Frustrated Ramblings

Irritated! I had a post about Jesus' ascension ready to go (last Thursday being Ascension Day). Then, when it came to actually typing it ... all gone. Mind a total blank. Especially annoying because it's now a fortnight since my last post, and I had been doing quite well at getting them done weekly. When it's a habit it's so much easier.

Time for a ramble then - bits and pieces without necessarily any overall shape and destination. I've always felt the best way to get to know a new place is to go out and get lost there for a while. It's a lot of walking the first few times, but you soon build up a mental map which helps in the future. Rambling: purposeless wandering ... with a purpose ;-)

A few follow-ups to earlier posts would do the trick, I reckon.

My last post I said I was expecting to take a hit from overdoing things ... I did. It was still worth it.

There was an interesting opinion piece on the BBC website today about disabilities and quality of life: in most cases it is no worse, sometimes it can even be better. A challenge can lead to a re-evaluation of what is really important, and a focus on that. One point the article makes is the importance of context, particularly in terms of social environment and relationships: simplistically, people matter more than circumstances. The article is well worth reading.

Before that I wrote about Kristin Cashore's young adult fantasy, Fire, which I found engrossing and moving. I am now about halfway through the next book in the series, Bitterblue, which is equally stunning. Themes include confusion and disorientation, so getting into the book at the beginning is not as easy as in the earlier books. The initial situation in which the heroine finds herself  is confusing and disorienting, deliberately leaving the reader without much clue as to what is going on. It's very well written.

Whilst I felt that Fire has a subtext of what it is like to be a young woman growing up; Bitterblue seems to allude to being a young abuse survivor growing up - hence the disorientation and the focus on the slippery nature of truth and lies. I'm only half way through, so I don't know if she can keep this quality of writing up all the way through, but so far it is an amazing book.

Actually, I am finding Bitterblue a touch more confusing than it really should be, as I am having trouble getting my head around the cast of characters. It adds an extra challenge to reading books when you can't remember half of what went on before.

Which was a part of the source for my Easter post, Alzheimer's At Easter. But the main trigger for that was the question of what it is which defines a person's identity. Is it their memories and their patterns of life? If so then I guess it is true that dementia in general, and Alzheimer's in particular, strips the person away to leave a shell behind. But if there is more to identity than the surface stuff, if a person's essence is deeper and subtler than just memories and habits, then the loved one remains and is to be respected as a fellow human being.

As the BBC opinion piece I mentioned earlier points out, assumptions about quality of life in difficult situations can be wrong. The evidence seems to be that having company, someone to talk to them and sing to or with them, can be really helpful for people with dementia.

As a final follow-up, looking back two years, I have been thinking about a post I wrote about my plans to lose weight. As ever, life got in the way of those plans. For most the past two years I have been half a stone down on my starting point (against a target of a stone). The past couple of months I have stabilised at three or four pounds higher than that, as CFS has clamped down.

What has struck me though is a possible answer to the age-old question of why it is that some of us could eat what we liked as teenagers and still remain thin, yet in middle age the pounds pile on. I suspect that I was probably putting on weight back then too, that probably hasn't changed. What has changed is how long I have been doing it for.

If I have been putting on roughly a pound a year throughout, then as a skinny teenager I was not going to notice any effect over three or four years. But over thirty or forty years is a very different matter: forty years at around a pound a year is near enough three stone - enough to take me well into 'overweight' territory.

To round off, I am now a big fan of West Berkshire Brewery. My daughter got me a mixed case of their beers for my birthday: absolutely delicious!

Autumnal Ramblings

Autumn Rain by RayCrystal

It's classic British autumn outside: grey with heavy, but warm(-ish), drizzle; and it's far too long since I posted anything to this blog, so ...

It's not even as if there's been nothing I fancied blogging about. There've been reports about genes and free-will, all sorts of health-related issues in the news, and, of course, reports of various security perverts spying on us "for our own good". As if MI5 and GCHQ are at all trustworthy or even the least bit accountable to anyone, certainly not parliament.

