Convention

About this time of year we host a convention. I regret I do not have any photographs to prove the point - cameras are too ubiquitous nowadays and anyway it is a bit naff to take photos in a meeting. To say that many people attend from all over the world is a bit of an overstatement - in fact numbers have decreased over the years and the few who now come are mostly from Ireland, the UK and the USA. The reason that numbers have decreased is, frankly, because not many people want to sit through such long meetings and be offended by the sort of stuff that is preached, even though we do offer most excellent hospitality in between. And, frankly, it is better that way, better that fewer people come and that the few people that do come come presumably because they really do want to hear this stuff. Although one cannot help wondering if maybe the reason they come is that they feel they ought to, a kind of self-flagellation.

This forum is hardly the right place to discuss what is preached and in any case I am hardly the right person to present it in a coherent way - the meetings are open to the public and anyone that interested can attend next year.  Suffice it to say that the the underlying desire is to find out the truth and thus to stand a chance of being set free.

Pity the dog, though - no exercise at all yesterday but I will endeavour to take her out today.

Cold drizzle

9.5 miles in cold drizzle with Meg and no shoes, topped with a hot shower, a cup of tea and a packet of King cheese'n'onion crisps!

Wonder

This is me wondering about something. I wonder what I was wondering about? Wonder is like that - it is gorgeously imprecise and incomplete. It always leaves the most important part to your imagination (a bit like my mother's stories when, in the middle of telling, she would go to the kitchen to get the desert and come back and all would be asking "and?" and she would say "and what?" and not be able to remember what she had been relating).

The slogan "The wonder of Woolworths" does not do justice to the word for me - except that it was in Woolworths that I was introduced to electricity. My father bought me a 4.5V battery, lampholder, a flashlight bulb, some hook-up wire and a switch, and the rest is history.

Here I am designing something way back before I
had discovered the ruler: I wonder what it was?

My glockenspiel and deep in thought
in the front room at 16 Broad Street 

I can wonder all manner of things in a sand creation,
and certainly have not yet grown out of doing so.

My favourite self portrait

I like stories, films, photographs, paintings that have an element of wonder in them.  It encourages you imagine more than is stated, so you get more for your money.  Some people say imagination is bad and quote the likes of Eze 8:12 but I say it is the precursor to creation. How can one be creative without first holding the thing in one's imagination?

Children's literature abounds in wonder. A good example is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's  The Little Prince. Long before the internet we used to take books out of the library to read to our children and so we chanced upon this book. Immediately I knew this was no ordinary children's book and I loved it, loved the pictures, loved the little prince himself. The joy is that so much is left out of the story to wonder at.

Fading light at Crackington Haven

Here is a picture I took long ago on my Agfamatic 200 of Crackington Haven that has a bit of wonder in it. One of those golden moments captured in film.

And here are a couple of pictures of below of wonder embodied.  The first is my nephew having discovered a drum set. The second is my grandson with his beloved dinosaurs. I might add that both of them are much older now. What were they thinking?

The term "wonder" can also mean "in awe", but it is really the same thing. We stand in awe because we do not fully understand something.  And who completely understands anything? We all totter through life with an amazing lack of understanding of who we are, where we came from, what is the point of it all and, most of all, of what will happen tomorrow. To quote "It's a wonderful world"!

Anxiety is another emotion fueled by lack of knowledge of the future. Anxiety ties knots in my stomach. Of course I know in theory that I should "have no anxiety about anything but with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let my requests be known to God" but you try telling my stomach that.

In contrast, the wonder of "wonder" is that it is based in security. Rather than worrying that we do know what will happen we rather revel in it, we joyfully allow our mind to explore all the possibilities. This we are very used to doing when reading a good novel or watching a movie knowing that the good guy will come out tops. It is not so easy in reality simply because we have not yet been fully convinced that we are safe.


O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in hell, you are there!  If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.

Aunty Mary

The story of my Aunty Mary is a sad one.

