Banking

Just typing that word reminds me of the time when my husband, then a fairly new Bank manager with Nat West was asked to attend a recruitment jamboree. It was in a room where lots of stalls had been set up and there  were many firms trying to lure unsuspecting youngsters into choosing a career in banking. He left the hall half way through, to go and have lunch and when he got back he discovered that on the sign outside his booth some bright child had changed the B for banking into a W.  He was very cross especially when I just laughed.
Now of course Nat West are not the same bank at all and the very sight of a smug young woman on the TV adverts claiming helpful banking is enough to make me splutter with rage.
Today having paid off my credit card bill by phone I was advised that I could  join Action Line to make it easier to do my banking over the phone. This involved me in putting in a lot of numbers and figures to convince them of my identity. Each time I tried I didnt do it fast enough so kept being handed over to a  variety of young women. They were all polite but when I told them that just a bit more time would help the registration process I then got treated to some very patronising remarks.
But I maintain if they are asking you how many letters are in your mother's maiden name then if its more than say 5 letters you have to write it down and then count by which time they've shoved you on to someone else. They are trying. Very.

Bad Saturday. Worse Sunday

The last two days have not been good. I hope not to have any more weekends like this for some time.
After all the problems with the printer yesterday I finally got the service sheets and the sermon printed. So then I relaxed. This was a mistake. There was more to come. Last night I got a phone call from the lady who was doing one of our services today. Her daughter was very ill and not expected to live. Having lost my own daughter of course I said I'd do the service and we wept together as I promised to pray.
That meant I had three services, the first one at eight am. Three back to back is always very hard but in an emergency I could still do it I thought.
I was up early and went out to start the first service. My car wouldn't start. The battery looked flat but then the alarm started wailing. I tried again. Nothing, so I ran indoors to get my husband who took me to church in his car and his dressing gown.
All went well with the BCP communion and I got a lift home..
Then I was driven to the next one where I told them I was their default preacher. They got half the sermon I'd written for the next service.
My lovely husband then got me moving and onto the next service which was back to St Just again.
I nobbled various people to read poems and settled down. The organist who had been quarter of an hour late last week didn't turn up at all this week. We sang the hymns unaccompanied.
My husband took me out for lunch and then I came home and slept. No more please Lord. No more. Enough is definitely enough.


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Printer walloping

Did you ever see the video of a cat sitting over a printer and walloping it hard. Today I am that cat! It has taken the best part of the morning to sort out various problems and changing the black ink was a mere interlude in the rest of the goings on! My main problem was that my mac doesn't really like Word. I use Word to do service sheets because that's the way I know best! Until the printer decides to go on strike! Twice Word simply stopped responding and had to be forcibly quit!
Twice I paused the printer because I'd spotted a spelling mistake only to find it was printing the original error so the whole thing had to be cancelled and then restarted! The stupid thing about the spelling was that the spell check had substituted a daft word which I couldn't ignore!
Once I'd got to screaming pitch the husband, the dog and the cat moved quietly to a different part of the house! Husband did finally offer help because he's got two pukka printers whilst mine is still steam driven!
By that time it was a battle. Me versus printer....it was a point of honour that I should win! And I did. I have, but only at the cost of a load of waste paper...and a half finished sermon which I decided to print before it failed me completely... I will use actual handwriting to finish it later!
Pen and ink.....those were the days!

Jesus at St Just?

This week we have a Sunday service usually referred to as Morning Prayer. The last time I did this one I planned a Service of the Word. That was the Sunday it snowed and we had to close the church after a car got stuck on the lane! Hoping for better this time.
We are talking about the childhood of Jesus which is a subject which is wide open because no one knows anything about it but over the years there have been some lovely imaginative poems written which I can use, such as the one about the clay birds Jesus played with until He blest them and they flew away!
This service gives me the opportunity to play to the congregation in a shameless way when from clay birds we can move on to the time that Jesus came to Cornwall... It is possible!
At St Just we have a wonderful legend that as a boy Jesus with Joseph of Arimathea visited the pool protected by a sand bar beside the church. Joseph it is said was a tin trader who visited Cornwall often and they pulled into a safe place to moor during a storm. It was a place of calm and beauty and Jesus and Joseph stayed a while because there was a well of clean water..now our Holy well. This legend has captured the hearts of the Cornish and all our visitors for hundreds of years and who are we to debunk it?
What ever the truth St Just then found this beautiful place and settled here and his hermitage has grown into the church we have today. It's still a place of spiritual peace and great beauty and I thank God for being able to work in it.