Consider the SpyCatcher affair, when the British government sent its Cabinet Secretary, Robert Armstrong, to lie to the Australian courts, to cover up a faction inside MI5 working against Harold Wilson in the 70's, when he was prime minister. Then there's paedophile traitor Geoffrey Prime, whose day job was working at GCHQ, but whose hobby was using surveillance to identify young girls most likely to be home alone so he could attack them (in spite of being positively vetted six times, it wasn't GCHQ or MI5 who finally caught him, but the local police using traditional policing methods). There's a really good article on Adam Curtis's BBC blog about the history of MI5 here. Maybe US readers can reassure me that their NSA is more trustworthy and accountable?

In terms of my own church life, I am in the process of getting re-licensed as a lay reader, at St John's Church here in Caversham. Considering that we used to belong to St Johns several years ago, this seems like a bad idea - like a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac. Also, St John's remains the far side of Caversham from me, which is hardly helpful when it comes to local involvement. Nevertheless, I spent lots of time last year visiting local churches and St John's was where the wind of the spirit seemed to be blowing me, so that's where I've ended up.

As a part of the re-licensing process I've been doing some supervised preaching. This is quite challenging as Anglican sermons are VERY short compared to Baptist ones, but also an opportunity to be as creative as I can in presenting truth in a different way. For harvest, last Sunday, I took in Biblical-style flatbread - made that morning - so people got sight and smell and touch and taste, as well as the words.

Meanwhile we have a son who's in his final year at university - so he needs to work on job-hunting - and a daughter who is planning to go to uni next year, so we've been taking her on visits to open days in various parts of the country.

Life goes on, and remains a gift - even in soggy autumn.

May 2012 Ramble

I think last month has to go down as being very definitely not my favourite month.

It began (and continued) with my wife hobbling about on crutches, off work and needing to be taken everywhere by car - including extra trips to physios, doctors, scans, etc. Lousy for her, challenging for my CFS/ME. Thankfully she's now working part time - mornings - trundling around on her crutches, although that gets very painful for her after a while.

I gather there are increasing numbers of people being injured by out-of-control dogs in our local parks. It is the old problem of an incompetent and inconsiderate minority messing things up for everyone else - if they cannot control their dog they should keep it on a lead, it's that simple surely.

Having had CFS/ME more-or-less under control for many years now, I have occasionally wondered how far the symptoms nowadays are more down to middle age and physical unfitness. Mid-May I was hit by a virus when my system was already on the edge, and simply crashed. There is a distinctive combination of feverishness, migraine, nausea, hunger and utter exhaustion - suddenly it all came rushing back to me. Now I'm just fragile and sleeping like a toddler (or old, old man) every afternoon.

A fortnight ago my father-in-law (pictured) died; his funeral was last week. He'd been very poorly since last summer, and not at all well for several years before that, so it wasn't really a surprise ... but still a shock, if you see what I mean. Similarly, it was very sad that he's gone ... but also not sad, because he really was not well and emphysema isn't something you recover from. It's amusing to think of him up with Simon Peter: discussing boats, supping fine ale, and setting the world to rights. Then settling down for a good long rest.

The sting in the tail is that it would have been my Dad's birthday at the beginning of the month; he too died of emphysema a few years back. Not good.

Any silver lining to this May? Well, there was the Delain concert I have already posted about, and there was my son home for the final week. We expected him back for his Grandad's funeral, but he suddenly turned up several days earlier than I'd expected; so that was a pleasant surprise.

That's about it though, in truth. Oh well, here's looking forward to June with optimism and hope. We never quite know what treats might be just around the corner.

Who We Really Are Ramble

Grandma?

I've never seen someone I love suffer from severe dementia, thankfully, but I'm told it is like seeing the person you know slowly disappear. I have seen someone I liked and respected fall prey to alcoholism - there is a sense in which it must be similar, as the person I know gradually disappears to be replaced by some strange, worn, ugly doppelgänger. It is a horrible and frightening experience, and one wonders what, if anything, can be done to bring that person back.

I believe in a core identity or spirit which is distinct from the personality (pneuma rather than psyche to be technical). I believe that this remains and therefore people should be treated with as much respect and dignity as possible, including addicts and victims of dementia. But relationships are primarily with the person, and that gets hard.

