Not a conjunction

It's happened again. I'm riveted by Sarah Dunant's latest novel and enjoying the intricacies of life in an Italian Renaissance convent and I'm pulled up sharp by a grammatical infelicity, such as happened in each of the other two novels I've read by this author. Each time it occurs in the latter stages of the story, and each time it comes as a shock because of the obvious linguistic skill displayed up to this point. What on earth happens? Does she too become so caught up in the story she's weaving that she grows careless?

I'll come back to this book when I've finished reading it, but for anyone out there who cares about such things, the sentence in question is this: "Instead, he, like she, had been a master of deception." "Like" is not a conjunction - I can hear my father's voice as I write this - and the subsequent pronoun should have been "her" - the object of the preposition "like".

Do dinosaurs say harrumph?

Old-fashioned fun

Grandma draws Catriona
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

When I was at secondary school, it was after S3 that we cut out of our curriculum those subjects we didn't intend to take Highers in. In my case this meant no more Art - and I regretted this, for though I was never a painter I had always enjoyed drawing. Life drawing turned out to be far more up my alley than I had suspected, and I can still recall producing perfectly recognisable pencil drawings of two friends whose turn it was to stand on desks in the middle of the art room. (Vera Campbell and Alison Goodall - are you still alive?)

My granddaughter has started drawing - she does a wonderfully confident circle as the starting point for mysterious heads with round, dark eyes and random facial markings - and this week demanded that I should have a go. Because she was wearing a very distinctive Peppa Pig cardi with big stripes and big buttons, it was a bit of a cheat, really, to gain instant recognition and acclaim for the figure I produced, but the exercise re-awakened all the joy I used to have in this sort of thing.

I recall sitting quietly, bored out of my skull, in the house of a friend of my aunt's. I must have been six, I think, or maybe seven. The whole afternoon was redeemed by my being given a small bit of paper - maybe out of a diary? - and a pencil. I drew the dresser - a massively intricate piece of furniture - and the patterned china sitting on the shelf. It took ages to finish, and I was engrossed. Much, much later - like maybe ten years ago - I amused myself during a "Please Take" in an Art class (sitting in the class of an absent colleague keeping the peace and supplying paper when required) by sketching the faces of the pupils around me. Great hilarity when one of them caught sight of what I was doing - I had to do the whole lot then. Great disciplinary tool, really.

Anyway, "Do another Catriona" resulted in a gallery of small stripey figures left behind as we returned yesterday. Who needs the computer?

It's life, Jim ...

Can't I prowl in peace?
Originally uploaded by Mac44.

The bird table continues to be a source of fascination as this frozen winter comes to an end. The latest mix of seeds (Bill Oddie's no mess mix!) is obviously infinitely preferable to the last lot and is hoovered up relentlessly every day - for the most part by a blackbird pair, who are becoming a permanent fixture. Mrs B is the biggest glutton - can she be eating for two yet? I don't know how these things work in bird circles - and seems to be more or less omnivorous.

Trouble is, I long to intervene. There are several chaffinches, a robin and a host of tits lurking in the bushes nearby, occasionally darting in at the table before a stern look from Mrs B (and this is not me, for once!) sends them packing again. As for the wee brown jobs with the delicate speckles on their backs and the funny wee tuft on top of their heads, forget it. They bounce gently on the willow branches beside the window, but rarely seem to get peace to eat - though I have noted one devouring something under the berberis near the table.

And this, of course, brings me to the mog in the photo. It has taken to visiting, and if you follow the link on the pic you will find more photos of its attempts to get close to the bird table - I've only chosen this photo because it gives such a good picture of its indignant expression if we stare at it. I worry, you see, for these wee brown birds on the ground - and shall be deeply sad if we are brought any Easter offerings. Intervention so far has been limited to encouraging the cat to move on - but I can't be there 24/7, and nature, red in tooth and claw and all that, has to take its course. Doesn't it?

Lighten our darkness ...

Anyone who read my last post will have thought: dismal. That's how she feels: dismal. And they'd have been right. And now I'm home again and I'm seriously tired - for whatever you feel, it's a demanding drive home after a long day - but I'm not dismal any more. Synod threw up things to concern and galvanise, and I may in time return to some of these things, but by teatime yesterday I'd cheered up.

Most of this transformation was effected by +Mark's sermon and charge to members of Synod at the Eucharist, where I found myself reaching for a truly old-fashioned medium ( the service booklet and a pencil) to record some of it. He was wearing a huge and extraordinary ring,* which had belonged to Bishop Forbes at the time of the 18th century Jacobite risings, and reminded us of the faithfulness it represents - the faithfulness of the Episcopal Church which over the years has fed others, not least the Episcopal Church in the USA. He exhorted us to a burning desire to proclaim the love of God in the communities we serve - serve as opposed to live in. The fact that at the moment we have no bishop does not stop our ministries, and we've not to let anyone tell us differently. Our task, he went on, is to be people who are open - open to the seeking of others, to those who will join us briefly and then move on; open to those who struggle elsewhere because of rules and regulations and find in our worship and our structures an openness and freedom. When we get bogged down in buildings and quinquennials we must ask: Who will I bring the light of God to today? This, said +Mark, is what we are about. The church has a voice - not of rules, commandments or exclusion, but simply a voice of love. He ended with the stirring reminder that today, in us, is the fulfilment of God's promise.

