greenmum

fickleness

2012-02-06T13:14:00.000Z

I am swamped by possessions. Awash with ‘things’. Overwhelmed by ‘stuff’.

“Stop,” I say to Mark at the Apple Store and the girls at the school teddy tombola. “We don’t need anything else. Please no more. I'm busy enough without the role of ‘household disposal expert’ added to my portfolio.”

Recycle: My small kitchen is full of containers for recycling items: tetrapak for the special bin at the tip; plastic food wrapping and carrier bags for a ‘bigger’ Sainsbury’s store; flat batteries to Boots; empty print cartridges to be sent off in charity envelopes; food waste for compost; card and plastic bottles in the white bin; paper, cans and glass in the red bin; garden waste in the green bin.

Reuse: Jam jars to the loft for autumn chutney making; loo rolls to school for making rockets; craft from school dismantled into googly eyes, feathers and sequins for new projects; used stamps for the Donkey Sanctuary; greetings cards for collage; wrapping paper folded to use again; clothes and books to Oxfam; baby stuff to anyone with even half a bump; teddies (back) to the school teddy tombola; half used paint samples foisted on friends, “Are you decorating? Blue? Yes, I’ve got twenty.”

Reduce: Yes! Please. Please. Please. I have everything I need. More than I need.

Ten years ago, I bought an electric juicing machine from Asda. £6.50. White. Plastic. Used it once. An impulse buy. I passed it on to the mother-in-law, along with the weight of its responsible disposal once she too realised its lack of merit. This morning, I squeezed a lemon on a simple, glass lemon-squeezer like they did in the old days. It worked perfectly. It's pretty. It's small. You can rinse it under the tap once and it's clean. It looks good on my shelf and makes me smile when I see it.

William Morris said: Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

I would add, and preferably both.

Nowadays, I consider an item’s obsolescence and my fickleness (yes that is a word) long before I reach for my debit card. I've stopped watching adverts (thank goodness for iPlayer) and looking at catalogues. Believe me, you do not need an electric juicer, bread machine, coffee machine, smoothie maker, ice cream maker and neither do your friends and relatives for their birthdays. Three days' excitement about ‘lattes’ and blueberry-and-biscuit ice cream are totally disproportionate to the time that the machine will sit unused on the kitchen worktop and then decaying (or not) in landfill with a broken part that the manufacturer won't repair.

Morris is the way forward. Don’t kid yourself, it's not recycling or reusing that will save the planet for future generations. It's reducing. Let me put it simply: stop buying ‘stuff’!

Read last month's post: cactus lady

cactus lady

2011-12-06T10:10:00.006Z

I burn the Advent candle down past 1 during breakfast. It’s the first of December. For the children it will burn too slowly. They look at the long length of the candle.

“What happens when it gets to the bottom?”

“It’s Christmas.”

“Does it have to get all the way down before Christmas comes?”

“Yes.”

Last Christmas, the Cactus Lady pulled aside her net curtain and knocked at me as I passed on the way home from school. I stopped the buggy and smiled. She pointed towards the door, telling me to wait.

I had never seen the Cactus Lady before but had often admired the cactuses growing in white wire baskets in her small crazy-paved front garden alongside the vintage Chevette parked under the tatty plastic car port. Cactuses you could not miss: some a phallic foot high, others round - the size of a football, some with a crown of flowers perched on their spiky heads, others furry or naked and ridged. But recently the white wire baskets had stood empty.

I stopped the buggy and waited. She opened the door.

She is wearing a blue and white gingham apron over a smart skirt suit, tan tights, low heels and bright red lipstick; her hair is set in platinum-blonde Marilyn Monroe curls but her skin is thin and wrinkled; she must be at least eighty.

I smile. “Hello.”

“Hello dear,” she replies. She is holding two small plastic bags in her hand.

“Are you alright?” I ask. “Can I help you in any way?”

Behind her, I can see the hallway. Spider plants hang from macramé plant holders, the carpet is a swirl of red and gold. A large plastic owl adorns the wall next to a mirror framed with curled brass.

She holds out the bags.

“For the girls,” she says, her voice quivering like her hand.

I look down at the bags. Inside I see brown fur, red and green felt. I take them from her.

“Thank you.” I say. I put the bags on the back of the buggy and smile. “That’s very kind.”

She nods.

“I liked your cactuses,” I say. “I always admired them when I passed by.” I look at the empty baskets.

She points across to the Chevette. “They’re in the car. I keep them there during the winter, ‘gainst frost.”

When we get home I open the bags. Each holds a grumpy-looking toy squirrel; one wearing ear muffs; the other a scarf and Santa hat. The girls love them.

“Doh doh,” says Nathalie, holding out her hand for a squirrel. I give her the one in the hat.

Robin snatches the other and cuddles it fiercely into her neck. “Sarah. Sarah. Sarah.” She chants in that fake baby voice that drives me mad.

Walking to school this morning, we pass the Cactus Lady’s house. This Christmas there are no cactuses; not even in the car. The Vauxhall Chevette is gone and there’s a builders sign outside: Roberts and Son, Renovations, Coventry. The undraped windows stare blankly back at me and I can see new wiring hanging from light fittings. In the front garden, where the cactuses stood, sits a large yellow skip, the contents frosted with the cold air: an old carpet swirled in red and gold, a plastic horse without rockers, two dead spider plants, a bathroom cabinet and the cactus baskets.

Tomorrow, the children will urge the candle to burn quickly, looking impatiently at twenty-four, pulling forward the future, not knowing that they are mortal.

Read last month's post: belly up frogs

belly up frogs

2011-07-13T11:13:00.003+01:00

The sink is not draining away. I climb on the side of the bath and hang out the window, turn on the bath taps and watch to see if it’s blocked outside. The water flows from the outlet into the down pipe and out into the gutter. It’s definitely the sink; a blockage in the mysteries behind the pedestal. I mention it to Mark when he gets in. He goes into the bathroom and runs the taps. There is no plug in, but the sink starts to fill.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s blocked.”

“I knew that.”

Mark wipes his hands on the towel.

“Well what do we do?”

“You’ll have to buy some drain unblocker.”

In Tesco I furtively pick up a bottle of 15 Minute Sink Unblocker. The bottle is black; it has a red lid, red writing on the label. Everything about it says: ‘I kill aquatic life’. I put the bottle back. Don’t ecover do something to unblock sinks? I scour the shelves. Nothing looks remotely green. I pick up the bottle again and hide it in my basket under a loaf of bread.

Mark decants the bottle down the plug hole. True to its word , the liquid clears the sink in 15 minutes. In my mind, I see fish and frogs floating on the surface of ponds, belly up, dead.

Two weeks later the sink is blocked once more.

“I’m not buying that stuff again. It’s just wrong,” I protest.

Mark looks at the toothpastey water in the sink. “What are you going to do then?”

“There must be another way. Can’t we change the trap or something?”

“I’ll add it to my list of things to do.”

I was in the hardware store on the High Street when I saw it: a simple construction, in varnished wood and brick-red rubber; a thing I had not seen since childhood. I carried it to the counter proudly.

At home, I flourished the plunger triumphantly at Mark.

“Remember these?”

I am smiling as I hear the wheeze and choke of the plunger from the bathroom. I go to look and the children come too. Mark is working the wooden handle up and down and black flakes are floating in grimy water.

“What are you doing, Daddy?” ask the children.

Wheeze. Choke. Wheeze. Cough. Splutter. Gurgle. The waste pipe sounds like an old man with catarrh.

“Is it working?” I say. I am ready with an armoury of ‘pump harder’, ‘change your technique’, ‘shall I Google it?’ and ‘think of the fish’ in case of spousely discouragement.

Mark stops plunging.

“Can I have a go? Can I have a go?” shouts Robin. But there is no need. The water has drained away.

It’s not the perfect solution. The sound of the plunger has become commonplace in our bathroom. I’ve found that Ecover do sell a drain unblocker - available from BigGreenSmile.com though I haven't tested it. And you could try cleaning out the trap – this is the u shaped tube that connects your sink to the wastewater pipe; there’s no need to call a plumber, it is a fairly easy job and you can find advice on youtube.

Read previous post: the edge of the lettuce

the edge of the lettuce

2011-03-30T14:23:00.007+01:00

Ok, so we’re out of apples and bananas, and we haven’t had cheese in the whole week. Yesterday’s packed lunches were marmite, and I have said ‘...because I haven’t been shopping,’ so many times that the children are starting to say it for me before I start. So I conclude that I’ve eeked it out long enough: it is now time to go to the supermarket.

You see, I’m trying to use what we’ve got in: putting those soft, bendy carrots in a soup, not minding the brown edge of the iceberg lettuce, and peeling the skin off a courgette that has seen better days.

I’m not tight, I’ve just started looking at things in a different way. That courgette took the trouble to grow, in fact when I look at the label, I notice that it took the trouble to grow in Morocco and then get its little courgettey-passport and fly all the way over here to come and live in my fridge. It took in hot African sunshine and nutrients from the Moroccan soil, it took the work and care of the Moroccan farmer who tended it, and it drank the water the Moroccan farmer could have drunk – Morocco is a dry land bordering the Sahara. A LOT went into that little courgette’s life. And it’s stayed in my fridge, unwanted and unused and going mouldy because I bought it as part of a bumper value pack, and because Mark’s been away a lot, and because I’ve been behind on the housework and saying ‘ok we’ll have frozen peas’ more times than I’d like.

So I finally go to Sainsbury’s on Friday because I have, at last, used up those continent-hopping zucchini and all the rest of the sad old veg in the chiller drawer and I’m feeling rather pleased with myself.

As I unload my groceries on to the belt, an elderly Indian couple join the queue behind me. The woman is grey-haired and tiny and wears a brilliant white sari, the man wears white too; they both have red bindis painted on their foreheads. They look a little lost and I smile at them.