She was my father's only living sibling. In her parents' eyes she was second-class compared with the older, blue eye'd Ted. When the war started she wanted to join the land army, but her parents said she should be a nanny and so a nanny she became even though she didn't particularly like children. She fell in love with a dutch man who promptly got killed in the war and she never got over that loss. Apart from times when she lived in as a nanny, she lived with her parents and, after her father died, ended up nursing her mother through neglected breast cancer to her death. It seems that, all through her life, she thought that other people made decisions for her or circumstances dictated her actions at variance with her own desires and she allowed this to make her bitter.

The top picture is the earliest I have of Mary, as a bridesmaid at my parents wedding.  In the next picture, taken at Longleat, she is the one looking sideways at my mum, my mum being the one holding onto the good-looking chap in the front.

She was at one time a heavy smoker but successfully gave it up - I remember tales of how she gorged on chocolate to thwart the withdrawal.

After her nanny years she tried various low grade jobs (I remember being taken to a Rubbolite factory where her job was to file off molding flash, and gratefully taking away seconds in various colours), but she could never hold a job down for more than a few months. I was too young at the time to ask exactly why she so often got sacked, but I imagine it was because she was so hard to work with. It was not that she was not willing to help: just that she had to do it her way. This used to drive my mother to distraction when they came to stay at 16 Broad Street. There is truth in the adage that "if you want a job done properly, do it yourself".

Mind you, there were some things she excelled in. She was very capable at flower arranging and, I think, at gardening generally.

Us children have vibrant memories of her intolerance of noise or vibration - like being snapped at for merely allowing one's shoe to touch a leg of the chair she was sitting on in church. Those were the days when children were to be seen and not heard!

In the back garden at 10 Weir Gardens

It wasn't all bad, though. I think Mary took this picture, and I think it was she who found the set of wheels at my request. Giving me a set of wheels to make a go-cart was on a par with giving a modern child an i-Pad.

My own children have similar memories of when Mary would visit us in Ireland, though I think that they were more able to dismiss Mary's antics for what they were than we were able.

She would bring presents for our children and, just the same as she did with us when we were children, she would often choose totally unsuitable things.  Like a join-the-dots book for a 15 year old. These presents would be selected from a vast stock she had acquired when, long ago, she worked for Woolworths. On one occasion I remember opening a present to find a box on which the manufacturer had boldly claimed "3 men's handkerchiefs" of which she had crossed out the "3" and written beside it "2".

I took this picture on my first camera. Mary is in blue and Nana is adoring, I suppose, my son Jonathan, and the location is the front room at 16 Broad Street. Behind Mary you can see the map of Narnia I drew, which picture has become a family icon. I hate knitted dresses.

Ginty died suddenly of a heart attack. In contrast Nana suffered from cancer for many years. Nana's death must have been a great anticlimax for Mary after she had given all those last years to caring for her and then - nothing. She remained at 10 Weir Gardens until she was no longer able to look after herself.

Mary played organ at the Grange Free Church and insisted that I try my hand

Mary tended the garden outside the 'Grange church'

We occasionally visited Mary during this time. On the occasion of the pictures above she took us to see the church she had taken possession of. She could be very possessive of things and people. So at the time this was "her" church and "her" organ and I had to play it. I am not sure what Jonathan and Chris made of it (I regret I am not much of an organist).

Mary greeting me with bags of useful things

Mary liked to collect "useful things" and would present me with bags of same whenever I visited. In her eyes, moulded by her upbringing, men needed such things and could work wonders with them. She was just a woman and would never understand how. The bags contained rusty nuts and bolts, bent bits of metal, and such like: mostly picked up off the street. The vast majority went straight in the bin after I left Mary, and I am not one for throwing anything away that might possibly have some future use.

The contents of Ginty's workshop (a garden shed made by my father) were sacrosanct, especially his tools, although towards the end she weakened and allowed me to take some of his stuff as I have recollected elsewhere.