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Graveyard rules.

People ask for strange stones for their loved ones when they have died. I quickly grew aware of all the rules and regulations governing church yards as some of the stranger ones came in. Some graveyards may have alot of room  but the two I have been most involved with were getting full...space was at a premium. St Just particularly has many small rules about sizes of stones and what's not allowed. It's a beautiful place much visited by people who come to see the church and the garden of tropical plants surrounding it, perched on the edge of a creek.
I got to know the local stone mason quite well during the interegnum and some of the requests amused him but he always checked with me to see if it was possible. Some were not. We had to keep the beauty and the gravity of the place intact and stones in the shape of toys or pets or Disney cartoon animals could not be allowed. Most accepted this  but one or two became incensed at what they though was beaurocracy. One woman in particular waged a long battle to get what she wanted for her mother It was a complicated design. based on a wartime service badge. It was going to be twice as big as any of the other small stones and she wanted it coloured red and yellow. I had already stretched a point to allow the burial at all. Her mother had never been resident in the parish. She did not accept my refusal of the design or the word of the stone mason. E mails flew through the air at the rate of several a day. The phone rang late at night. The stone mason and I became friends during this period when we were in touch most days because of the growing threatening behaviour of one woman. We quoted chapter and verse of the local by laws, the national rules and everything else we could find. The local solicitor was dragged in. The stone mason was sacked. It all got very unpleasant. I spent alot of time down there, being summoned by the distressed daughter who was convinced that we were all being unreasonable. It all got done in the end.
The stone is now almost the right size, made by a rival mason and is just two stones away from the one we did this week with its attendant beer can. I went to look at it. There is a bright blue statue leaning against the bright gold lettering.
 The verger said, "I've  had to leave it there because she says its the virgin Mary and she bought it in our shop"
She got some of her own way in the end.  We both shook our heads as we remembered the few months of dissent involved. And then I went to put some snow drops on my daughter's stone not all that far away.  Peace.

Strange memorials

After my experience with the ashes yesterday I found myself going back to the time when I had no idea what to do with my husband's ashes. He had loved the sea, specially in Cornwall so a friend took us out in his boat and the ashes were put into the stretch of water between the twin castles of Pendennis and St Mawes. It seemed only fair, we had eaten a lot of fish caught in that spot over the years.
After a year or so I realized that there was no one place to put flowers and more importantly no memorial. I had resisted the idea of inscriptions in the books at the local crematorium's Chapel of Rest as much too impersonal. So I had a think.
Eventually I rang the local stone mason and he agreed to my unusual request.
I got permission from the local councillors to put a granite dog bowl along the lugger in Portscatho. David's initials were inscribed and so was the deceased dog's.
We had often stopped by the tap along the harbor wall to let the dog drink from battered ice cream cartons and lamented the lack of a proper bowl. It seemed a good solution.
It was blessed by the vicar and a lot of old friends came to it.
Now I still clean it occasionally but it's much used by walkers to clean off their boots after a muddy walk. So it's often very dirty. Some people clean it for me and I sometimes sit on the seat next to it considering another inscription. Dogs drinking water. No mud please!
The bowl has become the stuff of legends in the ten years it's been there. I have been told several tear jerking stories about boys lost at sea. Heroic dog rescues and damsels in distress all feature in the stories. They are told to me by visitors. The locals know me far too well !
As a memorial it's not really working. I never put flowers on it for fear of what might happen to them but I do know that David would have loved it. And that's really all that matters.


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Ashes to Ashes

This morning it being half term I met a family with five children to bury GrandPa's ashes. The children were carrying flowers. One had made a wooden cross. They told me that now GrandPa was a star in the sky they could look up at him and talk to him but as well,  from now on they could visit the place in the church yard too. They said the prayers with me and then left the verger to tidy it all up. After I'd been back to the vestry I walked back to the place we had laid the casket. As well as the cross and the flowers there was also an empty can of beer. The children said they'd never seen him without a can of beer in his hand. The verger looked at me. I nodded. We perfectly understood each other. Of course the can could stay before being "Blown away" at some point.
 As I left I said, "A bottle of claret for David.  Scotch for me."