The man smiles back.

“For month?” he asks.

“Sorry?” I say, looking apologetic: he has a heavy accent.

“For month? Or for week?” He points at my shopping.

It has turned out to be a bigger shop than I thought: vegetables as well as the fruit; milk, bread, eggs, cheese, a bottle of squash and 3 packs of microwaveable popcorn because they’re on offer. I hesitate. It is a weekly shop but some of the items – the popcorn in particular – will last a month or more. He’s not looking for a detailed explanation, so I say,

“Week.”

He pulls the corners of his mouth down in a considering-type of frown and nods slowly.

I am aware of our difference. I look at my shopping. Could we live on that for a month? If I had bought a big bag of rice, some flour and yeast, and a bag of lentils instead of the popcorn?

“There are four of us,” I say, holding up four fingers, trying to excuse myself.

Again he nods, taking this in. “Four” he says, and his eyes scan my shopping. Then he turns to his wife and says something I don't understand. Now she looks at my shopping and nods too, raising her eyebrows, not in disapproval or amazement, but with interest and looking serious, as if she were a professor studying the shopping of an extra terrestrial.

The man and I talk a little, with pointing and using single words: he asks me what the blackcurrant squash is and then translates to his wife who, again, looks at the squash as if it were from Mars. It turns out they don’t want to buy; they want to make a return. So I direct them to customer services.

When I turn round the cashier is waiting. She tries to catch my eye but I don’t let her because I can see that she wants to shake her head and roll her eyes.

“I’ve got my own bags,” I say instead and walk to the end of the check out with my eyes on the ground.

Read last month's post: sad cows

sad cows: active citizenship and cynicism

2011-02-28T17:01:00.033Z

I get a facebook message from a friend. Well, the brother of a friend. A friend who I haven’t seen for ten years. It’s about cows.

There are plans to build a US style mega-dairy in Lincolnshire. I remember seeing one of these on a BBC documentary. These dairies do not look good. There is no grass. There are only heaps of grain, and dusty stalls. It is like chicken battery farming for cattle. It made me feel an overwhelming disgust at humankind. Nevertheless I hovered over the ‘sign the petition’ button. I wondered if the campaigning group were kosher. I wondered if they would abuse my personal information. I wondered if the government would keep my name on a list. I wondered – really wondered - if it was wise to sign.

I'm not a great fan of cows. I don't look into their long-lashed eyes and melt. I'm scared of them: it's cows that make me walk the long way round a field, cows that lumber fast towards me when I'm trying to vault a stile, cows that make my heart race on a would-be peaceful ramble through the countryside. I'm not signing out of sentimentality. I remember the BBC footage again. I sign. It takes 10 seconds.

It’s been a month of on-line petitions and surveys in the Greenwood house:

One late afternoon, my girls and I do the RSPB Garden Birds Survey. We watch at the window for an hour. We have put out stale cherry cake to tempt the birds in. Is this cheating?

We see: 3 black headed gulls, 4 blue tits, 6 blackbirds, 2 pigeons, 1 crow. We know it is a crow and not a rook because Granddad says: “See that rook? It’s a crow. See them crows? They be rooks.” Clear? Our local heron does not turn up. He’s more of an early morning kind of guy. We’re gutted.

We also do the British Astronomical Association’s Star Count survey:

It’s early evening, a cold wind is blowing, behind us the lights of the sports centre glow in the darkness. Robin’s hair is wet; we have been to her swimming class.

“Right,” I say, stopping on the path to the car park. “Star count!”

Fenella, who is walking with us, stops and listens. Robin and her school friend, Summer, are mucking around with the torch. Robin flashes the beam in my face.

“Turn the torch off!”

“Oh,” her bottom lip sticks out. “Why?”

“Because you can’t see the stars with the light on. It’s bad enough with these street lamps.”

She waves it about more. I try to grab it. She runs away, but turns it off.

“Ok,” I continue. “Girls are you listening?”

I lecture about the constellation Orion and about the star count survey and about light pollution. I point out the shape of the famous sky archer and show them Betelgeuse on his left shoulder. The girls are shivering.

“Now, how many stars can you see inside Orion?”

It’s too much to ask: the girls squint at the sky, they try to identify Orion, they look for - perhaps - one minute. Then Robin flicks on the torch and they giggle and run off between the lime trees across the dark grass.

“I can see four,” says Fenella.

I gaze up. “Five!” I say.

Fenella shakes her head. “I can only see four.”

I start to point out the five stars that I can see but Fenella is looking away across the dark common after the girls. I can see the torch waving about; a spot of white light in the darkness.

Later, I let Robin submit the results for both surveys: birds and stars. The surveys will provide data to help decision making in the UK. I feel good about myself. I'm contributing. I have the freedom to express my opinion; to influence my environment. Unlike those cows.

True these are only tiny drops. But drops do make an ocean.

The cows won. And I feel proud.

Read last month's post: road works.

road works: how to make tea properly

2011-01-27T13:39:00.008Z

The workmen finished our street this week. They have been here for six weeks. When I got back from the school run this morning I noticed that they had gone. The street was empty and still, the pavements smooth, the road uncluttered.

I miss them. I miss the guy in the white hard-hat with the smiling brown eyes who helped me and Nathalie across the trenches they had dug, lifting the buggy or the baby or the bike over the deep gravelly pits to safety, asking “Where’s babs?” when Nathalie was at school.

I miss the beeping of the dumper truck and the judder of the drill, the clang of the digger bucket and the chink chink of the pick axe, the shouts of the men. I am sad that they are gone.

But I like the quiet sound of the street as well. I like to hear the pigeon comfort itself with its gentle coo’s in the tree opposite and a car door slam and the shout of the rag and bone man as he passes, his truck filled with old fridges and bicycles. And Carol next door, calling to Maddie, as she turns the key in the lock after a day at work:

“Come on. Come on, bebe. I know. I know. Yes! I know.”

And the dog barking excitedly.

Things I could not hear with the workmen there.

I have been practising making tea. Being here, now, today, this minute.

Not always thinking of the next minute, there, then, tonight, tomorrow.

What I could be doing...

how life could be...

rushing making a cup of tea so I can get to the chat, rushing the dishes so I can get to bed, rushing the school run to get home. Hurrying Nathalie through her hesitant, stumbling, repeating explanations and Robin through her long complicated speeches to get to her point, if there was one.

In the tea-making there is peace.

The smell of the earl grey.

The sound of the kettle water muttering.

The chink of the cup as I get it down off its hook.

I take down the sugar jar and remember when Mark and I bought it, on a wedding anniversary, at Whitley garden centre in Huddersfield. I get out a teaspoon and it is one of the ones that don’t match and I wonder where it came from. And I reflect that it might have been Drummer Drakey’s, picked up from shared dish washing in the outside sinks at the campsite near Pateley Bridge when we both had campervans. And then I remember when Mark and I took our campervan to Harden Beck on a May Bank Holiday and parked in the field by the waterfall and a blackbird sang loudly in the sunshine from the branch of a tree, and we decided, after a row, that after 10 years of marriage we would at last try for children. And then I am thankful for my children and their health and their beauty and their longwinded speeches.

The kettle clicks.

All this from the making of tea. All this in a minute. All this to be missed in the hurry to be past the moment.

I keep forgetting. And hurrying on. It takes practice.

Philippians 4:11

Read last month's post: mother holle's eiderdown

mother holle's eiderdown: will it snow again?

2010-12-19T20:31:00.006Z

In Warwickshire we have mostly avoided the snow over the last weeks, instead getting picture postcard frost, hard ice and a mere powdery dusting, foiling any ideas of sledging on Abbey Fields.

I watched my Yorkshire friends' facebook postings with a sage nod and commented to my more southerly acquaintances, 'ah yes, snow up North,' before assailing them with tales of my first winter in Bradford as Mark's young fiancee, when he drove through a foot of snow to rescue me from my office block in gridlocked and snow blanketed Leeds, arriving at 2am with his parents in the back as 'ballast'!

The snow came to us yesterday. It fell, at first, in those small, fast-falling dry specks that promise nothing.

"I'm afraid there won't be enough, darling," I said to Robin who sat on the windowledge behind the blind, watching in anticipation, her breath steaming the cold glass. This she ignored, and in faith, started musing on the merits of different types of snowman nose.

"Why do some people use satsumas? You're supposed to use carrots. Satsumas look silly. It's not right! It should be a carrot."

As we watched, the flakes grew fat and fell from the white sky innumerable, dizzying and relentless. It was this type of snow, I imagined, that Grimm saw as the feathers of Mother Holle's eiderdown.

Mark watched - grim too - facing more cancellations due to snow. But he left, this morning - slooshing 5 inches off the car - for Sunderland - via a carol service in Birmingham - with a duvet and pillow on the back seat, wellingtons in the boot and a candle in the glove compartment.

I rather like the snow as it confounds our presumptious insistence that life be predictable and controllable, but that's an unpopular view, and I work from home, so I'll share it and then stop there.

I note that Mark's twitter feed tonight states that the 'snow has come' to Sunderland. So I retreat to bed and wonder if I'll see him before dawn.

Read last month's post: control freak

control freak: eat sleep pray

2010-11-06T10:21:00.009Z

I sit in my sister’s antique bed in her dazzling white bedroom. The window is open. Locked open, and I cannot shut it. The morning sun has disappeared and grey wintery clouds hang low over the London skyline. My nose is frozen, I rub it and sniff.

She sent me up to sleep, my sister. My young children play tirelessly and she, seeing my shadowed eyes and pale skin, stroked my back and said,

"Go and sleep, Emma. Go and sleep."

I ascend the narrow staircase and, after trying to close the window, snuggle into the bed and... read. I know the instruction was to sleep but... I'm reading Eat Pray Love and I want to get back to it.