10 Weir Gardens

At Thorpe Esplanade, Southend-on-Sea, 
possibly on an outing  from the nursing home

As time went on 10 Weir Gardens went from bad to worse. When our parents died we children agreed to spend some of our inheritance to replace the roof and to have the piano overhauled. The latter because Mary has always loved music so we figured she would enjoy "tinkling the ivories" in her dotage. But from that time on she never once even touched the piano. She was ruled by horribly restrictive laws entirely of her own making.

On one occasion my older son and I manfully agreed to do a makeover in her kitchen. We spend a week and did a very passable job (sorry, no photographs were taken). She really did appreciate this at the time. Amazingly we even ate from her "table" (eating at 10 Weir Gardens was always somewhat hazardous, but verged on being dangerous towards the end).  The sleeping arrangements were more akin to camping than accommodation and there were no washing facilities apart from a bowl of water and a cold tap, so we took off to the local swimming pool at the end of each day for a shower (and a swim).

But the new kitchen soon deteriorated. Mary apparently did not believe in washing up, or cleaning the cooker or, indeed, anything else. She would buy things impulsively and then not know what to do with them, and never threw anything away, so the house gradually became a refuse bin.  Before people started noticing and there came a time when she had to be admitted to a nursing home.

My last picture of Mary, taken in the nursing home

Once it was clear that Mary would never return to 10 Weir Gardens my older sister and I had the job of clearing it out and disposing of anything of any value.  Towards the end Mary lived in the kitchen and slept I know not where. All other rooms were dumping grounds, so much so that in some rooms we had to use shovels to remove well over a foot deep of rotting papers and material. Let's hope somebody keeps me in check in my later life and prevents anything similar happening!

The one-time sacrosanct music room:
the unplayed piano is under wraps on the left

'Miss Knight's room' 
Mary's former bedroom, stuff up to 2ft deep in places

Another view of 'Miss Knight's room'

The living room.

The living room seemed so small when filled up with junk like this. To think that in better times my parents, sisters and I, Nana, Ginty and Mary would have sat around the table to eat Christmas dinner in this room. With two armchairs either side of the fireplace you can see. Ginty's chair on the left (no-one else sat there: he had a gadget that clipped to the right arm of the chair on which could be placed his ginormous mug of tea and a small plate). There were two polished brass shells from WW1 on the fireplace one about 1" diameter, the other about 2". They used to tell me that at least one of them was live. And father Clovis. Clovis was a small pottery figure of a monk. There was a real Clovis but what the connection I know not...

Clotted cream

Clotted cream tea, courtesy Imen

I think I may have mentioned that a high point of my childhood was the annual holiday, and that our favourite venue was Cornwall. Clotted cream is particularly associated with the West Country of England but it is my theory that it is the richest in Cornwall. There was an unassuming upstairs restaurant in Padstow that we frequented that served a variety of deserts all accompanied by the magic substance.

Commercial jam tarts

One of these deserts consisted of a couple of commercial jam tarts, the sort that Mr Kipling makes so exceedingly well, with a very generous glob. Can you believe that such simple fare could be so heavenly?

I used to save my pocket money before the holiday and would eek it out to include at least one clotted cream ice cream per day. I am not talking about the inferior stuff churned out by the likes of Mr Walls. It has to be made locally to be good. Most of the world lives in ignorance or deception - take for instance this ridiculous quote "Give a generous dollop of this delicious cream on pies, cakes, or biscuits for a luscious taste that's a cross between ice cream and whipped cream, a traditional English favorite!"

The most beautiful girl in the world

You may have wondered how I could take so much space talking about running barefoot or describing my childhood and not mention the person who I have spent the most time with. But I never intended that this blog should apportion space proportional to the importance of things in my life. That would be too difficult.

The story (heavily edited for the purposes of this blog) goes something like this.

There was only one girl I thought I really liked before I met Alison, but she didn't have any feelings for me and broke my heart by going with one of my peers. I figured that this idea of a man meeting his ideal partner and that person actually liking him was statistically very improbable and so, more so that with any other decision in my life, I decided that getting me hooked was something God must do. This resolved I figured I would then make it as hard as possible for Him to prove that it wasn't by my efforts.

