Of peas and soup

Fog has set in today, thickening by the minute as I ate my breakfast banana.  (Yes, I also do brunch bananas, and other alliterative fruit.)

This was really just a chance to write about fog, or ‘pea soupers’ as they were called in London in the 19th century.  Given all the pollution then, a fog mixing with it could be very nasty then.  A bit like photochemicals and sunlight in LA these days, but without the stovepipe hats.

Equally, a chance to play with formats for titles,  ‘Of Mice and Men’ being the original.

But fog might equally describe feelings about work.  We have a new team structure.  New colleagues ready to get going.  And how is it meant to work?  Unclear.

To go for another title, not so much a need for ‘parting the waves’ as thinning the fog.  The trouble is, I’m less prepared to accept it all than I used to be, or to put myself forward to do the fog thinning.

The other thing is that with these new colleagues, work load is going down (or is meant to be), which suddenly allows other vistas to open up in what has been called (at times laughingly) my home life.  This is not because I don’t want a home life incidently – in fact, the distraction from work is all the greater because there has been so much time away from doing my own thing.

Maybe it’s a chance for yet more cooking (back to the peas and soup).  Or blogging.  Or writing other things.  Or maybe just time to see where the wind’s blowing, so to speak.

Perez de Kailyard

We’re told that inspiration strikes in unlikely places.  So today, while hanging up the washing, came up with a new pun on the former UN Secretary General.  I thought it could come in useful for someone who is trying to be very diplomatic, and has big intentions, but is limited to operating in (rural?) Scotland.

Now I’m sure there aren’t lots of occasions where those options combine, although it might have been an option for my grandfather, who came from Skye, and went on to be a diplomat.

I digress.  The main thing that came to me, just after feeling smug at this combination, was the sinking feeling that someone, somewhere, must have spotted this, and got there before me, probably while Perez de C himself was still in the job.

This is the trouble.  There are all kinds of nice potential titles out there, with wordplay, puns even, and I have the awful suspicion that someone else has got there before me.  Perhaps the best option is to keep a list as they occur to me, test them out, and perhaps do a google search to see if anyone else has used the same.

It probably says more about a) the non-phonetic nature of English writing, which allows you to have various phrases that are written differently but sound alike b) the prevalence of puns in British newspaper articles and c) my own fondness for wordplay.

Now all I need is another useful phrase to round off the post, but perhaps I’ll save it for another title…

Zywiec rules!

This is by way of some catch up from our holiday in Poland – various ideas for blog posts at the time.

For the uninitiated, I spent two chunks of time in Poland: six months in my gap year, working on the outskirts of Warsaw in a school for the blind; then ten months teaching English in Legnica, a small town near the border with Germany, after graduating from university.

Our visit to Poland this summer was a chance to revisit some old haunts – we even went back to the school for the blind, which I hadn’t visited for twelve years – and also get a sense for how Poland is doing now it’s part of the EU etc.

One feature that struck me this time was that pavement cafes are on the up.  In particular, ones with large sun umbrellas advertising one of the main beers, Zywiec.

When I was in Poland in the past, this kind of ‘cafe society’ was not much in evidence.  By the time I was in Legnica, ten years ago, a cafe in town occasionally managed some green sun umbrellas for Hortex, one of the brands of fruit juice.  Hortex bars – juice bars! – were kind of trendy then, and an alternative to heavy drinking in a regular bar.

The nearby city of Wroclaw had an ‘Out of Africa’ cafe, which my discerning teacher friend Beata took me to, and this seemed to be the height of aspirations.  (There were also standard German cafes in Gorlitz, the split border town, where Poles from Legnica and the surroundings went to do tax free shopping, rather than pay more in Wroclaw.)

Admittedly, this time we were mostly in big cities, or with places which had tourists, so there was probably more reason for expecting the pavement cafes.  But it’s part of the visual landscape I expect in other countries, even see at times in the UK, and now, it seems, in Poland too.

Poland can do hot summers.  It does a good line in hanging out in the park.  It’s good for pavement cafes too.  With the added advantage that the beer is just as cheap as in the ‘standard’ European countries I’d expect to see the cafes, but sometimes even cheaper…what’s not to like?

And when we were in the mountain resort of Zakopane, with afternoon storms quite frequent on hot days, the umbrellas were just the thing for keeping out of the rain.  Sorted.

Taking the plunge

All of a sudden, quite a lot of new stuff coming up all at the same time…

I’ve been on the singing team at church for quite a while – not bad as a way to be involved, and more creative than cleaning the loos.  (If you’ve come up with a creative way of cleaning loos, let me know.  Although it may depend on what state the loo was in to start with.  Maybe we’ll leave that one there…)  This means I turn up around once a month, practise the songs with the band, learn any new ones, and sing with the rest of the band during the morning service.

This morning, things felt a big sluggish, and I could feel myself getting a bit miffed, because we were singing some good stuff about God.  There are usually gaps for people to sing out their own songs to God (ie made up on the spot, though usually familiar words), and all of a sudden I found myself doing this.

Now you might think that if I could sing into a microphone in front of others, it wouldn’t be such a big deal to do this.  But it’s bit nerve wracking, particularly with the thought “Is this right?  Is this what God wants to say at this point?”  And I don’t want to sing platitudes for the sake of it, just because there’s a gap.

I was almost literally shaking by the end of it…but I also knew that it had all come from God.  Because the uncertainty went, the words were there, the tune was there, and somehow, I also knew how to lead it back in so that others could sing bits of it too.

Why write about this?  Because it’s another mark of what God has been changing in me.  I love music, I’ve sung or played for ages.  But it’s taken nearly ten years to break through to this in what is my familiar church, the place where all the significant things have happened since I became a Christian.

Coming home afterwards, I spoke on the phone to Dan’s mum, and was mentioning a group I’ve been to one life stages.  Talking to another person in the group, they had also experienced changes, confusion, but a greater creativity coming with it.  It’s something I’ve found too, that’s moved me on to getting this laptop and writing.  But to gain this for something else that’s important to me…I didn’t hope for it.  I didn’t ask for it.  But I’m certainly grateful.

Will I do it again?  Perhaps the more important issue is: am I prepared for God to do it again? I think the answer has to be yes.

Will I go along with Him?  If He can help me, and show me now, the hardest step has already been done.

Recessed lighting and Portuguese tiles

I can’t let this splurge of Dan-posts go by without saying how much I love our new bathroom.  That it was assembled with great care by Olly and Artur in August while we were in Poland shouldn’t make you think I wasn’t appreciative then.  The time that has passed hasn’t dulled my enthusiasm.  It is a joy to behold.

That Alison and I chose all the things to go in it and designed it to within centimetres shouldn’t detract from how chuffed we are with the result.  I’m used to planning and designing something in two dimensions, but it’s the first time that I’ve used that architectural training to take a plan into 3D.  I must say, it’s pretty good.

So, if you want a peaceful bath in a boutique setting, bring your Moulton Brown toiletries and we’ll supply the hardware (bathroom) and software (Egyptian cotton towels) and you can enjoy light green reflective tiles and recessed dimmer lighting.  Or if you want a similar look, we’ll let you have our list of suppliers.  Pictures to come soon.  Maybe.