The Way of the Wombat

S2C has seen the eye specialist, had some tests done, and now has eye drops and ointment to use regularly - it seems as if the surface damage to his eyes is, at least in part, caused by them having become too dry. So far they seem to be helping - with his new glasses, once his drops are in, his sight is better than it was a month or two ago. So, so far, so good.

In other news, winter is icumen in... last night it was below freezing for the first time this winter - this morning I needed to scrape the ice off the car - and tonight looks as if it will be much the same.

It really should make me feel festive and all ready to prepare for Christmas - and I am trying. I am ready to go into church on Saturday morning and decorate the Advent ring; I have bought D-d an Advent Calendar, and one for the Sunday Schoolers; I have some craft stuff ready for Messy Christmas at church...

But as for making cards and so on - I fear I haven't done any. You might get bought ones this year...

I've not been posting, or even commenting, much. Apart from being distracted by the Paralympics, my left arm has been sore; and I find the angle I need to hold it on to type makes it worse. But I really can't stop myself - apart from being here, I have a couple of short stories demanding to be written and a long one that keeps poking me, too.

The children were back in church today and we spent our time making salt-dough harvest wreaths, and salt-dough fish to celebrate the harvest of the sea. I was feeling a bit jaded before I went to church but it was so good to see them all, and have fun with them, that I felt much more smiley when I came home.

I had an urge to make scones, and so S2C and I sat to a pot of tea and some warm cherry and ginger scones about 3.45 for afternoon tea - very civilised.

And right now I have 2 ovens full of salt-dough drying out at low temperature to be painted next Sunday. It's keeping the house warm on what is a cool autumn day.

There are three or four pics under the cut - not related to the above at all!

( click for the pics )

Now a question for Tolkienista friends - I read a story not that long ago and can't remember where.

Does this sound familiar to anyone; Éomer/Lothiriel in which Lothiriel is actually Imrahil's illegitimate daughter, of whom he knows nothing, as she has been brought up by her healer mother in Rohan. She follows the Rohirrim to war in her role as a healer. When he realises who she is, Imrahil is more than happy to acknowledge her, but at least one of his sons is certainly not, and is convinced that she is a fraud.

I really ought to be more organised about bookmarking stories!

So - today was the first race day of the TT festival - the rest of this week has just been practice. I went down to church to drop off more carrot cake - only to find that there weren't enough people to keep the snack-bar open - so stayed to help - along with a lovely lady who is new to the congregation and had also only dropped in to drop off cake... three hours later we were still there. I hope we haven't frightened her off!

However, reinforcements arrived and I dashed home, well as much as it is possible to dash when some of the roads are closed so the others are crowded, just in time to pick up my camera and go down to the end of our road to see... ( click to see )

Today is, of course, Remembrance Sunday. During our church service we laid a wreath of poppies on the memorial in church, and an ex-serviceman read the exhortation to remember, as I'm sure happened in more or less every other church - but there were one or two other, even more moving, parts of the service involving everyone from the oldest to the youngest. I thought you might like to read, and see, them.

( under here )

Oddly, considering last week was TT Practice Week, and today is Mad Sunday, this post is completely free from pictures of motor-bikes. (TT - Tourist Trophy races - the centre of the TT Festival where our island plays host to about 15,000 motor-bikers. Mad Sunday - the midpoint of the two week festival - when everyone, and occasionally his dog, goes out to 'do a lap' of the course.)

Much of the week has seen me going 'get-up, go to work, go straight to church to help man the snack-bar, come home and take S2C to work, cook dinner, (about 10pm by then) and do some more baking for the snack-bar' as bikers eat an awful lot of cake whilst they watch the racing bikes go past.

But the pictures are a lot more tranquil!

( click for plants, boats, and a baby bee... )

I took D-d down to the airport this afternoon to go to Liverpool and thence back to York. I took some time to take pictures of some of our island history that I see whenever I take her there. These, plus a picture of Silly Cat being silly - or possible Embarrassed Cat being embarrassed, are under the cut.

First though I was reminded today, in Sunday School, of one of the oddest questions a small child has ever asked me. "Is God's name Harold or is it Richard?" Think about it... any ideas?

I had to ask why it might be either of those before I saw the light... "Our Father Richard in Heaven, Harold be Thy name..."

Actually, today I was teaching older children than usual - 12-15 year olds. We were looking at Jonah - told to head East to Ninenvah he got on a ship heading as far to the West as he could - to Spain. Could you hide from God by running away? Was it a sensible thing to do? And so on, until we got to the fish. Small children accept the Pinnochio picture of someone in a large empty space in the middle of a fish - older ones know what the inside of a fish actually looks like - even if it was a basking shark with that big open mouth, which would not have regarded Jonah as food.

