tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116858492011-12-01T03:08:42.559Z"..... a thrust in favour of the oppressed, encouraging them to to break with their current situation and take control of their own destiny." Guttierez 1973 "I write, therefore I am!"paolissimonoreply@blogger.comBlogger481100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-4409476079652651672011-08-30T21:49:00.005Z2011-08-30T23:42:46.995ZI walked the River Hodder earlier today; not the whole length you understand, just about two miles of narrow, twisting pebble-banked stream and deep, slow, murky pools hiding their secrets from the damp world above. The Hodder has run its course through villages such as Slaidburn, Tosside, Newton, Dunsop Bridge and Lane Ends for centuries, bringing fresh water from the North Lancashire Moors down to the Trough or Forest of Bowland, one of those well-kept, remote, attractive but hardly unspoilt areas of our green and pleasant land. <br /><br />Unspoilt is a misnomer! Of course it is spoilt, by the higgledy-piggledy stone-built houses locked together over time in each village, by the long and low farmhouses which litter the valley, by the stark and unwelcoming halls owned by the nouveau-riche who bought them from the families of deceased cotton and wool barons of the 19th century, and by the chain-link fenced sewage plant, all but astride the Hodder in the centre of the valley; this brick built monstrosity, ageing, rusting and weedy leaking its residue of filtrate into these ice-cold waters.<br /><br />We describe the valley as unspoilt because it is so well maintained, manicured by locals who take pride in their trusteeship. The natural Trough would be forested and unfarmed, a home for small mammals and birds as well as the ghosts of history, those travellers spirited away by accident and evil and buried in the rich and fertile soil. Unspoilt, no, but beautiful and impressive, with sober and unpretentious colours which welcome rather than challenge both residents and visitors.<br /><br />This is why I sat, stood and leaned alongside the Hodder, peering into the deep and slowly circling pools, searching for trout first but failing that, wondering what secrets these eddies hid. Time does not fly here; change is slow. No reminders of the speed of modern culture, just the bleat of sheep, the chirp of birds, the rustle of wind in the trees and the ripple of water over rock and pebble. Humans may well have changed the look of the Trough with their ploughs and cows, but no motorways or planes, few roads and cars left me to think, dream, ponder and reflect.<br /><br />Still waters do run deep, as deep as my thoughts, as hidden as my soul, as profound as the blood running through my veins.<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-440947607965265167?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-82925363143367307582011-08-21T22:46:00.007Z2011-08-21T23:56:26.410ZThe story of Freddie is sad indeed, the son of a dysfunctional family with father in prison, mother on the game, sisters in poverty caring for themselves, getting themselves to school most days, but always in trouble! Trouble with parents, with neighbours, with teachers, with just anybody. <br /><br />Freddie is one of those who might well have rioted last week, little sense of responsibility, little understanding of community, little to excite him but much to frustrate, to limit, to depress. Who got it wrong, who caused this division, disaffection and distress? Does it matter anyway?<br /><br />Some say that society is broken; others that social unrest is the consequence of a disaffected generation of young people; others that policing needs to be stronger, more assertive with punishments that deter. Fewer believe that policing is by consent of the community and that justice and jail must be restorative.<br /><br />Does it matter what we say, think or believe? Not for Freddie. He fell or was pushed from a third floor window and was impaled on the railings below a long time before these riots. Unlike our community today, Freddie is at peace!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-8292536314336730758?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-88153272164403951412011-04-06T23:27:00.001Z2011-08-21T23:56:26.417ZI've tried to write conversation, dialogue and discussion but without success. I cannot get it right! My characters seem unconvincing, their speech fatuous despite scenarios which should be arresting and make for compulsive listening. But no! I cannot write conversation. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-8815327216440395141?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-22590002929132021492011-04-05T22:42:00.001Z2011-04-05T22:43:49.871ZThe inspection had ended at 1300 on Friday and I had spent the weekend in the garden and with the family. Monday morning now, and where am I? On a train to the big smoke for two days of assessment and report writing ..... and thought I had retired .... again!!<br /><br />The train carriage is half empty, but also half full of slightly overweight middle-aged businessmen and smart young women making their way in the world. It looks and sounds like a two-way ladder with seriously boring guys pompously and pretentiously working with laptops and piles of paper, while aspiring and assertive (largely) women, clearly better organised, listen to their ipods and read the financial pages. Quite a contrast!<br /><br />And in this melee, where am I? With a foot on both sides of the ladder? Who can tell? Certainly not me!<br /><br />I tried to think this through but we are in Rugby already, more than halfway to London in just over the hour; the speed of life today! And here I am musing yet again! What would my favourite poet Donne make of this dilemma? Or tycoon, Alan Sugar? Or Paul of Tarsus? I sometimes think that I am thoughtful like Paul, but he was never confused; maybe he was like me? Reading him, I do believe that he was trapped with a personal issue he never describes; his theology may be sound, but his life seems to indicate a tension he never details. <br /><br />Alan Sugar would not be where I am; no tensions for him, no train either! he is the exemplification of clarity, direction and judgement, underpinned with confidence in his own abilities. He really is the consummate professional, having faults but being wrong not being one of them. <br /><br />So I am left with Jonne Donne, that sensitive and jesuitical poet with a resolution to every quandary, even if he does not share it, an answer to every tension, a solution to every problem! Whether his poem is compromise or conclusion, the outcome is always final, secure and unquestioned. At the "mingling of bloods" nothing stays the same, nor can the old world return; it changes everything ... for ever!<br /><br /><br />The Flea<br /><br />Marke but this flea, and marke in this, <br />How little that which thou deny'st me is; <br />Me it suck'd first, and now sucks thee, <br />And in this flea our two bloods mingled bee; <br />Confesse it, this cannot be said <br />A sinne, or shame, or losse of maidenhead, <br /><br />Yet this enjoyes before it wooe, <br />And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two, <br />And this, alas, is more than wee would doe.<br /><br /><br />Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare, <br />When we almost, nay more than maryed are. <br />This flea is you and I, and this <br />Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is; <br />Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met, <br />And cloysterd in these living walls of Jet. <br /><br />Though use make thee apt to kill me, <br />Let not to this, selfe murder added bee, <br />And sacrilege, three sinnes in killing three.<br /><br /><br />Cruell and sodaine, has thou since <br />Purpled thy naile, in blood of innocence? <br />In what could this flea guilty bee, <br />Except in that drop which it suckt from thee? <br />Yet thou triumph'st, and saist that thou <br />Find'st not thyself, nor mee the weaker now; <br /><br />'Tis true, then learne how false, feares bee; <br />Just so much honor, when thou yeeld'st to mee, <br />Will wast, as this flea's death tooke life from thee.<br /><br />John Donne<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-2259000292913202149?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-32037186988689373352011-04-04T08:12:00.000Z2011-04-04T08:26:58.494Z"Who is she?" she asked.<br />"Who?" he replied. <br />"Stop kidding; you know what I mean. Who is she?" <br /><br />These opening words of a radio play that I heard today made me think ..... made me think that this conversation (soon to be an argument) must have been repeated in so many homes, and made me think too that at home we sometimes pretend to be the people we are not! <br /><br />A mask can be a wonderful gift, enabling me, or you, or us, to be both the person we are and the person we are not. What we think and feel and believe may be there, just under the surface, the real me, warts and all. The mask is there for all to see, a shell or peel which can be so attractive, warm, inclusive or loving, a comfortable skin, acceptable to family and to friends, and believed by all except our intimates to be REAL!! <br /><br />Meanwhile, underneath the mask, a personality inhibited by events is just wasted or wasting, festering, infected with the germs of hurt, anger or isolation. Just as flesh softens, hardens and heats up, hiding the puss just under the skin until the boil bursts in a thick, grey, putrid flow, so our hurts fester behind the mask until it is torn away in a realisation for one partner that truth is health, and for the other a realisation that the truth is (or is not) welcome; living with a mask is tolerable. Living with truth is heaven or hell! <br /><br />Schizophrenia, that frightening term for those with split personality is often misused by amateurs like me. So few of us suffer from this maladie, but we seek comfort in the divisions we hide. Having two sides may provide comfort and security, and with practice may even become almost perfect. How many partnerships follow this model? At work or at home, so many crave an audience, needing appreciation, gaining satisfaction to sustain a mask. So many others see themselves as misunderstood. For others, the mask slowly becomes reality and one side of the split personality disengages as the other comes to dominate. <br /><br />What does all this mean? Which is our true self? If the cap fits, wear it! If not, be grateful for peace of mind and heart!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-3203718698868937335?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-74921187869600050852011-03-12T22:54:00.005Z2011-03-13T23:15:05.660ZFukushima may yet be a name we all learn to speak, not because it is the surname of a Japanese politician, the current chair of the Social Democratic Party of Japan, but because of its impact on the green agenda here in the UK!<br /><br />Fukushima, an atomic power electricity generating station on the east coast of Japan, is built on bedrock, just as such complexes are in the UK. There the similarity ends as the UK does not have the range of active tectonic plates off and around Japan but this will not be relevant in the debate on government proposals to expand the UK's nuclear generating capacity. Bedrock, intended to be the factor which makes the nuclear facility "safe", has proved a liability in an earthquake zone just as other factors, maybe remoteness of location or sophisticated technology will prove ultimately to be the failings of the UK model.<br /><br />Everything man-made is fallible; everything natural has its day. Harmony between the two is possible, even likely, but never eternal, As we say, every dog has its day, and nature has a way of proving its omnipotence …… it always bites back .... in the end!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-7492118786960005085?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-38810985136112138062011-03-12T00:36:00.005Z2011-03-12T01:40:13.453ZI guess Aborigine, Maori or other indigenous peoples of "under-developed" regions would make the connection between natural disaster and dramatic changes in the equilibrium of the world's resources? I have to ask if there is a connection between today's earthquake and tsunami and the speed of the North's consumption and abuse of our finite world.<br /><br />Maybe this question is conceived in my belief that blame for the world's failings can be mostly laid at the feet of capitalism (there are instances of the combination of nationalism and socialism having similar failings!) However the unity of nature, the Earth at peace with itself, the sort of allegory which the film Avatar portrayed, these are long-held traditions of animist belief ... that the gods must be assuaged if pestilence and disaster are to be minimised.