I keep calling it Eat Sleep Pray, which says something about my own needs. I bend back the front cover – I’m not a careful reader – and start to read. It is chapter 49 and the author talks about being a control freak.

I read the chapter and then put the book down and stare at the grey sky out of the window. I too have these tendencies. Not a bad thing, per se, just something to be controlled ;0)

I talked with my husband last week.

I told him I didn’t want to be the Time Police anymore.

"Good" he said.

I told him I didn't want to control every spare moment of his time, armed with a long list of familial obligations, DIY, environmental, keep fit and wardrobe suggestions.

"Good," he said.

I told him I didn't want to check he had taken sufficient time off for the family, for chores, for himself. That he was a grown man and a good man and that he could check that himself.

"Good," he said.

I have also stopped trying to micro manage my five year old. I am tired of constantly piping instructions as if she were a robot and I were responsible for personally programming every movement.

Walking to school with Emily and her children yesterday, I was as usual burbling on about my latest project and interrupting myself every sentence or so with barked commands to my children.

"Mind the dog poo, stop at the road, don't run too fast, do your coat up, no, leave your coat on, don't walk on the grass there's dog poo, don't hide in that front garden, don't touch the cars, don't pick flowers, come out of that shop, don't pick up that sweet wrapper, wait at the next lamp post, move out the way, let the lady past, stop dilly dallying..."

Emily managed to walk on without hollering instructions to her children every two seconds and after a while I, and she, began to notice the difference. I lapsed into silence. We walked along, her two obediently in tow beside her, mine running ahead, swinging round lamp posts and balancing on walls.

"Why?" I asked, perplexed.

She frowned and shook her head.

Maybe she never started.

Maybe I should stop.

And so this heralds a new era in our family. Maybe.

When I get home, I am tempted to stick Post It notes all over the house, reminding myself to ‘relax’ and to ‘let it be’; ‘to watch the world’, as it says in Eat Pray Love, rather than insisting on controlling it. And then I smile wryly as I notice my attempt to control my attempt to stop the control.

James 4:13-14

Read last month's post: autumn visitor

autumn visitor: a spider in the bath

2010-09-15T20:49:00.021+01:00

The week was busy. First week back to school. We had returned from holiday just 3 days before and the laundry room was full of washing. Unpacked bags of toys and books and summer things awaited attention on the landing. Buckets and spades sat by the back door needing transfer to the shed and wet suits hung from the airer redundant until next year's brave beach adventures.

Amongst the books on the landing lay Charlotte’s Web, our bedtime reading for the summer. We finished it the night before school started. Robin and I wept bitterly when Charlotte died; tired, old, mission completed. And Nathalie looked confused and asked ‘Why are you crying, Mummy?’ I hugged my girls to me on our big bed and finished the book my voice breaking with emotion.

During the holiday, a large black spider with eyes on stalks that could have passed for 2 extra legs set up home in my Belfast sink in the laundry room. I let him stay, loathe to crush him but not brave enough to catch him. I asked Mark to remove the creature, but the request sits amongst other demands and the removal of a sedentary arachnid from a little used sink is not high up the list of family priorities.

It is spider season and as I walk up to the veg patch to see if the tomatoes have ripened I break through long silks spun from bush to bush across the garden path. In previous years, I would have yelped, leaping back in fear, searching my hair and clothes for eight-legged stowaways. This year, Charlotte and a heightened awareness of the dignity of animals makes me bold and instead I catch the radial lines with my hand and swing the spiders and their webs to one side, attaching the radial to a more suitable bush.

As I lay out the bath mat for my shower this morning I disturb another large black stalky eyed spider. It runs to the plug hole and hides. I shiver. Again I am reluctant to crush it and I pick up a beaker and wonder how I can catch it. Mark is downstairs but I feel brave. With the world of the bath tub still and quiet again, it climbs up out of the waste and sits in the bottom of the bath, resting. I slowly move the beaker down over him but the shadow or the movement or some spider sixth sense alerts him and he scrambles, fast as the wind, up the side of the bath towards me. I scream. Jump back. Drop the beaker. Wow! I didn’t know spiders ran that fast.

“Are you alright?” Mark queries from the kitchen.

“Yes,” I shout back, “just catching a spider”.

I don’t ask him to come. I am brave. I approach again. This time wise to the situation. Take aim. Concentrate and then a fast swoop down on the subject. I go in. Bullseye. Our eight-legged friend is trapped beneath the beaker. I find a piece of cardboard on Robin’s desk bring it back to the bathroom, slide it under the beaker and lift the spider to the window. Removing the cardboard I let the spider drop out to the garden below. Twelve feet. Suddenly, I wonder if spiders can survive a twelve foot fall.

Psalm 24:1

Read last month's post: veg patch

veg patch: a bad hair day in the garden

2010-07-25T22:02:00.007+01:00

July is a very different animal from March. In March I talked of shopping trolleys and walking in the rain. In March I lost hours in my veg patch unfurling from my winter hibernation in the mild, early sunshine and being reprimanded by the gaffer at the local tip for bringing too much garden waste (?!). In March I dreamed of a summer of neat rows of vegetables and mown lawns and trimmed hedges.

July has arrived and June has been long and hot and dry. My veg patch is not quite all I had hoped. My pea plants are having a bad hair day, my broad beans have serious black fly, my cucumbers are wilting, the coriander is going to seed. And, most disappointingly, the only thing like a ‘row’ in the whole patch are the beetroots.

Just like last year, my vegetable gardening has been in the style of the ‘wildlife garden’ with pumpkins, brambles and frogs crossing paths, foxgloves and rosemary and butterflies rampant. This may sound romantic, fashionable even! But I long for that order that I see on the annual open day at the allotments. Regimental rows of leeks, cabbages queuing neatly in lines, cultivated blackberry canes trained with care along wires. I have read that this type of gardening is undertaken by the male of our species with a yard stick and string. March is a month for precision measuring and marking not of dreaming and lifting one’s face to the new sun and offering unspoken prayers of thanks to the God who swings the seasons round.

I must confess that hot trudges up the hill to school twice daily and nights of garden watering as the hot weather bakes the soil, alongside infant tennis lessons, school shows, sports day, summer fairs, carnivals and fun days and the endless parish barbecues for this and that and the other have relegated my shopping trolley to the hallway until slower, cooler months return.

I used to dislike the months of late winter with a vengeance. Wishing them gone. Hurrying them along.

Now, with children and a garden in the heat and hurry of Mid Summer I long for those short, dark, slow days with low expectations, minimal demands and time to think. Time to try out a new hobby or craft. Time to try a life change and to attempt to live up to ideals long held or recently won.

I am afraid that my life is like my veg patch, over run and unruly. In the slow quiet months I dream of year round order, children with clean faces, hoovered carpets, clothes washed, ironed and on shelves not piled high in drifts in the laundry room and a tight schedule of activities; a weekly routine strictly adhered to. But just like my patch, the sun shines and life abounds and grows rapidly outside the confines of my assiduously planned boundaries: an impromptu trip to the paddling pool after school with pizza for tea, staying until bedtime; a late night meal with friends at a retreat house, my children chasing geese round a field; a last day post-school playground rendez-vous, children already pink faced, wild haired and tired, dragged home tearful after half an hour, flopping dusty faced and dirty nailed into bed.

This is my life. It is not all I dream it to be. But I am kind to myself. I forgive myself. I’m learning to accept my incongruities until with time I learn to be consistent and whole and wise.

Matthew 11:29

Read last month's post: the importance of having nice nails (or not!)

the importance of having nice nails (or not!): Chanel's new nail colour

2010-06-30T22:26:00.006+01:00

“A well-groomed set of brightly coloured nails is the sign of a woman in control of her life,” or so said Peter Phillips, Chanel’s beauty guru in the Times magazine at the beginning of April. He would do. He wants to sell his nail varnish and a headline like that is guaranteed to send us women scurrying off to the Chanel counters at a fair old pace. None of us want to be seen as not being in control of our life. This year Chanel is marketing a ‘surreal shade of turquoise’ called ‘Nouvelle Vague’! Personally, I would say that a well-groomed set of brightly coloured nails may well actually be the sign of a woman controlled by the fashion media. I gave up painting my nails in 2002... to show that I was in control of my life!

In 1999, Julia Roberts ceased shaving her armpits. This fact was released in the media with such words as ‘shame’, ‘uproar’, ‘taboo’, ‘busted’. Can you get busted for having neglected to shave your arm pits? Apparently so. When I Googled ‘Julia Robert’s hairy arm pits’ I was presented with 14.5 million pages! As I perused Hot Hits ‘Hairy Arm Pits Hall of Shame’ I was told that there was ‘no excuse’ for forgetting to shave and Julia’s misdemeanour is dubbed ‘probably the most famous hairy armpit moment of all time’. Even the BBC ran a news article on it.

At about the same time that I ceased wearing nail varnish an older consultant started on my project. When summer came, she would sit in project meetings attired in a sleeveless dress and stretch her arms above her head revealing a pair of positively hirsute underarms. Respect! That consultant was so sure that she was good that she didn’t even have to shave her armpits. It was about her ability not about image. I have never forgotten that consultant, although I confess I did giggle with my colleagues about it at the time.

I am not about to reveal the current status of my armpits. But should it be that I shave them it will not be because I am ashamed of my God given hair or frightened that I will be ‘busted’ by the armpit police. It will be because it is summer and it is hot.

Recently, my daughter has brought to my attention her teacher’s fine gallery of nail art which seems to be, if not the sign of a teacher in control her class, at least a novel method of keeping the girls quiet during the register each morning as they inspect the latest creations. I have been thinking that I may just pop down to my nearest Chanel counter and buy her a bottle of Nouvelle Vague as an end of year thank you present.

