Comforts

… or perhaps escapism. It cannot be said I am looking forward to the inevitable struggle with (a) a tradesman and (b) my temper tomorrow. I am uncomfortably aware of any number of duties I need to perform which I have so far failed to perform, and of all my usual besetting sins.

I need to weigh, measure, clean, and perform routine and onerous tasks in almost equal measure.

I am seeking solace from sure-fire sources. I am browsing possible floor coverings.

Riches

The things I have most enjoyed spending money on have been joining the British Trust for Ornithology, and taking the neighbours kids out on treats.

Being broke inevitably involves picking and choosing. Yes, you can certainly have something – but not everything. So if you have (as I undoubtedly do) one expensive hobby, then pursuing other interests is probably Not On. But I have been able to indulge in some small pleasures.

I am developing my interest in birds. Here I have only a few in the winter, but they are most exciting … an over wintering kestrel, a visiting barn owl (the local bird man tells me he is a male owl). Also, if getting involved in a local society, wise people join something where they are in the happy position of being a beginner who can admire the knowledge and skills of others – and not sit there thinking: ‘That is very nearly right, you know.’

And the company of children is a licence to do things you know you will enjoy but can hardly do off your own bat. Next weekend I am hoping to join a leaf hunt. To do it without a child chaperone would of course be very difficult – and like the BTO it is not in absolute terms at all expensive (petrol and a cafe lunch, I think – picnic if fine). But it is all money. God be thanked for this licence to enjoy the real riches of the world.

Poverty and wealth

It is all relative in this country, I know that. But relatively I have at some times in my life been pretty poor. It has its advantages. One feels less guilty with others of a modest income. The luxuries one does get mean so much and the delight in them is so intense. The natural pleasure in making something is intensified by the fact that that is the only way one is going to get it. The skilfully made jacket, for instance, is something to be saved up for, executed punctiliously and enjoyed for months, years after. The joys of poverty are acute.

The downsides are enormous too. The sheer time it takes. The thought that goes into saving money, making things last, finding the cheapest thing, and the forced choice to take it or take nothing. I can’t imagine anybody wants to spend that long thinking about something as boring as money.

I am quite suddenly in the position of being able to chose things just because I want them, treat friends to coffee, take kids on an outing, and all without a lot of calculation and planning before hand.

It is disconcerting, though probably not as disconcerting as I will find it when the ability to do this vanishes. When it does, do remind me that I once blogged on the joys of poverty, won’t you?

… that was its name

Half the animals on this holding have names, proper names. They are the lucky ones. Jacob, and Mace, and Max, and now one of the sheep. And the Three Musketeers.

I had three sheep, Polly and Cotton and the lamb. The lamb was destined to the deep freeze. But then a tragedy happened. Cotton, who was over-stout, got on her back in the field and died. She was my favourite sheep and I was most upset. I was also in a dilemma. Because Polly is not young, and she might not have another ewe lamb, and if she did not before she died, I would be without a descendant of Eve, the late and great. ~So I have taken the decision that the lamb should stay, which meant finding a name. Since she is neurotic and constantly certain that she and her mother are Doomed, Doomed I Tell You, she has been named Cassandra, or Cassie, and in her name, she is assured of life, since I cannot eat those who are named.

The Three Musketeers are also benefiting from a tragedy. Their mother and their other nine siblings were abstracted (missing presumed eaten) by a person or persons unknown.
It has taken a good deal of care to get them independent and thriving. In the process they got a name. And a life.

And today I inspected the pitifully thin little ewe who has been seeking refuge in my outbuildings with real desperation. She is too thin – I suspect she missed out on worming for liver fluke. The shepherd has 2000 sheep. One is not at a premium. I will buy her wormer (and my own girls too). And I guess, if she does, I shall have to have a conversation with the shepherd about a change of ownership.

Should I stay or should I go?

Not here…. For a long time I have been a member of a small basically conservative Christian discussion board. I rather felt the members had got fed up with the endless re-iteration of the debate over the rightness of gay Christians being in a relationship, and I shut up. It seems I shut up too long.

A few days ago one member posted an outburst of such vituperative vileness that I exploded. I was not helped by the fact that I had not been on the board for a couple of days, and apart from a defence by the resident secularist members, nobody had protested and the post which was in clear breach of board rules had not been removed. My explosion, rather out of character in written discussion, got the whole thread axed. I slammed off the board, rather. Now I am asking myself if now I’ve got a better control over my temper, I go back and argue it out.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the past going through the same arguments again and again to change minds. I know half the minds on that board are firmly shut, and I admit to a kind of sinking feeling at the idea of going back and going through the arguments yet one more time.

But perhaps I should – so that the truth is witnessed, more moderate members supported, and the secularists thanked and let to know that at least some Christians do not take such a stupid attitude. I dunno.

Making an autumn

Last Sunday the last swallows were still swooping round my out buildings. I saw them again on Wednesday. Today there are none. The wagtails have de camped, too. I have new bird feeders in, but they are not yet being visited. Dearie me. Need to work harder on making a habitat for garden birds – the absence of flight is hard to bear.

Badulla?

Today I was driving, slightly late, into Kilmarnock. I was bowling down the main road when I saw a slight obstacle to one side. I slowed at once, and then slowed some more. Had I not been late with a tail of traffic behind me I would have stopped altogether. There, pulled up at the side of the road was a genuine, Sri Lankan style three wheeler. The red and yellow colouring, the open sides. Driver seemed to have trotted off down the embankment. The guess would be to relieve a bladder made to ache by the Ayrshire wind in late September, unimpeded by the slight protection of the canopy.

Really! First Italy and then Sri Lanka – what IS Ayrshire coming to

Firenze?

Today, walking back from the Uni library after another afternoon of research, I stopped to buy some figs. I eat them walking down Great Western Road in the late sunshine. Coffee wafted from open doorways. Suddenly my mother was beside me, and I was back on an Italian street.

Hiding behind history

Today I took the two children of my neighbours to the small local museum to see the mask of Alexander Peden. Peden was a covenanter, a minister of the church which broke away when Charles II returned, and he lived a dramatic and cloak and dagger lifestyle preaching and prophesying. The mask, well presented in a darkened room was far more dramatic than this image of it.

It wasn’t the mask which was the problem, it was the curator. Any suggestion that Peden might have been less than a plaster saint was at once talked down. I suggested to the children that what with his prophesying and his mask, Peden, however principled, had a flair for the dramatic. Nope. I suggested that going armed, campaigning for the right to carry a gun, and speaking openly of a desire to kill the King might be a good way of becoming unpopular. Nope. Where DO they get them? This is the second joyless historian I have encountered in Ayrshire, to say nothing of the published ones.

The curator, bless him, killed Peded deader than he had been for the 400 years since his death, worn out but miraculously of natural causes.

Friday’s blog