Tempus Fugit

It is nearly three years since I have last blogged. How time flies. Maybe it is time to start 'musing' once more. I will return....shortly!

Happy Christmas!

Dashing through the snow led me to ask, "What is it all about?" I guess it means many things to different people. What does it mean to you? Is it a constant hassle or a sheer delight; the highlight of the year or a necessary evil?

Me? I think the word I'd choose is Nostalgia. This is the time of year that I remember Christmases past. Yes, we did roast chestnuts on an open fire. As a child, I loved the magic of the season. I can remember being terrified that Father Christmas would miss me out. We had an aunt from Gloucester stay with us every year. My dad and I would walk the short distance to the coach station to meet her on Christmas Eve. I can still picture the coaches pulling in - Black & White, Royal Blue, Greyhound...

It always seemed colder, too. We all wrapped up in heavy coats, scarves, hats and gloves. The River Avon froze over in 1964 and we skated and slid on its icy surface. We made snowmen and had snowball fights. I can remember frozen fingers that couldn't be felt, starting to burn as they thawed out.

Then there was the religious bit. I say bit, but it was quite a lot really. Carol services at school - all singing from The Bethlehem Carol Sheet. Being a choir-boy, there were the church services. My claim to fame was solo singing the first verse of Once in Royal at a candlelit service on Christmas Eve.

Even now, the thought of that Holy Night sends a chill down my spine. Okay, there may not have been cattle lowing in Bethlehem, but there was the Son of God - born in poverty. The Nativity is one of the great scenes in the world's history. Here we are, two-thousand years on, still marvelling at its wonder.

Yes, nostalgia. There was time - so much time back then. Now there always seems to be so much to do. Maybe we should stand still now for a while. Remember back to that first Christmas and take in the peace, wonder and majesty of the occasion.

To all my friends here, of different faiths and no faith - have a lovely time. Eat, drink and be merry - and spare a thought for those who are in need and less fortunate than ourselves.

Happy Christmas!

The Tooth Fairy

If you see something hovering over my house, then it's probably the Tooth Fairy. I seem to be her best friend at the moment. It really started a year ago. I had a niggling tooth ache and went to see my dentist. She thought I probably had a cracked tooth. It was duly X-rayed, but nothing untoward showed up. She decided to re-fill it. Twenty minutes of torment later, the job was done, and off home I went. Was that the end? No! Back I went, still with toothache and she thought a root filling would provide the cure - this is quite a big job, consisting of a fifteen minute and a thirty minute appointment. I unwillingly agreed and the procedures were later carried out. Unfortunately, this didn't cure the problem and the pain was worse. The final solution was to extract the said tooth.

This was put under the pillow, and our friend TF took it away.

A few months later, the opposite number started to twinge. "Here we go again," I thought. Back to my friend (we were getting really close by now) the dentist who X-rayed again, said that nothing looked wrong and would I like it re-filled. I said that as we had been down that road before, could we by-pass a few procedures and just get rid of it. "It's your tooth!" she said, so out it jolly well came.

TF grabbed it up from beneath my pillow.

Was that the end? No! I had told her to take out the wrong tooth. Well, I did think that it was the right one, but it was its next door neighbour. I was pretty gutted, I can tell you. A further appointment was made, and I prepared to look a real plonker when I told her the outcome. However, whilst brushing on Sunday, I felt a hard bit in my mouth and found that a quarter of the tooth had broken off.

TF took the quarter away.

Tomorrow I go back to my dentist.

At this rate I will be living with a very happy tooth fairy and have a smile that will remind you of Stonehenge.

Footnote: I went back today, fearing she would think, "What a wally." She still insisted that the one she took out was damaged, and the one next to it broke as a consequence. A small filling and, fingers crossed...........Tooth Fairy has flown away, disappointed

How Childish

"Don't be so childish!" or "Stop behaving like a bunch of kids!" are terms often heard to describe unruly adults! Yet the Good Book says that unless we are like children, we will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven!

I have had a pretty childish Spring, so far. The annual Enid Blyton Society Day saw Jane and I hot-footing across to Berkshire. Old and new friends were greeted, and a good time was had by all. We were treated to talks, readings, videos as well as the ability to peruse a gigantic sale of Enid's books. This was rounded off with a picnic; sandwiches, cakes and lashings of ginger beer. How childish!

So what is so great about being childish? Does it depend on the type of childhood you had? I think it might do. My childhood was wonderful - when I wasn't at school, that is! My first seven years were spent in a suburb of Salisbury, West Harnham -- pretty much a village back in the fifties. We lived next to a river and had fields to the back of us. This was -- and still is today -- my Peterswood. Lady Candling's house, Goon's police house, the Dairy, the Burnt Cottage, the Boathouse; they are all firmly etched in my memory as being here.

Being a child is so comforting -- especially when ill. I had mumps when I was about 8, as did my older brother. In those days, you were kept in bed with most illnesses. We shared a bedroom and had a wonderful time; an attentive mother, a huge valve wireless and a bowl of fruit kept us happy and entertained. .The latest Famous Five was the icing on the cake!

Long school holidays, hot summer days with the sky as blue as cornflower, crickets rubbing their legs together in the long grass.....

Halcyon Days. Ah well, one day it'll be time for me to grow up!

