Glimpsesofcolour

Just brought myself up to speed with the latest news about Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross ringing up Andrew Sachs and claiming Brand had slept with Sachs’ granddaughter. Leaving aside the general tackiness of such ‘news’, I wonder if I should ring up Jonathan Ross and say I had snogged his stepfather. This has the advantage of being true, though it was a long time ago and he wasn’t Ross’s stepfather at the time (but is now). I somehow don’t think it would advance my standing in the world…

Off tomorrow early to a 24 hour theological forum in the Midlands. Still need to pack, still need to look through the papers that were sent ahead of the forum, still need to print out the directions, still don’t know if I’ve got a passenger going with me or not, still waiting for the clothes I want to wear to dry (I don’t seem to have any decent jeans that aren’t in the wash). And I need to encourage GB to do his GCSE coursework, and I’m going to home group tonight. Harassed, moi?

Just to add to the fun, after the forum I am going to visit a friend who lives near there, then need to get back to London early enough for The Grouch to go to his home group; then Friday morning I have another appointment at the sleep clinic, then Friday evening we are going to a Halloween party and I will need to create three costumes as no one else is likely to have any ideas. And finally – can you believe it? – I am hoping to go to a Christian feminist conference on Saturday.

I swore I wouldn’t get into this kind of rush again…

For various reasons including a growing Facebook addiction, I have decided to make Sundays a computer-free day (for myself – I wouldn’t venture to suggest it to the rest of the family). Yesterday was my first computer sabbath. It was hard, but I got through. As a result of which, I have now read the whole latest issue of Third Way, and nearly half of ‘Wounded Prophet’, a very interesting biography of Henri Nouwen, which has made me think anew about my vocation to write. Books are so much more rewarding than websites.

In the evening I was helped by the fact that Genius Brat had gone to sleep over at his friend’s house (his friend was with us for the two previous nights), so The Grouch and I got a rare meal out without adolescent accompaniment. Then we came back and watched ‘I (heart) Huckabees’, a truly strange film which I had got on our DVD rental scheme. I really must cancel the scheme, since it takes us about a month to get round to watching one film!

To all people wondering where October has gone, I accidentally archived the lot when I was actually trying to edit the latest post. I have requested restoration! Oh well, it’ll be November soon anyway..

Not sure if that’s in the right gender actually – help me here, kerensa! Anyway, after having a happy hour (in the literal sense, not the cheap drinks one) with my friend from Australia who’s here on holiday, I decided there was no need to go home immediately, and went to the Tube station to rehearse easy ways of getting from Victoria to Kensington Gore. As there turned out to be a direct bus (no 52, since you ask), I launched out into the unknown and went to the Vienna Café exhibition again, without aged parent and without rib pain. The object was to get the cake I didn’t have last week because of having chosen the wrong one. Unfortunately the desired cake (a sort of raspberry mini-pavlova) was no longer on the menu, so I ended up with a ‘Millirahmstrudel’ which is a light-as-air curd cheesecakey thing, and which was delicious (and also warm from the oven). Mini-pavlova – pah, I can make this at home.

By the way, one thing I learned from the exhibition is that Viennese pastries, such as the ubiquitous strudel, derive from Turkish pastries. Of course, it all makes sense – both baklava-type desserts and strudels use filo pastry. So the Viennese got not only their coffee but their cakes from the fiendish Turks. What I still haven’t worked out is how this happened when the Ottomans only got to the gates of Vienna but no further. Perhaps some of them liked the look of the place and stayed behind?

I was amused the other day to notice a sign above a shop saying ‘Tak Kee Trading’. I mean, I know the Chinese are known to produce a lot of junk, but that’s being pretty upfront about it!

Meanwhile on Facebook, I have been added as a friend by a boyfriend from 30+ years ago (who has since changed his name – ex-boyfs of mine seem to make this a habit). I was gratified to see he looks a lot older than me… (or than I think I look!). At the same time I found it almost impossible to see in his photos and videos any trace at all of what attracted me to him so much that I was obsessed with him for two years. This is a sobering thought.

The ribs have started hurting again by the way. Also I have been having lurid dreams lately – last night’s involved David Bowie and group nakedness. I am getting a little concerned about my subconscious!

The rib pain is generally getting better but I am still going to the doc this morning to get it checked out. Actually the main pain now seems to be in or under my right breast, which potentially makes the doctor visit more embarrassing, but hey, I’m a grown up lady.

