. You might remember a feeling that no matter where we came from, we have something in common.

Fear was not on the menu and didn't even get through the door: we had tempura, sushi, salmon, and some proper desserts. You might not have noticed the absence of the girl who taught us how to make tempura or the absence of committed drinking. I think I noticed the grace of the One who fills our lives with the potential and the reality of love and companionship. I think the Man who turned water into wine at Cana still likes parties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_at_Cana

Amos 9:14 4 'And I will bring back the exiles of My people Israel, and they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards and drink the wine from them; they shall also make gardens and eat the fruit of them.'

Orkney and Scotland 2008

Just got back from Orkney and a few other places in Scotland. I like being on tour. It was an excellent trip mostly spent with the family - both nuclear and extended plus a few days backpacking to boot.

Edinburgh

I started in Edinburgh and spent some time with my Aunt and Uncle and my cousins. I saw a show at the Edinburgh festival which was a fairly mixed quality reviewed here in the Scotsman. It was great to see all the family here. Edinburgh is a lovely city but vastly overcrowded during festival time - my presence notwithstanding of course. Didn't really have enough time there but it was great to see everyone. Sadly, only one cousin shown here and she is not the guy with no hair.



Aberdeen

On then to Aberdeen. A city I had wanted to see for some time and the only major city in Scotland I had not visited. I quite liked but I didn't really get on well at the hostel where I spent some time in fourteen-bed male dorm. Yes, it was noisy and smelly. How many times would you get up in the night multiplied by fourteen? I liked the museum and art gallery in Aberdeen though and was pleased to have seen the sparkling granite.

Thurso

I then got the train up to Thurso which takes about seven hours from Aberdeen. The second part though, from Inverness, is a really nice trip along the coast. Sandra's backpackers in Thurso is a cool place. Sandra is a very nice lady and has made a nice space for travelers getting round Caithness or going off to Orkney as I was. You get a nice view of Hoy from the beach. The island sometimes appears in relief when the weather on Hoy is sunny and the weather in Thurso is cloudy. It gives an intriguing glimpse of what might lay in store over the water.

Orkney

The ferry over to Orkney is great; you get to see the Old man of Hoy at no extra cost and trailed by a lot of seabirds during the crossing.

We were staying in Kirkwall which was a good location for seeing the mainland. The accommodation was above a shop on Albert St.

Day One
We drove down the causeways through the Southern Isles. The highlights were seeing the Italian church, the block ships and Churchill barriers. The village of St. Margaret's hope is a good place to have lunch if you can stand the midges.

Day Two
We went up to Marwick head and saw the Kitchener memorial which stands in a great location full of wildlife. Here we saw Great Skuas gliding above the cliffs on thermals. Then, driving round the north of the Island, we passed through the village of Evie and visited the Broch of Gurness; a much preserved two-thousand year old village. Life eback then looked pretty cold with everyone also living at very close quarters.

Day Three


Iain arrived and we went out to see some of the main sites of historical interest on the island. We started at Skara Brae which is an outstanding old village next to a really nice beach; Skail Bay. No wonder they decided to build their village there. After that we went on to Maeshowe which is thought to be some kind of burial chamber although when it was discovered there was nothing inside expect Viking graffiti saying something like 'we stole all the treasure'. The mainland also has some stone circles to visit with slabs of quite considerable size.

Day Four

Iain and I went over to Hoy; the volcanic island south of the mainland. We got the ferry over for about seven quid. Loads of sea birds evident in the harbour. On the way back a man walked up silently behind me and exclaimed 'ganet' in a very dead pan tone. It seemed to be something on an initiating into the ornithology community.

On the island we walked up Ward Hill, the highest hill on Orkney. Some very good views from the top. Walking back down the ridge, I spotted a mountain hare with black ears. There were loads of Great Skuas around too. We got a bit too close to a nest at one stage and almost got dive bombed.

Day Five
In the morning Iain and I looked round the cathedral and saw a scripture on a plack that he had told me about the previous day, "Awake, sleeper, And arise from the dead, And Christ will shine on you." Ephesians 5:14. Then we walked round the Earl's and the Bishop's palaces. In the afternoon we went to Scapa Bay and saw Oyster Catchers in quite large numbers then went on to the pier arts centre in Stromness which has a great collection upstairs and is housed in a very contemporary building.

