Glimpsesofcolour

My Christmas cactus (if it’s not an Easter one) flowered gorgeously at Christmas last year. Then it gave me a bonus by flowering again at Easter (so maybe it’s not a Christmas cactus). Now it’s flowering again, or still, at Pentecost: dramatic crimson ballerina-type flowers all over, with new buds coming all the time. Perhaps it’s just a Christian cactus? (I wonder if it will flower for the fourth great Christian festival of the year, Greenbelt?).

Which reminds me I have another flowering plant that needs repotting, since the cat knocked it over yet again the other day…. Speaking of the cat, he just came in very wet and bedraggled (and he has a LOT of fur). Seems sufficient punishment for murdering my plants.

..quite contrary traditions survive about you. I’m writing Bible notes this week on Mary Magdalene, about whom we really know very little but about whom various dubious legends have been woven. I was sitting in a café not long after the Da Vinci Code film came out and heard one workman saying to another: ‘Mary Magdalene, she was married to Jesus wasn’t she?’. I intend to attempt to refute this myth in my introduction.

As there’s really not enough in the Gospels about Mary to fill a fortnight’s notes, I also intend to write on several other Gospel women and Jesus’ attitude to them, and to try to disentangle Mary M from the various other Maries she seems to have got mixed up with. I’m looking forward to it.

Yesterday I asked a church friend who’s in a temp job, whether she’s enjoying it. ‘Enjoying it?’ she exclaimed, ‘it’s work!’. I think I am probably very privileged to be able to give my time to work I love. Writing is one of the most rewarding things in my life (housework very much less so). And because I have a nice husband who lets me live off his earnings, I can do the sort of writing that earns a pittance:-) This is a great blessing.

On sitting down at my computer just now, I felt something sort of tickling up my left sleeve. I put my hand up there to take it out, and it turned out to be a ladybird, which I then had to painstakingly take to the window to release it. I’m not very good at handling small crawly things not because they scare me, but because I dread finding myself left with a leg or a wing in my hand. However I managed to womanhandle it across the room, dropping it a couple of times, and eventually get it to the fresh air which it availed itself of by flying away. Sweet.

By the way I am typing this on my brand new very flash silver iMac keyboard, which has replaced the one I spilt tea into. Meanwhile my mother has my old black keyboard along with the Graphite iMac that goes with it, which is my old machine. We took it round to her yesterday as a delayed 93rd birthday present (her birthday was last Wednesday) . She was really excited and got the hang of the internet and email fairly quickly, under the expert direction of her grandson. Unfortunately the cheap dial-up connection we got for her ceased to function the second time we switched it on, so now we will have to think about getting her broadband. She really wants to email friends in Austria and America. I am so impressed with her enterprise.

While on the subject of changes of technology, I am still driving the courtesy car (Nissan Note) which I picked up last Tuesday, as the garage hasn’t yet finished doing cosmetic surgery on my Punto. The Nissan is a really smooth drive but feels a bit like a truck to me as it’s very high up and longer than the Punto. I am quite proud of myself for adapting to it.

For I have found the secret present which I lost and thought never to find again. All will be revealed in approximately 11 days’ time.

Meanwhile, The Grouch and I went to a swing dance tonight, organized in support of Christian Aid as part of the Pentecost Festival which, confusingly, is not at Pentecost. There was a jazz band, group tuition in swing dance steps (which we didn’t join in as I wasn’t sure my back was up to it), lots of agile young women in Fifties-style whirly skirts, fairtrade juices, Cola and chocolate, and a discussion of climate change in the interval. We missed that bit because we were too hungry and left to go for a meal (we did have one dance before we left though) The whole thing was at my old church in Waterloo which has become very posh and arty since I left. And we ate at the Italian restaurant on the corner which has not changed in the thirty years I have known it, and probably not in the at least fifty years it has been there. Finally we had a stroll around my old haunts, checking out which shops and restaurants had changed and which hadn’t, and peered up at my old flat where someone appeared to be in. There seems to be a new fence round the flat roof which wasn’t there in my day, but certainly makes it safer.

There are far more facilities in terms of shopping etc there than there were when I lived there. But I wouldn’t go back – it was a lonely life on the whole. In spite of all the struggles I’d rather be where I am now.

…the chestnut trees are this year, with their majestic spread and their candles reminding me of the real candles on the real Christmas tree of my childhood. Indeed all the trees seem to be particularly splendid as they burgeon into leaf. Or is it that they are this beautiful every spring, but I don’t normally notice them?

Apologies for long radio silence. I do have the perfect excuse, which is that I have spent the last four days or so mainly flat on my back in bed (alone, in case you were worried).

You won’t believe this, but last Friday I managed to put my back out severely while having reflexology at a carers’ relaxation day. Yes, I know. Basically I was on a reclined sun lounger rather than a proper massage table, and the reflexologist lifted up my legs onto a precarious arrangement of cushions, which kept slipping, so that he could gain better access to my feet. The result was that I spent at least ten minutes, possibly more, in an uncomfortable position which put huge strain on my lower back, and when the session was over and I attempted to get up, I couldn’t. I should have complained much earlier that I was uncomfortable, but unfortunately I’ve been too well brought up.

All of which meant that I was unable to go on the retreat that I’d booked for Saturday-Monday, and instead had to make do with a home retreat which consisted of resting my back and reading a lot of books. Not too bad, but not the same as spending two days in a gorgeous seventeenth century manor with beautiful grounds, a lake, a fantastic library and lots of home-cooked naughty food not cooked by me. The Grouch and Genius Brat cooked for me at home, but it wasn’t the greatest culinary experience.

Now I have to claim a refund on my rail ticket, with £10.00 docked for admin, and I have to pay the full whack for the retreat I didn’t have. Piddle. And Bum.

Appendix: Books read while supine.

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon (he of the Curious Incident). Very funny and poignant.
Losing my Religion by Gordon Lynch. On leaving evangelicalism. Struck lots of chords.
The Scheme for Full Employment by Magnus Mills. Also funny and original.
Not Religion, but Love by Dave Andrews (he of Christi-Anarchy). A bit more challenging than I was ready for.
The latest issue of Christianity magazine. Very much confirmed why I’m glad I’m no longer trying to be an evangelical. Not that I ever succeeded. Yes, a lot of things have changed since those days but the good old guilt-inducing language is still the same. And the good old insular culture.
Finally today, which was officially work: proofs of Good Enough Mother by (my editor) Naomi Starkey, which doesn’t come out till next year and for which I am meant to be writing a cover endorsement. This suggests, reassuringly, that while I may not be exactly famous, I must be a little more famous than Naomi

Today after having lunch with a friend, I took myself to Tesco and bought, for my son, a new pencil case, pens, erasers, sharpener, maths kit and ruler (I had pencils at home already). This will hopefully stop his teaching assistant grumbling about his ill-equipped schoolbag. What a glorious thing new stationery/office equipment is. Place your bets here on how few days it will be before he loses the lot.