Read last month's post: 2 mph

2 mph: finding peace in your life, slow down the pace...

2010-05-10T13:23:00.006+01:00

Earlier in the year, I visited an exhibition of ‘movement art’ at the Oriel Davies Gallery in Newtown, mid-Wales, which was displaying a small basket weave trailer containing a stuffed goose and a netbook playing a clip of a young bearded man in shorts pulling the self-same trailer through corn fields and along country lanes from Somerset to London. A long slow journey. This exhibit ‘informatively’ entitled ‘2 mph’ was presented alongside a giant gilded megaphone, fairy-lit hiking boots and 4 plywood columns sporting LCDs showing the heads of various people as they walked.

More recently, an approaching birthday demanded a trip to nearby Royal Leamington Spa and I planned to maximise the journey with a combination of activities. Swimming, Argos, charity shop foray, Holland and Barrett. To be back no later than 3.30pm for the school pick up.

I set off in the car, calm and optimistic, despite an itinerary guaranteed to bring forth shouts of ‘get a MOVE on’ at other less time-constrained drivers, pootling around the market town I call home.

The temporary traffic lights that had materialised overnight at the bottom of the Leamington Road drew only a quiet ‘come onnnn’ from my lips. But the sight of the big yellow diversion signs two turns before the road to the swimming pool had me chewing my bottom lip and rolling my eyes. The ‘diversion’ seemed rather to be a tourist trail around Leamington Spa, having taken us down The Parade (elegant Regency buildings), alongside Jefferson Gardens (formal planting and extravagant fountains) and past the colonnade of the Pump Rooms shrouding the lukewarm waters (from which the Spa suffix stems) before diving us into a warren of less elegant back streets replete with kebab shops and laundrettes. Having encircled the whole town I approach the pool from the opposite direction now driving mostly in second gear and revving the engine impatiently at each junction in a bid to save a vital few seconds. I let out a sigh of relief as I drive up the leafy avenue to the sports centre.

‘Pool closed today,’ a sign attached to a nearby lamp post announces.

I ignore it. Yesterday’s, I convince myself.

‘Pool closed. Masters Gala,’ another sign declares smugly at the entrance to the car park.

My stomach flips and so do I.

“You have GOT to be JOKING,” I shout frustratedly at the windscreen, braking erratically in the car park entrance.

As I sit frozen in disbelief a short queue of cars starts to form behind me.

“Do you know where you’re going dear?” taps a white haired sinewy lady in a tracksuit on my window.

“It’s shut,” I whimper pathetically staring up at her as if she could single handedly call off the Masters Gala and allow me and my child to swim.

“Yes,” she smiles, “it’s the Masters Gala today.”

No-one in the queue behind me, now 5 cars full of front crawl veterans, beeps their horn. The ‘Masters Advocate’ leaves me and goes to explain the hold up to the other drivers. As I perform a seven point turn with gritted teeth and my infant passenger shouting ‘wanna go swimming, wanna go swimming’, no-one shouts ‘come on, come onnnnnn’. And as I drive past the queue, the silver haired mer-people give me sympathetic glances.

‘2 mph’ floats unbidden into my mind. Any faster and you leave the soul running to catch the body up.

Read last month's post: monkey business

wild freddie: line dancing cowboy

2010-04-20T19:36:00.004+01:00

My eldest was in the paper again this week. Previously she has been a princess at the opening of Warwick’s Princess Tower, a paddling babe at Abbey Fields Charity Splash and a bemused bear ascending into Noah’s ark for the nursery play. This time though, there is no such glamour. She is standing by a toilet, lid open ready for use and accompanied by Wild Freddie in his white Stetson and rhinestone encrusted pants (for pants read ‘trousers’ I was trying to be all ‘Stateside’ but now realise that the image I’m painting needs to stop, back track and be redrawn).

Our church was having a charity barn dance with hoe-down food and the opportunity to Dosey Doe. Or so I thought. However, I’d read the poster wrong and though there was indeed hoe-down food of the jacket potato and baked beans variety, the imagined 4 piece folk band with both men and women sporting copious amounts of gingham and pony tails and entertaining us with wild fiddling and calls of ‘take your partner by the hand’ never materialised.

We entered the church hall, late as always (the inescapable saga of the mysteriously twisted car seat straps playing itself out again cf school run) to find rows of middle aged Anglicans clad in soft shoes and check attempting to ‘heel toe heel toe’ to the instruction of the aforementioned Stetson wearing cowboy.

I was slightly apprehensive at our dancing teacher’s risqué appellation, looking round the room at the rows of seated grannies clapping and smiling in time to the country and western blaring from our host’s boom box at the far end of the hall and seemingly oblivious that they were dealing with ‘Wild’ Freddie here and not just your run of the mill line-dance teacher.

My children and I joined in with some half hearted ‘heel toeing’ at the back and then lost interest due to the smell of potatoes and beans wafting through from the church kitchen. I’m not sure how Wild Freddie acquired his title but I wouldn’t have called him ‘wild’ rather ‘bashful’ as during the food break he sat shyly behind his keyboard (yes he sang as well) declining the offer of a spud, the reason for which became apparent after the interval. As did the ‘Wild’ tag.

The second half started with a showcase presentation of all Wild Freddie’s line dancing prowess, it was fast, it was furious, it was complicated, it was good ole footstamping downright dizzying, it was… yes… I guess you could call it… wild. And I, sitting near at a table bordering the dancing area was glad that he had refused the spud and beans.

But what of the press call with the toilet?

“The simple process of using proper toilets and hand-washing… prevents… potentially fatal diseases… Good sanitation also creates physical environments that enhance safety, dignity and self-esteem” (http://www.toilettwinning.org/)

Our line dancing raised money to ‘twin a toilet’ with our church toilet here in Warwickshire. My town is twinned with Bourg-la-Reine in France and Eppstein in Germany. My church toilet is twinned with Giharo, Rutana Province, Burundi.

There is now a photo on the wall above the sinks in our Ladies' loo of a girl with a big smile proudly showing her family’s new toilet to the photographer. Now that’s ‘wild’!

monkey business: performing animals at the zoo?

2010-04-08T15:44:00.005+01:00

I took my children to the zoo today. It was the school holidays. It seemed the sort of thing to do. I awoke to grey sky and drizzle which immediately dismissed my visions of picnics and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage and replaced them with an image of my children trudging round, peering into ‘empty’ (“the lion’s resting inside”) animal enclosures clad in bright blue waterproof two pieces in a fashion not dissimilar to memories of my visits to zoos in the Seventies.

I then spent the next 45 minutes obsessively checking the weather forecast on my husband’s iPhone, ‘9am: sun with intermittent cloud’. I revisited the window. No, it’s definitely raining. Sought confirmation of this fact on the BBC Weather website, ‘rain all day’. Back to the window. Hummmm.

Packed a bag of rolls, apples, crisps (of the no MSG variety), raisins, waterproofs and peaked hats. Checked the zoo website for directions (and am interested to read that today there is in fact a ‘signing monkey’ workshop available) and hurry the children out of the door.

As a child I found zoo visits the very epitome of tedium (right up there with circuses and Holiday on Ice). It’s not that I didn’t (or don’t) like animals. But the rustling blue waterproofs, aching feet, substandard packed lunch and endless sea of glum looking primates could not even be made up for by the fact that Uncle Nick was a zookeeper and fed the penguins.

But it’s not the Seventies and we’re in a bright new world of ‘zoo-ing’. Or so I was under the impression. Zoos these days are all about conservation, education and protection of endangered species rather than the making of a buck or two by caging animals. And I’m sure it is. But it didn’t seem to have made much difference from the spectator point of view.

I walked my rustling blue clad children around enclosure after enclosure of gloomy apes. Skruh skruh skruh. The monkeys managed to look a little perky but those apes, goodness me! They couldn’t have looked more miserable. I tested this out on my 4 year old. “Do the orang utans look happy or sad, darling?” “Sad.” “Well what about the gorilla?” “Sad.” “…the chimpanzees?” “Sad.” Until we came to a sign that said “The apes are not sad. An ape ‘happy face’ has a turned down and relaxed mouth. An ape grins and bares its teeth when it is unhappy.”

We moved on to the ‘signing monkey’ workshop. Now I don’t know what you are imagining when you read this. I know what I was imagining. A monkey. A monkey doing sign language. Not a seasonal worker sweating buckets in a large comedy character monkey outfit.

On reflection, my reaction speaks volumes about how we still see zoos and animals in captivity. The zoos might have moved on in their philosophy but have we?

After the workshop (for workshop read ‘ordeal’), we put on our blue rain protection (with enough rustling to make a real monkey ‘grin’) and left the overheated room on our way to the 3pm showing of the elephants playing football.

Read last month's post: shopping trolley

the tenby wind: backpacking with children

2010-03-28T14:31:00.003+01:00

My plans of a more ethical and back to basics UK holiday were definitely going up in smoke or rather blowing in the wind. There was the absence of Mark (dutiful husband and father) who had been left sad-faced on our doorstep the morning of the holiday on the instruction of Warwick A&E. There was the midnight fire alarm ‘test’, the grumpy baker, and the inevitability of remembering vital items only once you had bounced a buggy, two children, buckets and spades, a picnic and a beach chair down the long, steep cliff path to the beach. And then there was the wind…

We were staying in a backpackers hostel on the cliff top at the south end of Tenby just out of town. Our plan was to cook ‘al-fresco’ each night on a small single cylinder Primus stove and so I had bought cans of beans and the like along with a pre-cooked pasta dish to heat up on the first night.

