Living Wittily

Category: Stuff and nonsense

  • Triptych: three panels of an interesting day

    Saturday, sunny, warm, summery, and Sheila and I off for the weekend. Went in to pay petrol. Cashier type attendant chewing gum as if she had a grudge against it. Offered sympathetic comment, ‘You’d probably rather be elsewhere on a day like this’. Without breaking the rhythm of her jaw exercises, ( I assume her commitment to intense training for mastication for the nation), but making fierce eye contact, she managed to growl, ‘Aye. Ah widnae mind like. But ma’ pals are doon at the beer garden – thanks for phonin’, eh?’ Decided the best response to this was a sympathetic but wordless smile, took my Switch Card and discreetly tip-toed back to the car.

    12547 Saturday in Pitlochry. Walked past the Chocolate Cafe. Menu board said  Chocolate Cafe: Soup of the Day

    Left me wondering….what would chocolate soup be like? Don’t mock the idea – the shop has two chocolate fountains – a white one and a milk chocolate one. And there are two ladles beside them!! I’m still fantasising about White Chocolate soup of the day……..yummmmmm.

    Queens Evening drive out to Queen’s View on a country road. Red car approaching from the rear fast. Head, shoulders then torso appear through the sun roof (not the driver, one of the passengers. Follows us to Queen’s view and stops at the car park and out get four pleasant, high spirited, young Asian men. Charming, laughing, told me no need to buy the parking ticket cos it was after 6. They, and we, enjoyed the sunset, the view, the sense of quiet and beauty with my favourite Scottish mountain in the background, Scheihallion. And yes I did think about the mess in Iraq and the culture of suspicion; and no I don’t know the backgrounds of these young men; but yes, I do intend to resist the media generated trustlessness towards people who ‘are not us’. I was glad, and gratified to meet them – and have them talk with us.

    A triptych of impressions from a memorable day – food for thought, and prayer. A young worker who on a sunny day wants to be in the beer garden; four young tourists out for fun; oh, and the chocolate which I didn’t have but wish I had…..lead us not into temptation…..

  • Road Tax, Staff Training, Post offices and butterflies in China

    445886150_7028792d84_b_2 Needed money to pay for my road tax and got it at the autobank which is approached from one side by a ramp with steps at the other. At the bottom of the steps one of our senior worthies was leaning on her walking stick and scowling up at the bank doors:

    ‘Is that place no’ open yit son’ she asked me.

    I tried the automatic doors but no, they wouldn’t open. The notice said it opened at 9.45 on Wednesday’s following staff training. It was 9.30. I explained to my friend (anyone who calls me son at my age qualifies as an immediately co-opted friend), that the staff were training.

    Her reply, ‘Whit training dae they need tae open b***** doors.’

    Logo Went to the Post Office to get the road tax. After a longish wait in a longish queue, the teller said, ‘You could have got this at teller 11 or 12 without waiting. They’re dedicated to road tax’.

    Doesn’t matter I said. Anyway I was only there because I’d left it too late to do it online. At which point the teller told me the more people who do it online, the less come to the Post Offices. That affects the Post Office commission revenue and will eventually lead to further cuts in services, staff and Post Offices.

    Then went to my own bank, to find one of its employees standing at the door, locked out, because it was staff training and they were upstairs. It was 9.45 – bank would open at 10.00. Would I hang around for 15 minutes, or just leave it till another time. Blethered a wee while with Jackie (locked out staff member with name on jacket), decided not to wait.

    So on my way back up Paisley High Street, a place where deep pondering on the philosophical options of the good life tends not to happen too often, I thought about all this.

    Hmmmmmm. So staff training means the bank opens later, and customers have to wait. Now is the training to make them more efficient in dealing with the customers? Is it ok then to inconvenience customers, in order to train staff, to better provide a good service? And then the Post Office thing. If Post Offices are dependent on revenue from road tax, then clearly DVLA and/or Govt save that revenue if I do it online. Which means my convenience prejudices the convenience of all those who depend on a local Post Office and would be affected by cut services and closed Post Offices due to loss of revenue. It’s the butterfly that flutters in China that starts off the chain of events felt across the globe.