<br /><br />So where do BP and the supranational companies stand? What of the increasing influence of the political right? How about the domination of the media by Murdoch and his friends? Will these groups question our trusteeship of this world? Or will they continue to spout ideological platitudes about trickle down, ending poverty, the development cycle and the morality of the market?<br /><br />Meanwhile nature confirms its ambivalence about when and where it challenges humankind; and the West has been asked the question more in the last year or so than for some time ...... from New Orleans to New Zealand, from Queensland to Japan. <br /><br />Like the gentle breeze, my words are lost in the ether, but we have to answer the question, not simply ask it!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-3881098513611213806?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-10154111931042025702011-03-11T01:03:00.002Z2011-03-11T01:40:57.731ZVauxhall to Waterloo takes just eleven minutes on a good day but to look at my fellow travellers during the rush hour this evening, few had had a good day! From their silence, the lack of conversation, the total absence of eye contact, the unhelpfulness of those with no regard for fellow travellers looking for a space to stand not sit, or somewhere to place a bag, it's clear that Cameron's "big society" has little chance in the south-east where the prevailing isolation and apparent self-reliance of my colleagues on the Tube is a foundation of quicksand for his brave new world!<br /><br />I'm told that the human race is gregarious; not much evidence of this on the London tube. In fact, the very opposite may be true, a race of isolates, maybe the consequence of generations of inbreeding influenced by the political bigotry of the right wing media?<br /><br />Yes, I do that see that link as logical, that years of living on a diet of the abuse of society, selfishness, and intolerance of the less fortunate leaves communities bereft of spirit, afraid of teamwork and prisoners of intolerance.<br /><br />We reap what we sow said the prophet. Well, it will take more than eleven years of reflection to begin to challenge my eleven minute judgement on those who travel by tube. By then I will be seventy-nine years young and I Hope still taking an alternative view.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-1015411193104202570?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-70737607419664735512011-03-09T00:45:00.002Z2011-03-09T01:25:54.922ZAmbition is a young person's game; it fills their minds, hearts and days with dreams of what might be and how to change the world. For the middle-aged, ambition is reality, success or failure! Where am I? In what job? At what level? Living with whom? And the kids!! Wow! What have I done ..... or should it be what I have done? And what did I not do, what omissions, what pain inflicted, how many hurtful words uttered on the plank of ambition? Such questions become increasingly pointless with advancing age. And so it was that ..........<br /><br />...... today I bought a grave, mine, my home to be! A grave is a refuge, a hiding place in which a body resides, slowly and securely decomposing and returning to whence it came, a painless process requiring no energy, no activity and no ambition. A grave is also a retreat for and from those who love you, somewhere where they can keep you safely while their emotions cool.<br /><br />My grave was sunny and warm today with the noise of a motorway just a short distance away. Just 900mm wide and 2500mm deep, there will be no escape, just the certainty, not of eternal rest, but just seventy-five years before anyone is allowed to disturb me. So what ambition is this, to lie comfortably in my grave? Ah, think on reader; this is the ambition of someone who cares, who dares to have a view about life at and after death.<br /><br />I want to be buried; it is a safe departure, a comforting transition from death to memory. I want family and friends to enjoy the cartharsis of burial rather than the avoidance of reality in the escapism of cremation. Not only should I be lowered gently into my grave but those who mourn me and even the inquisitive must each must take a spade and backfill that grave, enjoying the resonance of clay on coffin, the echo of an empty box. Those who are there to check that I really am dead, they too can turn a sod or two and get their satisfaction. I do not care!<br /><br />So my ambition on this Ash Wednesday is not to penance and wish misery on those around me; my ambition is to live life to the full so that when my day comes and the grim reaper grips me by the shoulder, I will simply say, "Peace friend, I'm ready to say hello to my future."<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-7073760741966473551?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-34565619662191705392011-01-22T00:46:00.004Z2011-01-22T01:17:24.413ZNearly two years since I published on my blog and so much wasted time! My thoughts on so many issues lost forever into that empty abyss which swallows creativity, ambition, reflection and analysis. What shame! Lost opportunities are the stuff of life for so many, me especially! Here I am, sixty-eight years old and with so little time left compared with my life to date. I feel about thirty-five but one day soon, my body will begin to fail even if my mind continues; vice-versa would be even worse ..... an empty brain rattling around in a declining body .... ugh!<br /><br />I keep meeting people from my past .... how much have I lost .... or remembering events from long ago .... a bit like my life passing before my eyes ..... a warning that the grim reaper is waiting in the wings. Let's hope he (or is it a she?) stays in the green room rather than coming on stage!<br /><br />Watching The King's Speech this evening, I thought back to that day (02/02/52?) when the headteacher came into class, made us stand and announced "The King is dead!" First we prayed, and then we had to say "Long live the Queen!" The world continues and so do we .... most of the time, while one by one we fall off the edge of this flat earth and into an abyss, forever lost in a dark and spiritless void.<br /><br />Shall I write each day? Will my thoughts continue to litter this failing world, yet another environmental disaster .... words wasted, useless words, pointless words, hurtful words which cause offence, kind and loving words which miss their target, words lost on the wind, words misunderstood and words not heard. The world does not listen to me. Having no audience should tell me that I have nothing to say!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-3456561966219170539?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-42553063707704124122009-07-06T06:24:00.006Z2011-04-04T23:14:27.019ZThe inspection had ended at 1300 on Friday and I had spent the weekend in the garden and with the family. Monday morning now, and where am I? On a train to the big smoke for two days of assessment and report writing ..... and thought I had retired .... again!!<br /><br />The train carriage is half empty, but also half full of slightly overweight middle-aged businessmen and smart young women making their way in the world. It looks and sounds like a two-way ladder with seriously boring guys pompously and pretentiously working with laptops and piles of paper, while aspiring and assertive (largely) women, clearly better organised, listen to their ipods and read the financial pages. Quite a contrast!<br /><br />And in this melee, where am I? With a foot on both sides of the ladder? Who can tell? Certainly not me!<br /><br />I tried to think this through but we are in Rugby already, more than halfway to London in just over the hour; the speed of life today! And here I am musing yet again! What would my favourite poet Donne make of this dilemma? Or tycoon, Alan Sugar? Or Paul of Tarsus? I sometimes think that I am thoughtful like Paul, but he was never confused; maybe he was like me? Reading him, I do believe that he was trapped with a personal issue he never describes; his theology may be sound, but his life seems to indicate a tension he never details. <br /><br />Alan Sugar would not be where I am; no tensions for him, no train either! he is the exemplification of clarity, direction and judgement, underpinned with confidence in his own abilities. He really is the consummate professional, having faults but being wrong not being one of them. <br /><br />So I am left with Jonne Donne, that sensitive and jesuitical poet with a resolution to every quandary, even if he does not share it, an answer to every tension, a solution to every problem! Whether his poem is compromise or conclusion, the outcome is always final, secure and unquestioned. At the "mingling of bloods" nothing stays the same, nor can the old world return; it changes everything ... for ever!<br /><br /><br />Marke but this flea, and marke in this, <br />How little that which thou deny'st me is; <br />Me it suck'd first, and now sucks thee, <br />And in this flea our two bloods mingled bee; <br />Confesse it, this cannot be said <br />A sinne, or shame, or losse of maidenhead, <br /><br />Yet this enjoyes before it wooe, <br />And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two, <br />And this, alas, is more than wee would doe.<br /><br /><br />Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare, <br />When we almost, nay more than maryed are. <br />This flea is you and I, and this <br />Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is; <br />Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met, <br />And cloysterd in these living walls of Jet. <br /><br />Though use make thee apt to kill me, <br />Let not to this, selfe murder added bee, <br />And sacrilege, three sinnes in killing three.<br /><br /><br />Cruell and sodaine, has thou since <br />Purpled thy naile, in blood of innocence? <br />In what could this flea guilty bee, <br />Except in that drop which it suckt from thee? <br />Yet thou triumph'st, and saist that thou <br />Find'st not thyself, nor mee the weaker now; <br /><br />'Tis true, then learne how false, feares bee; <br />Just so much honor, when thou yeeld'st to mee, <br />Will wast, as this flea's death tooke life from thee.<br /><br />John Donne<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-4255306370770412412?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-35463361966786310382009-04-22T00:07:00.002Z2009-04-22T01:00:00.283ZI should look in the dictionary at words beginning with the letter P. How many there are I don’t know, nor whether P words are more numerous than those with different initial letters. What I do know is that it’s possible to reflect on the world in which we live by using definitions of P words as indicators of the state of our planet.<br /><br />The Postie was completing his walk the other day, an introspective man committed to his job of delivering letters parcels and junk mail with relentless efficiency but not a great speed; the sort of man who clearly avoids conversation and is happy with his lot. No great pretensions, just the bustle of a job needing to be done. The Postie oozes confidence and determination; he is focused, never raising his eyes nor looking left or right, he will not catch your eye and hates responding to those who greet him, but a man with a mission. Would that more were like him!<br /><br />So what of this Postie (“le facteur” for my French readers)? He made me think about the Press and Politics, of Pride and Poverty, of Paranoia, of Protest.<br /><br />An odd world in which we live, where the life-blood of the Press is the destruction of Politicians and the reduction of the Public to consumers of cynicism. An odd world in which we live where Politicians are and are seen as the Purveyors of greed. An odd world in which we live, where Pride in personal achievement is so often ridiculed while celebrities are made famous only for their fame. An odd world too where the Poverty of the South and East is largely ignored by the West. A world in which Paranoia is a defence for crime, where Protest is a cover for brutality by police officer and anarchist alike.<br /><br />I may be doing my postie a disservice, but I half envy him his abstraction from the world, his introspection. Content with his own thoughts, he has no need for or interest in the Vox Populi; independent and autonomous, he seems unaffected by the burdens of the economy, debt and the need to be nihilistic. Or maybe I have misread my postie; maybe it is these very burdens which make him the man he is. I will never know as intrude into his private hell I never will!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-3546336196678631038?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-64489214820173177012009-03-27T22:59:00.006Z2009-03-28T00:04:41.472Z<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_gHeNWnBd9oU/Sc1lvEnNp1I/AAAAAAAAAAw/5crMgYQn1Oo/s1600-h/dusk.