pic of the day - cherries

They may be undersized, but they're the right colour and they taste good!

There are two cherry trees on the pavement near our house. A little girl found me photographing them and eating a few and said I should be careful, because they might be poisonous. I assured her that they were perfectly safe and showed her how to choose the best ones. She asked me how I could be sure a dog hadn't peed on them. We discussed the logisitical unlikelihood of this. Her little brother came and joined us. As I left, they were trotting home with their hands full of their spoils. Their mother was waiting for them in the doorway and I heard the little girl announce that "That lady says they aren't poisonous. She says they're cherries."

Uh oh.

Perhaps the mother has known all along that they are cherries, but didn't want her kids eating any old cherries off any old tree. This is a fairly common stance. I might just have lost myself a few points with the neighbours!

On being rich

I've had a rough couple of months during which I have had no income. Of course, my husband has continued to earn his (very decent) salary, but our overheads were always based on two incomes and the loss of one put things like our house and our car in jeopardy. It was scary there for a while.

Not for the first time in our lives, we found ourselves on the receiving end of the kindness of friends. Bags of groceries, gifts of money and invitations for meals. It has been hard to accept these gifts, to be honest. I felt like a burden. I also felt embarrassed, because I knew there were people who are far worse off than we are. One friend pointed out we have always been the sort of people who consider it a privilege to do that sort of thing for other people, so we should realise that those who were helping us were seeing it in the same way. It was a lesson in humility.

But, even though I have learned this morning that a new contract is winging its way to me, the lesson wasn't over yet. Anol Bhattacharya (who twitters as SoulSoup) tweeted a link to this site this morning.

It is sobering to see that 99% of the world's population is poorer than we are - even when I don't earn a penny. We are truly privileged.

If you ever travel to Cape Town by air, almost on arrival, you will be reminded of how privileged you are: right next to the Cape Town airport is a squatter camp where people live in shanty houses made of bits of wood, corrugated iron and other scraps.

It gives you a sense of perspective about the air conditioning not working in your hired car!

Image by GNJOR on Photobucket

So there!

It's official. Facebook users are better employees. It's been researched and everything.

But seriously, the article makes for interesting reading. Check it out.

Learning about bereavement

Last night, a group of us had a discussion around the topic of bereavement and grief. It transpired that several of us had lost our fathers. The different circumstances of each of our lives meant that we each handled it very differently.

Not all the fathers in question had died, either.

One woman's father had been in prison for a time. She doesn't know why. Her parents refuse to discuss it, saying that he has paid the price for what he did and that it is a closed chapter in his life. While he was in prison, the family had to cope with the fact of his absence and with the stigma of being the family of a convict.

One young Latvian woman's father was abducted ('stolen' is the word she used) nine years ago. The family hasn't seen him since, but they all believe that he is alive and will be restored to him. I'm not sure who 'stole' him. Her English gave out on her. She initially wanted to use the term 'military', but then said that that wasn't quite right. She spoke without bitterness and with quiet certainty. Somehow, I think that kind of loss may be worse than death, because there can never be closure... unless, of course, she is right and he does come home one day.

One guy's Dad died last year after a long illness. Because he has been struggling with the debilitating impact of unemployment on his life for two years, he has felt unable to deal with the loss, and has shelved it for now. He did recently get a job, but was forced to quit after just one week, when depression set in. Granted the job was a very stressful and emotionally draining one, but I wonder to what extent the removal of the unemployment worries meant that the grief floodgates were finally - and very briefly - able to open.

My own Dad died when I was in my thirties and married with children of my own. In a way, I lost him long, long before he died. I hadn't seen him for 7 years at the time of his death, and prior to that, I had probably spent 6 months in his company over the space of 30 years. He chose not to feature in our lives. We spoke on the phone 3 times a year: his birthday, my birthday and Fathers' Day. Because I barely knew him, I was surprised to find myself grieving his loss, I was also deeply, deeply hurt that no mention was made of my sister and me at the funeral. The officiator hadn't even been told of our existence and half the mourners didn't know who we were. They passed us by completely in the receiving line, as if our grief didn't matter... which only made it worse.

My husband's doting father died when he was nineteen and busy with his basic military training. He was just getting to know his Dad as a man, and the loss was keen. Because he never saw the body, and because his Dad was a notorious prankster (how many church elders have you met who greet people with one of those buzzer things concealed in their hands?), it was years before my husband was able to accept that his Dad wasn't coming back. That he wasn't going to bounce in one day and declare "Got you!" For years, he held on to possessions of his father's. Getting rid of them would be tantamount to admitting he was gone, and it was a long time before he felt ready to do that.

We each deal with things in our own way. One way is not more valid than another.

pic of the day - poppies

I took this photo at a farm near our house. The farmer and his wife returned home while I was taking it and didn't look impressed. Pity. I would have thought they would take it as a compliment.
This is a close up of some of the blooms.