    Paisleycentral_2  So. I’ve decided. I’ll pay my road tax off line, by walking down the High Street, standing in the queue, and handing over the documentation. This will not be convenient, it will probably be raining, I will think of serial rationalisations for saying, oh Hang, just go with the online flow and let your mouse do the walking. But somewhere deep in the secret places of who I want to be, I’ll know that I’ve made a gesture of support for those whose lives can be made more inconvenient by every convenient click on the DVLA website, including mine. Luddite? Possibly. Quixotic? I hope so – there’s not enough of it. Futile – naw, just think of the nutterfly in China. (I know the third last word in that sentence is spelt wrong -hit the wrong key- but it seems like a word with a chance of being useful!)

    And as for staff training in banks, and consequent later opening for elderly customers wanting to lift this weeks pension, and having to stand in the rain, if there is a last word it should probably go to my pal met earlier, whose response required a series of asterisks to make her language suitable for a genteel blog like this.

  • Muffins and Sandy the Poet; Pizza, IRN BRU and Wembley

    200424062001 Thursday morning went in to College hoping to find my glasses – the expensive ones. Asked at the Cybercafe – no luck. Over to the library and asked on floor three if any glasses had been handed in. Librarian misheard me, looked at me as if I was daft, and said,

    ‘We don’t lend glasses. Anyway, the only ones I’ve got are my own and they would look weird on you.’

    After explanations – she’s embarrassed and I still don’t have my glasses. Eventually I found them – on the floor of my study (I don’t have an office – I have a study, HMMPHH!) – under the chair, undamaged either by the wheels of the chair or the cleaner’s hoover the night before!

    A_hutchinson Friday morning did lots of phone / email / marking then went for a coffee with Graeme. Met Alexander Hutchison the Scottish poet – not to name-drop but Sandy has been a friend since my early days here at the University – he gave me one of his poems, signed, as a gift to mark my Doctorate. Well a long blether about illumination in the poetry of Theodore Roethke, the dialectic between immanence and transcendence, the inordinately long sentence (Sandy thinks the longest one extant!) that comes at the end of Michael Polyani’s 1951-2 Gifford lectures, Personal Knowledge, and our usual swipe at the suffocating algae of contemporary academic administration that reduces the oxygen and light of scholarship.By the way, did I mention the curling stone sized blueberry muffins that Graeme and I ate???

    Friday afternoon did another 10k run – still quite hard going but slowly improving. Not today though – end of Semester fatigue took the edge off. But the wind, a couple of light showers and quite a lot of sunshine provided a pleasant climate in which to risk expiring. Running past a bus stop in Crookston Road, obviously looking mildly distressed, young ned says, devoid of sensitivity,  ‘ Ach ye’ll be too auld onywye by 2012.’

    Obviously I no longer cut it as an Olympic prospect. But I did shift most of that mountainous muffin though!

    This afternoon is fitba’ and pizza – Andrew and I are hoping for a scoring draw, extra time and then a penalty shoot-out at the new Wembley which today doubles as the OK Corral between Mourinho and Ferguson. If one is the goodie and one is the baddie, which is Ike Clanton and which is Wyatt Eearp? 

    _39342935_irnbru203_3 Doesn’t matter we’re neutral observers of the beautiful game, skilled practitioners of sofa fitba, the high energy spectator sport sustained by Pizza and, in true Blythean spirit, – IRN BRU. Anyway the BIG game is tomorrow – Aberdeen need to beat Rangers to qualify for Europe – or Hearts need to lose at Kilmarnock – which makes me a two day fervent Killie fan.

  • Urban Warriors

    Cimg0443500x375_2  Sitting at Cardonald pedestrian traffic lights two pigeons flew over the car and landed on the road island, standing on the road studs for visually impaired folk. Green man comes on, bleeper bleeps, and they start strutting across the road,the arrogant saunter of ornithological neds, just making it before the lights flashed and the traffic started moving. Last I saw them they were plundering the remains of someone’s discarded takeaway.