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318018594360895314" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 98px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 130px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_gHeNWnBd9oU/Sc1lvEnNp1I/AAAAAAAAAAw/5crMgYQn1Oo/s320/dusk.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">(A tribute to my friend Dalva whose poem this is. Poignant, sad, even a little depressing, this dark destination we all pass through!)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;">Ah! when I arrived at the vortex of life,<br />When nothing more, nothing around me, was ascending,<br />When at last I arrived at the end of the line<br />It makes no difference whether I go or come.<br /><br />When the loves and passions and friendships,<br />And their range of inescapable emotions<br />No longer sound like drums inside my chest,<br />Being just sad, poor and sultry echoes,<br /><br />When my bodily properties, if all regathered,<br />Again in these clothes,<br />My hat, one or two books, some poems<br />And a feeling of not winning what I wanted,<br /><br />Ah! when I stopped, at last, at the end of the road<br />And I considered the evil that I had within me,<br />(and what I did not have)<br />I was silent, like a rock,<br />Like a tree in the edge of an abyss,<br /><br />Like an arrow that was loose in the bow,<br />Like an idea that would never come to fruition,<br />Like a shadow, or like a rough draft,<br />Of everything I dreamed, and did not have.<br /><br />This is the end of the line …….. </span></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-6448921482017317701?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-70443342203972045362009-03-27T20:38:00.003Z2009-03-27T22:05:08.965ZThe clocks go forward tomorrow night, as we move from Greenwich Mean Time to British Summer Time, but is this really a sign of summer, warmer times with happier smiling people? I think not!<br /><br />The world is in crisis, not necessarily the crisis of war, but of changes to the human condition, the climate, the economy, all of which may already have tipped over the edge with few realising that this is indeed the case. Trauma and tragedy? Time will tell but when the fish of the sea are increasingly hermaphrodite, man's sperm count is less than half what it was fifty years ago, the seasons are more and more unpredictable with one polar cap soon to unfreeze each year, the world economy brought to its capitalist knees by the greed of bankers and money men, when will we see sense?<br /><br />No longer are we masters of our destiny! No longer do the winners write the history books; no, history is the province of a future we can only guess at, hardly predict. Out of our hands, man has committed the gravest of sins in recent decades, maybe longer. Industry has poisoned not only rivers and soils, but our minds as well. Our right to choice, that oft proclaimed plank of the right, but also now of the left, denies the trust for our world, a trust recognised by those we scoff at as animist or primitive, by those communities which are self-supporting and whose lifestyle does not threaten the future of the planet. And what of the "civilised" world with its consumption of resources far beyond nature's ability to produce? East mimics West and the impoverished South jumps on this bandwagon to a world desert. But nature will always keep its own counsel and payback will be in its own time, not when humans decide.<br /><br />So what of our future? Our best hope may be to stop, to think, to reduce the demands we make on ourselves, family, neighbours, communities, governments and nations ...... and ...... and what? Live as vegetarians or vegans? Probably not! Become pacifist? No! Go Green? Maybe! No, the answer must be to work together, black and white, rich and poor, Christian and Muslim, believer and agnostic, woman and man, and review the minimalist lifestyle needed to bring nature and nations into harmony.<br /><br />So my hope for British Summer Time is that the Sun will shine, warm our hearts and minds, open our eyes and ears to the realities of this world, to aspiration not desperation, and that hand in hand, Afghan and American, Briton and Brazilian, Serbian and Sri Lankan will rebuild the future of mankind. After all things can and do change; who would have guessed in 1991 that the next American president would be called Hussein?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-7044334220397204536?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-35224133511117373052007-12-04T01:26:00.000Z2007-12-04T01:27:00.897ZHenry Ford was wrong! History may not have much relevance for industry or commerce which he saw as being about production and profit, but history teaches us lessons which we ignore at our peril.<br /><br />I have been beside the River Thames this week, just above the great lock at Teddington. This relentless flow of dark water only half-hiding the secrets it keeps, and half reminding us of the past! Old Father Thames it is sometimes called, and like the ancients respected for their wisdom, it has seen so much, forgotten more than we can ever know, there like an icon to cherish and respect.<br /><br />As I ambled along the towpath with my grandson in the early winter sun, what did I see reflected in the still, slow waters? Bridges, clouds and overhanging trees, each with their meaning or is it interpretation, vision, fantasy or truth? Bridges, symbols of contrasting cultures; clouds and trees of changing times? Or later in the week with the increasingly fast waters of winter as the rains hit the counties around Berkshire, fleeting glimpses of these same shadows but impossible to identify as they were spoilt by wind and wave. Life is like that, sometimes slow and easy to read, at other times a rushing bedlam of incident and accident thrown relentlessly and unforgivingly into the chaos of life.<br /><br />There are those who pretend to unravel these mysteries, finding patterns of repetition, fate and behaviour in their or our lives; others who finding no pattern to explain the tragedies of life, blame it all on God or man. And others still who see our successes and failures as the natural or inevitable outcome of the life-chances we each inherit. Marx would have some sympathy with this last option … little choice, just the oppressive and given domination of the masses by an elite. It matters not which group we are born to, the elite to rule in largely robust health, the masses to survive for a while at least the vagaries of poverty and oppression, ill-health, unsafe employment, idleness and frequent childbirth.<br /><br />How did they survive, those who mastered the oppression of the market, slaves of a political creed that was largely British and white and mostly protestant? And where did Adam Smith figure in this history of ours? There are many who writing their observations of 19th or 20th century urbanisation, Marx or Dickens, Descartes or Churchill, who did little more than describe what they saw, their analysis failing to challenge the established mores of society, simply to set them in the stone of eternity, the way that the world was established for ever and a day!<br /><br />Now Lenin and Mao may have been different for they challenged established but unequal order. They tore down the century old bastions of privilege and power, and in ways which terrorised commitment to the new order, allowing other pillars of the establishment such as Christianity and the Catholic Church to adopt the Marxist theory of social disorder to sanctify its dominance of government and people. The established church was everywhere, different in each country, but everywhere. The French even built the Basilica of Sacre Coeur in penitence for their failures in the Franco-Prussian war, a fine example of the integration of church and state in the common perspectives of an allegedly secular state.<br /><br />Where have I strayed on this mentally, meandering journey which began with the purchase of a Ford Focus some weeks ago. Ford’s surname, passing into our automobile history, set me thinking about the relative degrees of freedom ….. that I enjoy? … that I appreciate? ….. that I value? ….. that I understand? ….. that are worth fighting for? ….. or whether nothing has changed in one hundred years? Still trapped in the sociological quagmire that is a conurbation of several millions of people, I may dream of liberty, of equality, fraternity, even sisterhood in these politically correct days, but nothing has changed; we are all trapped in the crowds between riches and poverty, in the dreams of improvement and the fears of losing the talents we have.<br /><br />Christ was right! If we accept the coin of Caesar, we also pay homage to the ethos and edicts of the Czar. Henry Ford was wrong; it’s not history which is bunk but our literal and uncritical reading of the past.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-3522413351111737305?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1161646455336172342006-10-23T23:19:00.000Z2006-10-23T23:35:15.856Z<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3713/958/1600/cry%20hungary.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3713/958/320/cry%20hungary.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Fifty years ago tonight I lay in bed aged 13 listening to the reports of the uprising in Budapest. It is ironic that there is trouble in Budapest tonight! In 1956 the people were taking on the Russians; today there is division at home over the dishonesty of the government.<br /><br />The Hungarian uprising was my political baptism. I knew nothing of politics, or democracy and oppression. I just listened all day and all night to the reports coming from Hungary of ordinary and often unarmed people facing up to the power of the soviets. This bravery was very impressive to me, a teenager. I wanted to be Hungarian, not British! I wanted to be there with the excitement and emotion of the fight. I knew nothing of the pain of living under the Soviet yoke, or the pain of death in this uprising. It was David and Goliath, and I wanted to be David.<br /><br />The uprising (or was it a revolution?) changed my life, leaving me with a revulsion for "the Russians" as we called them, but not so strong that within a few years I saw capitalism as a greater threat. So today, after a lifetime of support for a political party and ideology which some might call socialism (not many I think) what is left? It is not for me to comment on Hungary and its people; their past is past, their future is theirs! But I have to say thank you ..... for my commitment to the poor against the rich, the weak against the strong, can be traced to the events in 1956 in the streets around Hősök Tere and Andrassy Avenue. so.... thank you for that. Without your struggle and the example of the Hungarian people, I would not be the person I am today.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-116164645533617234?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1160460059756172012006-10-10T05:47:00.000Z2006-10-10T06:00:59.766Z<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3713/958/1600/DSC_0010%20(2).jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3713/958/320/DSC_0010%20%282%29.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3713/958/1600/DSC_0009%20(2).jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3713/958/320/DSC_0009%20%282%29.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Neil Kinnock, the man who rescued the Labour Party from impending oblivion, spoke at events in Manchester at the party Conference in late September. Great man, great orator, great photos!<br /><br />Neil Kinnock was born eight months before and just a few miles from me. Always my hero both for his great oratory laced with Welsh fervour, and for the way he made Labour electable during the late 80s.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-116046005975617201?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1152835702510492852006-07-14T00:08:00.000Z2006-07-14T00:08:22.560Z<b>Lori Decter sings Mimi's Act I Aria from La boheme (Puccini)</b><br /><object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://youtube.com/v/FIZFoVHJ9EE"></param><embed src="http://youtube.com/v/FIZFoVHJ9EE" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br>My first attempt to add video to my blog. Let's hope the technology works.<br /><br />As for a comment on La Boheme, just listen and enjoy!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-115283570251049285?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1152119544599877012006-07-05T17:07:00.000Z2006-07-05T17:12:24.616Z<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3713/958/1600/ivy.1.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 280px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 235px" height="202" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3713/958/400/ivy.jpg" width="271" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Sitting in my garden, I am surrounded by fencing two metres high but invisible to my eyes. It is covered from the ground upwards with ivy! Ivy? Yes that five-pointed leaf that repeats day after day, year on year and inch by inch, but never in the same shape or colour.