Myth or Reality

I have sometimes remarked how the shape of my Christian faith might have been very different had it not been from the works of C. S. Lewis. He in turn spoke of George Macdonald as his master saying that he fancied he had never written a book in which he did not quote from him. 

My father introduced me to Narnia. He was so enthused with the books that he wrote Bible cross references in the margins. I’ve not seen anyone else go to such lengths. But I can vividly remember the day he told me that Lewis had died. Lewis was someone who spoke a language I could understand.

It was after I left home for college that I chanced upon a copy of Till We Have Faces subtitled A Myth Retold in an Oxford bookshop. I hadn't known of its existence before so it was an Oh Joy! moment. 

Lewis called it "far and away my best book" and I agree. Because I identify with the protagonist Orual in all her struggles and I want to share her final redemption. In this blog I have already made several references to it: I make no apology for making another.

The myth in question is of Cupid and Psyche as told in Book 4 of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius (aka The Golden Ass) being the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety.

To jump in half way through the myth, Aphrodite (aka Venus) gives Psyche barrels of grains, barley, wheat, beans, and poppy seeds mixed together, and orders her to have them sorted by evening. Psyche breaks down in despair, but an ant takes pity, instructing her colony to help sort the grain. Aphrodite, surprised and enraged to see that the task had been completed, gives Psyche a new task: to approach a pack of rams known for being violent and shear their golden fleece to bring back to the goddess. Rather than be killed by these rams, Psyche plans on drowning herself in the river, but again she is saved. Aphrodite then sets a third impossible task: gather the black waters from the River Styx in a crystal cup the goddess had given her. But again she is saved. For her fourth and final task, Psyche is given a golden box and ordered to travel to the Underworld to retrieve a bit of beauty possessed by Persephone, goddess of spring, and queen of the Underworld. Psyche again decides to take her own life, but at the last moment she is once again saved. Finally the marriage between Psyche and Eros takes place and the rest, as they say, is history.

Tolkien argued that ancient myths were the best way of conveying truths which would otherwise be inexpressible. The same could be said of fairy stories, which is why stories like the Narnia chronicles or the Curdie books by MacDonald are so effective. Musicians claim similarly that music can express unspeakable emotions.

I read on a forum on Reddit: I think what it [the book Till we have Faces] means is that what we say we believe is just a thin, distorted, and in some cases even completely wrong picture of what we really believe in our hearts. Instead, what we actually believe drives us and changes us, so that life itself draws it from our hearts to the surface, and it's only after our lives - after we have stopped both talking and doing - that we can stand before God and truthfully proclaim who we are. 

What people see when they look at us is often at odds with what we actually are or believe, as epitomised in Lewis Carroll’s parody:

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,

    "And your hair has become very white;

And yet you incessantly stand on your head—

    Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,

    "I feared it might injure the brain;

But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,

    Why, I do it again and again."

In Till we have Faces Orual says: Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when the Fox was teaching me to write in Greek he would say, "Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words." A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the centre of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces? 

What do you see when you look at your comrade? Will you invest the energy and time required to tease reality out of him or her? And if you did, would you be horrified or would you fall in love? For the basis for true phileo love (friendship) can often be a "What? You too?"

Trauma (e.g. in war-time or disease), or even plain camaraderie over a long enough period, can become the catalyst to break open our hearts. Perhaps that is why God allows suffering to be so much a part of our human experience - because it shapes our innermost being.

When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the centre of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces? 

Daylight saving

Which is easier?  To change the setting of every clock on planet earth or to change human habits?

Like most countries in Europe, Ireland observes Daylight Saving Time (DST), with the clock shifting forward one hour at the end of March and one hour backward at the end of October.  The USA has a similar scheme but uses different dates. The situation is even more confusing in Australia where only some states (the green ones in the map) adopt DST.

Living in a community we have rather more clocks than an average house: I've just adjusted 13 of our more public clocks, and one subsequently fell off its wall fixing and broke its glass - duh...

The EU proposed to abolish the time change in September 2018 following a public consultation, during which, 4.6 million European citizens called for the practice to be brought to an end, however its usage still persists.

