Immense

Yesterday I went to the thanksgiving for the life of Ada Lyndon who died just over a week ago.

It was an intense and moving experience....clearly not at the level for me as the thanksgiving services for FLN and El Pasto almost 3 years ago but all the same with echoes that made it very special.

It is impossible to do justice to Ada in a blog like this and any attempt let alone mine risks being labelled trite and feeble.

But I want to say something about her. Just like I was determined to say something about El Pasto 3 years ago. And for her that is the wholehearted commitment to things which to most people I meet every day would be jaw-dropping. Like traveling thousands of miles to a remote part of a poor African country to painstakingly record the language of the Koti people in written form. Like methodically with her husband Chris translating parts of the Bible into this language. And the years it took to achieve this.

And for what? The picture is a good answer to the what question. It was taken by my friend the English Blogger when he and a group from our church went to Angosch last autumn. It is a church on Khelelene. It and the people who go there and to other churches round about are her legacy. Something beyond value in pounds euros or dollars.

Read my friend's blog about his trip for a real insight into it all starting with part 1 and 7 parts in all.
http://thebloggie.blogspot.com/2008/12/mission-trip-part-1.html

Her courage in the face of the cruelty of the cancer that killed her will long be a source of inspiration. Those of us who heard her testimony of that struggle and her overcoming faith in the morning service on 28 June will never forget it.

Hillbillies....

....is what we are, Teapot and me, and this last week we took time off from our visits to grandad at Haslingden Hall to walk over Cowpe Low with its stunning views down the Rossendale Valley.

We could see across to Longridge Fell and Ingleborough and the other way, down into Cliviger near Todmorden. The scene though is not always like this and I have dim memories of school cross country runs in the rain not far from here.

My granny Sellers grew up in Boarsgreave in the village of Cowpe. Town and village loyalties are fierce in this part of the world. I grew up in Stacksteads and it was with no little trepidation that I married into the more civilised part of the valley, namely Rawtenstall, where Teapot comes from. The previous day we had enjoyed a pleasant stroll from her dad's house to Top o't' Bonk, one of her favourite views.

Which all reminded me of those other well known hillbillies who struck oil in the hills and went to Beverly Hills (if your memory goes back far enough). Jed and Granny Clampett and of course Elly May, who according to Wikipedia was a mountain beauty with the body of a pinup girl and the soul of a tom boy.

Now who does that remind me of....

PS Click on picture for larger version

Statistics.... 204 plays 300

Curious thing statistics. How they come along one after the other sometimes with no seeming relationship to each other.

Yesterday's news led with the death of more soldiers in Afghanistan. Now 204 since British troops first went there in 2001. We have a government that cannot convince the public of the point of it all because it does not back its words with the money and equipment that are needed and we do not understand the people we are supposedly there to help and their ways.

Yesterday's news followed up with an item about the road safety charity BRAKE and its campaign for the working hours of taxi drivers to be regulated, like others such as lorry drivers. 300 deaths each year on our roads because drivers fall asleep.

Makes you think.

The trumpet shall sound...

.....no not the trumpet which sounds when the rag and bone man comes round at the weekend looking for scrap metal; nor the wonderful piece by Handel which is one of my favourites....

........but rather Billy Cooper trumpeter for the Barmy Army who will apparently be welcome with open arms for the final Test Match of this summer's Ashes series at the Oval beginning Thursday.

....or not perhaps because Billy may be engaged elsewhere having been told earlier in the year he would only be allowed to play at Cardiff and Birmingham.

There are those of course who believe that cricket should still be played against the backcloth of polite applause and the occasional snore from the direction of the members' seats. Timelord is not one of these old timers notwithstanding his many regenerations. Just because some spectators drink too much or over step the mark by some of their jeering of our opponents does not mean we should return to crowd conditions for watching paint dry.

Many of us thought the return of the Ashes would be long gone by the time of the final Test but there is still all to play for. So let's hope there will be more Englishmen than Billy with reason to blow their trumpet in another week's time.

The beeping breadmaker...

.....is one of the special features of the Tardis kitchen. There is nothing quite like the smell of freshly baked bread - except perhaps eating it, especially toasted with lashings of Frank Cooper's vintage Oxford marmalade.

More refined palettes may find the crust a little tough but hey that's nothing.

Unfortunately Teapot is less suited with the noise this wonderful machine makes as it kneads the mix. A sort of mini cement mixer in fervish action. And more to the point when it finishes the job and helpfully lets everyone know with a beep beep beep.

"Will you switch off that bleeping breadmaker" she says. "Would you like some bleeping honey on your bleeping toasted freshly baked bleeping bread " says I in reply with my usual touch of deference and bonhomie.

The other Friday evening I thought it would be a fine start to the weekend to have some freshly baked bread for the following morning. All it needed was careful use of the timer. But no, "we're not having that bleeping breadmaker going off in the early hours......." So I hit on the idea of plugging it into the power supply in the garage.

Hmmmm unfortunately the vibrations meant that the breadmaker danced a merry jig across the wooden staging, dropped off the side to land in a garden chair whilst spewing out dough like molten lava. With the sixth sense for which she is famous Teapot got up in the early hours, wandered to the garage to see what was cooking, and brought the remains into the kitchen for forensic analysis.

I am pleased to say I was able to rescue much of the dough and inspite of protests from Teapot and later Mrs FLN baked some rather tasty and solid rolls in the oven in time for breakfast. In fact there is still one left in the bread bin for tomorrow's lunch!!

Slippers

We had a visit the other week from Mrs FLN and the reindeers Robbie and Rudolf. And great too it was to see them.

She happened to let slip whilst she was here how FLN and her were often on the edge of their seats when they came to see us because of my life long habit of twirling a slipper from the end of my foot. Wondering when it would drop off!

It is hard to describe how skilful this habit in fact is. It has taken a lifetime to perfect. A bit like a footballer who can do hundreds of keepmeuppies.

I have a thing with slippers. I even took a pair to my baptism and their condition was the one thing which Teapot's granny remembered ever afterwards. But I digress. Slipper twirling is a kind of fidgeting you may say, or I may say, a subtle piece of ankle exercise.

Which made me think of that seminal paper written in 1885 by Francis Galton called "the measure of fidget". He observed from watching students in lectures that the more boring they found it the more their bodies moved from the perpendicular towards the horizontal or their bodies swayed from side to side. A separate study by the Reverend Septimus Fogg of sermons days in Methodist Chapels in Lancashire undertaken in the 1950s confirmed this theory. He even developed a boredom scale called "the measure of the yawn"

Timelord however believes that the fidget is not always bored. On the contrary the fidget may be full of galactic energy just ticking over like a well tuned engine waiting to click into gear.

The question you may ask is, which is which...