Spam, Blog and Chips

My good friend Keith has got a bee in his bonnet about Spam. Well, I don't blame him for that. Spam is the cancer of the email world. Chain emails encouraging you to "send this message to ten people" just inflate inboxes. You send 10, each of those send 10 - that's a hundred pointless emails due to 2 people!

I didn't realise the potential danger in eCards though, (Thanks Ming for not stopping me sending one to Anita). I have unwittingly "sold" email addresses to countless people now. Is it really that dangerous Keith? I thought I was the world's greatest cynic, but I see there is room for improvement.

So, on to Blogging, and linking. It took me a couple of days to get my head round this linking thing. My little Bangladeshi pal tried really hard to

a) Convince me it was worthwhile and not just a pointless excercise
b) Explain how to do it - she's not the planet's best teacher....

Anyway, my previously mentioned good friend and mentor, Keith, has sent me a blog tag. I guess I'd better comply, if I don't I will only look like a fuddy-duddy, and I can't have that. Naturally there are rules!

• Link to the person who tagged you.
  
• Post the rules on your blog.
  
• Share six quirks about you.
  
• Tag other people, and at the end of your post, link to their blogs.
  
• Let each of them know you have tagged them by leaving a comment on their blog.
  

The person who tagged me, as I have said, is Keith - I've linked to him, check above!

Now for my peculiar traits!

1) I can't stand skin left on cooked potatoes. Why should I have to prepare my own vegetables in a restaurant when I'm paying?

2) I hate stupid figures of speech, such as "Oh my God", "basically", "Like" and so on.

3) I detest and never (well, hardly ever) use txt spk. My texts are grammatically correct and properly spelt.

4) I like a pint of beer to be in the correct glass. I can't stand drinking Abbot Ale out of a Guinness glass - I'm not even that keen on drinking Guinness out of a Guinness glass!

5) I have to straighten pictures and ensure that everything is symmetrical.

6) I can't see the point in tagging.

My tags for now, then?

Keith, at The Secret Blog because I love reading his blogs!

and

Ming, at Ming's Busy Days, because she's such a whirling dervish, I simply have to keep an eye on her.

Okay, that's only two for now, but I'm getting bored with this already! In any case, I'm sure the general gist of it is plain to see.

Bag of chips, Keith?

For God's Sake

Extremism has flourished as Britain lost its faith in a Christian Vision, says the Sunday Telegraph. Is this more racial stirring or is there some truth in it? Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester thinks it has. Britain is certainly the most multi-cultural that it has ever been. I think we should welcome that. We talk of the world getting smaller and that we now live in a global village, so let's all live together and get on. However, it seems to me that we don't necessarily want to live together. Other cultures tend to stick together and seem afraid of mixing with others. In a relatively small city such as Salisbury, there is a Bangladeshi community. I can understand people from Bangladesh (or any other country, for that matter) wanting to retain strong links with their culture and family origins, but their forefathers moved to Britain, surely because they liked the idea of living in this country. I am fortunate that my circle of friends includes Australians, Americans, Bangladeshis, Indians, Sri Lankians, French, Germans as well as British people. I know Muslims, aetheists, agnostics, Christians as well. We all get on well, so where is the problem?

I find it quite interesting that the religious membership in Britain now has more Roman Catholics than Anglicans. What would Henry VIII have to say about that? The third highest faith is Islam - 1.6 million RC; 1.5m CofE; .9m Muslim. Orthodox, Hindu, Pentecostal and Jewish make up another 1.1m between them. Not that long ago, if someone was asked their religion, you would expect to here different sects of the Christian faith - C of E, Methodist, Baptist, Roman Catholic and so on. Not so today.

Muslims have submitted an application in Oxford to broadcast calls to prayer from a mosque. Residents have urged the council to refuse this request for a two minute call three times a day, warning that it would turn the area into a Muslim ghetto. Oh dear, our Christian hymn books have a hymn that runs:

In Christ there is no East or West,
in him no South or North,
but one great fellowship of love
throughout the whole wide earth.

How can anyone argue with that? I can hear bells from 3 Anglican churches from my house, would the sound of a call to prayer from a Mosque be that bad? I certainly don't consider that I live in a Christian ghetto. What rhetoric.

What is the answer? In fact, is there one? What does the future hold? I think that there are more questions than answers. All I do want to see though, is peace and harmony - irrespective of culture, creed or faith.



Amen to that.

Ken the Ripper

Jack the Ripper got away with murder. Now we have Ken the Ripper. He gets away with daylight (and twilight) robbery. That is, if you are a motorist. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of time for Ken Livingstone. He has done a great job in London - providing you don't drive.

I was hopelessly lost in W1 the other day. I don't usually drive to town, but on this occasion decided to. Anyway, back to being lost - well I wasn't really lost, just wasn't exactly certain where I was. Well, I knew where I was - in Portland Street, en route to Bloomsbury Square. I just wasn't too sure how to get there. I took a left turn at the end of the road, and noticed that all the traffic (apart from me) was buses and taxis.

Oh blimey! I had veered into Oxford Street - a restricted thoroughfare. None of us in the car had noticed a sign prohibiting us, but obviously there was one. We weren't stopped, flashed at or hooted off the street, but I guess somewhere there was a camera, taking my registration number. As I write this, the wheels of the DVLC and TfL are doubtless in harmony, printing out my summons.

If only Ken was Mayor of London in 1888. Whitechapel would have been a safer place - providing you weren't in your own trap.