<br /><br />What do I see? Greens of every hue from dark and tough and ageing to small, new, fragile and light. And in between, every shade and misshapen size possible. There’s not a flower in sight, just millions of leaves each one covering the layers and leaves underneath, changing with the seasons and with the years but never changing the totality of cover over my lost and hidden fence.<br /><br />If the fence was the ovum, the ivy was sperm! Millions of leaves which impregnated and in time turned into its own eco-system. Sustained by sun and rain, a shelter to frogs and birds, threatened by hedge-cutter and creosote, renewed by spring each year, but always home to a secret and silent community.<br /><br />I closed my hand, pushed it between the leaves. More leaves? Yes, for a while, but they had lost their smoothness, and like the skin of an ancient naturist, were wrinkled, hard and crisp to the touch. They crumbled in my squeeze and fell to the ground. “Dust to dust,” says the good book?<br /><br />Like motorways, railways, roads and paths, the ivy stems tangled and twisted to all points in this hedge. “Where I will,” they seemed to say. No architect, planner or bureaucracy here; just more and more growth and in amongst it, evidence of a huge range of creatures, spiders, ants, flies, beetles, centipedes, insects of every description, and all unwittingly approaching death by bird, hedgehog or other prey.<br /><br />Where is the parliament to regulate this ivy? Where is the protest or the support? Where is the management and organisation? There is nothing I can find, save an eternal community, in balance but without committee. And underneath the ivy, long since lost to light, the fence lives on, save in its protective coat.<br /><br />What lessons are there here for us? What can we learn from this peaceful idyll? Maybe to let nature take its course, to leave our world alone, to wrap ourselves in nature and not the reverse; but like each ivy leaf, we have no future and will not be missed. We make our input, just a little, we have our day, but in eternity, we barely figure, counting as even less than zero. A depressing thought? No, we are human, trustees of this universe, and destiny is ours, or is it mine alone?<br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">(dedicated to Sylvie Garreau who gave me an empty book ..... in which to write!)</span></em><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-115211954459987701?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1145531586205496122006-04-20T09:51:00.000Z2006-04-22T08:14:30.110ZI sat on age-old rocks in the warm of the sun and the cool of the wind at Calella de Palafrugell, wondering what these rocks would say if they were to give voice to their memories. Would they tell of a history of waves and weed, of fishermen and boats, of traditions which changed little over the centuries? Or would they speak with the forked tongues of men? Conscious of the differencees between Spaniard and Catalan, or facist and republican, or the modern invasion of tourists from accoss Europe. Is Calella Catalan any more? Is this the Costa Brava, or is it now Costa Turistica?<br /><br />What has Calella lost since the BBC proclaimed it to be the least spoilt destination in Spain? To sit on those rocks in winter or spring; to dream with the gulls, to ferret around with the sparrows, to look into a swirling cremat, to sip on cafe solo, to enjoy the saltiness of Vichy water, solsos at lunchtime, the rocky crust of crema catalana, simply to be alone with history, culture, language, music and oneself .... these are forever lost. Tourists bring money and with money change ... eternal revolution of homes and bars, of tracks which become roads, and roads which grow into motorways.<br /><br />So I sat and thought of these rocks and the stories they cannot tell ... how the sounds of the sea reassures those who doubt the realities of our world, how cormorants return each year to this remote pasture, how multitudes of fish are able to hide beneath these clear waters. The world goes on, mi amigo. It does not deny the superficial nor the beneficial, but human activity is on the edge, one facet only and the spirit of the earth and sea lives on. Garcia Marquez is right, the spirits walk our world, unseen by most, and only the spirits understand the force, the power, the omnipotence of nature. Our world is safe, if only we knew it!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-114553158620549612?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1145299737219932732006-04-17T18:45:00.000Z2006-04-18T21:23:08.863Z<img style="CLEAR: all; FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3713/958/320/Espanyol2006%20098.jpg" border="0" />Oh, to be in England<br />Now that April's there,<br />And whoever wakes in England<br />Sees, some morning, unaware,<br />That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf<br />Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,<br />While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough<br />In England—now!<br />And after April, when May follows,<br />And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!<br />Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge<br />Leans to the field and scatters on the clover<br />Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—<br />That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,<br />Lest you should think he never could recapture<br />The first fine careless rapture!<br />And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,<br />All will be gay when noontide wakes anew<br />The buttercups, the little children's dower—<br />Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!<br /><br />A poem by Robert Browning ..... but .... 12 April 2006 .....<br /><br /><br />Oh to be in England now that April´s here!<br />On this occasion, no contest .... the Copa del Rei with son-in-law Mario, and Español´s somewhat unexpected 4 - 1 victory over Zaragoza was an event to savour... a moment of history, a moment to enjoy being out of England!<br /><br />Forza Español! <a href="http://picasa.google.com/blogger/" target="ext"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; BACKGROUND: 0% 50%; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; moz-background-clip: initial; moz-background-origin: initial; moz-background-inline-policy: initial" alt="Posted by Picasa" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif" align="middle" border="0" /></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-114529973721993273?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1143836280552984002006-03-31T20:12:00.000Z2006-03-31T20:18:00.566ZA poem by John Donne that I have not read in many years ... but its meaning improves with age!<br /><br />MARK but this flea, and mark in this,<br />How little that which thou deniest me is;<br />It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,<br />And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.<br />Thou know'st that this cannot be said<br />A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead; <br />Yet this enjoys before it woo, <br />And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two; <br />And this, alas ! is more than we would do.<br /><br />O stay, three lives in one flea spare,<br />Where we almost, yea, more than married are.<br />This flea is you and I, and this<br />Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.<br />Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,<br />And cloister'd in these living walls of jet. <br />Though use make you apt to kill me, <br />Let not to that self-murder added be, <br />And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.<br /><br />Cruel and sudden, hast thou since<br />Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?<br />Wherein could this flea guilty be,<br />Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?<br />Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou<br />Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.<br />'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be;<br />Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,<br />Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-114383628055298400?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1141851086503259752006-03-08T20:48:00.000Z2006-03-08T20:51:26.526ZAnd death shall have no dominion.<br />Dead men naked they shall be one<br />With the man in the wind and the west moon;<br />When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,<br />They shall have stars at elbow and foot;<br />Though they go mad they shall be sane,<br />Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;<br />Though lovers be lost love shall not;<br />And death shall have no dominion.<br /><br />And death shall have no dominion.<br />Under the windings of the sea<br />They lying long shall not die windily;<br />Twisting on racks when sinews give way,<br />Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;<br />Faith in their hands shall snap in two,<br />And the unicorn evils run them through;<br />Split all ends up they shan't crack;<br />And death shall have no dominion.<br /><br />And death shall have no dominion.<br />No more may gulls cry at their ears<br />Or waves break loud on the seashores;<br />Where blew a flower may a flower no more<br />Lift its head to the blows of the rain;<br />Though they be mad and dead as nails,<br />Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;<br />Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,<br />And death shall have no dominion.<br /><br /> Dylan Thomas<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-114185108650325975?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1141255169726062072006-03-01T23:18:00.000Z2006-03-02T05:58:29.626ZDear Peter<br /><br />I was at your funeral this morning, trying to make sense of it all, all that pain and hurt and sadness …. asking myself the question … “why?” And yet through the tears, I also asked, “why not?” After all we have no monopoly over life and death; why should it be early or late in life, and why should we always be able to predict the timing of this inevitable event?<br /><br />I looked at faces racked by tears, red-stained eyes that looked worn and old, noses than ran sore and were wiped incessantly. I felt the collective heave of a community bound together in the grief of your death. Family, friends from school and from life, colleagues from work, and those who were there only because they knew your name and who you were, all caught up in what we hoped would be a celebration of your life, but inevitably became for many, a catharsis, and for some a trauma.<br /><br />Phil talked about your illness, Ged about your life and work, but so many spoke only to themselves and to their God, knowing there was no answer to the questions “Why?” and “Why not?” We listened to these brave words from those who would do anything to go back a week, pick up a telephone, call at the house, do something different to change the course of history, and thus not need to be here today. All pointless … we cannot go back. We make our choices and must live by their reward.<br /><br />Phil started and ended with the reminder that no event, no one illness can define or determine you or anybody else in our world. We are who we are with all our history, successes and failings, laughter and tears, choices made and avoided, friends and colleagues; we are all these things and not just the final event of our life.<br /><br />It was good to hear this, reassuring, and it reminded us of all the pleasure that you gave us at home, at school, at work. Your work is not undone by death; it is perpetuated, complete. Your laughter, your energy and commitment is not lost; we are the people that you influenced, that you helped to form; and so your qualities and something of you, live on in us.<br /><br />So, Peter, look down on us from wherever you are, smile your smile and talk your talk. Maybe when we look at sun or moon, your face will be there. When we hear the sound of that gentle wind it will carry your muffled words into our world. Whatever else you do, remember that we loved you, the person you were and the person you remain, and then, my friend, my child ….. rest in peace.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-114125516972606207?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1140769609648181012006-02-24T08:25:00.000Z2006-02-24T08:26:49.660Zis being alone with your thoughts, sharing them only with your God!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-114076960964818101?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1139444786205773932006-02-09T00:25:00.000Z2006-02-09T00:26:26.220ZI boarded that train at some provincial stop, and at some unearthly hour. This is my job, I told myself and sank into seat.