Aging fast.

I must be going senile. I apologise to those who read the first draft of this blog because it was much the same as the one I did on Saturday. And that is one of the problems of getting old...and its not just the memory, its all the senses. I now live in a house full of geriatrics.  The cats 13, the dogs 12, my husband is 85 and I am in my early 7o's though that's hard to admit!
We have all got age related problems of one kind or another. The husband and the dog are deaf. They have both learned the art of selective deafness and fail to hear what they don't want to hear.  My husband's cataracts have been fixed but not the dogs so unless I stand immediately in front of him he is not quite sure who is there till I speak. Magically he can always hear that!
We are still mobile though some days are less mobile than others!
Food  is a problem for me. I can no longer eat huge meals.  David can so everyday I still cook a large meal at lunch time and he eats most of it whilst I make it look good, helped out by the dog who always knows when to hover.  Whilst we were on hols it was a problem every evening and some meals just out- faced me completely. What I would have loved to eat as a younger woman have now become a real problem. I am a bit slimmer though not as much as I should be!
My main problem is with words. And I do know that this is one of the first signs of Altzeimers but not of course in my case! This is why I play games, Scrabble and Backgammon to keep the brain moving!   Sometimes I grasp at a word and can't find it. It's very frustrating. I have taught myself to go back and think of another way of putting something and then the word usually pops up, not always though.
Names escape me which is not good in a priest. Yesterday in church a young couple walked up to me carrying their baby and of course I knew them perfectly well. I knew he was in the Navy and she was a teacher and the last time I saw them the baby was a bump under the wedding dress. But could I remember their names? Embarassing all round but they seemed to forgive me. With any luck they'll be old themselves one day.
And thats the point. Aches, pains, infirmities, they are a dam nuisance BUT they are better than the alternative! We have survived!!

Evangelical atheism?

I have been on Twitter for a few months now and am finding my way round slowly. One thing is a particular puzzle to me and that is the aggression of some atheists. Their need to proclaim their beliefs and debunk others is very strange to someone as tolerant of other peoples beliefs as I am.
The whole basis of their argument is negative. If you have to tell people you don't believe in God, that fine. But they have made their non belief into a sort of religion in itself.
I am not talking here about Humanists or people for whom any church is a restriction. I am talking about those people whose sole reason for being on Twitter seems to be to attack, to debunk to ridicule. How can you make a religion of hate from not believing something? An evangelical atheist is something I would never have believed possible. But here they are. Why? They must get something out of their non belief but surely the more intelligent ones would be able to see the irony of their position?
A belief in something is easy to defend but a belief that something does not exist is hardly worth stating.

Promises to keep

The text I'm using for this weeks sermon was the one much used by Bush about going the extra mile. It brought back floods of memory which may be too personal to use in church.
My first husband died whilst we still in our fifties. A poem echoed through my head at his funeral and in the weeks afterwards. It was the one by Robert Frost "Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening." the last line of this is
"And I have promises to keep and hours to go before I sleep. And hours to go before I sleep. "
This stayed with me for weeks and then months.. I had promises to keep but I was not sure what they were.
I had had my call to the church in my teens only to be rebuffed on the grounds of my sex. I had spent years exploring other faiths and having mild flirtations with them, always to return to Christianity.
The insistence of the words of the poem made me introspective. I withdrew from social activity for a while and focussed inward. I was at a cross road and had no idea which way to go.
Eventually I placed my life into the hands of God. From then on I would do what was asked of me. Shortly afterwards I was asked if I wanted to buy a friends house in Cornwall. Yes. Then if I wanted to sing in the church choir. Yes. Then would I be the church secretary. Yes again and to being a worship leader etc. The path to ordination was as simple as that. I simply said yes at each turning.
Keeping my promises have made me the happiest I have ever been. My only regret is that I was already an old woman when I finally fulfilled my call.
But better late than never.


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Photo albums? Ha!

