For All The Saints

I haven’t posted for a while in light of the terrible events we have been living through lately. It just seemed indecent to indulge in my usual frivolous musings about ridiculously expensive/precious items in the face of other people’s monumental losses. But then, in the midst of life, we are in death. What do we do when there is so much trouble everywhere? The best I can come up with is to do my best not to make the world a worse place than it is. It also occurs to me that whilst we are stricken by the recent string of disasters in the UK, there are unimaginably horrific events happening every day in Syria, Yemen, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. We can put those troubles at the back of our minds because they do not impinge on our daily lives. What then happens when trouble comes calling on us? It brings to mind the old adage that you stand up when they come for others because one day, when they have worked their way through everyone else, they will come for you. Who will then be left to stand up for you? The ‘they’ is not necessarily a person or a group or a system, of course. I guess it just makes me focus on the fact that I am here for a limited time; I’ve got to get my stuff done before I check out of Dodge or else, why waste all that oxygen?

So, back to my usual – do all the good you can for all the people you can in all the ways you can whenever you can. I will not pass this way again. Now all I have to do is to keep remembering that. I leave you with a riddle by the politician George Canning to keep you going:

A Riddle

There is a word of plural number
A foe to peace and tranquil slumber.
Now any word you chance to take
By adding “S”, you plural make;
But if you add an “s” to this,
How strange the metamorphosis!
Plural is plural then no more
And sweet, what bitter was before.

What is the word?

On a cheerier note, I particularly like this poem by Harry Hearson whose ingenuity is entirely based on the crazy English habit of not pronouncing words phonetically:

Nomenclaturik

     There was a young fellow named Cholmondeley

     Whose bride was so mellow and colmondeley

     That the best man, Colquhoun

     An inane young bolqufoun

     Could only stand still and stare dolmondeley.

     The bridegroom’s first cousin young Belvoir

     Whose dad was a Lancashire welvoir,

     Arrived with George Bohun

     At just about nohun

     When excitement was mounting to felvoir.

     The vicar – his surname was Beauchamp-

     Of marriage endeavoured to teauchamp

     While the bridesmaid Miss Marjoribanks

     Played one or two harjoripranks

     But the shoe that she threw failed to reauchamp.

The answer to the riddle is ‘Care’. Wishing you all a carefree and wonderful week.

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