I hadn’t bargained for the wind…

The first night’s attempt at heating up the pasta in the harbour area failed dismally. Well, it failed dismally in heating the pasta and keeping the Primus lit. It succeeded in drawing withering glances from my ‘fellow diners’ at the harbour side restaurants offering Caldey Island Crab and Tenby Mackerel accompanied by a free glass of New World Wine. I’m not at all sure whether the Crab and Chardonnay Crowd were most ‘interested’ in the fact that I appeared to be about to cause a small gas explosion or in my ‘lowering the tone’ of the harbour with my windswept hair, large saucepan and half-naked children running wild on the little walled beach.

The next night we tried again. This time deciding to stay off the beach and try to find shelter for the struggling stove in one of those cliff top ‘gardens’ where people sit on benches with Thermos flasks and gaze at the view. Looking back on it, I can see how someone who watches a lot of East Enders would think that I was hiding behind the ornamental dwarf conifers with my little stove in order to prepare my Class A drugs. The bench fillers left as soon as I settled in with my stove. I was thinking that it was just the old ‘lowering of the tone with my large saucepan’ concerns until the police helicopter arrived. Indeed, the police helicopter could have been hovering over the cliff top directly above me for those 10 minutes or so in response to an ailing sailing vessel on the Caldey straits. You may think that. I’m not so sure. But when I didn’t pack up my wares and flee as they do on Police, Camera, Action I think our friendly flying enforcement officers decided that it was in fact baked beans that I was cooking and flew off for an end of shift pint in Swansea.

Either that or they hadn’t bargained for the wind…

Related articles: the tenby stare

the school run - different 'voices'

2010-03-23T11:33:00.000Z

Hi! Yesterday I published my 'school run' post in 3 different voices. It'd be great to know which you prefer and why. Thanx for reading :0)

the school run (3)

2010-03-22T20:45:00.000Z

It’s a joy to walk to school in Spring time. Since Christmas I have been earnestly watching the gardens that we pass for any signs of life: green shoots poking through barren earth, snowdrops making a daring early appearance. When I think of the many years that I spent cooped up in an artificially lit and temperature controlled office arriving in the dark and leaving in the dark, my heart swells with gratitude that I am able to experience the ‘real world’. Since the ‘School Run’ started it’s long and often seemingly interminable path last September when my oldest started Reception class I have been trying to adapt my life so that this twice daily chore becomes not something to rush through with gritted teeth in the most convenient way possible but an opportunity for joy and thankfulness and responsible living. It gives me time…

Time with my children. Yes, true, sometimes my oldest moans at the walk. Yes, true, sometimes (no always) my youngest tumbles as she toddles along on tiptoes at a precarious pace. But it’s time to listen. Time to chat. Time to enjoy the walk and the things we see together. This will not always be the way.

Time to experience God’s creation. Yes, true, sometimes it rains. Yes, true, sometimes it rains very hard indeed. But we are determined to enjoy our God given weather in all it’s beautiful forms. We don’t hurry, trotting briskly under umbrellas counting the minutes until shelter is found. No, we pull on a peaked hat, pull up a hood and take the weather as it comes and smile at God’s beautiful creation.

Time to be part of the community. Yes, true the walk is often so filled with children’s chatter and needs that a conversation with a fellow ‘school-runner’ is lost amongst the many words and interruptions. Yes, true, that sometimes I'd quite like to walk alone and be unsociable. But it is an opportunity to share daily life with others in my community – that’s a tremendous privilege and again, this will not always be the way.

Time to slow down. Now I know that sounds insane! Surely the morning routine and the school run has to be the most stressful and rushed time of the day! But no, with planning, re-prioritisation and an attitude change this can be a time to take a breathing space out of the day’s busy activities and enjoy the walk and the change of focus it can bring.

And it challenges me…

Challenges me to use less fossil based fuel to get us places and use instead the food fuel that we have eaten and so use the world’s resources more responsibly. Challenges me to exercise our bodies and enjoy health and fitness and thank God for providing us with food and healthy bodies and a school nearby. All this is not a given, we don’t take it for granted. I regularly think of those with little food, challenging health issues and schooling many miles away and I am hugely grateful to God for our plenty and privilege and also hugely convicted to live more responsibly.

This post is part of the 'greenmum' series, find more posts in the series here:

shopping trolley
school run (1)

the school run (2)

2010-03-22T20:31:00.000Z

“Oh do take some umbrellas!” my friend Katie offered again as my two children and I stood on her doorstep on a cold, dark, wet winter’s evening about to walk home. “No, no!” I replied cheerily, “we’ll be absolutely fine!” And I resolutely pulled on my peaked cap and made sure the children’s hoods were well up. Our little family walked down the drive, my oldest skipping happily in the rain and I enjoying the sight of amber street lamps reflected in black puddles, warmly familiar from my own childhood days of walking in all weathers. “Nutter!” muttered Katie under her breath as she returned to her warm brightly lit interior and shut the door on the night.

The Greenwoods are a two car family. My husband’s away a lot and we are thankful to be able to have an old but reliable small run-around car to use when he’s not here. I grew up in South London. We were a one car family then. Well, when I say a one car family, I actually mean one car at a time, in fact my father had a penchant for changing the car and we never knew when he would turn up in a new vehicle. We had a shiny red Cortina that ended up in the sea when it was left on the jetty at Broadstairs one evening as the tide was coming in. We had a dark blue 1970’s police-style Rover in which my dad loved to pretend he was a policeman. We even had an old Silver Jag which my mum drove up onto a roundabout when she was learning to drive. The car I remember most fondly though, was the classic Wolseley with it’s walnut dash, leather armrest and the little pull down tables in the back of the seats. Recently my dad celebrated the '70 cars' mark.

So, as a child, cars featured in my life quite a lot, but nevertheless we used the car only on occasion. We walked a lot. We walked to school. We walked to Brownies in the dark (skipping happily through black puddles reflecting amber street lamps). We walked to the supermarket. We walked when it felt too hot and we walked when it rained. That was the way in the Seventies. Dad took the car. The family walked. Or caught the bus. We were ‘green’. We didn’t have to try. We didn’t have a choice.

In the Noughties, I made a decision that we would be a walking family too. We do have a choice. We are very thankful to have a second car to use for longer journeys and emergencies. But on a day by day basis we have decided to walk. We walk to school. We walk to the shops. We walk to the park. We experience the weather both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and are learning to appreciate it in all God created forms. We use less fossil based fuel to get us places and use instead the food fuel that we have eaten and so we use the World’s resources more efficiently. I regularly think of those with little food, challenging health issues and schooling many miles away and I am hugely grateful to God for our privilege and spurred on to live more responsibly.

This post is part of the 'greenmum' series, find more posts in the series here:

shopping trolley
school run (1)

school run

2010-03-22T19:41:00.002Z

I am a School Run Rookie. That is, I have recently embarked upon the long-term expedition that is the twice daily journey to school and back (I estimate 1755 hours and 5616 miles before high school provides the freedom for both my children to travel in alone). I’m half way through my first year and I’m in a love/hate relationship with the ordeal. There is part of me that rejoices that I am no longer stuck in an artificially lit and temperature controlled office with no experience of day light and no sense or perspective of the ‘world out there’. This part of me exalts in Spring sunshine just warm on my face, in the smell of freshly mown grass, in crunchy Autumn leaves underfoot, in a white snowy world under a cloudless blue sky, even in a heavy downpour of rain (I’ve banned umbrellas on the school walk – you can’t walk with an umbrella, well you certainly can’t push a buggy with an umbrella, and you can’t walk with an umbrella if you get my drift. A peaked hat, I find sufficient to keep my face dry and to embrace the elements whole heartedly, preventing me from entering into the brisk umbrella carrying trot of the ‘oh my goodness, the World’s going to end, it’s RAINING!’ brigade). But then, some days, the endless routine of the same journey, the same time, the same people, stretches far away into time interminably.

As I say, I’m a School Run Rookie and you, School Run Veterans, may smile cynically at this next paragraph and at my green enthusiasm (in both senses of the word). But hold back your objections for a few minutes and hear me out, don’t let those years of the same journey, the same time, the same people close your heart to this rookie enthusiasm. You see, I have made the decision to walk the children into school. In truth it takes about the same amount of time to walk in as it does to strap the children into their child seats (the straps are always trapped in the buckles and it’s mysteriously neither me nor my husband that has perpetrated this deed), to then drive 5 minutes up the road, search for a parking space (and find one nearer my house than the school) and then unstrap the children (obviously taking great care not to catch the straps in the buckles, as it is NEVER, as previously outlined, on my watch that this occurs). Now that’s an ordeal! This is not, however, the reason why I have decided not to use the car. I want to live a different type of lifestyle. I want to teach my children a different type of living. We walk to school. That’s what we do. We live near school. There is no need to use fuel (of the fossil type) to get us there. We have eaten breakfast. We will use that food fuel to propel us the distance. We will thank God for providing us with food and healthy bodies and a school nearby. Many do not have that privilege. We are the fortunate few. We will continue to walk to school, in all weathers and be whole-heartedly grateful to God for the privilege and ability to do so.

shopping trolley

2010-03-22T19:33:00.003Z

I bought a shopping trolley this week. One of the pull along type frequently towed by ladies of the more mature years.

I feel this rather needs an explanation as I have not yet reached those more mature years myself, nor have I taken leave of my senses. You see, since my determination to reduce my use of fossil fuels, I have long been pondering upon how to transport the heavier weekly shopping items the mile and a half back to my house, having terminally broken the spirit of our last buggy through overloading. The word ‘backpack’ had been swimming around my head when my husband mentioned to me that on a recent perusal of a tabloid he had noted that a number of green-minded ‘celebrities’ had been sporting a ‘trolley’ about town in recent months. A trolley! Aha. But where to buy? And at what price would these ‘desirable’ items come?