Other than seeing the doctor I seem generally to be doing nothing much this week, but I do have to prepare communion for tonight. I’m hoping to extend and revise a liturgy all about brokenness which I wrote a year or two ago and which people really seem to like. I want to put in some stuff about betrayal, because it is in the context of betrayal that the Last Supper took place, and because as well as all being broken, we are all traitors in some way, at least against God. Hard to know how to do this in a ’sentence and response’ format though.

On the tube with my Mum yesterday, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a woman get onto the train with a baby in a buggy. She was swathed in a long brown robe and had a head covering. My first instinctive thought was, ‘What’s a nun doing with a baby?’ Then I realized she was a veiled Muslim. Modern city life is so complicated…

To be fair, some of it could be considered to be good news. I went to the Dental Hospital on Tuesday and had a polyp removed from my tongue, not for the first time (the earlier one was on the other side). I knew what to expect, but still, having an anaesthetic injection direct into the tongue is not exactly fun. To make it worse, the surgeon had to dig around a lot, and then call her boss, because she was having trouble getting all of the lump out. So the op seemed to go on for ever, and I think the anaesthetic hadn’t reached quite as big an area as it was meant to. And that, believe it or not, was the good news! Good in the sense that my polyp, which was causing me a lot of bother, is out, and all I have to do is rinse with hot salt water four times a day for a week, which is actually excessive as the wound seems to be healing up nicely, in spite of the stitches having fallen out within 24 hours before they even had the chance to dissolve.

Now the bad news – crossing the road yesterday afternoon (not at a crossing), I became aware that the parked car ear me (parked on the wrong side of a busy road) was reversing towards me at a not inconsiderable rate. So I stepped back onto the pavement and somehow missed my step and found myself hurtling rapidly in slow motion (as it were) towards the pavement. I grazed the knuckles on one hand, which was not too bad, but I also seem to have landed awkwardly on my right ribs, which are now hurting whenever I stretch, bend or breathe deeply. Because I was on my way to meet my Mum at a tube station (and she doesn’t have a mobile, and mine was run down), I went ahead and soldiered through the afternoon taking her to the Vienna Café exibition – which was good apart from the pain, and the fact that I chose the wrong cake.

Now on the advice of various internet friends, in particular one who works for NHS Direct, I am taking painkillers and not going to Casualty because they wouldn’t do anything anyway. Apparently, so long as there are no complications, ribs are generally left to heal themselves. I don’t really think anything’s broken, it doesn’t hurt enough for that – it could in fact be a muscle strain from the way I fell. As to why I fell, I really have no idea. I seem to have lost the knack of recovering myself before I keel over – perhaps it’s the higher dose of anti-depressants (I blame everything on that).

Meanwhile I had fortunately already written my sermon for Sunday – yes, I’m preaching yet again – and can probably get away with not revising it any more. I wonder what medical, transport or other emergency I’ll have next…

So – I made it to the church in Greenhithe yesterday in spite of nearly going into the back of a white van at 60 mph on the motorway, when all the traffic suddenly ground to a halt. Actually, this was seriously scary – I knew the brakes wouldn’t be enough so I had to swerve to the left which meant going into a slip road where there could easily have been someone coming up behind who would have gone into me. And all because of a moment’s lack of concentration. I sometimes wonder whether I really ought to be driving on all this medication, but the thought of not driving is too grim (apologies to all greenies, of whom I’m supposed to be one).

The sermon in Greenhithe (40 miles away) went off reasonably, in spite of having a coughing fit in the middle which I couldn’t control, but eventually got over with the help of my friend from the congregation bringing water. Also the worship leader, after I sat down, and various people who spoke to me after the service, tried to get me to say that God always heals when asked to, which I refused to say because it’s not true. I’d forgotten what it’s like to be in a church that has a theology of healing without a theology of suffering…

On the way back I managed to miss the M25 entirely, not sure how, so ended up going towards central London on the A2, through the Blackwall instead of the Dartford Tunnel (saved £1!) and as I didn’t want to pick my way through Hackney and Bow where I would get even more lost, I ended up doing a huge detour to re-find the North Circular. However I still made it, shaking and hungry, to the end of church lunch where I got some delicious leftovers.

It will be a long time till I preach again at anywhere except my own church (famous last words….)