George Hudson (who has a lot to answer for) was the first to propose modern DST in 1895 with Germany being the first to implement it on May 1, 1916, in the hopes that it would save energy during World War I. Whether it did is open to question but in any case the system has persisted since then.

If indeed it is better to have lighter winter mornings (at the expense of darker evenings) why change the clock? Whatever is wrong with an institution deciding to shift its starting and ending times by an hour to achieve the same end? 

Having just informed my Physics class that two underlying laws pervade humanity:

(1) there's no such thing as a free lunch, aka you won't get something for nothing, and

(2) cause must precede its effect (as parodied in Alice through the looking glass) aka the "arrow of time".

The latter observes that time moves only in one direction, and DST violates this principle. I wonder what would have happened if I had set a repeating alarm on my smart phone for 01:55 hours last night?  I suppose it would have rung at 01:55 and then again, two hours later, at 01:55. Which underlines the absurdity. If I had been sufficiently bothered I'd have tried it, but I preferred not to interrupt my beauty sleep. And had the switch been during daylight hours, would the sun have moved back?

DST was (and is) clearly a political agenda. No engineer, computer programmer or scientist in their right mind would propose anything so asinine or contrary to reason. We technical people get around it by adopting UTC for any serious investigation, but we cannot totally distance ourselves from DST because we have to live with the rest of humanity who appear to be more politically than technically minded. Hence my spending  half an hour or more adjusting 13 clocks and breaking one.

Having belaboured my point, I admit that there is a Biblical passage about time going backwards (and another about time standing still):

And Isaiah said, “This shall be the sign to you from the LORD, that the LORD will do the thing that he has promised: shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or go back ten steps?” And Hezekiah answered, “It is an easy thing for the shadow to lengthen ten steps. Rather let the shadow go back ten steps [or degrees KJV].” And Isaiah the prophet called to the LORD, and he brought the shadow back ten steps, by which it had gone down on the steps of Ahaz. (2Ki 20:9-11)

about which there has long been the rumour that NASA computer programmers proved that this event actually happened, now mostly debunked. I remember my father alluding to this - it was the sort of thing that would have tickled his interest. This link summarises the subject.

Angel

Some while ago I posted about an XY-plotter I made. In fact it had a Z dimension in that it could lift the pen off the paper. The X direction was a platen roller. The Y direction was the pen carriage travelling along a true steel rod which I had salvaged from somewhere, about 12mm diameter, mounted over and parallel to the platen. I wanted a key-way slot milled down the length of this rod, into which the pen carriage was keyed so that by turning the rod the pen would lift.

On discussing my plan with my father he arranged a visit to an "angel" who, if my memory serves me, lived at Ovington House. I think this man ran a 5" gauge (or thereabouts) railway in his grounds and was one of my father's business clients, but I cannot find any reference to the railway in Google. In any case he, who must have been an angel, led us into his workshop where he had a milling machine. After I had explained what I wanted and why, he set the machine up and, wonder of wonders, told me to work it. Meanwhile he turned down the end of a small bolt that would follow the key-way. After profusely thanking him, he asked me to show him the plotter when I had completed it. That action I never took, and I live to regret it.

According to Google, the "angel" was Harvey Hoare of Hoare's bank. Whether so or not I remember one anecdote - my father told me the man would take micro-naps during the day, sitting in his chair, during which he would be totally non-communicando but after a few minutes would wake and be fully attentive.

The aerial view below might be Ovington House and the outbuildings arranged in a triangle strike a small chord in my memory - we had to walk outside to get to his workshop. And there are extensive grounds which could have housed a miniature railway.

Ovington House

Young Theo here wanted bits of wood which I gladly supplied. I asked him what he was making - it was, I think, "something to fire corks". I too would have loved to see his completed article working. Not because I want to see some inferior childish construction, but because I'd love to further inspire Theo's creativity. Like my grandfather once did who watched my disappointing attempts to make things and took me aside and helped me make a small wooden box that actually had at least a suggestion of precision and purpose.

The moral? Be an angel - facilitate but never discourage a creator-in-the-making.

What does it take?

