July 21st was St. Swithun’s day which legend says will predict the weather for the next 40 days. It rained on St. Swithun’s feast, and so far since then it has rained every single day but one.
Weather forecasters say it’s going to be an unusually wet August.
Heaven help us.
We walked out of the supermarket this morning and when we got home realized we’d walked out without paying for the newspaper we’d picked up.
I am not consumed with guilt.
But it reminded me of the time several years after I’d left the convent when I began to wonder if I didn’t steal things because I really thought it was wrong. Or if I was just afraid I was too stupid not to get caught.
So I walked into a department store, and after much observation and deliberation, stole a scarf.
I told my therapist whom I was seeing at the time and he thought my motives needed further exploration than the simple explanation I offered.
But I’ve never stolen anything again and being tempted to do steal things isn’t one of my particular devils. So I think I really was just trying to convince myself that I wasn’t just a coward.
Unfortunately, though I am now convinced I am not a closet thief, I’m not sure I’m not a closet coward. I’m not tempted to rob a bank to try to find out, though.
One so often thinks of tea as a very British drink, but it’s not native to Britain and didn’t arrive here until it was brought from China by Portuguese trading ships in the mid-1700’s.
Some historians think that the arrival of tea played a critical part in England’s development as the world’s first great industrial power. They say that until the 18th century, cities were limited in size because the spread of disease always imposed a limit to population growth in a confined space. Much disease was spread through contaminated water, so that boiling the water to make the tea greatly reduced the rampant spread of infection. And tea itself is a significant source of anti-oxidants, (which is why so many health-conscious people still recommend it today.)
Because the cities were able to expand, factories were able to find workers to produce more goods that were delivered by ship and railroad all over the world.
Yesterday, though, I just learned something else about tea. When it was first brought to England, it wasn’t used as a drink. The water in which it was boiled was discarded and the tea leaves eaten with salt and pepper.
Sort of like cabbage, I suppose.
One of things I like about living in England is that so many of the foundations of today are visible. The church around the corner has been there for more than eight centuries. The village has been here for at least twice as long. We live on Stocks Lane, which is where the original stocks used to publicly punish the recalcitrant were located. Roman Hill really does refer to the Romans who first arrived in the first century AD.
Today I discovered that the shoes on my feet had a surprising origin. I would have called them sneakers or possibly tennis shoes, but over here they are called “Plimsolls.”
Plimsoll was the man responsible in the mid-1800’s for demanding that ships have a line painted on them indicating the level of cargo they could hold. When the line on the ship sank below the water line, it was dangerously overloaded and subject to capsizing. His crusade ultimately has saved millions of lives. Ships everywhere today have “plimsoll lines” painted on their sides.
Plimsoll also developed a shoe which is why they are now called Plimsolls. The original version, including the pair I’m wearing, have a line about a quarter of an inch above the sole indicating that if you don’t step in water above that line, your feet will stay dry.
It was probably a good shoe at the time for sailors. But I suspect the line on the ship was a better idea than the one on the shoe. I don’t think Plimsolls are too highly recommended as a boot alternative these days.
I’ve stumbled on a quote from Oscar Wilde:
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
I think it was meant to sound very wise.
But personally I think it was arrogant and presumptuous. Who is Oscar Wilde – or anybody else – to decide that “most people” don’t meet their standards for living?
I will admit, though, that Oscar Wilde lived a complex life. Not the life I would choose, but that’s my point, I guess.
While the United States is convulsed with an argument about health care, a fierce debate is occurring over here about assisted suicide.
It runs along lines similar to the abortion debate in America: do those who object to abortion or assisted suicide on religious grounds have the right, in a free society, to impose their religious views on everyone?
When lawmakers here realized that it was impossible to prosecute anyone who actually succeeded in killing themselves, they changed the law so that it is no longer illegal to commit suicide. It is still illegal, however, to assist someone who may wish to commit suicide.
But now, according to a poll published yesterday, about 70% of the population in Britain want the terminally ill who are of sound mind to have the freedom to get assistance to end their lives. There have also been a significant number of high-profile cases of people travelling from Britain to Dignitas, an organization based in Switzerland where for about $6000 one can receive medical help in achieving a peaceful death.
Some opponents fear that a change in law will lead to an increased pressure by relatives on the elderly and disabled to end their lives. In the face of this potential temptation, they believe no one should have the right to receive help.