<br /><br />As night gave way to dawn, to light, to landscapes, to skies, what did I see? People? No, this land is empty of them, but full of fields and folds, copses and ponds, lanes and tracks which all deserted looks so natural. Only the canals and bridges look man-made. Man’s influence seems almost sympathetic as hamlets, farmhouses, barns and stacks pass by. What I cannot see is the track on which we ride, this iron road rebuilt on white and soon to be grey stone, fenced in with railings which in time will rust. And as they do, will they blend in and be consumed by this rural scene? Will earth’s colours again assume their dominance? Can cuttings and embankments, straight and fine, ever stand out against nature, or will they mellow, soften, and be weathered by wind and rain and sun?<br /><br />This arrow, this sharp and silver shape, cuts through our land at speeds we cannot comprehend. London in two hours they say, when once it took a week! But trains are urban, not rural, filled with the urges and noises of those who work and chatter and shout orders down their phones. Why can they not stop for a moment and take in what they do not see. Obsessed by work, efficiency and outcomes, they take their worries and concerns, their intensity and commitment, to transform this world they say … for the better, and without even a glance at these passing sights, this ancient world which will see us out. A world of quiet, of birds, of rats and shrews we never see, of quiet cattle, of sheep, of those who mind their own affairs, those who relax, take the longer view, and take life as it comes.<br /><br />So town and city dwellers just halt your race into oblivion. The train speeds not to London, but to eternity. One gets on, but will it ever stop? Like some great wheel, the train speeds on, in relentless chasing of a perfect world.<br /><br />Think on, my friend; this is not heaven but hell, a denial of our humanity, a false faith in our dominion when what we need is quiet and humble eyes for the marvels we have missed.<br /><br />Sleep on my friend, and when you wake, the world will not have changed.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-113944478620577393?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1139380809529830152006-02-08T06:39:00.000Z2006-02-08T06:56:49.386ZI woke to the sound of overwhelming, utter exhaustion. The mobile was ringing, waking me from a sleep induced by the monotony of the rhythm of the train. All day I had discussed, debated, analysed, and to what purpose? Putting the world to rights, condemning injustice, Opposing anarchy? No, none of these; just reflecting on the differences between the meanings of monitoring, evaluation and review!<br /><br />If only we spent our time productively. We protest out commitment to efficient service delivery, and what do we do? Use our tongues rather than our hands, our mouths rather than our heads!<br /><br />Is this like the difference between Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky? Who proved to be the most effective? Was it the thinker and planner, or the one who acted decisively? One left us a political philosophy, another a corrupt and inhuman empire; the third was exterminated because of the threat he posed.<br /><br />The parallel for today might be the interactions between militant Islam and the secular West. The former protests at the cartoon sacrilege upon their prophet (peace be upon him), oppressed both by Western domination of oil and the vestiges of a thousand years of clerical rule. Meanwhile, in the name of freedom, our governments and peoples rape the resources of our world, threaten the future of the planet and of humanity, jeopardise the quality of the very air we breathe, and are never brought to account for these crimes. Our world is in our trust, not our ownership or dominion!<br /><br />Meanwhile, in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, and in so many of the West’s urban centres, people suffer and starve in the names of capitalism, secularism and religion. When did religion last protest on behalf of the poor? Nearly always it is tied into a political regime. While our prophets prophecy in truth and in justice, Christians at least have both oppressed and been oppressed in the name of Jesus. Of other prophets, I cannot speak.<br /><br />Maybe I should take refuge in sleep, undisturbed by worry, concern, pain and violence, or the threat of these.<br /><br />Back to sleep on my train. Boa noite meu amigo!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-113938080952983015?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1129160596405194932005-10-12T23:42:00.000Z2005-10-12T23:43:16.416ZI drove through Lymm this afternoon, a posh yet unpretentious place, the product of centuries of growth and decline. So close to Mother Nature, yet so lacking in life. Maybe it was the mist and rain, the damp and cold, the wind and rain, the wet and cold that drove the living into their tomb-like homes. Closed doors, locked doors, curtains drawn to hide from the outside world, like cowards wrapped in comfort, escapees trapped in another jail.<br /><br />What of the life of those who haunt the fields on this drab, drab day. Excluded from these cells, they walk alone, but in the company of trees, of hedges, of fences which have weathered these extremes. They may be wet but they are warm with the lashing gale on hooded heads, in tune with season, time and age.<br /><br />The steeple pierces the low-blown clouds, wrapping this Cheshire world in fast-moving grey. The Lymm Damn, that still flat lake protected by its slopes and woods, its surface broken only by the blown leaves and by those still small ducklings rippling like a chain as they race for cover. Dark, black, murky, even haunting is the feel of that spot. As night approaches, there is no good here. Away!<br /><br />And so as Autumn grows, I ask, “Quiet, empty, still, where are they all, the people of this place, hiding in the remoteness of their homes?” Their trimmed hedges, lawns and borders betray a people chained to garden habits, like robots, automatons in a marble world.<br /><br />And where is nature? Hiding round the corner? In that field, waiting its chance to return and once again go soft and green? Patient, untidy yet at peace!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-112916059640519493?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1126017089151885342005-09-06T14:28:00.000Z2005-09-06T14:31:29.156Z"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."<br /><br />John Donne (1572 - 1631)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-112601708915188534?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1125931342805243302005-09-05T14:40:00.000Z2005-09-05T14:42:22.813ZI have been just once to the USA, the north-eastern corner, but we call the huge country America which it is not! So much confusion about the difference between perspective and reality. And of the last week since Hurricane Katrina ……?<br /><br />Who am I to comment on the USA, Bush, the people of New Orleans, the black poor, the politics of America, the media? Just an interested and committed observer, appalled by the images of the last few days, of old people dying on camera, of babies dying of thirst, of patient and composed people waiting patiently for their fate, of parents risking their lives for their children, of others giving their lives to the rescue. And what do our TV screens show? White policemen targeting looters while their poor and black brothers and sisters starve. It seems to me that irony is not strength of the local media and politicians. What victory is there in parading a looted television in a city without power? What arrogance to knock stolen food from the hands of a father anxious to feed his family. When the world stops, people have time to reflect, and reflections can be brutal.<br /><br /><strong><em>The Image</em></strong> is of overwhelmingly black people trapped in this flood … those who could not escape. “Give me your poor” says the Statue of Liberty but the American dream does not liberate; it entraps so many in poverty and repression<br /><br /><strong><em>The President</em></strong>, were it not so shameful, is a figure of fun and derision at home and abroad. He is naked, with no judgement, poor communication skills, and no instinct for intervention. However, he has a vision of a rebuilt New Orleans at a time when people are drowning in a sea of faeces and corpses. Most of all for a conviction Christian, he does not look for meaning and understanding in this sign from his God.<br /><br /><strong><em>The Media</em></strong> change their take on the story from day-to-day. First there was the hurricane, then death and damage, then the human stories, followed by political indifference, but thank God, the looters saved the day and allowed us to report “increasing lawlessness and violence”, something that would put the blame for this mess firmly in the poor black communities. Finally, after days of criticism, came the Marines and Fox News reporting so eloquently on the effectiveness and commitment of these cavalry from over the horizon (bring back Reagan and the cowboy films of old)! How easy it is to turn tragedy into success!<br /><br /><strong><em>The British</em></strong> in our inimitable style have done little except watch and listen. Our greatest ally is in big trouble and there is no national mourning, no great appeal for help. We have not even been encouraged to send donations. What does this tell me? That while the suffering people are to be pitied, their government and country are not. That there is a belief that if the USA is so great, it deserves the opportunity to resolve this situation without outside help. Not our problem, we seem to be saying. As a nation, we may be embarrassed at our own silence, but at least we are asking the question of ourselves about the meaning and relevance of our life.<br /><br /><strong><em>The End Game!</em></strong> The world will never be the same again. The USA is enfeebled by this tragedy more than by Vietnam and 9/12. Its economy is threatened. The world’s greatest military power has little heart, little compassion for its own, never mind the rest of the world. Is this the death of capitalism? Never. As always, it will present the rise in oil prices, the impoverishment of millions by the catastrophe as an opportunity for individuals to make an impact, to succeed, and to break out of their imprisonment in poverty … the American Dream! Ha!<br /><br />As for “little government”, the flagstone of Republican politics for a generation, where were you when you were needed? With your rich friends, safe from the winds of change. Big government might have been slow to react, but at least it speaks for all the people.<br /><br />If liberation is action on behalf of justice, then this blog is nothing, as are the words of all those who pontificate on Katrina and its consequences. Prayer and sentiment may help us as individuals. <em><strong>Who will help the poor of New Orleans?</strong></em><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-112593134280524330?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1124817082767162292005-08-23T17:09:00.000Z2005-08-23T17:11:22.773ZA Brazilian friend has just asked the question, “Are you a man or a mouse?” In the context of my first world credentials, it is a hurtful question, and it needs to be. Whatever happened to my commitment to the third world, to my study of Liberation Theology in the 1980s? Liberation can never be study; it is always action, in this case, action by the poor in light of the gospels. So where did I go wrong?<br /><br />History, politics and salvation are in the soul of most people, where we came from, what we hope for, and our current ambition and commitment. The West has no ambition, simply platitudes, conservatism and a wish to retain the present state at all costs. So what of my history, my politics and my salvation?<br /><br />My family originated in poor agricultural and then mining stock; I was one of the first in my family to go to university. Did I turn my back on their poverty? … on their history of oppression in Ireland and in the Welsh mines? Do I still value their principles and what they worked and stood for, or am I just another catholic capitalist paying lip-service to justice and peace?<br /><br />The enslavement of generations of Latin Americans in sinful structures supported by the Church and state challenges not the existence of God, but the identity of God. It is clear from Old and New Testaments that to know God is to do justice; the Church (both the institution and individuals) is failing the people.<br /><br />Scripture cannot support a political ideology of oppression and exploitation which is anti-Christian. The gospels renounce any identification with rich and authoritarian societies and their compromise with capitalism and imperialism. Didn’t Christ reject the coin and the head of Caesar … if we accept the coin, we accept all that goes with it … this is prophecy!