When there is unresolved disagreement with an otherwise respected colleague, when there is estrangement from a loved one, when there is imagined ostracisation, when one person believes that "God has said" and another opposes it - what does it take to reconcile them, to restore trust and relationship? When God seems distant and irrelevant, when strong prayers go unanswered for years, when pleas for God to reveal himself hit brazen heavens, what does it take to convince us
that truly He heals all our diseases? Although I will not give up asking.

In a post of many years previous I described my relationship with my father, he being of few but memorable words. I always respected him and many of my principles by which I live are founded on his input. But then I did this community thing, and he after my mother died did his thing, and we drifted apart. I in Northern Ireland with very little liberty to travel having given all for the common. He, having moved in and become part of another family in an arrangement that I may never comprehend but one in which he also had given all for another common. We met once. Somehow I had managed a trip to the UK. I knocked on this family's front door in Old Alresford. It was clear that I was not welcome but I forced my way in and was able to sit with my father for a little while. His love for me was evident although stifled and he gave me some money, but the whole episode was strangely surreal.  He died not long after and to my shame to this day I do not know the details of how and why. In his will he left me the contents of his workshop and I still treasure the little I was able to redeem from this. He had already given away the rest of his estate. What would it have taken to completely restore our relationship with him to what it was when I was a child?

What does it take, or what will it take, for those powerful words "Well done, good and faithful servant" to apply to me? To stand secure on that Rock? To know no shadow of doubt, to know the warmth of His presence, to know total shalom peace? What does it take for any man to say "my Lord and my God"?

Chocolate

Yesterday I overheard my wife extolling my self control at being able to open a bar of chocolate, eat a few squares, and then return it to the draw for another day. I hasten to add that my self control is not as good as she claimed.

I may have inherited the chocolate deal from my father. As a child I was amazed at how he could keep an easter egg unfinished until the next Easter. He had a special cupboard in his bedroom under the stairs leading to the loft - it was strictly out of bounds although I did manage to fleetingly see the interior a few times. His box of Meccano was kept here (I now have this relic) and, joy of joys, various tin-plate O-gauge locomotives and rolling stock. Was it here that he kept his cache of unconsumed chocolate?

My daughter (and oh-the-delight-of-my-eyes) gave me 10 small bars (the sort that used to cost 6d when I was a boy) of Irish Cadburys Dairy Milk (CDM) on my birthday - this was several years ago - and I am eating the last bar at the moment. Even way past its sell-by date it still tastes supreme. By "eating" I mean I had a few squares yesterday and the rest is awaiting a suitable opportunity in my bedside cabinet. You may wonder why all times are not suitable for eating chocolate. The reason is maybe because I live in community. If you bring chocolate to the communal lounge (some do, I even have myself on rare occasions) it sort of vanishes. You end up with maybe one square if you're lucky.  There again it seems antisocial to disappear to one's bedroom to consume the stuff without the-help-of-others. Such are the joys of community.

Without doubt Irish CDM is superior to the UK equivalent. My daughter in law recently arranged a blind taste test and I correctly identified the Irish one. At one time you could tell the difference by the colour of the foil wrapping, whether gold (Irish) or purple (UK), but with modern wrapping the only clue is the small print saying where the bar was manufactured. Cadburys online are cagey about any difference claiming the recipe is the same but the milk is local so could contribute a difference. And of course Cadburys has been taken over by Mondelez so who knows what effect that change has made on the product.

Here are two responses to my querying the subject with the manufacturer:

email received Jan 2016
The Irish business is expert in manufacturing Cadbury chocolate tablets, Flake, wafer and extruded chocolate products. Our range of Irish made products includes; 8-square Cadbury Dairy Milk, Turkish, Tiffin, Golden Crisp, Mint Crisp, Wholenut, Fruit & Nut, Caramello, as well as; Time Out, Snack Wafer, Moro, Flake, Flake 99, Twirl, Twirl Bites and Miniature Hero units. There are no plans to change any recipes or processes in Coolock.

email received Dec 2018
You can check which Cadbury products are made in Ireland by looking at the packaging for our products. Our packaging will include a batch code beside the best before date which begins with three letters. For example, our Coolock Factory products begin with OCO. I hope this information helps and if you have any further questions please do contact us again.

