Getting Loose

Very Powerful

Crazy

"This is crazy! This is crazy! This is crazy! This is crazy!"

That’s what she spoke as I talked to her in the chapel just before the general public was to enter. And indeed, she was right. Her husband of just a few years, dead at 36. So senseless. So stupid. So very crazy.

But that is what an addictive disease can do to you. It can make you act crazy. It can make the lives of the people around you that you love the very most, crazy. And it can come to a stark and senseless end. Way before it should have.

There are just no adequate words to say that will make anything better anytime soon. And some people say the most stupid things in an earnest effort at trying to be helpful, when silence and presence would do so very much more.

But my heart went out to her. Two grade school children whose daddy is gone. And though she may never be able to grasp this, though she will always wonder what she could have done differently, she really did do the absolute very best that she knew how to. She went the second mile. And the third mile. And the fourth mile. And the . . .

Sometimes, things in life are just tragic.

Kathryn

You learn a lot when you go to see someone, and just sit and listen. I love doing that very thing.

I had always known her as Kathryn. She has a rather serious look to her face. I know that she has traveled lots of miles so to speak in her journey of life.  She’ll admit it has been a pretty good one for her many decades.

But when she was much younger, she was Kate or Katie. I found that intriguing. All of a sudden a younger girl appeared who was full of life and activities that involved siblings and cousins—never mind whether they were first or second—they were kin and that is all that mattered.

She’s outlived two of the children she helped to rear. She has outlived two of her husbands, and some days are better than others.

She gets frustrated with her inability to precisely call a name or a date or a place, but the older I get, the more I sympathize.

But what really stunned me was that she was a Beckendorf. And that set of dogs is always related to each other through one way or another. Of course the one I knew the best was Harvey Beckendorf, a fellow clergyman. And then I found out there’s another Beckendorf who is pastoring a church in Beaumont under another name. I felt a kinship with her that I had not previously felt.

She was so appreciative of the visit. It made her day. She said, "You know, you can hardly find anyone anymore who cares about what it was like in days gone by."

But that is not me. I love to hear the stories of days gone by. I find myself, the older I get, ruminating around in my mind decades ago, reliving, dissecting, analyzing, wondering, puzzling about events that I feel certain most everyone else has forgotten about.  But somehow they linger brightly in my mind. Why that is so, I don’t really know.

Violet

prepared a wonderful meal. Many different courses.   Beautiful terraced cottage.  A beautiful personality that just fills the room with light!

She also had a wonderful pudding for dessert, and finished off with a cheese plate of three wonderful cheeses. Oh, my, I hope I did not look too much like un porc!

Of course we finished with tea . . . that's hot tea to your Yanks.

Urtica Dioica

I had heard of it, but did not know if it really existed or was simply the lore of days gone by.  I had heard of its tea as a good diuretic, which can help to lower blood pressure.  I've even heard of eating contests with it.  But in trying to pull weeds barehanded out by the garage, I got bit so to speak. 

I was trying to pull this weed up by its roots and all of a sudden the intense stinging sensation hit three of my fingers.  I let go and looked around, wondering if some insect had stung me.  There were no stinging insects that I could see.  I looked at the plant I was pulling and it seemed harmless enough.  I looked at my hand and could see a little blood, but man the stinging sensation would not go away.

I went inside to wash my hands, and wondered in my mind if that were a stinging nettle plant.  I had heard of them, but had never seen one as far as I know.  It looked similar to other hairy weeds where I live, and so I really did not give it a second thought.

It apparently gets you by its stinging hairs, whose tips come off when touched, that make the hair become like a needle injecting at least three chemicals into you, one of which is histamine, like in hives.

It tends to be more of an English plant, and that is not found as much in America.

RI

I’ve been a Rotarian for years. 

And I had the most gosh-awful, difficult time trying to figure out where the Rotary Club of Hanwell & Northfields  met in order to attend a make-up meeing.  As it turned out, Google was spot on.  But looking at the addresses of the houses on the street, the address was way off.  On top of that the door was locked and you had to swipe some card to get in.  I couldn’t believe it.

After that after having travelled all that way by the E2 bus and having had to walk an entire block! 

I had to wait for a chap in an electric wheel chair to get into the parking lot and ask him if he knew where the Rotary Club met. 

He pointed right to the building beside which I was standing!

I said, “How on earth do you get in if you are not a member?”

“You see that fence over there?  Go around that fence and there is another door and it is open.”

I could not believe it.  I thought these Rotarians really do not want any visitors.  Where are the signs?  How are you supposed to know this?  Do you have to be an “insider” to know your way around?

Believe me, the parallel was not lost on me as to what visitors face at so many churches!

Once I could run through the hoops, the Rotarians were a congenial lot.  The food appeared home cooked.  There was lots of it for 11£.

I remarked how it was strange to me that they met at night, for in the USA they predominantly meet at noon or some at breakfast, but that I could not think of one who met at night!

They told me they were primarily a social club; they were not trying to make business connections per se.  There were lots of inside jokes. 

I find I have to listen harder with some people to wade my way through their accent.  I find it too easy to tune it out as if I were in a foreign country where unless you are the person being addressed, you tend to let the chatter pass you by.

I had a banner to trade with them from my own club.

“Oh, yes.  Right.  Well you see, we don’t do the banner bit anymore.  But we will make a 5£ donation to the Rotary Foundation in your honour.”