Now the whole of Facebook know just how inept I am. A friend wanted to see some pictures of our recent trip. I tried. I failed. FB kept telling me that my instructions were confusing them. The irony of that statement should surprise no one. My friend was on chat and told me not to be a big girls blouse so I tried again. There are several different ways of making an album on FB and I failed at all of them.
Eventually I resorted to e mail! Success! It allowed me to choose and I sent off about ten. Imagine my surprise when 44 turned up!
We do have the ten from this trip. We also have pictures of the garden and St Just and Crispin in his collar. My friend enjoyed the statue of Christ. Unfortunately it was in Lisbon not Rio.
Learned a lesson from all of that. It takes time to sort out all the intricacies of FB. And you cannot do it in a quick ten minutes.
I ought to start by putting the thousands of photos in iPhoto into albums. That would certainly help. Unfortunately time is short. Other problems need more urgent solutions.
I'll get round it. Eventually.


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Quiet Day

I started today very tired. Crispin my 12 year old golden retriever had barked on and off all night. I lost count of the number of times he woke me up! He is deaf now and has cataracts so sometimes he neither sees or hears much but when I got up to let him out all he did was go and lie down in his favorite place by the gate.
I am ashamed to admit that I ended up by shouting at him but with any luck he didn't hear me anyway. On a night like last night an audio book is the best solution. Even better than ear plugs! AJ Cronins "The stars look down." is still a riveting book!
Then at half past five my husband got up. We had set the alarm for six but by that time there seemed no point in hanging about.
He went off to the station to get a train into London. He is only gone for the day. A car will pick him up when his train gets in and take him to a restaurant where he will meet people he used to work with before retirement. This happens several times a year so by this time the notion of going up to town to have lunch from Cornwall has become normal.
They will return him to the station and by the time he gets home he'll be sober!
So I am having a quiet day. The new app for the BBC iplayer has relayed the entire last series of "Lark Rise" right to my iPad.
In theory I should be able to both rest and catch up.
Except that of course others don't know I've been awake half the night I've just about given up now. Eventually I'll just slump I expect. If the dog barks again tonight I could become demented. But who will notice?
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Spring!

It is almost here that much awaited event! This afternoon
I wandered around the garden, gazing out to the distant sea and the sun was warm on my face so I sat down for a while. Hopefully its the first of many sits this year but there was real warmth in the sun this afternoon which gives hope for the future.
I've been doing what we all do in the church I've been organising things, making things happen in fact. I've organised two burials of ashes which sounds easy but which has to include people up country who can only get here during half term which is next week so that involved lots of phone calls. I've sorted out a baptism or two...this was one of the first brides I married soon after ordination and she has had two babies since then, both boys and both now at school! Half term looks all set to be rather busy!
I've fixed up a mock baptism in church with class one from the local school for the week after. That should be fun!
I've remembered to order two sets of ashes for Ash Wednesday since two of my fellow priests are away then. In fact the other one is also alway but he's arranged his own cover. This means that for a week I will be the only priest working on this small peninsula which is only fair considering I've just had five weeks off but the prayers that no one will die start now!
If the sun shines as it has this afternoon then there is nothing I can't cope with. With the help of God of course.

Location:Truro,United Kingdom

Phone shop angst!

I know I've been out of the country for a few weeks but this mornings trip into Truro shook me a little. It was very very quiet. The square was empty. M and S was like the grave. I didn't get far though after being stuck in the O2 shop.
This is a firm that really needs to get it's act together. I've only been in a few times and always had to wait. The last time an impatient sales girl told me it would cost a lot of money to break my contract on the first phone and in any case there were no iphone 4's available.
At that point off I went to Carphone warehouse who duly supplied me with the new phone and cheerfully accepted the view that I could pay £15 a month for a couple of months as much cheaper than breaking the original contract.
Job done. I had two iPhones on two separate contracts but I told myself that I would go into Truro after the trip and get out of the first contract when it's time expired. Both phones proved very useful on holiday. We had one each!
So this morning should have been easy!
No. First I stood waiting for twenty minutes without anyone even acknowledging my presence. When finally a man did arrive he was very negative.
"you can't have two contracts with us for two different phones" I had and I produced them both. You could see the mental effort it took for him to accept this. He was looking over his shoulder the whole time at a woman who was looking at phones. He clearly saw a sale approaching whereas I was trouble. When he asked to be excused I sat in the shop and rang customer services. A pleasant young man checked my name and password and asked why the second phone had been bought from Carphone Warehouse. There was a gulp from behind me when I told him that I'd had no joy from the sales person in the Truro shop
He solved my problem by canceling the contract and putting the first phone on Pay as you Go at no cost to me Simple.
If all customers have this sort of personal treatment then the other phone shops will do rather well. Which is very irritating because I've got shares in O2!