I heard a preacher recently talking about heaven "up there" ... saying nothing very meaningful to me. I believe in a resurrection "down here", when Jesus returns and heaven comes down to earth. When this earth is renewed, when injustice and hatred are replaced by love and justice, then we too will be raised and renewed - to be the people we really are, deep, deep down inside.

Part of who we really are lies in our deepest and truest relationships, so I expect to see those restored too. Although not necessarily as we expect: imagine someone we have only known as a quiet old grandma resurrected as a lively young flapper!

Now imagine someone you know who is self-obsessed and treats others appallingly. Maybe s/he has always been like this, or maybe they have become so because of things that have happened to them, or through bad choices they have made. Unless and until we meet them post-resurrection we have no way of knowing who they really are; although God does.

This post is turning shapeless, but I think there is something in here that I do want to say. Anyway it's a while since I did a 'ramble' post, so I'll adjust the title a little ;-)

The Prince Of Wales In Caversham

I've mentioned the PoW several times in previous posts, but I thought it was worth its own ramble today.

Something I only realised recently is that the Prince of Wales is actually part of a small chain of pubs - it seems the same team also run the Fisherman's Cottage and the Rising Sun. It's a very long time since I last went to either of those, but my memory of the Fisherman's Cottage is that it is next to the Kennet, over in Newtown, and seemed mostly focussed on the lunchtime office workers' trade, whilst the Rising Sun is an edge-of-town-centre pub which (back then) had a bit of an unfriendly reputation. As you can probably tell from the links I've put in, there's not much information on the web about either, although it seems that the Rising Sun are also featuring weekly live music and are starting to do food. Clearly the team responsible for the three pubs are not really into posting much info on the internet. Still, I reckon they've done a good job on the Prince, so if you live near either of the other two, they have to be worth a visit.

Like many pubs these days, the Prince has a fairly sizeable and pleasant outdoor area, to cater for smokers and anyone who fancies getting out of the main building and breathing lovely vehicle fumes from Prospect Street. A couple of Fridays ago I turned up, on my bike, to find the outdoor section completely full. Indoors it was like a Tokyo bullet train - absolutely packed. The reason was a local band showcase, with four local bands all playing on the same evening. I watched about half a set from one band, who were excellent, but claustrophobia took over in the interval and I squeezed my way out and left. Maybe they should do fewer local bands at once but more often?

Tonight they had The Generaters playing - to a busy but (thankfully) not completely packed audience - it's the first gig in a while where I've felt motivated to stay to the very end (life's a bit complicated and very tiring recently). They weren't perfect by any means, but were very enjoyable. Basically they play covers in and around the borderland between rock and funk. At times they really hit the groove and were brilliant, but they kept falling back out again. There was a tension between a younger singer and bass player, with an older guitarist and drummer, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. The lowlight of the set was a version of Queen's We Will Rock You, where the guitarist just went AWOL  (try to imagine the song without the lead guitar parts, and you'll see why it didn't work), followed by what I assume was AC/DC's Highway To Hell, completely testosterone-free. The main highlight was the encore, something about 'burning your sex'(?), where the guitarist and bass player swapped instruments and the singer finally persuaded several men to come up and 'dance'; but an honourable mention has to go to a really good cover of Bowie's Spiders From Mars during the first session.

I did plan to insert a photo of The Generators from a previous visit to the Prince into this post, but their Flickr albums block copying, so I can't.

Somewhat ironically, I seem to be visiting the Prince of Wales more often since we moved further away from it - as well as the Saturday night live bands (and occasionally Friday too) they also do excellent Thai food, so the two of us sometimes pop over for that also (the kids aren't keen on Thai, which is a bit of a pain, but they are old enough to be left to their own devices from time to time). The beer is more expensive, but far better kept, than the horrible big-chain pub down the road, and it is a genuine, friendly, community pub, which has to be good news.

PS: I meant to mention that on the 'Local Bands' night I dropped my coin purse somewhere in the PoW. When I popped around next day in the slight hope someone might have found it, there it was behind the bar waiting for me. As I said, a proper community pub.