And this was the display on my car's console at the time. Woohoo! 38 degrees! Glorious!

pic of the day - stuck!

The train I took into London today got a flat tyre or something about 10 minutes outside of Euston. There we sat, for over an hour, with no air conditioner and totally sealed windows and doors. The guy in the white shirt in the background was literally wringing wet by the time the rescue train arrived, with it's mercifully working air conditioner... and LOOS! The lady in the foreground was travelling with several female relatives to Wimbledon. One of the relatives had an aerosol can of some or other cooling spray which they all kept using liberally, spreading who-knows-what into what little air there was. The elderly lady next to me came over all faint and I had to get her out of her seat and into the general area where she could feel a little less claustrophobic.

I made my appointment by the skin of my teeth. I must have looked a fright... and probably didn't smell too good, either!

Blow me down if the tube I took back to Euston after my appointment, didn't also come to a halt between stations. This time because the driver of the train ahead of us took ill in the heat and a replacement had to be found. It wasn't quite an hour that time, but apparently it was necessary to carry out a series of emergency stops in quick succession thereafter 'for safety reasons'. When you're hot and sticky and irritable, the last thing you want is to be thrown towards the front of your carriage at about mach 1 several times.

Sigh. It's good to be home!

Apportioning blame

Currently, the British Lions are on a rugby tour of South Africa. On Saturday, they lost rather controversially in the dying moments of the match. Of course, I am pleased with my team's win. I would have thought that was a given. I completely understand that Lions fans are not happy about the loss. To my surprise, however, some of that anger has been directed at me. Now I quite obviously had nothing to do with any aspect of the game. I didn't even get to watch the live broadcast, but had to rely on a recording dropped off by a friend. Nevertheless, it seems I am called upon to shoulder some of the responsibility for what is seen as an injustice, simply by virtue of my nationality.

This got me to thinking about the things for which we are called upon to carry the blame and the extent to which this is reasonable.

For example, for close on a decade, it has been possible to send the parents of a truant UK school child to prison.

I have always found it inconsistent that this is the case in a country which makes provision for a girl to undergo an abortion without her parents' knowledge.

How is it that we are called upon to know whether or not our children are at school, but be ignorant of whether or not they are sexually active, pregant and taking this enormous step? I would imagine that an abortion is traumatic enough, without having to go through it without (at least) your Mom's moral support.

Now it seems we can be fined or even be sent to prison if our children become unruly at school. Not only must we see to it that they go to school. We must see to it that they behave when they get there.

Note: On a personal level, my husband and I have worked and continue to work very hard at teaching our sons to be productive, considerate members of society. We have even (thus far, anyway) had some measure of success. But it's the principle that bothers me.

In the light of the extent to which an increasing number of parents feel that they are 'not allowed to' do this or that in respect of their children, this seems to me to be another imbalance.

I can't help feeling that there needs to be a bit more joined up thinking, here. Either parents are to be expected to shoulder responsibility in respect of their children - in which case, they should be empowered to do so - or, if the state wishes to dictate to parents how to discipline, feed and even set their children down to sleep, then it can't hold them responsible when the wheels come off.

Telling a story

Thanks to Cheryl Cooper for posting this on Facebook and drawing it to my attention. This was taken from the Ukraine's version of the 'Got Talent' TV show. UK entrants are never given that long, but this story is quite rivetingly told. Watch the beautiful young woman who tells the story, too - she's dancing. Performing. Her face and body show the passion of the story she tells with hands in the sand. Quite extraordinary!



Later edit:
Wes Fryer shares the interpretation of this story by a friend who is fluent in Russian.

The video is from the Ukrainian TV Show – Ukraine has Talent. It is called a Requiem in the Sand by Ksenia Simonova. The girl starts by drawing a village and two people on a bench. Then the announcer uses the actual radio announcement of the German attack on the USSR on 22 Jun 41. It is followed by a Russian song about a quiet night during the war. It is followed by an instrumental score and then another Soviet song about soldiers that died for the Motherland. The final instrumental score shows a girl looking through the window and seeing a shadow of her sailor husband. The child puts his hand on the window and she writes "you are always close by."

So much sadder than I had realised. I thought the husband had unexpectedly returned home at the end of the war. Now I realise the wife sees the husband in the child's face every day.

Welcome to the blogosphere

I recently wrote an article on blogging for Training Zone magazine. In it, I promised readers who were started blogging that I would give their blogs a mention here. So I am making good on that promise.

Isobel Tynan blogs over at Lifetravelling, where she looks at "creativity, innovation and learning and development". Please swing by and encourage her with a response to one of her posts or a link to a blog covering a similar issue.

pic of the day - the icing on the cake

Tonight our ladies' group was shown how to some clever things with icing. This is my effort. I was rather pleased with it, actually. I had expected to be about as good at it as I was at arranging flowers! It's quite fun doing these really girlie things from time to time.