Actually, it is an unexpectedly encouraging view of the human condition that statistics from places like Oregon or Switzerland which do permit assisted suicide do not support the prediction that, given a chance, we will encourage our inconvenient relatives to end their lives.
I think the best way not to feel like a failure is to set ones sights very low. Or perhaps not to set any sights at all.
I was thinking about how many things we hope the Obama presidency might accomplish – tackle universal health care, education, climate change, the economy, equal rights, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Palestine and Israel, torture, N. Korea, and terrorism for starters.
Of course there are going to be failures. Big ones.
Just undoing the fiasco of the Bush years seems enough and we are hoping for so much more.
Well, I am.
So I’ll forgive Obama a lot for what doesn’t get done in the next four years. Just starters on one of the above would be a mega-success in my books.
I realized again today my problem with heaven as a perfect place. It occurred just when I thought I’d eliminated the blockage in our kitchen sink with about $30 worth of Drano. It backed up again into the conservatory.
It’s not that in my ideal heaven, drains would routinely back up anywhere, and certainly not into one of our favourite rooms.
In fact, my first thought wasn’t heaven at all, but something more like its opposite.
I’d already determine that the blockage was not between the sink and the conservatory outlet, but somewhere under the floor in the pipe that leads to the outside sewer. So I opened up the pipe cap on the floor and removed about two feet of smelly dirty water. I tried to syphon it out with an old piece of hose, but getting it started by sucking the water through the hose was more than I could contemplate. So I bailed it out using a six-ounce bottle. I eventually hit something white and soft.
Since the stuff was white and this was at the bottom of the drain, I thought at first that some previous owner had tried to block off the drain and whatever they had used had corroded. But as I began to pull it out, I realized it was an accumulation of years of fat which must have been poured down the sink. It was two feet under the floor and probably about six inches deep.
I was lying on the floor digging it out in handfuls when Peter walked in. He was appalled, and said I’d not earned my Ph.D. to clean sewage pipes. I told him to go away.
It took about an hour, and when I was finished I put every stitch of clothing I’d been wearing into a 90 degree wash, and stepped into the shower that was almost as hot.
And I did it. I solved the problem, and the water has been running out of the sink with a speed it’s not had since we moved in.
And that’s my problem with a perfect heaven. It’s not that I would like to have a career cleaning sewers. But I do enjoy solving problems.
In heaven, I might even find myself tempted to break up the boredom by collaborating with Lucifer to create a little havoc that I could then go in and organize.
The problem of boring is not, I admit, quite up to the standard of the problem of evil. But it probably illustrates see why I didn’t last all that long in the convent.
Several years ago I walked into the trash room in the apartment block where we were living. The floor was wet and slippery and I fell on the bag of glass bottles I was carrying gashing the fingers of my left hand.
I got my wedding ring off before my hand became too swollen, but my ring finger never did return to the size it was when my husband bought it for me more than 35 years ago. I was able to get it off recently only with great effort and a generous slathering of soap, but forcing it back on after I’d finished tarring our gutters didn’t seem very sensible. If I need to get it off again, my finger might have to go with it.
So my husband wants to buy me another ring. I’m not sure I want him to. I don’t need another wedding ring. My marriage is quite secure without it.
Today I read a story about a couple celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary. When he first asked her to marry him, she accepted his ring, but later changed her mind and gave it back to him. Being a pragmatic Yorkshireman, he sold the ring and bought a suit. Later, when she changed her mind again, he didn’t buy her another ring.
As their 60th anniversary was approaching he said “come on, let’s go out and buy you a ring.” So they went shopping together, but when they saw the cost of diamond rings, decided that they would rather spend the money on something else.
I understand. My husband, however, wants to buy me another ring. Okay. Just as long as it’s not called an eternity ring, which seems to be a new fad for couples celebrating their wedding anniversaries. I said yes the first time, and I still mean it.
Really, I’d like my old ring back. But I don’t think it can be stretched. And I’m pretty sure my finger can’t be returned to its original size.
I guess life is a series of unending compromises.
I’ve not read much about public reaction in the U.S. to the capture of a U.S. soldier by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
But the claim by Dick Cheney and the rest of them that the torture which the U.S. has used in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and other undisclosed locations around the world is required to keep America safe must sound terrifying to the family of the soldier. Or to anyone else who has loved ones fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq.
If American can claim the high moral ground and use the kind of torture methods they did, so can the Taliban.
If the chickens come home to roost on this policy, it will be a terrifying homecoming.