Serendipity (or the Lord), depending upon your persuasion, had me wander, only the next week, passed the charity shop in our market square and there, standing coyly in the corner of the window display, not knowing it’s own value nor the high fashion item that it had become, was a lovely spotty version of the very thing I coveted and with a not so vast price tag of a fiver!

Later at the supermarket checkout, I begin loading my groceries into my new acquisition in a self-satisfied manner when the lady behind me comments with interest at the amount of shopping and my unorthodox means of conveyance, adding with insight ‘have you far to go?’.

Those prophetic words ‘have you far to go?’ rang hauntingly in my ears thirty minutes (and only half way home) later as I negotiated yet another precarious road crossing pushing my buggy – heavily laden with child, groceries and library books in front of me with one hand whilst dragging a poor spotty second-hand shopping trolley behind me with the other; wheels wobbling, sides bulging, straps taut. On reflection, I’m not sure the humble shopping trolley is designed for the amount of shopping a younger woman can (or thinks she can) pull. As if to confirm this moment of self-realisation both for the trolley and for myself, the travail of the journey home was welcomingly interrupted with knowing looks and sometimes outright laughter from ladies of the more mature years who have long known their capabilities and whose (mis)adventures with titanic shopping loads are well gone.

I’m still going to use the trolley! My green intentions are not thwarted by this small setback. I am determined to lead a life that is healthier for the World and for my body and that is an example to my children as I believe God desires. This time, however, I will load that trolley within its capabilities and so let it proudly do the job it was designed for. And perhaps I too can learn a lesson about myself by reflecting on my unrealistic expectations of that trolley; for Jesus himself taught that His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Matthew 11:29).

Read last month's post: school run

the tenby stare

2009-08-31T11:44:00.000+01:00

Leaving the backpackers hotel at 7.45 am with the intention of buying fresh, early bread, we met the early creatures of the holiday town. Litter pickers, roadsweepers, brewery lorries (holes open alarmingly in the pavement to allow barrels to be lowered into deep, dark alcoholic pits), hanging baskets dripping from early watering. But all in all the streets blissfully empty and air fresh, though not silent, the very noisy roadsweeping vehicle beeping and whirring so as to make my children cover their ears. So much for teaching them the joys and beauty of the early morning and the benefits of early rising.

We turned up at the old bakers at 8 am prompt hoping for the smell of fresh bread and a welcoming rosy cheeked floury baker. Instead a van was parked over the pavement and a man (presumably the 'baker') was unloading baked goods into his shop. The van was indeed marked with a local address, but alas the dream of freshly baked bread wafting smells into my nostrils was cut short. As was the friendly baker hope.

"Are you open?" I enquired jovially - a mere courtesy as the door was open and 8am well past - expecting a welcome and a flourish to display shelves of bread, cakes and mouth-watering pastries.

"You're early. We're not open until 9." came the matter of fact reply.

"Really?!" I feigned shock, "No breakfast til 9 then children." I said jokingly to my wide eyed worried looking infants; tummies rumbling at the sight of the trays of goodies being unloaded.

The 'baker' ignored the bait and continued to unload his wheaten wares and determinedly keeping his shop 'shut'.

Refusing to spoil the holiday fantasy of a daily ritual of walking out for breakfast bread any further by going to the Londis I had spotted near the hotel and buying a bag of sliced I pondered over what to do with my children for the next hour.

Walking further up the road I scanned the closed establishments advertising Tenby Mackerel, Caldey Island Crab, teas, coffees, hot chocolates and all day breakfasts (but apparently not at 8am) when I spotted, down a side alley (of which Tenby walled town has many) some tables laid out with sugar pourers and brown and red plastic sauce bottles. And lo and behold I had discovered Tenby Covered Market hidden away behind little more than an open door.

Things appeared to have more life than the other places in Tenby at this apparently, if not God-forsaken then certainly proprietor-forsaken hour in the morning (it was now 8.30 am!) and so I wheeled the buggy and pulled the other child down the thin corridor towards an area brightly lit by the morning sun through the old glass and wrought ironwork roofing.

Again I enquired jovially of the blonde girl behind the counter "Any chance of a cup of tea?" . This was met with a hopeful "In a minute" in a heavy accent - perhaps Polish? I was surprised to find the Pole migration had reached Tenby - it's a lot further west than you anticipate when you plan (from your computer) to holiday there. The reason I say 'perhaps' Polish, is that it is a long standing joke between my husband and I that I cannot recognise accents in the slightest and seem to regard everyone with a dialect that I cannot place as from Poland.

The children and I settled ourselves down at a table expectantly and surveyed the surroundings. Now, the archetypal indoor market, as exhibited perfectly by the Tenby example, is something I had not experienced until I was transported North by the man I was to marry. Do these markets exist in the South? The market had the obligatory fish stall, pet shop and cafe providing the pervasive and also obligatory smell of cooking fat that comes home with you on all goods purchased (my fancy dress waist-length blonde wig bought in Barnsley indoor market in the late Nineties made me smell like I had spent the day working in a chip shop, which was unfortunate for the other actors during our touring performance of Scrooge that year). And of course the Butcher's stall ... now I leave the Butchers until last and pride of place as I have a special relationship with Butcher's market stalls as will be explained forthwith.

The man that dragged me North was, in his early years of employment, a Butcher. And a proud one at that. He worked in the old stone-built Rawson Market in Bradford City Centre (now demolished and replaced by a sanitised, concrete, characterless, 'I can't believe you got planning permission' version) and was often found whistling a leg o' lamb into a sale or making a few pound of sausage (apparently Yorkshire butchers drop the 's' and the plural of sausage is in fact 'sausage' rather like 'sheep'). And before I carry on, I must just mention that those involved in large scale planning in Bradford must somehow have missed the 'we will never do that again' conviction that everyone else seems to have gained through reflecting on the 1960's city centre monstrosities. Oh, except for the recently erected black glass 'ship' building on the ring road which is superb.

Anyway, were we talking of Tenby? The Butcher's stall in Tenby was staffed by 3 broad and round looking men in white over coats and red and white striped aprons - well 2 were - the third 'member of staff', a life-sized model - obligatory, seemingly, in all fresh meat establishments (maybe it's an EU rule) sported a blue and white striped version, a straw boater, rolled up sleeves and a moustache and looked remarkably like my husband as I first met him. In fact if the model could have stepped off his plinth and spoken I would've been sure he would have addressed me with a Bradford accent (even though in Tenby) and asked cheekily "ello lady! Nice piece o' lamb?" followed by his signature whistle and a flourish of a leg of the aforementioned meat. But the butcher stayed resolutely on his plinth as, alas, did the girl behind her counter and no cup of tea arrived, although the butchers (the 2 that could move) helped themselves to a couple of brews (or should that be 'brew' as in 'sheep' and 'sausage') and stood behind their dead animals eyeing me in a 'tourist aren't welcome here' way that made me feel a trifle uncomfortable considering the number of sharp implements ready for use behind the display of what they had previously used them for.

Eventually, I decided to return to the counter and enquire over the tardy beverage ordered 20 minutes ago. I was greeted by a "huh?" and a stony stare before a view of her back as she turned away from me, picked up a cup, added milk from a jug close at hand and filled the cup from an urn that had obviously been ready for at least 10 minutes unless the butchers were drinking cold water. I'm not sure whether a tea bag had been involved in the process but the liquid presented for purchase appeared to have been on away on holiday when the teabag visited, if it ever did.

I peered at the milky water.

"Do you still have the tea bag?" I enquired politely.

The girl gave me a pained expression and remained firmly rooted to the spot.

"Have you put the tea bag in the bin?" I tried.

This time a completely blank look as if I was speaking Martian, which I may have been if she was indeed Polish and used only to the butchers "a'rite? cup o tea love?"

"Look, I'm sorry but I can't drink that. Could you put the tea bag back in it if you haven't binned it already?"

The girl, still wordless, but seemingly to have understood by some miracle of revelation, took the cup, turned, put a tea bag in and returned it to the counter where at least a ripple of brown was now starting to spread out from the bag into the white liquid.

I won't relate the following 'discussion' about the children's drinks but it transpired that although the menu promised juice and other healthy joys, all that was available were the contents of the three quarters empty Coke fridge. I bought the healthiest beverage available: a full sugar Oasis, paid and returned demoralised to the table where I quickly sank the tea (with tea bag in, I had not been offered a teaspoon) and under the territorial glare of the butchers, now joined by the pet shop man , hurried the children out leaving a much bemoaned half finished Oasis and a 'what happens if I squeeze this really hard mum?' red sauce bottle.

Upon exit, the Tenby church clock struck nine o'clock with, I am sure, 12 chimes or more (I gave up counting with the children when it took this unexpected turn) and we retraced our footsteps for a reconnoitre with the Baker, who as we turned the corner, we saw had clearly been open a good long while before nine o'clock as his shop was bustling with locals clutching paper bags plump with pastries and buns.

Still full of the optimism of the first day of the holidays, I reached the front of the queue. My children had already selected their choice of breakfast roll from the window and eagerly awaited the removal and placement of the items into the crisp white paper bags that they could clutch in their little hands on the journey home.

I smiled warmly at the blonde serving girl and was greeted by a stony stare.

"One of those soft white baps please. And one wholemeal small bap. But not the one that's a little overdone if you don't mind, the children won't eat it too crusty." I chatted conversationally.

The items were placed in their bags without a word or a smile. The girl then stood stony still and stared at me as I surveyed the rest of the goods. The stare said "Are you really gonna make me walk two steps back to the window and then bend over to reach something else from the display when I've just been over there?"

"Oooo...mmm...yes...I'll have one of those teacakes please."

A sigh, and a rustle of a bag, and one was in my possession.