<br /><br />The witness of the Church is the process of liberation, liberation from sin and oppression. Structural factors, economic rationalism and development theory perpetuate the same neo-colonialist existence that they pretend to challenge. They deny Latin America the opportunity to value its Indian and Iberian cultures and traditions, and to integrate its hopes into regional solutions. It is time to renew the relationship between political activity and Christian faith. When will the Church give witness to community rather than to communities? A clinic in a Peruvian village is no response to oppressive employment practices and the need for agrarian reform. It is a sop to the conscience of the West.<br /><br />Transformation of society is required with Christians opting for political action rather than personal prayer! From Puebla onwards, the tension between these two views has been marked. We have a choice, a “popular church” united in a struggle for liberation, or a “magisterium” trapped in its own theological bureaucracy, a choice between an egalitarian distribution of wealth and the need for cheap labour, a choice between participation and shared decision-making and the doctrine of national security.<br /><br />God’s people are, like Christ, free, redeemed, but we need to be evangelised in the gospel of Christ, not that of Mammon. Christ gave us humans freedom in our relationship with the world (we are trustees), freedom in our relationships with each other, and freedom in our relationship with God. Our world is typified by the sinfulness of ambition and envy, and these produce injustice, domination, violence and conflict at all levels of society.<br /><br />It is significant that the false evangelisation of centuries has made a virtue out of poverty, but theology is written by the rich and powerful. Is it “blessed are the poor” or “blessed are the poor in spirit”? True evangelization will enable us, not to ape the sins of our oppressors, but to proclaim the gospel of liberation. It is ideology and idolatry to associate God with domination and exploitation. The Church has failed!<br /><br />It is time for me to choose. Am I a man or a mouse?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-112481708276716229?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1124790895746092962005-08-23T09:53:00.000Z2005-08-23T09:54:55.753ZPhysical and intellectual overwork brought me to my knees. Exhaustion was utter, total and overwhelming. I was unable even to climb the stairs to bed that Sunday evening. The therapy of physical endeavours, as a contrast to the mental stresses of the week helped only to allow my body and mind to protest, and as I crawled crab-like to the bathroom at dawn, I knew that my brain had taken over from my heart.<br /><br />My world was spinning in a clockwise ellipse, relentlessly pursuing its course around me. Closing my eyes could not shut it out. Retching like a child could not change it; nor could the almighty sweat which drenched me and the floor on which I sat. What was I to do? Nothing …. For probably the second time in my life I was helpless, unable to help myself, only this time I knew it; I understood!<br /><br />Labrynthitis is not pleasant. Its disorientation is total. It does not respond to drugs, only to time, and of that I have plenty. Those two skulls, one inside the other which moved at different speeds, one always following the other, make for discomforting life. To lie still is one’s only hope, but patience is a virtue which is not my strength.<br /><br />So to reflect on life and love and work, and on a future? What is there for me now, just a warning that I must or should learn to balance those elements of my life to which I have given so little thought? Firstly there is me, myself and I, a complex character, often hiding from his other self. What of me and my selfishness? Should I continue to work sixty plus hours each week? Should I limit myself to the local maximum of thirty-seven and see the quality of service to the community diminished? Should I challenge my managers to give me the support they have always denied, or close down the service and say, “To hell with those who need advice, those who have potential to change our world for the better?"<br /><br />My wife and family I do not write about. That is personal, private, confidential and precious. Why should they devote themselves to this man who is everywhere else too often? Suffice to say, “Thank you!”<br /><br />And so my interests, hobbies, addictions. What value do they have? What place in the history of our world? Am I allowed these selfishnesses, or are they like leaves upon the wind, a passing fad, a mere dot in the history of mankind? Is this how I will end my days building the garden fences even higher to shut out others’ gardens, top protect my passions and prejudice? Shall I soak myself in the history of the family, back to the Brayles of 1200? Why look back, unless it is to inform the future. It is not the names, dates and places of the past which matter but the social history which tells me and us of man’s search for betterment.<br /><br />So what shall I do? Return to work with its absence of boundaries, little management and impossible demands, or shall I choose the better path, of reason and reasonableness, and put on my ageing frame only the burdens where I can make a difference … as a teacher. After all, this is my profession, or as a writer of what I do not know. Short stories perhaps.<br /><br />So to the computer, my greatest love, I remain faithful. Armed with my mobile phone, PDA and laptop, I can travel the world knowing that I am never more than a call or text or email away from what I love, and to which and whom I will return. The choice is made. Technology matched with reason will save my life, my health, my life’s work. <br /><br />Thank you one and all for your support and friendship. To work at last … there is no other course. But my work is words, communication, trust and challenge, poetry and prose in equal measure, and debate, discussion and argument. There really is no choice. I am who I am. I cannot change the person, just learn to remember who and what I am!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-112479089574609296?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1117728555896201782005-06-02T16:08:00.000Z2005-06-03T15:26:38.386ZAnd did those feet in ancient days, walk upon England’s green and pleasant land.<br /><br />What is fantasy … and who can understand? Who can see inside the secrets of a heart and mind? Of frustrated hopes and unreachable desires. All is chalk, dry, and senseless, lying unfulfilled under the shallow soils and wispy grass. And do people thrive here? With what? For what? How do they make a fist of it? With their sharing, their openness, stubbornness, carelessness or just pure genius.<br /><br />So what of me, trapped in my locked tower, locked in, not out; have I the key, the password which will untrap me from myself? In this maze of life, where decisions are forced on me, taken for me, presumed or just written in the future and in history, where do I make my bed? Is it at work, in play, in thought or deed, with a spade or a mouse … so much to ask, so little time to ponder. This confusion is of my own making. I have read Marx and Engels, Guttierez and Boff, Manley Hopkins, Thomas and Tolstoy, and what do they do? Simply set even more challenges for this world.<br /><br />Europe is divided between those who want, those who have and those who dream. The have-nots are forgotten. As for the States, they have their monopoly on power, right, freedom and communication. Who cares? More and more, we walk on by.<br /><br />It is in the East that the war is waged between the Arab and the Jew, the European and the Moslem, the Sunni and the Shia. And ideas? Do we have time to debate? Oh no! Our time is spent, wasted on petty tasks, clothes, shopping and TV. Where is our world?<br /><br />Dylan got it right when he said, “Dead men, naked they shall be one with the wind and the west moon!" Roll on spring into summer. Where will we be this autumn? With the devil and the deep blue sea, or in that garden of mellow fruitfulness?<br /><br />Only time will tell!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-111772855589620178?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1117435262539889782005-05-30T06:39:00.000Z2005-05-30T06:52:49.776ZI found her swaying like a reed in the wind, asking why I could not speak, challenging me to believe that all was as it should be. My response of “It’s time you owned up to being an alcoholic,” was greeted with silence, resentment, a twisted expression which betrayed both hatred of what had been said as much of herself.<br /><br />What caused this? How to control or cure it? Time has proved there is no answer to these questions except for the alcoholic. What had happened to this beautiful and talented friend, this Trojan woman with looks and personality who radiated her attractiveness in her small but trusted coterie of friends? Maybe the secret was there, hidden in her past. Was it insecurity, this need to be liked? Was it self-deprecation, low self-image, or lack of confidence? Was it inherited …. are the sins of the ancestors dumped on our children?<br /><br />Questions, more questions, always questions! Answers, never!<br /><br />And so, I look back over years of abuse, firstly enjoyed, then tolerated, never challenged, abuse which addles the mind, the judgement, the emotions and dumps upon a homeland beach this human wreck with no mast, no rudder, and no compass. And of the crew, where are they? Just one or two left, those who cannot, through love, indecision, confusion or blame, drag themselves away, and suffer but do not share the guilt. Who are these people? A mother maybe, a husband, a brother or sister, a friend? Fewer than the fingers on a hand, they dither, not knowing what to do, to challenge, to resist, to support without a word, and all tortured in their hearts and minds, distracted by the turmoil, unable to sleep or even to slump in a chair.<br /><br />What is human spirit? From where do we gain the strength to challenge and to fail, to try and try again against this evil ghost that haunts our every thought and action? The seeds of our destruction are within, and once planted, like some virus within the register, remain to regenerate at any time. Yet, when we see that pregnant look of potential unfulfilled, dare we hope for a future with a smile. Take a chance, risk it, our minds demand. Nervously, cautiously, desperate for self-belief, our friend and goddess offers us her hand. She is secure, not cured! She is responsible for this hope … is it misplaced?<br /><br />We have no choice but to obey; we cannot and dare not fail her. If she has strength, then so must we. If she has faith, we must believe. As for hope, it is not changed … there to be greeted like the dawn of a new day, the day that Trojan horse was locked up but not away.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-111743526253988978?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1116066074688089622005-05-14T10:20:00.000Z2005-05-14T10:59:28.873ZWhat do I write? Sympathy? “My thoughts are with you and Pete?” Some trivial comment to sooth the guilt? Or do I challenge the confusion of emotions and stare, white-eyed into the scars of their and our future?<br /><br />Disappointment and despair, trauma and an empty void; they push in on every side; utter helplessness, and the slow monotonous tick of time, an unwanted and changeless company. There is no short cut, no other gear, no quick fix, no spin to resolve this hurt. A life, conceived in love is at stake, and human intervention does not give hope, just graphic detail of prospect and potential. This foetus, this child soon to be, is loved, secure in its sack of warm, protective fluid. Oh why? Oh no! Oh yes! Why her? Why them? Why not? Nature has a will and logic of its own.<br /><br />Their hopes and expectations are destroyed, not in the technology of scans, but in facing truth and reality. And how do we come to understand, to make sense of this cataclysmic event, so small, and yet a tragedy for all, and for all time? There is no refuge in motherhood shattered in an image on a screen, in abnormality, in this child who lives on for how knows long. A child, her child, their child, our child, everybody’s.<br /><br />Tears which refuse to flow, a heart which will not break, a body shaken to its core, yet unable to bend. Pain is the baptism of maturity, pain is the birth of wisdom; pleasure … a fatuous smile on a mindless face.