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Valentine?

When you get old you've seen a lot of Valentine days but that doesn't stop the memories flooding in. It was so exciting as a girl waiting to see if you had any cards and more importantly who might be sending them. The competition in my girls grammar school was intense. I am fairly sure now that some very tall tales were used to try to edge out possible competitors in the love stakes but then it was most important to go into school with at least two cards to show. Some had several! So we hated them naturally.
St Valentine was a little known saint supposedly martyred in Rome as an early Christian. I imagine he would be astonished by the importance of his name in this century. The church of Rome and us Anglicans don't celebrate his day though I believe the Orthodox church does but not in February.
My husband always said that the cards should be anonymous , and to that end every card I ever got from him on this day always had " guess who?" inside them. I always did so no prizes there.
What ever you think about this strange custom it might well have been just an excuse for another festival. After Christmas it was a long haul before Easter with the rigors of Lent to endure. A bit of romance would go
down well once all the festive eating had stopped.
A few flowers and chocolates might be very well received in the middle of this cold month. And it's certainly better than Lupercalia.




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Facebook angst.

At my age I should now be aware that people enjoy a good old row. Course they do, it gives us the chance of airing our views or listening to other people discussing theirs.
So why am I surprised by the row that is simmering away in this beautiful part of the world.
I can not say what it's about or who is stirring who but I can say that it makes me very sad.
And what is really sad is the extent to which social net working is being manipulated by those people who want everyone else to sympathize with them. They are pleading their cause by flooding everyone with messages and asking for support in a situation in which there can be no winners just losers.
I am fairly sure that the laws of libel must hold good on Facebook. So maybe some caution would be a good thing.
This row was in full swing whilst I was away and I got dragged into it the night that I arrived back when I was still very tired and jet lagged.
It's escalated since then and the destructive urge to manipulate is now reaching the heights of hysteria.
My position is to stay out of it if I can. People are asking me use my links with the community to try to find out just what is being said. I can't. We are talking about people I know well and love. I have no wish to presume on my position here to try to find out what is being said by whom. I have to stay out of it all.
That's easier said than done but I have to try. but beware of social networking. If used negatively it can be a tragically powerful tool.




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Absent friends

Could just be the first day of Spring. It has been glorious today. The sun was warm and that brought many of the flowers out. Cornwall is wonderful during it's seasons and Spring often comes earlier than most places.
We are both feeling much better now and we've heard that people we met on the cruise are also home and well.
Several people we got to know well are still on board the Queen Mary. From Cape Town they were going round the corner to Durban and then straight across to Sydney. They will be still at sea and I hope they are also much better than they were.
I am not sure what could actually be done but I can't help feeling that the air conditioning could include a germicide. Everyone on the boat was coughing. It did not spoil a wonderful trip but we could all have done without the bugs.
Back to work tomorrow. I am easing in gently just doing an Evensong.
I shall enjoy it. I hope my voice will be strong enough to carry the canticles on my own as is now usual!


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Belief

Sometimes I experience the feeling of being ganged up on that I used to occasionally as a girl. Twitter is a great social net work and I enjoy it. But it does encourage bullies. They see one person being criticized and then they all jump in. I have written about this before but this morning I experienced it from a different group. The first time it was the extreme right wingers. This morning it was the atheists.
I get on with atheists usually. There are a couple on Twitter I talk to regularly and like. My best friends is one and she has good reasons for her non belief in God and it is obvious that she has taken the trouble to think the whole thing out and come up with, for her the best possible set of core beliefs. I respect her beliefs as she does mine.
The destructive ones are the problem. I can't prove God exists any more than they can prove that He doesn't. It takes as much faith not to believe as it does to believe. The fact that God allows bad things to happen is the core of this thinking and I direct them to a blog i wrote some time ago called "Why does God let bad things happen?"
In the middle of a reasonable conversation suddenly the wolf pack pounces. I had no time this morning to answer all their questions which was also taken badly.
I am not interested in per suing a subject to the point of angels dancing on the head of a pin. Reasoned argument is one thing. Semantics is another.
I believe that God is. If you don't then I respect your point of view but I am not interested in the sort of argument that becomes hysterical and abusive.
I don't need to defend my views nor do I need to attack other peoples. We are the sum total of our experience in life. Mine shows me a God of love. And I'm thankful for it.