Neither of which says anything about the special taste of the Irish product.

At the "duty-free" shopping area at Dublin airport you can purchase CDM in various sized bars but recently I was unable to find a single bar made in Ireland. I queried this with one of the store keepers suggesting that surely at Dublin airport of all places they would want to promote the local product - the sales person looked at me with incomprehension and as though I were mad. And here in the community folk at least know about my fetish but as far as I know no one shares my views. Which is all very strange.

But then they do not share my views on Lyles Golden Syrup or Evaporated Milk.

Aunty Elsie

Stock photo of Crantock beach, Pentire head beyond the Gannel

Aunty Elsie lived in Crantock and this alone was sufficient qualification.  But she also had a small shop in which was, oh joy, a loom and a spinning wheel and she actually spun and dyed her own wool and wove it into cloth to make garments and such like. And she fed us (cream teas?) and walked us to the beach, explained the dangers of the River Gannel. And she actually liked us children!
What more could we want of an aunt? And yet she was actually only a friend of our Nana and thus not our aunt at all.

Using a treadle fret saw (which I now have) like the one above my father used to cut out plywood handles to complete the hand woven shopping bags Elsie sold in her shop.

In this photo she is garbed in orange on the steps in her front garden holding my baby sister Heather, my mother on her left, Margaret on her right.

Here we are on Crantock beach, Elsie on the left. No Heather so perhaps this photo predates her. I think the dog is Chum. I am of course at my favourite occupation.

Forever Newquay and Crantock will remain dear in my memories on account of Aunty Elsie and all she stood for. I will never forget how dangerous the Gannel is. Forever I will long to return to Cornwall, a place worthy of dreams, a place of idyllic happiness, contentment, of clotted cream and scones, ice cream locally made with clotted cream and in a zillion different flavours, real Cornish pasties freshly baked from Rock, long sandy beaches, rock pools...

To add to the magic of the place there was also the mystery behind a carving on a low-tide cave which my sister remembers visiting but I do not - perhaps it was considered too dangerous at the tender age I was back then?

Mar not my face but let me be,

Secure in this lone cavern by the sea,

Let the wild waves around me roar,

Kissing my lips for evermore.

I am hoping my sister(s) will contribute to this page to fill in any blanks in my memory...

On the fringe - or - never able to arrive at the truth

It is a universal truth - though largely ignored by some die-hard archaeologists - that there is no known culture in the world without religious beliefs (Terence Meaden, Archaeologist, Oxon). An interesting observation - some would say it is because there is a "God shaped hole" in everyone.

I have a rich Christian heritage but more to the point where am I now? Like in "But whom do you say that I am?".

I remember cringing when someone we used to visit would ask me "and what has God being doing in your life?" - because I could never think that there was anything in particular.

My earliest church memories were of Alresford Congregational church. Later we went by train to Winchester Baptist Church where I, tacet, would sometimes sit beside my father on the polished organ bench. His own folk were at various times nonconformist evangelical, Baptist and Peculiar and his father was at one time a reverend.

Winchester Baptist Church

Speaking of which, the ‘The Peculiar People’ were initially quite a fiery bunch but, doubtless after a generation, their zeal diminished. They later changed their name to the ‘Union of Evangelical Churches’ and their web site now says "divine healing does not now have such prominence..." If folk really were healed once, this seems a strange statement to make. Like, we don't want any of this getting better stuff.

My parents then joined NFC from whence stem most of my childhood church memories. Here I went to Sunday School and later the Adventurer's Club, was baptised, and first spoke (briefly and timidly) in public. Open Brethren based, I am thankful for the good knowledge of the Bible that NFC instilled in me, but I must have been suitably indoctrinated because, when I left home for college, I naively considered all other churches inferior and probably heretical and was surprised when I discovered committed Christians from other persuasions. In my final year I agreed to become the OICCU "Rep" for my college and, under considerable duress, was obliged to sign a statement of doctrine. It wasn't that I had a problem with anything there but I disagreed strongly (and still do) with the need to sign.