    Rock_pigeon_dove_thumbnail Pigeon’s – not the Mary Poppins, ‘Feed the Birds Twopence a Bag’ kind; and not the biblical or liturgical dove of peace either; but the hardened urban warriors who work part time as the auxilliary co-opted members of local authority cleansing operatives. And as evolutionary survival tactics, they do us the service of eating our throwaway rubbish and set an example by waiting for the green man before crossing.

  • the sun shines also on me!

    Today has been a full day – the Waterstone gift tokens are gone, (3 novels and 2 CD’s, of which more in a later post), I’ve done a 10k training run (modest pace), read The Independent over a very fine Latte , (a kind of 10k for the mind!), bought a book and a CD for Sheila, finalised my paper on George Macleod’s prayers for our Scottish Christian Spiritual Tradition Conference tomorrow, given the grass its first cut for the Spring – clocks change tomorrow too –

    Smile3t and today to frame all this in unexpected joy, the sun realises its payback time for a miserably dreich winter and is reminding me that the sun shines also on the unrighteous! So today I’m not remotely scunnered – books, sweat, latte, prezzies and sunshine – I’m juist that chuffed so ah am. Or in a more literary vein

    "The adventure of the sun is the great natural drama by which we live, and not to have joy in it and awe of it, not to share in it, is to close a dull door on nature’s sustaining and poetic spirit."

  • 49832_big_1 The pen is mightier than the keyboard and printer. For several years I’ve been the proud owner of a special edition Waterman Fountain Pen which I use to sign letters, and when I want to write something carefully, neatly and personally. It was a gift from the congregation at Crown Terrace Aberdeen. Who knows, maybe my handwritten letters will one day be rare enough to become collectors items – or maybe not.

    My birthday this year coincided with family commitments that meant my birthday present from Sheila had to wait till we were both free to go to the pen shop again – this time for a Waterman ballpoint to match the Fountain. We had to both be free ‘cos I had to be there to choose, and Sheila had to be there to pay! Said pen is the one shown above. It has weight, balance, deep coloured lacquer and writes with a smoothness that makes me embarrassed about how scrawly my handwriting has become after years of keyboard tapping – actually, I don’t so much tap the keyboard as practice martial arts on it with two index fingers which move with lightning speed and variable accuracy.

    I’m off to play with my pen – coloured deep lacquer green, and on the day the Irish won by 19 -18!

  • Barthian Haiku

    With reference to the previous post, and especially Graeme’s comment, a little 5x7x5 micro biography!

    Triune Barthian Haiku

    Neo-orthodox,

    Theological donkey-

    Karl spells out the Word

    …

    Markus the builder-

    Ephesian exegete-

    Tamer of donkeys.

    Abbey2_2 …

       Iona’s glory-

    Natural theology’s

    God, glimpsed in beauty.

    …

  • ‘A wee cocksparra…….

    Being situated in the middle of the University Campus, and sharing the accommodation with all kinds of other classes taking place (from food safety & health to drug dependency, to corporate marketing), we often get folk coming in asking for directions, drinks of water, the use of the phone to check on lecture times, and various other requests. Last week a lecturer from along the corridor asked us to phone estates and buildings to tell them a small bird was trapped in the room and would need to be released before the weekend. He was quite insistent about the University’s duty of care in this matter, and as a bird lover / watcher I was fully supportive of his concern for the wellbeing of said sparrow (Passer Domesticus). He waited till the incident was duly phoned in and an assurance given of imminent liberation.

    The bible verses are self -choosing:

    Are not five sparrows sold for a penny, yet not one of these falls to the ground but your Heavenly Father knows it

    [In your house] even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest, where she rears her brood beside your altars. Psalm 84:3.

    This particular sparrow later flitted off with a little encouragement from University security. Security – how apt is that, like?

  • Committed or Committeed?