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Baptism

It is good news that synod is trying to sort out some of the language used in the CW service. I relish the startled expression on the faces of the god parents when I ask them if they renounce the devil and all his works.
It is archaic and it does confuse but also it goes some way to instilling a sense of awe into the proceedings.
I have a lot of baptisms following all the weddings we do here though not necessarily in that order. I always talk to the parents of course and as many of the god parents as can be assembled. This is difficult when they are traveling up from London for the weekend.
The worst christening I ever did was one that another priest had arranged. It was at two on a Sunday afternoon so we could get the morning services out of the way. It soon became clear that they were arriving straight from the pub.
They were partly drunk but most of them were not too bad until we got to the statements. One girl screamed with laughter at the mention of the devil and continued screaming at every other sentence throughout the service.This made the others giggle a lot I should have halted it in hindsight.. But at the time I was desperate to get it over with.
It was appalling. Made worse by the fact that the grand parents were very embarrassed by their childrens behavior.
Most baptisms are, like most weddings happy family occasions. I try always to have them as part of the normal church service where possible. I explain the language as we go. I do everything I can to enhance the importance and awe of the wonderful gift from God the child is receiving.
Still sometimes I have my doubts. The bottom line is that we are receiving a person into the church of Christ. My honest opinion is that an adult is better able to accept and go along with what is happening and I treasure the occasions when a thinking person has decided to accept God.
But we cannot forget that if we refuse or make it too difficult it is a baby being kept out of the kingdom and we should I think seek to be all embracing and welcoming to everyone.
Let's hope the Synod makes it an easier liturgy for us all.


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Home and other problems

Getting back down to earth after a holiday is always a problem....for us at any rate!  Whilst away life goes on unsullied and in a different time space.  Having ipad and iphone with me meant I could blog and tweet etc but only in a fairly limited way as I had to pay for every minute that I was on line so I got home to many messages  that I had not read. Thanks to all of you who said such great things...you know who you are!
The journey home was long and often uncomfortable but it was great to be back...
Until the phone started ringing. A massive row having developed in my absence all the protagonists felt they had to keep me up to date and even try to draw me in. My refusal to be involved last night meant some very hairy moments which I have spent the morning trying to resolve.  Now I am only slightly jet lagged it all seems quite simple.  Ha!
Our first move was to get our animals home. This took up a good part of the morning but here they are, safe and sound and very happy to be with us if not with each other. The cat has celebrated his return by spitting at the dog so everything is back to normal in that department.
We then had to try to book the weekend away when David's grandson gets married. This proved even more difficult because all the instructions were via Microsoft  and  we both have Macs.  I found the way round that one so the rest of the family can rest easy...we have not missed the booking boat!
In the middle of it all visitors  have arrived to be dispatched asap. Phones have been ringing, post opened and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all!
We really must go away more often!
15 minutes later
I have now heard such a variety of swear words from the other half that I am wondering where he's been keeping them!  He is trying to book a rail ticket up to London for lunch. Unfortunately the web site denies all knowledge of St Austell.  The fact that we drove through it only yesterday seems not to count!

Heavy bag!

Getting to the airport was good. The man arrived right on cue and got us there fast. All was well until my suitcase went on the scales. Too heavy said an implacable young lady. I pointed out that in relation to it Davids was light. They cancelled each other out.
She was having none of that. Some of it had to go in the other bag.
It was hot. I was bending over my case with poor David looking anxious. I threw several bottles of shampoo type stuff away. I hope someone can make use of that great mousse and various creams.
It took me about half an hour to unpack and repack the cases, all in the public eye. I offered to just pay the excess but she said that would involve another big queue!
Eventually she let us in. It was the lowest point of the holiday!
Today we did the eleven hour flight in good heart. We even got some sleep. I saw a couple of great films on British Airways. It helped make up for all that angst!
I have promised David that the huge case will now be retired. Never again will we have this problem. Of course the road to hell etc!
It's great to be home. Cornwall is very beautiful even in the grey mist!