Whilst in Oxford I tried various church flavours including the James Street brethren assembly (now re-branded "evangelical") - the folk there were very friendly but I didn't fit in. Plain contrary to my upbringing I ended up most at home in the reasonably high Anglican college chapel - because the chaplain cared about my well being, because it was local and because I found I could worship God there. Despite the occasional smells and bells.

On finding my feet in my first job I started to attend CBC where I met and married Ali, and when we both wanted to be involved in young people's work we first had to become church members which implied signing up to their doctrine, which I once again did under much duress.

Both Ali and I wanted more than CBC appeared to offer and thus we met together with like-minded folk of similar age. One year the group had a holiday-cum-conference hosted by a Christian community in Eastleigh and this was our first introduction to communal living and The Move.

You can Google The Move and its founding leader Sam Fife and you'll find a lot of nonsense as well as some truth. And sure there was some nonsense, doubtless because of People. We had our share of this nonsense but thankfully nothing serious - because we were on the fringe.  The Wikipedia link is rather dated and things have changed, mellowed - a bit like the Peculiar People I wonder?

That Sam Fife (who I never met) was a "one man ministry", or at least the dominant leader, did raise warning bells in me but, hang it all, wasn't Jesus also a "one man ministry"? The thing is, some of what Fife preached his followers now don't go along with - at least they no longer emphasise - like "people of God we are not going to die" and the "wilderness message". If those radical areas that so intrigued his followers are now mellowed, do we revert to being plain evangelicals?

Probably not - Ali's parents were, for a time, Exclusive Brethren. When they left, not being able to stomach some of the more radical and intrusive teachings, her father could never feel at home in any other church flavour, none of which had the same sense of family and depth of conservative doctrine, so ended up without christian fellowship for the rest of his life.  I think I might have done similarly.

Seen in Texas 3 days ago

A recent guest on the Ryan Tubridy Show on RTE-radio-1 told how, when he was about six, he saw an angel standing beside his bed.  He hadn't told anyone else for years but much later his younger brother (who had shared the bedroom and would have been less than two at the time) asked him if he remembered the angel. So did that really happen?

I once saw an angel. I was a child sitting up in my bed at home. The angel was standing on top of a chimney stack on a building opposite my bedroom window: much taller than a human, with wings and shining white. Certainly not a cloud formation! But it might have been a dream - I cannot remember clearly: did that really happen?

My Aunt Mary claimed she had seen angels. She claimed all manner of things, mind you, but it would be wrong to discredit her experiences just for that reason.

If we cannot confirm whether recent extraordinary things like these really happened, what chance have we of confirming stories about a man who lived 2,000 years ago?  Most historians concede that the man Jesus existed - but they get woolly about the miracles. Did they really happen?  On the other hand why would anyone writing a Gospel account chose to blatantly lie?

Along with many others, I have a burden for a child with leukaemia and have earnestly prayed for his complete healing. His father is a Methodist minister and he also is praying for total healing: I would interpret this as "faith". But whilst there has been good medical progress, currently there has been a relapse. I am at least encouraged when I read "See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven". It's not the end of the story, of course, but I had hoped... But maybe I am missing something, maybe his being healed now would spoil some vast eternal plan?

We humans are rum creatures. We think we know so much and yet we know so little. Our understanding of science, when descriptive and thus concerning things we can measure now, is all very well. But when it becomes inferential, concerning things long ago or yet to come or far, far away or far too small, who knows whether we have it right? I sometimes wonder whether, if you look hard enough with a preconceived dogma, nature will oblige. Thus the double slit experiment which could be thought to answer to two apparently contradictory theories.

There's people who genuinely think the earth is flat. Or this guy who goes along with the electric sun hypothesis and writes:

Yet, here is an incredible thing. Even though the theories of Newton, Einstein, and Twentieth Century astronomy are blown to pieces on almost a daily basis by what is actually out there, yet modern man has refused absolutely to let go of those dis-proven ideas... And so to explain how "gravity" can do all these wondrous things, the mathematicians have pulled out of their hats such unprovable bits of nonsense as "dark matter," and "black holes," and "string theory," and "nuclear fusion," and so on. None of these fantastical ideas ever find their way into a practical laboratory because all engineers know they are complete fabrications. Governments have spent untold billions of dollars to duplicate "nuclear fusion" on earth to complete and continuing failure. Why? Because there is no such thing. That's why it takes government money to build the huge "super colliders." No private business would waste a penny on such nonsense. So, let's look at astronomy as it really is. The universe is electrical. The sun is a large solid ball of rock that sustains a vast and continual electrical arc lamp discharge above its surface exactly like the electrical arc used by welders. That electrical arc is fed by huge currents of electricity that flow down the arms of the Milky Way to its center.

