The wife's asked if she can add a new dimension to this blog... occasionally chipping in with observations, quotes and maybe the odd recipe... but only ones that really work, not those really complicated ones that involve things like 'sweated pak choi' or a 'fricassé of three live geese and a small pineapple'...
Of course I said 'yes'... after all, she's the cornerstone of this bit of earthly life that I call 'home'... and celebrating with her is just as (more) important as anything else that I might write about on here. So, here's the first. Perhaps not quite what you might expect... but real life... and possibly more profound than you think at first glance...
Over to her:
... and I quote M - [on death]
"it's not that I'm scared of dying... I'm not... and I'm sure heaven's nice, or wherever it's going to be once God remakes the world... it's just that if dying means going to be with Jesus... and if I die now, or I die in 50 years time it's still going to be with Jesus... then Jesus can wait... right?"
Showing posts with label Home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Home. Show all posts
Sunday, 30 May 2010
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
Loose fit, long life
In a past life (I've had several), I had a number of friends who were professional building conservationists.
Sometimes, this was a lot of fun... I seem to have made it a feature of my life since childhood to try and get into places that I'd normally be barred from (my favourite was the school boilerhouse) so there's a certain frisson to being mates with people who have keys to all kinds of buildings that the public aren't normally allowed to visit.
Sometimes it was much less fun. There was a lot of tedious standing around, tutting at the use of the wrong paint (not just type, but also hue... and sub hue... and apparently sub sub hue), the wrong bricks (colour, shape, size, manufacture and patterning are all very important here), the wrong pointing (apparently the cementy bit between bricks and the order in which they're glued together also matters) and a lot of other 'wrongs'...
There was also a lot of arguing over just how far back to take a restoration... being a bit of a child of nature I always used to like to suggest "to the original oak forest" - this was received with derision until they realised that I was serious. I'd rather look at a forest than a stately home any day.
However, there was one phrase that used to come up from time to time, and that was 'Loose fit, long life'... It's a phrase that particularly puzzled me, because it always seemed to be applied to the most ramshackle old buildings; the ones that look like they'd been out on a particularly committed Friday night on the town and crawled home to slump in a heap in a corner of their neatly manicured garden at 3 in the morning... but it was a phrase that always seemed to meet with universal approval.
"Grand building Gromit... ay... look at them winders... them beams... never see that now... no siree... loose fit, long life..."
... and everyone would nod and chew on their cloth caps...
Sometimes, this was a lot of fun... I seem to have made it a feature of my life since childhood to try and get into places that I'd normally be barred from (my favourite was the school boilerhouse) so there's a certain frisson to being mates with people who have keys to all kinds of buildings that the public aren't normally allowed to visit.
Sometimes it was much less fun. There was a lot of tedious standing around, tutting at the use of the wrong paint (not just type, but also hue... and sub hue... and apparently sub sub hue), the wrong bricks (colour, shape, size, manufacture and patterning are all very important here), the wrong pointing (apparently the cementy bit between bricks and the order in which they're glued together also matters) and a lot of other 'wrongs'...
There was also a lot of arguing over just how far back to take a restoration... being a bit of a child of nature I always used to like to suggest "to the original oak forest" - this was received with derision until they realised that I was serious. I'd rather look at a forest than a stately home any day.
However, there was one phrase that used to come up from time to time, and that was 'Loose fit, long life'... It's a phrase that particularly puzzled me, because it always seemed to be applied to the most ramshackle old buildings; the ones that look like they'd been out on a particularly committed Friday night on the town and crawled home to slump in a heap in a corner of their neatly manicured garden at 3 in the morning... but it was a phrase that always seemed to meet with universal approval.
"Grand building Gromit... ay... look at them winders... them beams... never see that now... no siree... loose fit, long life..."
... and everyone would nod and chew on their cloth caps...
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
31 Flavours
From 1992-3 and 1996-7 I worked for YWAM in a rural corner of Canada. There, of a humid, sultry summer's evening - if you could stand to be out at the same time as the mosquitoes - a really great thing to do was to drive into the nearby Cowansville (there are no cows - misleadingly) and visit the Baskin Robbins Ice-Cream Parlour.
I love ice-cream... Oh, how I love ice-cream... So, I considered it my mission (after all, I was a missionary, was I not)... to try each of the 31 flavours on offer.
Some weren't great. Root Beer for example - an acquired taste at the best of times and in ice-cream form rather like sucking on a frozen Elastoplast... bizarre in a cone.
I love ice-cream... Oh, how I love ice-cream... So, I considered it my mission (after all, I was a missionary, was I not)... to try each of the 31 flavours on offer.
Some weren't great. Root Beer for example - an acquired taste at the best of times and in ice-cream form rather like sucking on a frozen Elastoplast... bizarre in a cone.
Friday, 23 April 2010
Môme's Home
I've moved academic discussion to my wordpress.com blog so this is now a much more personal take on all things life/work/family/church/God...
Why Môme? As an academic, I'm often searched for by name. Môme is a persona from a past in MUDs and a not-at-all-anonymous tag when posting information that doesn't need to show up as 'me'. It means 'small child' in French and has a kind of defenselessness innocence about it - a kind of sparkly-eyed, sand-in-your-sandwiches, hair bleached in the sun, implicitly trusting, happiest-when-hugged simplicity to it that I'd like to see in my own life :)
Why Môme? As an academic, I'm often searched for by name. Môme is a persona from a past in MUDs and a not-at-all-anonymous tag when posting information that doesn't need to show up as 'me'. It means 'small child' in French and has a kind of defenselessness innocence about it - a kind of sparkly-eyed, sand-in-your-sandwiches, hair bleached in the sun, implicitly trusting, happiest-when-hugged simplicity to it that I'd like to see in my own life :)
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