The ensuing discussion - is it simply an allegory, or a parable? Or did Jonah, who says

5 The engulfing waters threatened me,
the deep surrounded me;
seaweed was wrapped around my head.
6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down;

and...
7 “When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered you, LORD,

just almost drown? And then, finding himself miraculously safe on the shore, come to the conclusion that the only way God could have achieved this was to have had him saved by a passing fish? And, in the end, does it matter?

I do like the challenge of the teenagers sometimes - we concluded that an actual hollow fish you could live and breath in was very unlikely - but in the end it didn't matter - God saved him when he admitted that he shouldn't have run off in the opposite direction.

Anyway - to the cat and the history - ( click here )

As an island people we also all held the people of Japan in our thoughts in church today.

Yesterday, on the other hand, S2C, D-d, and I were considering that there is a lot to be said for Cornwall. It should act as a good breakwater if a tsunami ever approaches up the Irish Sea. (Not impossible, if Cumbre Vieja on the island of La Palma ever goes in a major way). My family, and why I love them!

What have I been up to this week apart from spamming people with illustrations from A Hobbit's Journal? Work has been busy.

One really neat thing, though, was a work meeting, about a client, with a clinical psychologist. Why? Because last time the two of us met was at her wedding when we were both 21 - that's a long time ago! Neither of us realised that the other had come home until very recently. So our client related meeting began with coffee and five minutes of "Do you ever hear from X?" "I keep in touch with Y," and "Did you know Z got divorced?", along with pictures of our families being shown off and admired!

On Friday evening I was part of a quiz team at an annual event - an inter-church quiz night, would you believe? We had two teams in, the one I was in came 3rd, our other team came 2nd - not bad out of 15 teams. Pity the Cathedral managed to beat us. There was a good hotpot supper, though, and all proceeds went to the Leprosy Mission.

On Saturday we had a meeting of the Elders of the two Manx URC's with two members of the Pastoral Committee. This is less gentle than it sounds - quite a lot of worries, angst, and dissension. We had a 'Faith Supper' at the end of it - my contribution is ( under the cut )

And just think - there are still more of the Hobbit's Journal illustrations to go. Not sure if you would see that as a promise or a threat, really.

There has been an awful lot of snow all over the UK. We had some too, but I didn't take many photos, I was too busy coping with getting to and from work, and ours wasn't much compared with other people's. I do have some pictures of where Daughter-dear lives though, under the cut, also some pictures of flowers still trying to survive the winter in our yard, and a picture of the festive flapjack that I posted the recipe for during the week.

The flapjack picture is because I realised, through comments, that in Amer- English 'flapjacks' are a sort of 'pancake' and so, in English English, would be some sort of drop scone or Scotch pancake. Whereas the recipe is for British flapjack and so something rather different...

But also, under the cut, is a bit of reminiscing. Bojojoti posted a picture of her daughter's new rescue kitten, and he reminded me of the ginger cat we had when D-d was little - so there are also some pictures of Cherry.

( pics under here )

Sunday pic-spam this week are all taken during my holiday in the Yorkshire Dales. My friend dougalsservant and I shared a cottage just north of the small village of hawes in Wensleydale. Yes - it is a real place not just Wallace and Grommit's favourite cheese! We ate some of the cheese whilst we were there, mind you.

This set of pictures are of the Dales, the cottage's surroundings, and the wildlife who visited us.

( Yorkshire Dales with added pheasant )

Finally - it was the Harvest service at church today. All the traditional hymns, but also the children led the singing of a song called 'Paint Box', which starts with 'cauliflowers fluffy' and has a chorus that finishes 'Broad beans are sleeping in a blankety bed'. It mentions 20 different fruit and veg. Last week my fellow teachers got the children to draw, or collage, all 20 on separate sheets of paper. Today they got 20 adults to come out to the front and hold up the relevant fruit or veg as it was mentioned in the song... the result was brilliant!

It has been a lovely week, weatherwise. Dry and sunny almost every day. Good camera-carrying weather. Th result is rather a surfeit of pictures - mainly sea, hills, paths, flowers, a stream; that sort of thing.

A lot of it is rather elvish, I think. So - ( Let me take you on a walk through Ithilien, or maybe a couple of glades in the Great Greenwood... )

It is a beautifully green time of year. Although, as my mother pointed out, if the sunshine continues unabated things will start to look very brown instead... How did you guess she is of farming stock?

I have spent most of the morning singing loudly, in a big tent, with about 2,500 others - not my usual way of worship - but rather fun. There is a music festival on, and the organisers offered the use of their enormous tent to the combined churches of the island so that we could get together. Not something for every week - but it would be good if we could do it annually!

Then, this afternoon, I have been complaining of a sore neck and shoulders; until I realised it is the very discomfort I used to get when I went to rock concerts... I had been bopping as I sang!