His position is gently ameliorated here but, honestly, with things we can, at best, hardly detect, who can say whether our theories are correct?

In our early community years we were already convinced about home schooling our kids. We listened to a CLA teaching about legal cases where the US child protection authorities took kids from their parents and, on their advice, we decided to eschew child benefit to cut one possible hold the government might have on our kids. Years later I think of all that cash we didn't get and see all the young parents here taking child benefit without a thought. And yet I read the other day Norway's hidden scandal - so were we so stupid? I certainly have no regrets about home schooling. Our four children have not grown up with carbon copies of their parents strange beliefs as some think home schooled kids will, but each are now making their own choice as to how they should live and what they should belief, as is right and proper. And I am proud of them.

I like to think that I am searching for truth (though probably not nearly hard enough as in strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able).  But I am allergic to religious or hypocritical sort of "truth". Like in the parable of the leaven in all three measures of flour: I suppose the Kingdom of God must attract error.

In searching for truth I find myself coming back, again and again, to the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus. I try to read them without the preconceptions I grew up with, and I find a very human man with emotions and a sense of humour, who enjoys a good meal, who gets tired and thirsty after a long journey. Here I might add (though the accounts leave it out) that doubtless his body sweated and needed washing, that he had to go to the loo, cut his finger nails, and all the basic stuff we experience but don't generally advertise. But in this human frame he did only what he understood his Heavenly Father wanted, and thus he wrought amazing miracles, and he was crucified and died "to make us good".  And I get goose-bumps when I sing:

...Risen with healing in his wings 

Mild he lays his glory by, 

Born that man no more may die: 

Born to raise the son of earth, 

Born to give them second birth...
[Charles Wesley]

and

There is a green hill far away,

Without a city wall,

Where the dear Lord was crucified,

Who died to save us all

We may not know, we cannot tell,

What pains He had to bear;

But we believe it was for us

He hung and suffered there.

He died that we might be forgiven,

He died to make us good,

That we might go at last to heaven,

Saved by His precious blood.

There was no other good enough

To pay the price of sin;

He only could unlock the gate

Of heaven and let us in.

O dearly, dearly has He loved,

And we must love Him, too,

And trust in His redeeming blood,

And try His works to do.
[Cecil Frances Alexander]

Interestingly Cecil Frances Alexander, née Humphreys, second daughter of the late Major John Humphreys, Miltown House, co. Tyrone, Ireland, b. 1823, also author of All things bright and beautiful... The purple-headed mountain, the river running by might well have lived at or at least been associated with Humpreystown House, in which case those purple headed mountains are the ones we see across the lake at this time of the year, and the river might be the Liffey or Kings River.

Maybe

May has been late this year, maybe, but has come with a vengeance this last week or so of idyllic weather. May blossom always reminds me of my father: his birthday was in May and each year it was a race to see whether that or May blossom would come first.

Yesterday morning I took my first, fleeting swim in the L. To do this and get back in time to take breakfast in solitude requires getting up earlier than usual, although even so at this time of the year the sun is up before me. Those that miss this time of the day miss the best part of the day IMHO, but then it is best partly because They miss it!

Early morning swim

I like this picture

Sci-Fi stories about time travel are often unsatisfactory and yet the concept is curiously attractive. But we can sort of time travel back by looking at photographs.

I like this picture - it brings back memories of posing for it whilst feeling the warmth of the dog beside me and the roughness of the bricks under my legs, and anyway it is a great photo - does that make me a narcissist?

Sadly the colours have faded - I was in fact wearing a light blue jumper and the sky behind was largely blue. I've tried adjusting the colours but cannot get it quite right.

The location was our "top garden", the one with the swimming pool (to the right) and my workshop (on the left).