    For God so loved the world that he did not form a committee…..

    It’s easy to have a pot at committees, and sure there’s a lot of time spent talking, consulting, reporting, recording, remitting. A large American church has a consultative committee of the sub group on church committees. I’ve just come through several days of being over committeed. Days of talking in small select groups, around pre-arranged agendas. In all the talk surrounding Christian leadership, vision-building and development, there are times when it seems the consensual, consultative confabbing that goes on in committees, seems to slow down rather than facilitate necessary change and innovative thinking.

    The20table1 But I wonder if what is criticised is committee at its worst. Sure, at worst committees can be bottlenecks where good ideas are put on indefinite hold till the original enthusiasm and energy dissipate. ‘A cul de sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled’. At worst a committee can be made up of people whose ability to veto, delay, frustrate and revise innovative, risk taking and original initiatives, gets in the way of ‘real leadership’.  Fibber Magee speaks of committees as ‘a small group of the unqualified, appointed by the unthinking, to undertake the utterly unnecessary.’ So that’s committee at its worst.

    T11165_9_2 At its best a committee can provide important space for creative thinking, trusting conversation, collaborative discussion, in which expertise and experience are freely tabled in the interests of making good decisions and forming strategic initiatives. The good committee can also act as a corrective, a friendly critic, a cautionary voice, while also being an enabling resource and a permissive supporter of adventurous thinking. I happen to believe in committee at its best; the ability of a diverse group to meet, listen and speak, to think clearly enough and to be confident enough in their own insights that they are prepared to change their minds in the light of others’ experience. Of course it requires self discipline, humility to listen, trustfulness to speak, confidence in the reality of the Holy Spirit’s influential presence, discernment to know when someone else is ‘at it!’, and through the whole process a commitment to the communal and relational foundations of Christian fellowship. ‘It seemed good to us and to the Holy Spirit’ is one of the most intriguing statements about church administration in the entire NT!

    165258062_f09fc289b7 Two further thoughts – If it is true that the saving work of Jesus was purposed and determined in the eternal relations of the Triune God, should we be so sure that ‘God so loved the world that he did not form a committee……???’

    Isn’t it true that the gathering of a congregation as the Body of Christ, meeting to discern the mind of Christ by listening to God, listening to each other, and listening to God through each other, is itself a reflection of the relational mutual exchange of love and trust that defines the love of the Triune God?

    In our church life, when committees meet, they begin in prayer – so the real chairmanship is already determined by the promised presence of the risen Lord; the discussion quality controlled by the fruit of the Spirit who indwells our hearts and reminds us we all call "Abba, Father"; the agenda open to revision because the Kingdom of God is leaven, new wine, mustard seed and many another metaphor for the uncontrollable activity of God in our midst; the fundamental relations are that of family, brothers and sisters and children of the Father, from whom every family on earth is named.

    If our committee meetings are boring, frustrating, sterile, a waste of time, talk-shops, perhaps that is because we dampen our capacity to be what Elton Trueblood, that forgotten philosopher saint of the Quaker tradition once described as, the incendiary fellowship.

  • Lead-free bullets……

    Bulletl_175x125 A friend has paid a gift subscription for me, for the Reader’s Digest, for over 20 years. The late Murdo Ewan MacDonald, pioneer in securing practical theology a place at the academic round table at Glasgow University, once referred to it as "that saboteur of the modern intellect". But now and again, by accident or intent, it gets it right. One of its snippets illustrates the ethical ambiguity, rational dexterity, logical inconsistency, dubious ecology, theological illiteracy, philosophical stupidity, social irresponsibility, technological rapacity….och I’ve ranted long enough – just read it…………. and laugh………., or weep.

    A pressure group poured scorn on BAE Systems after it emerged that the defence company was developing "environmentally friendly" munitions – including lead-free bullets.

    The Campaign Against Arms Trade called the move "laughable". But BAE Systems said it was not embarrassed about its efforts or by a statement on its website that "lead used in ammunition can harm the environment and pose a risk to people".