Once more the stare. I enquired after savoury pastries and was directed to a list on the counter with the information "They've not been put out yet," given, at last, verbally. And she was, I think, Polish! So the supposed reluctance was perhaps down to a language barrier. Of course! I smiled graciously and thanked her for the information whilst mentally noting not to mention this second national designation to my husband.

You may be wondering at this point, where the much-mentioned spouse is on this trip out to procure sustenance to break our fast. Alas, he is not resting in bed back at the hotel whilst I take the early rising children on a 'dawn' (by Tenby standards) excursion as was planned whilst booking our last minute jaunt a week ago. In fact our beloved ex-butcher is bedridden with a gout-y big toe, having been driven to A&E at 6am on the very morning of our holiday in severe pain. Being a determined (and some would say hard-hearted) type of wife, I packed the children into the car, as planned at 9.30am and drove off amidst tears from husband and offspring alike. And so when we return from this buying (mis)adventure I will have to relate the rather long tale and no doubt be jocularly abused about my overly keen Polish classification of retail outlet serving girls via my mobile phone rather than face to face.

And so, having surveyed the list of savouries, and not being visually assisted by sight of the aforementioned items (as is much desired, I always think, in the selection of a savoury pastry) I spotted second from the bottom of the list a 'Taffy Pasty'. Aha! I think to myself, a Welsh speciality! That's more like it.

Still a little unsure about my Polish attribution of the (conceivably) Welsh but sullen serving girl I ask, possibly - and as I look back on it now probably - somewhat culturally insensitively whether the Taffy Pasty is in fact a Welsh speciality (can anyone tell me if the Welsh object to the appellation 'Taffy'?). And I am greeted by the now familiar "huh?" accompanied by a short thrust forward of the head (like a chicken impression without the backward volley) leaving the mouth open in a disbelieving gape after the expulsion of the "huh" and a look in the eyes as if you have just asked for a bacon and cheese turnover made from moon-cheese.

I repeat the question and the girl throws her head back over her shoulder with a "wuh?" (again ending in an open mouthed gape) towards a lady of more mature years and obviously more experience on the national pasty front. The look as their eyes meet communicates that the sooner I leave the baking establishment the better.

The National Pasty Expert pulls in her chin, raises her eyebrows and says in a broad (definitely...I think) Welsh accent,

"It's chicken. Inasmuch as chicken is available all over the United Kingdom I don't suppose so, no" and continues with the stony stare.

I quickly appraise the savoury list; somewhat apologetically order 3 sausage rolls; pay and hurry the children out of the shop.

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surprised by Narnia

2009-04-22T21:04:00.000+01:00

Earlier this evening I flicked through my Virgin Catch Up programme list and came across a programme (may still be available on BBC iPlayer) called the Narnia Code. Skeptically, I looked at the programme information. Even more skeptically, I started to watch it. It was on the last day of availability and so would be off the listing tomorrow. I had been reluctantly planning to watch some trash movie with Scarlett Johansen on Film 4+1, having resisted going to bed at 7.15 to read again, thinking to myself "I must have a life!" (though how watching a film with Scarlett Johansen about American business would give me that I have no idea!).

It started in the way all these 'code' programmes do. With a deep male voice slowly intoning the narration in a fashion that makes you feel that a mystery in about to be revealed "one lost in time for generations, only now about to be revealed...this discovery could be the most significant literary discovery in our life time...changing the way we view the Narnia books, C S Lewis and even the way we view God and our place in the cosmos..." (or something very similar).

I sat for 30 mins of the 60 whilst they drew out the 'revelation' thinking "get on with it" and "what on earth are they going to come up with?". And then it comes:

The books represent the 7 planets as defined by medieval cosmology.

What? So what?

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe represents Jupiter. Prince Caspian, Mars. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the Sun. (The 7 medieval 'planetary' bodies included the Sun and the Moon). And so on...

Yeah? And? Why is that remotely interesting?

Apparently, it shows that C S Lewis hadn't 'lost it' in writing a set of 'sloppily written' children's books but that there are 2 not 3 levels of meaning in them and each book in heavy in symbolism pointing to each pertinent planet.

I'm still thinking, why? What would the point of that be?

Actually, to be fair, I'm still thinking that!

However, from about 45 mins in they started exploring Lewis' view of creation and God's involvement in holding it all together. They then interview one of the leading physicists in the UK and some other major scientist who both start giving an educated, lucid, uplifting account of creation and creator and the physicist even starts to refer to the Bible, Christ's resurrection and to talk about the new creation and how that could work with new laws of nature!

I was genuinely gob-smacked and uplifted.

And then the guy who 'cracked the planet code' who all the way through had not made his views on Lewis clear suddenly comes out and says that he holds the same beliefs as Lewis.

I still don't really see the point of Lewis doing this - except for his love of medieval symbolism and complexity, that nothing is as it first seems but that everything needs another look, and then another, and then another. So I suppose maybe he's asking us to look at God more carefully and not just take a cursory glance. That there may be things hidden, shrouded in mystery that at first seem obscure if you're not looking the right way at something. Maybe: take another look at Christianity's claims?

Or maybe he's trying to point us to the whole cosmos and it's beauty and importance and majesty and to not be so self absorbed and self centred (so very human).

I particularly liked the ideas explored about God relating to the entire cosmos (again moving away from this self-centred end-user of the Gospel bias), it's beautiful and immense and huge and magnificent and we don't understand it but God created it and holds it all together. They gave an allegory (don't know if it's a Lewis one):

Christ is a deep sea diver, he dives down, deep, deep down right to the bottom of the darkest water and he grabs from amongst the slime and muck a jewel and he comes up and shouts for joy as he breaks the surface holding the jewel aloft. And the jewel he is holding in his hand is the whole of creation, the whole, entire cosmos.

Now didn't you feel he was going to say that the jewel was 'you' or 'mankind'. I was surprised and delighted to find it was the entire cosmos. It gave me a refreshing perspective of how large and big and wide is God.

Thanks for reading :0)

beamer and bono

2009-04-19T19:54:00.000+01:00

Yeah, well I've decided to lay down a few more blogs about that amazing summer of 94.

It blessed me to write and remember about Margaret and just reminded me of what the Jesus walk can be like. Not that I'm saying that my long hard slog through early years motherhood is not a walking, living faith. Just in a different way. It's seasons. Life is a journey. I am a pilgrim. You are the Way and I'm walking with you (clinging on to you) til I get there.

But I want to nudge my view a bit. I want to refocus on relationships, have a Jesus walk. With God. With Robin. With Nathalie. With Mark. With my neighbours (that makes me scared). With the person on the street. With the people I meet. To refocus on the most important commandments "love God and love your neighbour ". It's relationships. And we forget. I forget. Time gobbled up by worthy causes: church work, house work (well, ok, sometimes), DIY, roles, roles, responsibilities. Always too busy. I want to take time, to have time. To chat to the Cactus Lady again (watch this space). To spend more quality one to one time with the young people. To not rush Robin through the day. To visit my Gran in London more before she dies.

To breathe.

To walk like Jesus around my town.

To live like Jesus in my family.

So I'm trying to remind myself of when I lived life like that and lived in a community like that. I'm sad to say (yes sad, really sad) that it's been a long time.

So, on to the topic. Who was 'Beamer' and what's she got to do with Bono?

We were meeting for prayer. Me and 3 of the youth. We met weekly (as far as I can remember) but I don't know how long that lasted. I only remember this one prayer meeting. It's hard not to. The girls turned up to my little flat in Druid Woods (yeah actually, never noticed that before, sounds like I was living on some pagan site. Maybe I was! But it didn't stop us reaching heaven that afternoon). The girls turned up. I think it was the summer holidays. They were in their teens. There was some little thing going on. I can remember what it was, but there's no need to say. There was an air of awkwardness. I can't actually remember how we resolved it and got praying. But we did.

I didn't let things fester back then. I dealt with them before sunset. I can remember frequently bewildering my colleagues at work by insisting on dealing with any tiny bit of awkwardness that there was and apologising for things that on reflection they probably didn't even notice. They may have thought me mad. But do you know what? My heart was light and the yoke easy. I carried no burdens. I had a skip in my step.

Anyway! Back to that afternoon. We didn't let the thing fester. We got it out in the open. We talked about it. Said how we felt and then, because we loved each other, there was grace and there was love and there was understanding and there was acceptance. So it was done. An inauspicious start.

Beamer was there. We called her Beamer because she had this disconcerting (to the person beamed at) habit of smiling (No. Not just smiling. Literally 'beaming'.) at people she met, walking down the street, standing at the bus stop, in shops. It's a great thing to do. I've tried doing it a few times (more of that in another blog).

So, Beamer was there, me and 2 sisters. We started to pray. Same old, same old. But then someone started to pray for U2. We all started laughing. For some reason (that now I find hard to understand) we thought it was really bizarre to be praying for them. I think it was the sincerity and level of belief that our prayers were going to make a difference in the lives of Bono, the Edge and the others (they must get fed up of being 'the others'. But hey, at least they're in U2).

Anyway, we all REALLY started praying for them and those prayers seemed to be going straight up. I've rarely felt this in group prayer. The level of absolute belief and faith that our prayer was going to make a difference. We were all there, 'on one'. But no one had hyped us up. As I said we didn't get off to the greatest start. There had been no worship music, no stirring preaching. And we were all 'good Anglican girls'. Just us 4, in my bedroom suddenly getting right through to heaven. The cheesy terms "on a hotline to God" and "blasting rockets right through the stratosphere straight into heaven" come to mind.

Now writing this in 2009 as a nearly 40 yr old who takes a heavily considered approach, weighing every statement and thought theologically til it drives me mad. I find it difficult to use those terms. But I also find it difficult to find any adjectives, metaphors etc that explain it more accurately. Those prayers really felt like they were 'alive' (mmm...that's better) that they were rockets, powerfully going straight up to heaven (if that's where prayers go). So I apologise if you feel uncomfortable with those americanised and military terms. I do. But it's what it felt like.