Day Six
We went out to Birsay and checked out the ruins of another village. This one was rather modern though - only eight hundred years old. Then we walked round the mini-island there. In the cliffs we saw what we believe to be Guillemots nesting in the dramatic cliffs there. Also, there were some birds diving for fish that may have been 'divers' of one sort or another. It was pretty much a case of packing in the evening but we managed to get a nice Chinese meal in too.


Back to Inverness
We drove back to Inverness via Dunnet Head and John O'Groats. It was interesting to see the west coast and we stopped off for tea on the way. Inverness was quite busy compared to Kirkwall and it was a bit of a shock to the system checking into the Student Backpackers Hostel which was a metal-loving, hard-drinking joint whether you didgeridoo or you didgeridon't. It was nice to see the river and atmostphere on the weekends. The locals say that the town has changed a lot in the last ten years for the better. The castle there is used as a court now which creates a slightly uneasy mix of tourists and defendants hanging around the same space.

We had meal out a restaurant next to the river for Mum's birthday where they served a pretty decent steak I must say.


London

Nobody had done any major socio-cultural rennovations on South London since I had been away. Back in the news loop and getting fed lots of downbeat economics forecasts and trying to cut down on my sports news intake. Wondering if Orkney still exists or it disappears when you get back to London.

Dorset Road Trip 2008

It is good to get away to the South Coast I am sure you'll agree. Just getting back into life back in London. There is a lot of police sirens, planes and people, in no particular order.

The photos in this clip are principally from East Dorset, just east of Dorchester around the Jurassic coast between Weymouth and Bridport.


The youth hostel was in a little village called Lyton Cheney. I think all it had there was a pub, a phone box and a nice little stream. The nearest shop was about four miles away.
The sunset in West Bay was a fantastic colour and it was good to be there.

Driller Gate

Sitting in the waiting room of the dentist’s up the road and feeling a bit edgy

I had plenty of time to consider whether it was a mistake on my part giving up being a veggie

As these and other subjects passed through my mind I thought I heard the sound of drilling

But it wasn’t a drill; it was a littlun’ jamming a handheld fan into carpet which he seemed to find quite thrilling

With my appointment time far in the distance I was ushered into the surgery

My admission to the dentist that I hadn’t been for four years was no act of purgery

Realising I might be a bit anxious he give me a good vibe

Which I hung onto for the next ten minutes praying that I would survive

In fact with no sign of decay all I needed was antibiotics for a gum infection

Surprise, surprise: my vision of rampant, irretrievable decay was just a projection.

Later on Dad came round and we worked together to put an iron gate back on its hinges

It looks better swinging there than it did under an overgrowth of Lilac on the front garden’s fringes

I got the chances to use a drill myself to make holes in the wall and did not baulk

Marking a guide hole, getting the bit to bite and giving it some torque

I felt pretty good about myself and even better that the holes were in the brick

A more appropriate substance for drilling in than my one of my back teeth, however sick.

From out of the guts of the machine

Here is related the true story of a man who rescued my printer from a wasted life of peripheral redundancy. It is written as an unlikely poem although almost every word of it is nearly true:

That’s me on the phone and getting into a bit of a stinker

Trying to get Comet or Epson to do a warranty repair on my printer

I finally ascertained an engineer who would have a look locally

I checked the address and mumbled about my bad luck with printers vocally

The centre on Purley Way didn’t look all that modern

It was the sort of industrial unit you might expect to find in Waddon

The receptionist was polite and called down the engineer

Apparently casual dress is not an inhibiting factor in that career

We talked about the main issue which was that the paper was not grabbing

He went back up stairs got a pair of big pair of tweezers, a stip of cupboard and proceeded to shove that it

He looked like a surgeon fishing around for a bullet

Imagine my surprise when he located an old pencil jammed in the guts of the machine and out he did pull it

A moment of twinkle; a birthing; a miracle

But it was hard for the receptionist not to be cynical

‘That’ll do it everytime’ she quipped as the pencil hit the desktop

I thought about saying ‘Oh wow, I was looking for that!’ and then I thought, ‘no stop’.

