Category: Stuff and nonsense

Had a conversation with a couple of the University administration staff on my way out today. A beautiful late afternoon, sun shining and I was on my way home to get changed and go for a wee trot around Barshaw Park. Nothing too strenuous, just a way of loosening up and sloughing off the worst of a day’s wear and tear.

Talking with my two admin friends about the clocks going forward Saturday past, and losing an hour’s sleep, one of my friends said it was the next night she felt tired, and was in bed at the ridiculously early hour of 9.30pm. So by way of consolatory conversation, a kind of solidarity with those who go to bed early and get up early, I mentioned that whereas I used to be able to read for an hour in bed at night, now I was struggling to clock five minutes before my eyelids did their portcullis thing.

Whereupon the third member of this conversation said, in tones of unmistakably sincere sympathy, "Aye well – but don’t worry. That’ll come to us all". Now I don’t know if I look older than I am, or if I feel older than I look, or if I am older than I should be for my age!

Anyway – not too old to run round the park for 50 minutes and arrive home still standing and able to hold a conversation, albeit accompanied by heavy breathing! Just about ready to run my first 10k of the year – but only when the weather is good. No point in taking chances at my age.

No doubt about it.

I saw what at least one Scotsman wears under his kilt.

It happened in broad daylight, outside an Estate Agent’s at Cardonald, at 11.55 a.m.. today. There he was playing his bagpipes, accompanied on the pavement by one of the Estate Agent staff who was holding glasses of something liquid for drinking and proffering said liquid to passers by.

Now in the widely predicted and living up to their description strong winds which were battering the West of Scotland, complemented by rain alternating between vertical and horizontal stair rods, two otherwise sensible people were engaged in what I can only guess was a publicity stunt on Burns Day. It takes two hands to play the pipes, so what happens when gusts of wind elevate the tartan, eh? And have you ever tried to balance a tray with filled glasses in one hand, while giving said glasses to passing punters, and the wind threatening to turn the tray into an alcohol laden frisbee?

And the obvious consequence of open air waitressing in a gale, and wearing a kilt in a storm force wind?

Nearly crashed my car.

Why?

Cos I saw what he was wearing under his kilt. But I’ll pull a tartan veil over the shocking reality witnessed as an anti-epiphany.

Did wonder though if it was one of the £24.99 Lidl kilts that sold out in less than an hour?

Two Kitchen Haiku

…

Plastic jug bounces

when filled with hot chicken soup

and dropped on the floor.

…

Dropped soup spurts upwards

in forensic spray pattern

of airborne food stuff.

Written after the fact!

Thought I might mention several thoughts and plans for this blog which will be a year old on January 10.

I’ve revised the list of blog destinations I regularly visit. The initial enthusiasm for Blogging seems to have cooled off, and some folk are now doing different things, or have other priorities. I’ve added two theological blogs that I often visit. Don’t know the full name of Halden, over at Inhabitatio Dei, but he is writing some important and thoughtful stuff on a number of theological issues I’m interested in. You might want to look in and see if it’s your kind of thing.

I’ve resisted the long lists of "just about everybody who blogs", and rely on several existing bloggers on my own select list for taking me further afield – mainly Ben Myers at Faith and Theology and Cynthia Nielsen at Per Caritatem. If you click on their names in my sidebar and browse their sidebars a very large and varied blogging community opens up.

As I think through what I want to do with this blog for the coming year I’d be interested in suggestions, comments from regular readers and anyone else who happens by. But I reserve the right to go on posting a mixture of the serious and whimsical, the book stuff and theological reflection, and to ‘have a view’ on some of the issues, stories and happenings that seem to me to be significant clues to what it might mean to live wittily in the tangle of our minds, seeking by so doing to live faithfully after the pattern of Christ.

Now and again I want to take time to write a more substantial post, which I hesitate to call an essay since that sounds too much like an assessment instrument! Yet the essay is a long established and honourable forum for developing ideas, building persuasive argument, educating and shaping and challenging commonly accepted values, tastes, and perceptions – and that process includes the wiriter. I mean the kind of reflective, meditative, inquisitive question-raising such as I posted on forgiveness on Thursday Jan 3rd.

Those who know me know books are an essential element in my humanity, as vital to my life quality as heat and light, food and drink, friendship and work. Books are, as Philip Toynbee once admitted, ‘My royal route to God’. Of course not everyone is book daft – not everyone’s mind works the same, not all personalities learn best through literary forms, not everyone finds verbalised concepts interesting or that ideas interiorised through reading are easily processed into practical wisdom that is life transforming. But for me spiritual discipline, theological reflection, the journey of self-discovery, sympathetic human understanding, intellectual maturity, and contemplative humility before the mystery of God, are some of the blessings of reading – hence the literary bias of this blog!