I use this picture as my avatar for various computer apps so I get to see it daily. And sometimes as I look at it and dwell on times past I remember that my father, behind the camera, was also looking and it makes me wonder - and this makes my heart lurch - how much did I disappoint him in later life? Doubtless he appreciated my company in the railway room, the things I used to invent, my success at Oxford and getting a job for the BBC, my falling in love and marrying Ali. But then more and more of my time and devotion was spent on church things and with my own family and, when my mother died, he began to spend more time at the W's and for both these reasons we got to be with each other less and less.

If I could live my life over again many things I would not change - but I like to think this I would change - to spend more time and talk more with both my parents. To be an encouragement to them particularly in their later years.

Common return

I have mentioned that my father had an attic full of OO-gauge railway and that this was my favourite place to be of a Sunday afternoon. The track was divided into sections, each section being powered via a switch on the control panel and thus from the speed-controller associated with that panel. There were three panels altogether for up line, down line and goods. I divided my circuit into a number of sections and added signalling and automatic changeover between two speed-controllers allowing me to run two trains independently on my railway circuit.  All this has been discussed elsewhere. The point in question is that all these electrical circuits had a common return. Some call this "ground" or "earth" - all the same idea. All potentials (fancy name for voltages) are measured with respect to this and, for convenience, the voltage of the common return is generally called zero.

Having a common return means that each section needed only a single wire to power it - the power returns via the common return. The idea is based upon the scientific fact that all points on a conductor at at the same potential. All straightforward stuff.

So when, in my growing up, I took notice of telegraph wires like in the picture and my father told me that each telephone required two wires, I could not understand why they didn't use a common return and thus almost halve the amount of copper required. And I think my father could not give a satisfactory reason.

It is, of course, because my "scientific fact" is only true if no current flows.  It would be true even then if the resistance of the conductor could be ignored - but only if the current was not changing, because a conductor has inductance and capacitance as well as resistance.  I could wax eloquent and try to explain these terms but this is hardly the place...

For many applications the idea of a "common return" is a good enough approximation to reality but, if large currents are flowing, or the wires are long, or if the current is changing rapidly, the approximation is no longer good enough.

Thus was ruined my early understanding of electricity.

In the process of time I progressed beyond simple switches and light bulbs and, my father's business office (being in full view and about 50m from my bedroom window) having been burgled, I decided it was time to build a burglar alarm. My alarm consisted of a microphone and pre-amplifier at the office end, and in my bedroom the receiving end being an audio detector with a knob to adjust the threshold and a suitably loud bell. A burglar, I figured, was bound to make some noise.

The clever bit was to avail of the earth common return. After all, early telegraph stations used this scheme (see Fig. 151) and thus halved the amount of wire needed and, for me, wire was always in short supply. My Christmas gift list for Michael always featured batteries and wire, though invariably I was given socks instead. What good are socks to man or beast?

Having built it and activated it for the first time, I set my weary head upon my pillow and slept the sleep of the righteous. But not for long. The bell woke me with a start: I rushed over to the window to get a view of the burglary taking place but nothing was visible. I imagined... but I could hardly go over and tackle the burglar(s) single handed and I wasn't that sure of my technology to wake my parents.

Thus was the demise of my one-wire burglar alarm. It was never activated again. Whether it was electrical noise in the earth common return, or a insect that chose to walk across my microphone diaphragm I shall never know.

Flanges

Temple Mills Eurostar Depot

Several years back I was working for a company that supplied catering equipment for the Eurostar trains, and my work involved a visit to the Eurostar Temple Mills depot.

Making conversation with my host I mentioned how strange I found it that the flanges on real rolling stock seemed so small compared with what I was used to in the OO-gauge models my father excelled in. He explained that, of course, the flange is not normally what keeps the trains on the track anyway. Strange that, until then, this wisdom had not penetrated my thick skull.

The principle is explained on many web sites: The picture below is from one of the easier to follow. Of here for a video. A consequence is that, unlike road vehicles, train wheelsets do not need, indeed must not have differentials.