I thought, “Hmmm.  Not bad.”

The speaker spoke of Dechenne's muscular dystrophy.  I had never heard of it.  1 in 3500 boys is born with it, and even fewer girls.  It was a sobering speech.

The meeting lasted almost 2 hours!  But it was very interesting.

Choices

I’m fairly sensitive.  I distinctly remember the first day we were out on the Broadway and New Broadway, wending our way through the teeming people; I could feel the heavy vibrations of some of the people passing us in the street.  The look of anxiousness on their faces, the costs of associated goods and services, the choices having to be made between eating lunch or buying a necessity for the child.  It wasn’t what I thought it was going to be initially.  I’ve not been able to get that heaviness out of my system.

Rolling on the River

It used to be the case a long time ago, that the best and easiest and cheapest transportation to get around from certain points in London was by using the Thames River.  (I always thought the British pronounced it “tims”, but I think it is closer to “tams”, Love).

The Thames is a tidal river.  By that I mean it truly ebbs and floods like the sea.  I did not know that.  Going to our destination we were on a high tide, coming back we were in a low tide. 

There are river islands all over the place, and for some of them, the only way you can get to them is by boat.  And people live there like that.

Harold and Linda took us on a cruise down the Thames.  I do not know how to describe it adequately.  One thing that both Harold and I talked about was that when you travel by water, it is somehow more soothing and at a much slower pace.

For example, when we got to theTeddington Locks, there was either a broken lock, or there were not enough personnel available to make sure that both sets of locks worked, hence we were tied up there for more than an hour trying to make our way further west. 
Harold pointed out, “You know, had we been in a car or the tube or a bus and had been tied up in traffic for this long, people would have been screaming mad.  But here, we just sort of take it in stride.”

He was right.  I opined that maybe it was because when we take those other kinds of transportation, we are already running late for some appointment that we think we just have to get to, and we depend upon the time approximation or schedule to be spot on, and when taking the river there is no such expectation.  We are just more willing to go with the flow.

I guess I had been told, but I thought we were just taking a cruise down the river and back.  It turned out not to be so, but I thoroughly enjoyed the boat ride.

In England, things tend to occur at a more genteel pace it seems to me.  Not every deadline is an urgent life or death situation. 

BABS

Dave and Marian were very generous to invite us over to their house for a supper.  Again, very English . . . but then what would you expect?  I am in England for crying out loud!

He's a Methodist, don't you know, and she's an Anglican, don't you see?  But they have a great marriage, and a generous heart.

The first course was carrot soup.  It tasted great, but I could have never identified it as carrot.  It was so yellow like there was a lot of butter or food coloring in it.  I kept asking if there were such things as yellow carrots.

"Well maybe there are . . .  but I've never seen one!"

"So you just blended those kind of carrots that grow In the ground and are orange when you pluck them up?"

"Why, that's the very ones."

"But this soup is so yellow.  Did you add some yellow squash to it?"

"Yellow squash?  Why not at all!"

"So it's just carrots, is it?"

"Isn't that what I just said?"

"Why, come to think of it, I believe you said the very thing!"

But it was great whatever it was.  And that was a huge hurdle for her to cross.  I tend to like only raw carrots.  I'm just not a fan of cooked carrots unless they are candied in some way.  And I don't mean just that thin gruel of a sugar glaze.  I mean candied like a think, browned barbecue sauce.

Dinner was great, their back yard was delightful and the gardening evident, but what was superb was BABS.

Now for those of you who do not know, I love barbershop quartet singing.  Not that I am in a group or anything, but I love the very close harmony.  I wish the church in the village could somehow manage to pull off a song once a month.

At any rate, Dave, who happens to be part of a barbershop society group, had this recording of the American group who had won a gold medal in BABS.  They were phenomenal to put it mildly. As I was listening to the introduction by the American chap, I started laughing. 

Dave wanted to know what was so funny. 

I said, "That bloke doesn't have an accent!"

"Doesn't have an accent?"  And then he could see what I meant.

A song that really focused the difference between American and English cultures' use of the language, was using a version of George & Ira Gershwin’s, “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.”

They highlighted the way we say and use different words and expressions—tomato; potato; loo, bathroom; queue, in line; diversion, detour; etc.  It was a lot of fun sitting with our British hosts and laughing about how differently we use our common language.

The Clerical Collar

Over here in JOE (Jolly Ole’ England), all denominational clergy wear a clerical collar.  

I knew that before I came over, and I wasn’t sure what I thought about it.  I tend to wear clerical collars only very occasionally—like for a funeral in a funeral home (which they call crematoria over here), or an occasional wedding, or when I have to act  in some official capacity at a public event, or very, very occasionally when I go to the hospital, or when I get my driver’s license picture made.

But to come to JOE, I went ahead and bought 2 additional clergy shirts (one black and one grey--both long sleeved).  Here, I use them exclusively for Sunday service, going to residential homes (i.e., nursing homes), and other sundry activities. 

I’ll have to admit it does tend to make me feel a little more official somehow, like I have on a costume that people recognize the credentials that go with it. 

What will I do when I get back?  I just am not sure.  I like travelling incognito in a lot of ways, yet on the other hand, wearing a clerical collar opens a lot of doors.

I’ll just have to see.