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Wonderful day

We have made the most of our last day in Cape Town. We set off on a sightseeing open topped bus and saw the city, finally driving up to Table Mountain. We then chickened out of the cable car to the very top and took pics instead.
The whole tour was cheap but excellent. The voice over did not gloss over apartheid and there were sad reminders of the past but the main note was of pride and joy in their heritage and of their emergence into the light of freedom.
Afterwards we returned to the waterfront and had lobster and chips! It was brilliant washed down with cape Chardonnay.
I then had my big splurge of the holiday. I bought a small purse made of crocodile, ostrich and antelope. The sales girl said it was OK because they had been eaten. I agreed and now have the strangest purse I have ever seen.
Our experience in Cape Town has been positive and enriched by the pleasant nature of the locals. If we live long enough we will come again. DV.

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Weird

In the field of weird there are several graduations. So this isn't very weird at all. I am sitting with a glass of wine in the hotel lobby. I have brought my iPad down to play a video I downloaded a while ago. It is the dramatised version of Mo Mowlems life.
There she appears played by Julie Walters. In the opening scene she is wearing a pink striped blouse. It is identical to the one I'm wearing. Not very weird at all. But weird enough!
I had to stop watching it when she started to be sick. It looks like a film to watch on my own. I wish she had lived.

Day off

We have the luxury on an entire day in Cape Town with nothing planned. It's Sunday so if I find a church I will go in. But other than that it is a great feeling that we are free to explore.
There are sight seeing buses around.
My husband got rather more rands than the 50 I got yesterday. Apparently this would get me a coffee or a glass of good SA wine! A helpful friend has told me what to ask for!
We found a lovely place. Waterfront.


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Cape town.

We have arrived safely at our hotel. Fountains. It's lovely in downtown Cape Town. We have had our lunch preceded by two glasses of wine which may have triggered some very ancient memories.
I was a student in the late fifties. Ok I am an old woman!
Then the burning issue of the day was apartheid. I read the books by Alan Paton and Trevor Huddleston I followed the wickedness of the Bantu Education Act with indignation and horror that one nation could try to keep enslaved another nation solely on the colour of their skins.
Youthful zeal took over and I waged a personal war against South African fruit which only cancelled after Mandela asked us to lift sanctions
Who could have expected a man of this stature to survive years on Robin Island?
But he did and here we are. A happy free people making their livings in tourism. That's all we've come across so far but I really am aware of just how lucky I am to be actually here on hallowed soil.
All we've seen so far is beautiful.
Us old people now need a sleep and then off we go. Explore!


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Obesity.

We have arrived in Capetown and spent half an hour going through South African immigration. Not sure the process would actually keep out undesirables. But still. We've been done and can leave tomorrow.
I have been watching a sad story unfold for the last month.
There is a woman about 30 years old who is now unable to walk without help. Every morning she gets herself into a lounger, and sleeps for an hour. Her husband then appears with a huge plate of food. He wakes her and watches her eat with apparent pleasure.
He does everything for her, helps her up and down, puts on her socks and other clothes, wipes her face and then tucks her back down to sleep. Another hour passes and he brings her another huge plate of food. The whole thing is repeated throughout the day.
It is so sad.. Having been on board for a month I am aware that her girth has increased a lot. She will go home much fatter than when she arrived. I would have liked to talk to her. Maybe there is a medical condition, maybe a need to fulfill. I have failed to engage her in conversation She just goes to sleep My dread is that the husband is a feeder and that she's doing it for him. His delight when she eats is apparent.
I pray they are also leaving the ship tomorrow. If she stays on for another month she will need a wheel chair to get her off.

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Talent night

Oh dear. The grand talent night concert has just occurred. We had to go because the famous tenor on our table had got us seats on the front row
This served us right! We had to sit through it all. There was no chance of slipping away from the back.
They were all talented but some were living proof that once you need a hearing aid, a wheel chair or are only six years old you might be better not competing.
One rather ancient old boy told several jokes! One contained a character called Sambo who lived in a jungle. We were all staggered. I hate the PC brigade most of the time but it had clearly never got through to the old boy!
Our famous bloke was good. He sang a song from "Phantom" and used the stage to good effect. But he had sung it better at the table when he wasn't overworking the voice.
The man who sang a Tom Lehrer ditty called "I hold your hand in mine dear" lost his audience because he failed to let them in on the joke that the hand was no longer attached. Only me and a guy from the next table got it!
There were many good things especially a wonderfully voiced woman who sang "Vie en rose" magnificently.
At the very end a callow young man was allowed on as an extra act. The audience voted with their feet, the equivalent of the hook ,a resounding thumbs down. Poor lad.
Some had to go to eat straight away. We have an hour and a half yet so we are going for a stiff drink. We have deserved it.