<br /><br />What now, what next, how to face the future with or without a child? Time is set in the dial of dawn and dusk. Delay is in the nature of prognosis. Our child is damaged, does it matter? After all, all creation has the potential to be loved. This child is their creation and we must care, if not for ourselves, then for this work of art, this foetus, this nameless babe who waits, who rests, who sleeps within those peaceful waters. When will they break, prematurely or at full term? And will our hopes and aspirations be that treasured memory of what might have been, or grow and thrive and shine in a world where touch and sight and sound have that unique and infant magic?<br /><br />Who knows?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-111606607468808962?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1115873416124602242005-05-12T04:46:00.000Z2005-05-12T04:50:16.126ZI woke as the sun came up. I sit at the window looking out on beauty. Not a sound, not a thought, no motivation, no energy. Time to be still and to listen<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-111587341612460224?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1115765385630537372005-05-10T22:47:00.000Z2005-05-10T22:49:45.640ZAmongst the women were several who thought they had known each other since childhood. Others had joined the group in recent years, the wives and partners of colleagues who had moved to Didsbury, Withington and south Manchester for work. Nearly all were professionals, teachers, a nurse, a doctor, two administrators and one who described herself as a simple housewife. What brought these women together was their faith in God, the goodness of the world, and themselves. Never loud or arrogant, each of them was in their different ways secure in their belief in a loving, merciful and forgiving God.<br /><br />This evening as every Thursday was their retreat, a personal reflection on their inner selves, a chance to review and confirm their place in the world. Maggie was large and confident, with a personality to match, Carol slight, thoughtful, and cautious; they were sisters apparently with little in common. Peg, a teacher with enormous energy and insight, and Patsy, quiet but businesslike, were working on their lump of clay. Their hands, not used to this activity, were red with the firm but damp material. Their knuckles ached as they kneaded the lump into a representation of themselves.<br /><br />The offertory of the Mass which was to follow would be their opportunity to share a picture of themselves with the group, to unveil their contribution to family, friends and those with whom they worked. Irene’s sculpture was clearly a house or home, Peg’s an intertwined rope. Maggie was working on a pregnant figure, Carol on an intricate design. Only Patsy was struggling, not with the clay, but with her vision of herself. Committed and selfless, she found it hard to see her qualities represented in a piece of clay. She tried shapes, animals and plants, but not one was her.<br /><br />The lesson from St Paul began and ended. The gospel of Matthew, the calling of the apostles, fishermen, farmers and tax collectors was no help. Still Patsy worked on her clay, more and more conscious of the others, mostly content with their sculptures. The prayers began. Bernie offered her brown leaf, asking the Lord’s help wherever the winds of life blew her. Carol prayed that her attention to detail would enable her to pick out those too proud to ask for help. Irene offered her house with the open door as a symbol of refuge for those in need. Peg’s rope had become a mosaic for the harmony of peoples and races. Maggie’s pregnancy had gone full-term and her clay figure was labouring with the inequalities of our society, issues of poverty and empowerment. All put their work and hopes and fears before their Lord.<br /><br />As for Patsy, increasingly confused by the clarity and openness of her friends, the tears ran gently down her cheeks wetting and softening the lump of clay. She offered it up and said her prayer, asking that whatever the Lord wanted of her, she would find the strength. Sister Muriel accepted the object, recognising in it and in the woman before her, a chameleon, someone with the skill of responding to every change of circumstance, of adapting to each and every challenge.<br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">Lord, whoever, whatever and wherever you are, forgive us our arrogance and selfishness; help us open our eyes, ears and hearts to the needs of our world. Amen </span></em><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-111576538563053737?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1115586744628760612005-05-08T21:11:00.000Z2005-05-08T21:12:24.636ZA story of the Second World War from 1983!<br /><br />My family and I had our first holiday in France in August 1983, Patsy and I and our five children, Catherine, Helen, Mark, Anna and Ben [then aged four]. We’d never been abroad, never towed a caravan, never camped … quite an adventure, and we allowed two days to get from Didsbury to Dover, calling in to Birmingham to say goodbye to my parents. It was as though we would never return!<br /><br />As we left them, my mum gave me two missals that she had since 1944. Her brother in law, Jack Snell, a sergeant in the South Wales Borderers, had liberated these missals from a French farmyard, brought them home when all but fatally wounded in France, and given them to Muth as she was Catholic, and he thought they might be of use to her. Muth always did feel guilty about having them; she knew they should be with their real owners, that Jack had recognised their attractiveness, but that they should not be with her. [For those who don’t know, missals are the books of readings and prayers that Catholics use at Mass. In this case the missals were printed in both Latin and French, were leather bound with gilt page edgings, and were mementos of the First Communions of Roger Luet of Torteval and of Denise Lebarbet.]<br /><br />As a child, I remember being intrigued by these missals, regularly taking them down from the bookshelves and wondering what had become of Roger and Denise. And now the missals were on the back shelf of our Peugeot 504 on route to their French homeland!<br /><br />What a month! Parthenay with the girls’ pen friends, fishing in the Loire near the Chateau of L, La Rochelle and the Atlantic coast, a great holiday which came to an end with the missals still on the back shelf of the car! It was time to set off for Calais, our last day in France, and we were due at the ferry at midnight.<br /><br />The Office de Tourism in La Rochelle was very helpful. Torteval did not appear on their maps either, they had no hotels registered there, so the assistant looked up the telephone directories and was able to tell us that the village of Torteval Quesnay was in Normandy and had eight telephones, hardly a thriving Norman centre. We still had no map reference and Normandy is big!<br /><br />We drove for several hours and knew we were just a few kilometres from Bayeux. Ben was getting fractious so we stopped for lunch in a remote lay-bye. Ben and I walked the fifty meters to a field gate where we were to kick a football around while Patsy prepared lunch in the caravan. At the gate was a telegraph pole with a notice nailed to it ….. Torteval! Quelle chance!<br /><br />After lunch we left the caravan in the lay-bye and drove up the narrow road to the church that could be seen on the brow of the hill. Torteval had Mass only once a year on 15th August. It was like the village deserted. We knocked o the door of the house next to the church. It was answered by an old and frail woman who seemed reluctant to answer questions when I began our conversation with the words “pendant la guerre.” Maybe she was often interrupted by old soldiers and those revisiting their wartime haunts.<br /><br />Armed with instructions to the farm of Roger Luet, we drove about four miles, and up a long and straight farm track with the farmhouse in the distance. In the farmyard were teenage children playing. They stopped at the sight of a British registered car approaching. A large blue overalled woman came out into the sunshine. Our children got out of the car, all very excited, and immediately got back in and locked the doors as dogs standing four feet high emerged as well. This left me standing on my own holding the missals behind my back. The farmer emerged and looked quizzically at me. “Etes-vous Roger Luet, monsieur? “ I asked. He replied “Oui monsieur, mais pourquoi ? “ I produced the missal from behind my back. He cried, I cried, and then instead of taking it he ran into the stables at the side saying “un moment, un moment”, and returned within seconds with a white leather presentation case. He took the missal from me, put it in the case, snapped the clasps shut and said “C’est complet.”<br /><br />We went into the farmhouse and sat around the large kitchen table to exchange details of the story ….. how after the D-day landings the Germans fell back from the coast and established a defensive line that passed through the Luet family farm ….. how the family, together with hundreds of locals had deserted their homes for life in the woods for about six weeks before returning home to find it in ruins …… how Roger had kept the presentation case for 39 years despite the comments of his wife who wanted to throw it away when they moved farms ….. how he had always said, “One day! You never know!” …… how his father had died some six months earlier, and how he would visit his mother with his first communion present later that day.<br /><br />We returned home, delighted to have put right a little wrong, but now I feel that a little of our family history has been lost, those missals that were part of my home for 39 years. We never heard from the Luet family again; we just drink to their health each time we open up the bottle of Calvados that they gave us way back in 83!<br /><br />This story is dedicated to Jack Snell and his comrades, some of whom gave their lives for freedom and democracy some sixty years ago. May they rest in peace!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-111558674462876061?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1115448220151337832005-05-07T06:12:00.000Z2005-05-07T07:45:17.536ZThe rain fell steadily all last evening, not heavy but persistent and penetrating; relentless rain washing down the pavements, cars, homes and gardens of our town. I woke to clear and clean air this morning and to a fresh feel, a new beginning? It was as though an older and disappointing world had been wiped away, a cleansing, a baptism that washed away the sin and imperfections of our past.<br /><br />The sun has broken through the clouds, great shafts of early light picking out the features of our garden, the clematis turning in the breeze to warm their open flowers. We have our new start, a chance to look forward to a brighter and better world. They say that they have listened to the people and learned the lessons of Iraq. We have given them a bloody nose and slashed the majority to require an more inclusive and consulative approach.<br /><br />Soon we'll see whether there has been a change, whether politicians and people have restored some mutual trust. But what of the press, the media? Will they reflect on their cynicism, their determination to destroy. Did that rain wash them clean as well?<br /><br />Meawhile, the peoples of towns and townships around the world will continue with their view of Britain and the British. Will this election change them, improve the life chances of those who live in Basra, Beijing or Sao Paolo? Democracy is fragile, especially in the rich and thoughtless West. What would they make of my concerns in Vila Prudente? Did it rain there last night?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-111544822015133783?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1115271234363997722005-05-05T05:18:00.000Z2005-05-05T05:36:36.676ZThe day dawned a couple of hours ago, a cool quite crisp day with birds singing their dawn chorus. My mind is confused, not empty. What should I do? Vote? Certainly! For Labour? Yes!<br /><br />Then what is the confusion? Just a mellow emptiness? Concern about the outcome? Maybe elections are communal and gregarious events when we need the company of friend and foe? Maybe I have seen so many colleagues leak theor postal votes to Kennedy that I worry for the outcome. This is not 1992 when every other house had labour posters but Kinnock lost. Nor 1997 when all but the comotose judged that the Thatcher/Major era had run its course. Nor is it 2201 when Labour didn't contest the election, just waited for their overwhelming majoity.<br /><br />In 97, I saw the seeds of Blair's decline in that majority. Politics must be, to some degree, inclusive and accommodating. Blair has no need to be, within and outside of Labour. So what will be, will be. It's the people's mandate and we will return it one way or another. It's time for a change, and let's hope that there is an opportunity for Blair and for Labour to do just that.