My college class, unbeknown to me, had decided that I was the least likely of them all to get married. And so, to cut a long story short, I met the most beautiful girl in the world and I got married before any of them. Somewhere in that process there was a white Triumph Spitfire, an invitation to tea denied and a pair of bicycle clips.

Shoes are like hats

Is it wrong not to wear shoes?

Only about 75 years ago it was about as socially unacceptable for a man to go out without a hat as it is now to go out without shoes on. I remember reading Rees Howells Intercessor and being amazed at how hard it was for Rees to even contemplate going to an important engagement without his hat. Having run barefoot for over a year now the natural progression might be to do away with shoes altogether and join the barefoot living community. But I find a strong feeling within me that I would cause offence by doing so. Perhaps Isaiah had a hard time going around barefoot too, and naked. Such is fashion.

Barefoot Hollywood

I am sorry for those of you who are not interested in barefoot running.  I include these posts because I figure someone somewhere might need the same encouragement that I did when I first "discovered" barefoot running.

Humphrystown to Hollywood via Tulfarris, courtesy Google Earth

I set out intending to repeat yesterday's 5 mile lake-shore run but at the entrance to Tulfarris was turned back because they are felling trees further along that road. This sort of forced my hand to go further. Tackling cold, muddy forest tracks is harder to countenance earlier in a run* so I followed the road to Hollywood and then returned via the forest. It is amazing what difference 5 degC makes. Muddy patches where I sank to my ankles were still cold, but not bitterly so as yesterday morning. Horses have been using these tracks - they churn up the paths and the end result is not at all kind to barefoot runners. This may be because horses wear shoes.

The total distance was 9.1 miles, according to Google Earth on which I traced the route you see in my picture. Rather hard on the feet.

NOTE * I have some principles on which I operate. They are purely personal: I have no wish to inflict them on anyone else. The one to which I refer here is to force a later decision by burning bridges, like running along a road to Hollywood from where the shortest distance back home is via a muddy and wet forest track. This principle is useful to get oneself to the dentist or to do any other distasteful task. It depends on a second principle namely to minimise expenditure, thus having started to drive to Naas it would violate the second principle to turn back without getting to the dentist. You already know my principle of outings (this includes cycling, running, or a car journey) in which one should try not to retrace one's path. Just to clear up any misunderstanding, the first principle I mentioned would seem to violate that of deferred gratification. I am not at all sure about that middle class axiom of deferred gratification. Having been brought up what I would label "lower middle class" I used to always leave the things I liked best on my plate till last. The problem with this principle is that you might not have room after force-feeding oneself piles of beetroot, curly kale, broad beans and such like, and as a result defeat the very purpose. So sometimes it might be better (like a child) to eat the things you really enjoy first. This should not be confused with another principle in which, when I am planning and executing a project, I generally tackle the most difficult part first. Having succeeded, it is, of course, all down hill from there.

Barefoot in frost

This is my first totally barefoot winter. Last winter I was beginning to experiment so carried my trainers with me. This winter I had hoped to be able to say that wearing or carrying shoes was for the weak...

With the dark mornings and now, no thanks to daylight saving, dark evenings I have moved my mid-week runs to lunch time. At the weekend I can choose my time more freely but today I wanted to free up time to fit an extractor fan and wall heater in my daughter's house so I decided to run before breakfast.

I set off at 07:30 and choose my 5 mile lake-shore course. The air temperature was hovering around freezing point, but there had been a fairly sharp frost in the night. The first 100 yards across our frost-covered lawn was painful enough, from there it got worse. It seems as if I was running on feet unaccustomed to barefoot running. Every stone on the road was sharp. Usually the lake-shore is sweet relief from stone-dressed asphalt but this morning the sun had not risen above the mountains so it was frosty. Some of the sand was soft but other areas were frozen so it was very hard on the feet.

And yet they say that "You can’t run barefoot in the snow" is a myth. I wonder if my feet will adapt in time? How long does evolution take?

I would be interested in comments and advice from other barefoot runners...