In the last week or two I’ve come across several claims that such and such a book is a theological classic. Confining suggestions to the 20th Century, there are those in the blogosphere who nominate (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) P T Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, H R Mackintosh, The Person of Jesus Christ, H R Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, Elisabeth Johnson, She Who Is, G Guttierez, A Theology of Liberation, J V Taylor, The Go-Between God, D Bosch, Transforming Mission, and T F Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God. I suspect most of these reflect personal enthusiasms, but none of them are lightweight either. Suggestions – either supporting some of the above or other nominations – which books would you argue is a 20th C theological classic?  Of course at some stage we have to define ‘classic’ – but for now just go by your own definition.

Waiting in the queue for my Chai Tea Latte (aye, dead sophisticated me!) a colleague from the University came over and we debated about the pros and cons of going halfers on a 2 inch square of millionaire shortbread. Now I’ve sat on Learning and Teaching Board, on Validation Panels and on various other ruminative, deliberative and generally talkative committees with this colleague – and none of the debates were as animated as our discussion about whether the base should be shortbread or cheesecake in content and texture; how thick the caramel should be relative to chocolate; and whether either of us was prepared to admit to cleaning out the condensed milk can when millionaire shortbread was being made at home. Now that’s what I call an academic discussion, a robust exchange of viewpoints, a collaborative forum in which the discussion outcomes were no less significant than some of the other discussions we have had to witness / participate in / sound informed about.

In the end we decided to leave the discussion at the level of theory, though with an assumed action point that post-Christmas, the discussion should be resumed with the acknowledgement on both sides that a firm conclusion may only be achievable if the differing opinions were subjected to practical testing (tasting).

Amazing how you learn what you learn these days at University.

Walking across the Paisley Campus with my latte and fresh baked scone with Blackcurrant jam (no butter), I pass one of the cafe staff outside having a smoke. Our eyes meet and she looks at my plate, smiles and says,

"Aye but what you’ve got makes you fat; what ah’ve got makes me thin".

Oh, well that’s ok then!

I have recently been confused with a really learned, Edinburgh New College, nae kiddin, seriously scholarly looking former Princpal of said august New College. Brodie has detected a similarity between my physiognomy and that of the as yet unnamed academic. (By the way, do any of you remember using the word physog or fizzog as a word for face?)Anyway, semantics aside, you can see the two pictures, and read the comments over here at Brodie’s place. – and you’ll understand why I am yet again posting this self portrait of a Scottish hillwalker clothed for the local climate. It’s the hat that gets them talking, and laughing – and clearly Brodie missed previous showcases.

I have no comment on the similarity between the two aforementioned portraits until I know who the learned gentleman in Edinburgh purple is.

One of the long term failings in my make-up is that when I come off a long period of working too hard, and take a holiday – the first few days I am like a bear with a migraine discovering somebody’s been eating my porridge. So I don’t live to any agenda, structure, timetable, plan, schedule or any other device that hints at control.

Aye, but then what happens when the central heating gets its service on Monday, and goes on the blink on Tuesday, eh? And both days I’m told the gas engineer will come anytime between 1pm and 6 pm so I can’t go out? And the shower is at best a cool tepid, but I give thanks that the blessed boiler had at least taken the chill off. With studied patience (one of several under-developed fruits of the Spirit in my life) and pious resignation, (one of the carnal attitudes that occasionally surfaces) I took to the sofa with a book, made a cafetiere of coffee, watched the rain run down the windows, made a veritable vat of lentil and herb soup, and descended to the depths of cultural vacuity by watching some daytime TV. The gas man came, fixed the solenoid, then it stopped again, replaced the valve, but it needs a pump -so the gas man will come Wednesday as well – three days of non agenda living huh? Holiday not dancing to anyone else’s tune, eh?

  Still – by Tuesday afternoon, leaving our cool home (the word cool means cold, not trendy), Sheila and I went to Lochwinnoch for a brisk, healthy, stress-busting walk. At the side of the loch a couple had come to feed the birds – gulls as it happens. What impressed me was the fact that it was Morton’s rolls they’d brought. Not your imported doughy, synthetic dissolve in your mouth baps, and none of your healthy high fibre bran and wholewheat curling-stone rolls either.

No – the real thing, Morton’s rolls. These folk had come to ‘feed the birds’. And not your Mary Poppins London pigeons, more your Die Hard Lochwinnoch seagulls, complete with grubby vests.For those who don’t know, Morton’s rolls are the Rolls Royce of the roll industry. When someone in Glasgow says they are just going to get the Rolls, it isn’t the car they mean. A Morton’s roll is better than Somerfield’s SO GOOD and Sainsbury’s TASTE THE DIFFERENCE rolled into one! (rolled – get it?). Crusty, light, requiring enough Lurpak butter to leave visible tooth prints a minimum of umpteen millimetres deep.

A different class of gull at Lochwinnoch – discerning scavengers from rural suburbia by the loch. I came back feeling that the world is still a surprisingly good place to be.