Category: Blog Entry

Just time for another update from the Barney Rubble suite here at Blogstead Espagna. Life slips into an easy stone age rhythm – Betty and Bamm Bamm had a run in the shops this morning and we tested out the coffee in the square. Otherwise it is a snooze by the pool and the books. Maybe some rock music in the background ..

I’ve been reading Alistair Cooke’s book on his travels through America just as it entered WW2. I had never thought about the parallel between the shock of the destruction of the fleet at Pearl Harbour in 1941 and that of 9/11. Same feelings of innocence lost and invincibility punctured. But there was one crucial difference. Cooke describes the frail and crippled figure of Roosevelt being helped into the House of Representatives as ‘the unexpected and dramatic revelation … of what a man can suffer and what he can grow to by reason of it.’ Compare that to the sight of President Bush walking from his shoulders – strutting weakness posing as strength – and faith somehow caught up in it and debased by it. I feel the shame of it.

They say that travel broadens the mind. And that’s certainly true here at Blogstead Espagna. There are five bedrooms and four bathrooms. You might expect them to be called after the great figures of Spanish history, art and culture. But no – we’re not in the Dali room but the Barney Rubble suite.

Here I have to share with you another of my keys to travel. Regular readers will know that I regard a haircut as one of the fast ways into the culture of a new place – as when a camp Cape-coloured hairdresser in Cape Town took an hour to cut my few hairs and finished with a light dusting of talc to give the top of my head a matt finish.

Showers are another way in. I remember thinking on my first visit to the USA that I was going to have to remain unwashed – until I found that you had to pull the dinky little lever towards you. And then there was the ‘Is that a tarantula in the shower’ episode in Pacific Palisades.

So the shower in the Barney Rubble suite does it for me. No so much a ‘walk in’ as a kind of journey round and towards the centre of the earth. Turn the tap clockwise and you get a conventional and warming shower. But turn it anti-clockwise and you enter a kind of looking-glass world where jets cunningly inserted into the walls promise all kinds of experiences both intimate and communal. I’m a man of the world. I can cope with that. And yet, I have to say that the angle at which some the jets are pointed stretches even my imagination …

We’re watching the news – or lack of news – from Portugal. I find myself completely full of admiration for Gerry and Kate McCann. They bring to bear a whole range of resources spiritual and emotional – they are rational, balanced, hopeful and spiritually rooted. They have an extraordinary support network of extended family and friends. Chasms of despair and hopelessness beckon invitingly all around them – a crisis with a child is a huge stress in a marriage. But they are doing a wonderful job of remaining focused on the matter in hand – which is keeping the search for their daughter in the world headlines.

So here we are in a rather magnificent villa – the kindness of friends.  I’ll have to give you a conducted tour as time goes on – but we keep finding new bits of it.  There also seems to be a group of flamenco dancers living beside the pool – keep waking me up as I doze in the sun lounger.  I haven’t found the piano yet – Blogstead Na Mara has one.  But I’m sure it’s here somewhere.  We are glad the travel arrangements worked well – three of us here and we came on flights from three different airports.  Don’t ask why – seemed sensible at the time. 

Person parked beside me after the meeting today remarked on the rain and said – as he climbed into a rather svelte motor, ‘If I had known it was going to rain today, I wouldn’t have brought this car.’  Amazing, I thought, as I got into the Passat – now 144000 miles faithful.  I delivered Poppy for a two week stay in the cappuchino belt of Bruntsfield this evening and stopped off at the Asda car wash in Dunfermline on my way home.  One has to keep one’s end up in smart company.

We’ve been supporting CATH – Churches Action for the Homeless – in Perth as our Diocesan Lent Appeal this year. David Kydd asked me if I would give a little publicity to their Timberworks Monastery Project

They are looking for volunteers who have experience of joinery and the building trade – and also for young volunteers who would be involved in a woodland clearance project.

My friends in the Cursillo movement are also looking for help. Christine McIntosh of blethers@googlemail.com says:

Cursillo has until now been able to store its materials – everything from sacristy items to table tops and polystyrene cups – in the basement at Kinnoull, free of charge. Now this is no longer possible. Ideally, we require storage space – about half a smallish room takes it just now – somewhere in the vicinity of Perth, so that the team involved in clear-up can transport it there with minimum fuss, perhaps using a number of cars. We could pay a small fee – but would find it draining to pay commercial storage prices. We also see it as a drain on resources to keep hiring vans – hence the need for somewhere close at hand. Any helpful suggestions would be warmly appreciated1

Thank you very much for cooperating in this; forgive my cheek in asking – but need is a great driver!

Having a week off next week and looking forward to it.  But the usual feeling has set in – ever increasing amounts to do and less and less time left.  A bit like revising for exams.  But, in the great scheme of things, maybe ..

Amazing day in Northern Ireland.  And it really does have the look of something which is going to last this time.  I still don’t really understand it.  I could see it coming – particularly around the time of the elections in March when it was clear that the whole atmosphere of politics had changed.  And suddenly the politicians who were mouthing what were yesterday’s conventional statements about not being ready to trust yet ….. were beginning to look like carry-overs from another age.

Two things fascinate me about it.  One is that there is no particular reason why it should all have happened now and not in 1000 years time.  So what does that tell me?  Maybe that if there is hatchet-burying to be done, then it might as well be done now.  Or maybe that there is an inevitability about the need to make peace, regardless of how unpromising the circumstances.  I think it also tells us that, if you can engender optimism and confidence, then almost anything is possible.

One of those days which seems endless both in time and distance – over 200 miles today.

I managed the early start in Glasgow for the Daily Service.  On of the things I really do like is the challenge of live radio.  The little light comes on and you’re away.  It’s really to do with economy and exactness – finish at 9.59.50 precisely.  Everything else that we do as clergy tends to be messy and unfinished.  Frikki and the Choir from our Cathedral in Glasgow were really great – highly talented, business-like and obviously very committed to what they do.

Quick excursion into the support trenches behind the episcopal Front Line.  And then Kirriemuir for a ‘do’ to mark Canon Charles’ birthday – 96 I think.  He’s as sharp and active as ever.  Wonderful.  When you see the longevity of clergy, you understand why Clergy Pension Schemes are always under stress!  Many happy returns.

One of the problems about using a PDA thingy is that it doesn’t tell you about important things like Bank Holidays – or Christmas and Easter for that matter. So they jump out and surprise one.

Anyway, we’ve been celebrating with Charles Severs at All Saints, St Andrews, his 50 years as a Lay Reader. That time has included a period as Port Chaplain for Mission to Seafarers and all sorts of other things – what Charles calls a ‘journey of grace’. All Saints – with its rich tradition of worship – is a great place for a celebration. But I sometimes think that the boat girl has a rather better idea of what is happening than I do. I take what is handed to me, do with it what I am told and hand it back with a good grace. Last weekend, I succeeded in leaving behind in two different places mitre [1] and cope [1]. My score was better this weekend but I am still short of a cope.

Tomorrow morning it’s the red eye to Glasgow by 8 am for a Daily Service Broadcast on Radio 4 Long Wave – real echoes of the Home Service there. Got to get my Number 2 accent into gear.