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Location:Test Rd,Southampton,United Kingdom

Talent night

Oh dear. The grand talent night concert has just occurred. We had to go because the famous tenor on our table had got us seats on the front row
This served us right! We had to sit through it all. There was no chance of slipping away from the back.
They were all talented but some were living proof that once you need a hearing aid, a wheel chair or are only six years old you might be better not competing.
Our famous bloke was good. He sang a song from "Phantom" and used the stage to good effect. But he had sung it better at the table when he wasn't overworking the voice.
The man who sang a Tom Lehrer ditty called "I hold your hand in mine dear" lost his audience because he failed to let them in on the joke that the hand was no longer attached. Only me and a guy from the next table got it!
There were good things especially a wonderfully voiced woman who sang "Vie en rose" magnificently.
At the very end a callow young man was allowed on as an extra act. The audience voted with their feet, the equivalent of the hook ,a resounding thumbs down. Poor lad.
Some had to go to eat straight away. We have an hour and a half yet so we are going for a stiff drink. We have deserved it.

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Last lap.

We are now on the last lap of our epic journey. We have today on the boat and tomorrow we land in Cape Town. On Friday we have an afternoon out but come back for dinner and bed before disembarking on Saturday. I think, it's all getting a bit hazy now and I don't suppose the tablets are helping. Once in Cape Town we then have a couple of nights in a hotel, we think, before flying home . We should be back on Tuesday, we think. If all this sounds vague it's because it is a bit vague....David made all the arrangements some time ago and he can't actually remember some of them. We are putting our trust in Cunard and the booking agent to get us to the right place at the right time.
Meanwhile back in the illusory land of plenty there are quizzes , talent contests, Dance offs, library books are being returned and last minute visits to the doctor are the order of the day.
We are all coughing , some more than others....the ship says it came on board in New York. Some say it was from the Queen Victoria, others naturally disagree. Where it came from doesn't actually matter because the fact is that almost everyone on board has got it to some degree.
A thousand of us are leaving the ship soon to be replaced by another thousand Aussies. Has anyone told them?


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On the last lap.

We are now two hours behind the UK. Until yesterday I had assumed this to be some of the problem of our lassitude. It was latitude versus lassitude. However that soon changed when David announced that he was ill. Now my husband never admits to illness. He is an intrepid soul who cuts straight across the manflu cult. He has never had a major illness in his life and never even had a day off work so I had to take this announcement seriously.
Off we went to the doctors. I was on a follow up and he was there for the first time. The doctor saw us together. We have bronchitis. The prescription was frightening. Painkillers, inhaler for me, steroids for us both and anti biotics. Blimey! We skipped our supper date and had room service. We also cracked open one of the bottles of champagne we found in our room on the first day.
We went to bed early and feel much better this morning. We are sitting on deck gazing out to sea. We arrive in South Africa on Friday. I think we fly home on Monday. So we have a few days to recover in!
I have also been told how many people are praying for us so this is a wonderful gift. Thank you all.


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Enjoying is tiring.

We have been rising later this week. Moving on the hour several times in a week plays havoc with the inner clock.
I had an amazing e mail this morning from someone wanting news of the Rolt family. It is amazing that a child who lived next door to David when he was a small boy is still asking for news of the family.
Unfortunately many of the people she asked about are dead so it wasn't a very cheery reply.
By the same batch of post was an email from Davids son about his trip to the Caribbean. Weird that at one point we were in the same vicinity.
Tonight we are eating out. This does not mean crossing the sea to a new ocean but going to a rather exclusive restaurant where fine dining is an art form!
I brought on the iPad the entire series of Studio 60. It's written by Aaron Sorkin who wrote West Wing. I've watched one a day and am sorry to have reached the end. It was tremendous and I shall start again from the beginning!
Enjoying yourself is tiring. And we are both still coughing!



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