I find it hard to comprehend how hundreds of tons of rolling stock travelling at around 100 mph can stay on two narrow steel rails, bends and all, just because of the wheel profile. But they do. And here's how scale fails us - with OO-gauge models I have no doubt that it is the flange primarily, and not the profile, that keeps the trains on the track. Although die hards model to P4 standard which is true to scale which makes we wonder whether they suffer frequent derailments.

I miss my father's model railway. Living in a community as I do sort of precludes building one myself - there is nowhere to put it and would be little time to enjoy it. And how would I pay for it? I still have some remnants of my father's rolling stock gathering dust in the attic, kept in case any child developed a taste, but so far that hasn't happened. How could they?

Does this bother me? Frankly not all that much. But I still love railways in any form, shape or size and am looking forward to that grand age when the Irish government will allow me to travel anywhere in Ireland for free!

Irish Dodo

My namesake. Because that's what my dad sometimes called me. Sometimes it morphed to "Mickie Dodo" which prefix I dislike. I never found out why it was Dodo. I was prompted to post this short remark on reading this article.

May blossom

The may blossom (it's late this year) is beautiful this year - it always reminds me of my father, whose birthday was in May.

On my (barefoot) run this morning I went down to the lake hoping to swim but had to abort because the crack under my left big toe was hurting. It's always the left big toe that develops the crack in spite of care I give it. So I have duly administered pink Germolene and Elastoplast.

Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

Still trying for the perfect selfie...

You know very well

I used to wear shoes. I had black lace-up shoes like this one that I wore on Sundays and had to polish every week. This was done outside, for fear of spreading shoe polish beyond the remit of the shoes. I did not like the job. On one occasion I remember my mother telling me I hadn't done a good job on the *** part of the shoe (I cannot remember - maybe heel, sole...). I asked - where is that? And my mother answered - "you know very well what I mean". But I didn't. No good arguing. So I remain in ignorance to this day as to what that part of a shoe was.  All this I explained in a previous post and no apologies for repeating myself.

Sometimes I hear parents in similar dialogues with their progeny and my heart misses a beat. But not just children - so often there is such an expectation that one should already know a thing that even eating humble pie and admitting one's ignorance does not evoke an explanation. Whilst playing soccer at grammar school I wished someone would tell me the rules - but boys are supposed to already know by that age. Or in the matter of sex - our biology master, when faced with the requirement to teach the subject, observed to the class that doubtless everyone knew all there was to know so there was surely no need to teach it and did anyone have a problem with that? Obviously no one owned up to his ignorance. Thankfully in this matter nature herself taught me and I have four wonderful children to prove the point.

My father taught me that it is always better to admit that one knows less than one thinks one knows: they might be some embarrassment in the admission but one ends up knowing more that way. I have tried to apply this principle but what does one do if, after such admission, they still won't tell you?

So much of a person's life is taken up with learning to live. What a joy it is to see a young teenager taking responsibility, learning a life-skill, taking an interest in things that matter.

Rhaetian Railway

I grew up loving railways. My father's railway room and going to school on what is now the Watercress Line might have had something to do with it. I could have been a train driver, or maybe the surveyor who decides the optimal route as a track traverses mountains - or involved in signalling. Witness the episode in which I incised cuttings in my parent's lawn for my Lone Star track, or the complex signalling system I created in the railway room, or imaging myself a train whilst running around the playing fields during the lunch hour at school. One of my main doodle types when I am bored in meetings is to create railway systems. You can see that I am kind of soft in the head about railways.

Die cast Lone Star track and rolling stock

This locomotive I christened "Bournemouth"

and this one "Swanage"

Along with bricks of various kinds and Meccano (I still have and cherish my father's Mecanno set) these Lone Star models were amongst my favourite toys. I do not know why I named one locomotive "Bournemouth" and another "Swanage" but to this day if I hear of or read either place-name I am immediately presented with a mental image of the corresponding Lone Star avatar.

But I digress. What caught my eye today was this travel feature about the Rhaetian Railway. Wow - this is a railway and a half and how I would love to have the money and time to waste to navigate the whole length of it. Google Street View have imaged some of the track - possibly the first and only "Railway View"!

The track gauge is 3 ft 3³⁄₈ in  as opposed to standard gauge of 4 ft 8¹⁄₂ in.

Here's a short video I found...