So after a while we wrapped up and the girls went home.

Now, I can't remember the exact details of dates and stuff. But a few weeks later Beamer and a few of the other youth were going to Cardiff Arms Park (as I think it was then) to see U2 in concert.

After the concert Beamer comes to see me, or I go to see her (it doesn't matter) and she's got this amazing story to tell. Now, let me just say that Beamer was a very balanced and Godly youth. Not flighty. Not giddy about celebrities etc. Just a real lover of Jesus.

So she gets into the stadium, she tells me.

And she's with the others.

And the concert starts.

And she's on the pitch area.

And she gets separated from the others.

And the crowd just seems to move her to the front.

Ever tried to get to the front at a U2 gig from the back of the pitch? Precisely! Even if she was that type of girl she wouldn't have been able to. We're talking thousands and thousands of fans.

And somehow she's now at the front against the crowd barrier.

And then Bono looks down at her.

And he points at her.

And he says to one of the security guards "that's the one".

And the 'heavy' lifts her on stage.

Now, I have no idea how a 17 year old U2 fan keeps her head in this situation (well, I do, he's called the Holy Spirit) but Beamer just grabs Bono and shouts in his ear "Jesus loves you Bono". And he says "Yeah I know". And she says "No, he REALLY loves you".

She gets put back in the crowd, and I presume enjoys the concert although it must all be a bit surreal by now.

The next week there's an article in the paper about it (which I still have somewhere) where Beamer tells the journalist that we'd been praying for Bono prior to the event. And Bono has mentioned it on the radio and in a book somewhere (so I've been told).

Who knows the purpose of this? God. Something was going on. Those prayers really felt like they were going somewhere. It'd be cool to know. If we really are allowed to ask God all the questions we like in heaven.

So, like last time, I seem to have gone off the point a bit from my initial thoughts. But what I'm trying to remind myself is this: make time to be used by God. Be expectant that you will be used. Be Jesus where you can. God can use you in lots of little ways that can be big ways to other people. You don't have to give the 'full gospel' to be doing Jesus' work. However, I have to say: if you get the chance then do so! I have a number of times been asked 'so what do you believe?' or a similar question when stuck on a train with someone. But I had been friendly, open, smiling, willing to give time and myself to the stranger. It's unlikely to happen if you've got your head stuck into your ipod/laptop/mobile phone or are looking like you'd roar if anyone invades your personal space or dares to sit in the seat next to you!

Hope you'll read again sometime. I'll be blogging some more about '94 and other times. And sometime you might even actually get my own story of Jesus and me. And do you know what? I'd love to hear some of your stories of your Jesus walk. No matter how long ago. No matter how small a thing. There's something amazing and encouarging and faith building about hearing about each other's stories. Why not blog them?

:0)

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brewing peas

2009-04-16T19:03:00.000+01:00

On a cold, wet day like this it's simply essential to 'brew up' some peas.

You can buy a bag of frozen 'mushy peas' from Tesco. Although they're not yet mushy. I felt totally defrauded when I first opened a bag! But do not despair! One pint of water, one teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda and a 20 minute brewing on the hob later, a complete and wonderful transformation occurs. A scum appears on the surface and then those little green friends magically turn from frozen pellets into a thick green comforting paste perfect for days like these.

Mark likes his with mint sauce. I prefer to add a knob of butter.

Mmmmm...enjoy!

mattress-girl

2009-04-02T19:40:00.000+01:00

So, now, inspired by Dave8's podcast, I start to blog properly (or that's the intention). Just read my last (the first) blog. A bit self-indulgent on the ascent/nascent and mountain climbing thing lol. But hey I'm not going to be apologetic and delete it - just slightly embarrassed - but surely that's the thing about blogging and podcasting - not to take oneself too seriously.

I wanted to blog tonight because there wasn't enough room on Twitter to put what I wanted to share. I was excited again by how God uses us, in what we can think is a small thing, but actually to someone else is MASSIVE. Apparently, I first encouraged Dave8 to lead worship - I can't really remember this much, but for him, it was the first step on what is now a gifting (ok, ok, theologically - it was probably a gifting then too but just embryonic!). Another example:

Mark got saved by a guy named Brian knocking on his door when Mark was 12ish - I'm not sure what Brian felt about door-knocking (I know I can't bear doing it and maybe even question the validity of such an exercise for the image of the church unless done very carefully/thoughtfully and with integrity) but anyway the whole Greenwood family found Jesus. Mark has gone on to talk about Jesus' love to thousands upon thousands of people over the last 21 years with many, many people deciding to join the journey of faith thru Mark's invitation. Brian must be blessed to be part of this God story!

So... I want to tell you about the Summer of '94. I was 24. (I was going to give the shortened version, but hey the WHOLE story gives glory to God so I'm just not gonna cut it short). Ummm... I've just re-read all this and the relevance of what follows to my initial preamble may not seem apparent but hey my mind's a maze! I'll try and pull it together at the end :0)

I was dry, so dry, hadn't felt the Spirit for weeks. Hadn't thought I'd done anything to grieve him and was still praying/worshipping daily and fellowshipping with believers. Didn't know what was wrong. The ceiling seemed like brass. Clang. Prayers bouncing straight back down again. Worship felt like I was in a completely empty apartment - nothing familiar or cosy - echoing, flat.

Then one night, I was hurrying somewhere (can't remember where, I was heading down to Bristol town centre so probably not to a church event) and it was dark and drizzling a bit and an old lady was standing on the side of the road looking distressed and confused. I was late, I was hurrying, it was raining, I may have even gone past (I can't remember it was 15 years ago!) but then the Spirit twanged inside my chest like an elastic band "You need to stop! Go back!" (by the way that's not a literal physical sensation, I'm using metaphor :0) ).

"Are you alright?" I say.

"I can't cross the road and my knickers have fallen down round my ankles" says the lady.

I pull up her knickers. I help her across the road. I ask her where she lives (just there - yeah - just there - 75m from my little flat). I help her home. And that's what it is a 'home'. Only it's not. Not a home. It's some sort of half-way residential care place. Only it's not. There's no care. Just someone that comes once a week to clean and I'll be honest with you I sincerely doubt that one little old lady can create that much mess, dirt and grime in one week!

Anyway she says she's Margaret (only everyone there calls her Peggy and laughs when I say her name's Margaret) and she calls me an angel. I leave and go on down town (or wherever - I really can't remember).

Anyway, for 2 or so more days I'm drier, painfully dry and I know now, I know why. But I'm resisting. I can't. I can't make that commitment. I'm scared stiff. Someone 75m from my place. Someone needy. Really needy. Just there. Always needy. I won't do it. I can't start that off. I'll only let her down. I'm busy. Too busy with my life. With my church commitments. To the youth group. But the Spirit is twanging so hard now.

And then I break. I bake a cake to take to her and as I start to weigh out those ingredients He floods me. I'm down on my knees in that little studio flat kitchen, I'm raising hands still clutching a spoon covered in cake mix, I'm sobbing. And it's beautiful, He's beautiful, And I've missed you, And I love you and I'm full of Him and I know I can do it. And it's not a burden anymore.

I take the cake and I chat to Margaret and in my mind I plan - we're gonna get the youth into this - they can take turns at coming with me to clean and chat each Saturday. And she says I'm an angel again, sent by God. She's right on one count.

(I haven't even got on to the bit I wanted to tell you...but it's coming...)

And the youth rise to the challenge and they get enriched and blessed. And she tells us one week about a girl who lived upstairs the previous year (see it's coming now) who slept on a mattress on the floor and talked a lot about God too.

So during this time I go to a different church one Sunday morning and get introduced to a girl and when I get dropped off home the girl (she's in the car) says "I used to live round the corner".

"Yeah?"

"I was ill and I lived in this sort of care home..."

Well you know who she turns out to be, don't you? Yeah. The mattress-girl.

And she tells me she's been praying, praying for God to send someone to Margaret. Someone to carry on her work. Her God work. Her Jesus love. And she's so blessed to hear the story. To hear that God honoured her work, honoured her prayer, loved Margaret enough.

Margaret's dead now. Don't be sad. She was old enough. When I moved up North to marry Mark, my lovely youth group carried on seeing her until she died. As far as I know she never made a profession of faith, she was always a bit confused by it all. I don't know where that puts her. I do know though, that we were a joy to her in her life at the end and we brought something of Jesus to her through love and laughter, companionship and practical things. It blesses me to think about it. Thanks God for involving me in that part of your story. And do you know, I don't think I've ever felt closer to the Spirit for such a long length of time as those joyful months in the Summer of '94.

So I think what I'm trying to say is God uses these 'small' things and does 'big' things. We're out living our 'Jesus life' looking to love the lost and lonely and tell people about our beautiful Jesus and encourage the under-dog and God takes our small gestures of love and encouragement and makes huge differences in people's lives but we rarely hear about it.

We need to look for the lonely, the unlovely, the not-yet gifted, the young, the infirm, the unloved, the elderly, the rejected, the laughed at, those not taken seriously, those who always fail or backslide and give them love and chances and more chances and even more chances even when we're laughed at or frowned at for our foolishness. This is the song I want to sing. I believe it's the song that Jesus sang. But I'm still scared to sing it, it seems to cost too much. Except when I remember all those times in the past; when I sang the Spirit sang too and He gave me so much more than it cost.

To think about: I believe I was dry because I wasn't giving out. I was just comfy, an end-user of the gospel (quote Brian McLaren) an end-user of the Spirit. Why was the Spirit given? Just to feel cosy and nice with God or to empower us to live the Jesus life? Just a question! Not sure of the answer!

Well, that was long...hope not to long for you to get to this point.

Speak soon. Maybe. :0)

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