It is better to say nothing and act like engineers pull pencils from the guts of printers every day maybe they should

And, well, if they talk about me when I am gone all well and good.

Join the dots

We had a nice bike ride today from Morden Hall Park back to Croydon following the Wandle Trail.

You can get most of the way without going on the roads which is nice and some parts of the river and just spectacular. It is still a powerful river at points which has supported a lot of industry and many mills in its day. It felt good to be on the land as it is, as opposed to what we have put on it.

We passed through a number of points that held memories for me including Wilderness Island near Mill Lane, Beddington Park where we met Tom and Stacy. The park itself borders my old school. That river we were cycling on was the very same river I fell into on a regular basis after the hurricane in 1987. We used to walk from one side of the river to the other across fallen logs with varying degrees of success. How well I remember the smell of pond water emanating from my socks (if that is not too pleasant a concept to reflect upon).

Following the river was interesting in that I knew various points along its length quite well, but did not previously know the whole picture. It was fascinating to cycle through ancient looking riverside woods to pop up next to a road a have got the bus down a thousand times. Gradually an overall sense of its course, above and beyond its sections I have known formed in my imagination.

One way or another that river has wound itself through many times and seasons of my life and riding along it today reminded me of a lot of that. The more I think about it, the more it blows me away. Everything we need for life is in the river and its beautiful: the river is a journey; the river is a story; the river is wealth; the river is the economy; the river is the painting; the river, it doesn't stop.

"[Jesus] ...the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." (John 4:13-14 RSV)

Mum and Dad's Fortieth Wedding Anniversary

'Forty Years of Bliss'

It is an interesting irony that everyone seemed to able to share: that the day to day realities of a marriage are sometimes less than entirely blissful.

My mum and dad's friends had these T-shirts made up for their fortieth wedding anniversary. It was a joke that nobody failed to get. I don't think my generation is going to be able to laugh in the same way. To laugh at that means you are getting through the problems. To laugh means you do not think you will be beaten by the problems. To laugh means it has been worth it whatever the cost.

My people: I think a lot of them are going to give up. I don't think my generation is going into this thing with the same attitude. I don't want to be too hard on us; we have good qualities. We can be egalitarian, globally responsible, humane and considerate. But getting through forty years of marriage is not a calling as many of us are going to sign up for.

It was a lovely day with a real collection of family, family friends and absent friends. Adjacent to the day itself were memories shared of other, similar parties held in the garden at my parents' house. Like their twenty-fifth anniversary where some friends and I played some very rough rock covers in the back garden; the singers voice coming through a bass amp. As bad as it may have been as a performance it was much recalled today along with various synonyms for 'drunk' to describe the mental state of the musicians.

They often quote that African saying on World Service, 'it takes a village to raise a child', especially in debates about correcting the misdemeanors of wayward British youth. What struck me today was that, perhaps, it takes a lot of friends to make a marriage. There were about thirty-five people there and most of them I have known all my life. A great big crowd of moral support and affirmation; a crowd stood together like so many antarctic penguins keeping each other warm.

So, it can be hard work like a marriage, just doing the next right thing one day at a time and trusting God for the results. It helps me to remember the God's son knows a thing or two about suffering and endurance:
Hebrews 12:2

We must focus on Jesus, the source and goal of our faith. He saw the joy ahead of him, so he endured death on the cross and ignored the disgrace it brought him. Then he received the highest position in Heaven, the one next to the throne of God.

For just a moment today, when the sun came out and we made our toasts to mum and dad, and we all shared a sense of love, admiration and respect knowing that it couldn't have been easy, no one was thinking about the hard times really even though we laughed at the T-shirt, I thought well maybe Heaven is a bit like this. Because when it's over, it's over. You don't think about having had to wait for the kettle to boil when you are drinking your cup of tea. The house of cards falls neatly back into the pack. Wounds heal. Friends meet. You recognise the face of someone you deeply love and have always known. You put the bag down. Ronnie Barker takes off his awful shoes and everything's all right forever.