<br /><br />A second chance is what we need. So like a child, I beg for that. The die is cast and by tomorrow's dawn, the outcome will be clear.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-111527123436399772?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1115185284876555582005-05-04T05:36:00.000Z2005-05-04T05:45:13.596ZBudapest, my spiritual and emotional home during so many months of 1956 when I was absolutely passionate and committed in my opposition to Russian oppression, against the Hungarian stooges who had sold their heritage, culture and souls for the trappings of power. Yes, power they had; of credibility, they had none; of authority, they had none! But on the other hand, my heroes, my colleagues, we had not only the authority of the people, of true democracy, but the will to change our world forever, to claim our country back.<br /><br />Morning and evening, from my bedroom, I would listen to the radio from independent stations covering the growing conflict. I would clamber on captured tanks, travel at speed down those wide and cobbled avenues, cross bridges over the Danube, climb lampposts to hear my heroes proclaim, wave our flag, free of hammer and sickle for the first time in twenty years, and all this from my bedroom fifteen hundred miles away.<br /><br />How I love the news with its film of men and women, old and young, flushed with their victory as the Russians retreated out of the city. We were free! And the after that awful foreboding, came that Sunday morning when they returned, spewing death and disaster at any movement along the street. Radio Free Danube, Radio Free Budapest, they all appealed for help. “We need guns, help us,” they cried, while the West watched and waited for reality to return. A sad, sad day as the radios fell silent, and Western reporters crossed back into Austria. The Iron Curtain was back in place.<br /><br />Unable to speak the language, knowing nothing of the country, untouched by or at least unaware of the history of this country, its literature, philosophy and architecture, I had become Hungarian through and through.<br /><br />What of me now? How could those youthful hopes change to absolute commitment to the socialist cause? How could I ignore what I had seen of evil regimes in Budapest, to see in socialism a hope for my world? Easy, very easy!<br /><br />My world was class-ridden and controlled by a clever and arrogant elite. They did not need tanks, guns or secret police to impose their will. They did not need to invade in order to oppress across the world. They knew the score, that patronage and sharing a little of their wealth would win them power. Their promises of peace and justice, of wealth distribution and the dangers of socialism, kept them in power and with the shield of democracy. After all we usually voted the capitalists (Tories we called them) back, afraid that we might lose what comforts we had.<br /><br />Forty-nine years later, what has changed? Still a socialist, still committed to the cause, still with Marx on my office wall, I wait for tomorrow, the 5th May, when exercising my democratic right, I shall help return New Labour, a pale pink reflection of its past, to power once again. My only choice? Well yes; I hate those bloody capitalists.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-111518528487655558?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1115014116711523932005-05-02T06:08:00.000Z2005-05-02T06:08:36.710Z<a href='http://photos1.blogger.com/img/263/5496/640/paul%27s%20nose%20035.jpg'><img border='0' style='border:1px solid #000000; margin:2px' src='http://photos1.blogger.com/img/263/5496/320/paul%27s%20nose%20035.jpg'></a><br />Things really didn't go that well, did they? Ladders!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-111501411671152393?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1114929514623073912005-05-01T06:23:00.000Z2005-05-02T05:49:39.856ZWe are trapped into a self-fulfilling prophecy ... so many of my friends and colleagues believe that all politicians are untrustworthy, that politicians lie as a matter of course, and that whoever is in power, nothing will change. How wrong can they be!<br /><br />Can't they see that with Charles Kennedy, there would be a radical at the helm and that it's difficult to predict what will be the outcomes of economic and environmental policies which are as yet untried. He's honest if untried.<br /><br />Can't they see that Michael Howard's small government will fundamentally change the relationships between different interest groups (classes?) within our country. There will be winners and losers and nothing in health, education, business, economics and welfare will remain the same. He too is personally honest; it's his party's principles which are divisive.<br /><br />As for Labour and Blair, why didn't he own up to the mistakes of Iraq and challenge the public's trust in him rather than the reverse. He could have gone down in history as the man who restored faith in politics. Instead, he will for ever be remembered as the reluctant liar, when he probably, as all politicians, decided on the balance of truth, evidence and right as he saw it. Blair has confirmed the public's view of politicians; he needs to be held to account for that.<br /><br />We are towards the end of a campaign in this pointless and damaging election. The government will not change; the prime minister will not change; nor will the economy, public services, and the people's trust in them. One thing will change, increased cynicism from the punters on the street. I shall continue to vote Labour.<br /><br />An afterthought: The one event that would stop Labour winning this election is a terrorist strike like the one in Spain days before their general election; let's hope it doesn't happen.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-111492951462307391?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1114843519373078872005-04-30T06:45:00.000Z2005-05-02T05:55:15.196Z<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/263/5496/640/Paul%20Chidgey%20Baby%20200dpi.jpg"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: #000000 1px solid; BORDER-TOP: #000000 1px solid; MARGIN: 2px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 1px solid; BORDER-BOTTOM: #000000 1px solid" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/263/5496/320/Paul%20Chidgey%20Baby%20200dpi.jpg" border="0" /></a> Just finding out how to post photographs. It's clearly all downhill from here.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-111484351937307887?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1114841638232946482005-04-23T05:26:00.000Z2005-04-30T06:13:58.233ZPerspective is everything ... the way we look at our world and our priorities. For me, March and April have been life-changing months. One pope suffered in public and finally died with a million people at his window. Another pope was elected with just as many watching. In their turn the media seemed obsessed with these two ageing men, only six years in age between them, one Polish, one German.<br /><br />Why have these two enjoyed this high profile of wall-to-wall television and newsprint in this secular world? Frankly, they are largely irrelevant to the lives of so many europeans, africans, south and north americans, and certainly asians. Rome carries on as though it influences, even controls the lives of its flock. The Coliseum<span style="font-size:85%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">[built during the reign of Emperor Vespasiano c. 72 AD and dedicated in 80 AD by his son Titus. The popular name of Coliseum came about because the immense oval stadium was situated next to a colossal statue of Nero.]</span> is two hour flight away .... the Vatican <span style="font-size:78%;">[established as an independent state in 1929 when it agreed the three treaties signed with Italy, acknowledged the full sovereignty of the Vatican and established its territorial extent which can be traced back to the 8th century]</span> is a million miles away!<br /><br />So what challenged my view of the world and my place it? Walking down to the beach at Calella de Palafrugell and finding Bar Gelpi under renovation! This is tragedy ... history wiped off the face of the earth; a tired, slightly dirty, mahogany-countered and secure watering hole which allowed me each morning to enjoy croissant and coffee at a snail's pace (often from an ageing and miserable waiter), and within sight and sound of the sea.<br /><br />Here I could gaze out at the Mediterranean, and each evening stroll slowly past Bar Gelpi's tables with Catalan families enjoying their cremats and talking as though there is no other world. I don't like cremat ... I've tried, but this mix of coffee, cinnamon and rum is hardly the point of the exercise. The point is to enjoy raising the ladle of flaming cremat to a good height and allowing it to drop gently back into the bowl as though you were born to it.<br /><br />A link with the Catalan past has gone. No doubt Bar Gelpi will reopen in a month or so, and will be all stainless steel, glass and impeccably clean. The cremats may taste the same, history will have been wiped away, and I am suddenly challenged to think about my age, my life, and what meaning there is to all this.<br /><br />Oh by the way, may the pope rest in peace, just in case..........<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-111484163823294648?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1111991537021547882005-03-28T15:16:00.000Z2005-03-28T06:32:17.023ZIt's cold this morning .... no real news on TV .... a bank holiday so we should be out walking, I guess ... probably do jobs instead.<br /><br />Pigeons have a wonderful life, just pecking around outside the window ... free to fly wherever. I love early morning, and if there's water around, sea or river, even better.<br /><br />I need to think through whether blogging is wasteful or helpful, a minute or two of reflection or just a waste of time. Writing has no point unless for an audience, I think. I'm in a reflective mood ... it's the morbid Welsh in me ... time to read some poetry, but not John Masefield or those I learnt at school ...... more like John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins or Dylan Thomas .... something to test the brain cells.<br /><br />And Death shall have no dominion<br />Dead men naked, they shall be one with the wind and the west moon ...... no not my mood this morning ... more like .....<br /><br /><br /><em><span style="font-family:arial;">The world is charged with the grandeur of God.<br />It will flame out, like shining ftorn shook foil;<br />It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil<br />Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?<br />Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;<br />And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;<br />And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil<br />Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.<br />And for all this, nature is never spent;<br />There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;<br />And though the last lights off the black West went<br />Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--<br />Because the Holy Ghost over the bent<br />World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. </span></em><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-111199153702154788?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1111951467366502632005-03-27T19:16:00.000Z2005-03-27T19:24:27.366ZChrist is risen, we shout with confidence ... and then the Pope comes on the telly, anxious, cross, frustrated as he is trapped in a mortal body ... must think about this ... and meanwhile 10s of thousands of people pray for what recovery?<br /><br />Maybe we should be praying for a speedy release ... or does that make me a cynic .... even an unbeliever?<br /><br />Work is so much less demanding than philosophy and questioning our life. Occupied, too much to do ... successful and effective ..... no time to think .... just occupied and challenged by getting things done. Wow!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-111195146736650263?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11685849.post-1111950856182683192005-03-27T19:02:00.000Z2005-03-27T19:14:16.183ZSo what is the meaning of life ... all those geese, ducks and swans that peck and fish on the Thames at Kingston/Teddington makes me wonder what my role is ... where am I in the great plan of things? A two hour walk in cool but bright weather ... lots of fresh air and conversation to enjoy here on the edge of London.<br /><br />I have decided to get fit again, to slim, to enjoy reading and music .... what was the last book I read?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script language="JavaScript"> <img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11685849-111195085618268319?l=chidgey.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>paolissimonoreply@blogger.com2