Somehow, that worked. And the good humour and yes, the love, survived the airless conditions of our windowless venue and the haphazard arithmetic of the tellers (why, I ask myself, was I chosen as a teller, again?) By the end of business this afternoon, we were ready to believe the bishop's closing words: we are a beautiful diocese, one which most people in the world want to visit, and whatever we might think, visitors find it wonderful to go to church on a Cal Mac ferry. We must stop moaning about long drives and difficulties, demolish the barriers that keep people from church, have the courage to speak about our church in the ordinary places where we find ourselves; we must enable the joy of faith and the love of God to be seen through us.

Yes, it worked. And I'm glad to have been proved unduly pessimistic: Moray diocese is fortunate in having a bishop who can light up a room, and we are lucky to have him on loan. Now we just need to find Another of The Same, as the old hymnbooks used to say. Here's to the election!

*For more about this ring, see Hugh's comment on this post.

Argyll Synod

Diocesan Synod this week - and a meeting of the Electoral Synod that as yet does not have any electing to do. It means a two day visit to Oban, with people having to stay away from home and travel some of the most challenging roads in the country to get there. In past years I've felt a certain anticipation - there's a social element, a dinner, a sense of the diocese meeting for once instead of ploughing lonely furrows in scattered pockets of Episcopalianism. And for the past 5 years or so there's been Bishop Martin, and he always raised spirits just by being himself. I don't feel that sense of anticipation this year. We need to be able to elect another bishop, and one of our choosing - and Canon Law, like Time's winged chariot, is pressing down on us.

As we all head to Oban tomorrow, like so many bedraggled homing pigeons, we could do with the prayers of our friends, wherever they are, that all will be well.

Must be Spring!

Must be Spring!
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Today reminded me of why I used to say I hated early March - that promise of warmth that turns out to be a chill wind; the clouds that whisk over the blue; the bleak dusk where before there was cosy darkness. Reminded me, that is, until we were heading back from a brisk walk along Loch Striven-side - in itself an antidote to bleakness as we watched a swathe of rain pass us by on the far side of the loch with only a sprinkling on our shore.

The wind had dropped suddenly, as it often does at the end of an afternoon, and in the sudden silence we heard ... a clucking sound. Not exactly chicken-like, but a sort of contented purring. It came from the ditch - the only bit of the ditch with water in it - and when we looked we could see that the muddy water was alive with movement. The photo shows the cause, but I'm too ignorant to know if this couple are frogs or toads. Someone can doubtless enlighten me.

Whatever they were, they were making the most of the afternoon - and they cheered me up no end.

A haunting novel

Another good book, a first novel this time. Two women, one in the present, one in the mid-nineteenth century, as far as I can make out from the social history of the time. Both have suffered loss, and their shared experience seems to sensitise the present-day owner of the cottage to the presence of the past. But Baker doesn't just follow the story of Rachel, tidying out her parent's country retreat after the death of her mother; in equal measure we follow the life of Elizabeth at the time when her world and the society she inhabits are both shaken by the arrival of the Chartist movement.

By the end of the novel I was as moved by the plight of the ordinary countryfolk of the nineteenth century as I was by the emotional turmoil of both women. I had learned a bit about the roots of the democracy we now take - more or less - for granted, and the suffering of those who sought to break out of the tyranny of the master-servant mould. Not only that: I was delighted by the visual quality of Baker's prose and by the mastery of pace and rhythm.

Another recommendation for your next book group?

Huvtaes no more

I was working today. Well, sort of. That kind of voluntary stuff that has you heading off on the ferry with a briefcase full of papers (and a sandwich!) rather than a rucksack, wearing, if you can picture this, the kind of shoes you sit around in rather than the ones you hike up a muddy glen in. And yes, it was stuff for the church, dealing with the business of lifelong education and distance learning in Argyll and The Isles.

Quite apart from the revisited horror of spending hours closeted in a relatively gloomy and distinctly ecclesiastical-smelling room while the sun was splitting the sky, I recognised the sinking feeling that used to overtake me at Department Meetings when there was paperwork to shuffle and forms to fill in. In particular, I was reminded of the horror of the Modules which used to happen in schools before Higher Still came in and changed everything (again). I realised yet again why promotion to the paper-shuffling (or file-shuffling, if you like) echelons of the teaching profession had never been an option for me - the department would have fallen apart in a welter of missing documentation.

Not that I am incapable of keeping some sort of tabs on things I consider wildly relevant - the carefully-filed Standard Grade folios or the book of notes on Higher RPRs come to mind - but maintaining individual record-sheets for people used to drive me potty and my record of work tended to be composed retrospectively, with the help of the pupils. I long ago recognised that I was a performer, not an administrator, and that living in the moment was always preferable to planning for it - or writing said moment up later.

And so it was with joy that I was able to sit back this afternoon and note that my - what? line-manager? boss? superior? pal? - was going to bear the brunt of all this bumf. I'm retired, I heard myself murmuring (yes, I can do murmurs) and I don't have to do this. I can take holidays, I can suit myself about the hours I work ... but inside the voice of truth was adding its own tuppenceworth. I do what is fun for me to do - and when I'm not enjoying it any more, I stop.

I guess I was anticipating all this when I was asked by an acquaintance on the ferry if I was still working. (I musta looked businesslike). No, I said, I'm retired from teaching. But what I really meant was that I've retired from huvtaes - all of them.

*In certain educational circles, a "huvtae" is what in Dunoon we called a "Please Take" - the dread summons to cover the class of an absent colleague. I have appropriated it to cover all the compulsory elements of working life - set hours, set holidays and so on.

White smoke at last

Whew! The white smoke was billowing metaphorically around Holy Trinity church, Dunoon, today - and in the other episcopal charges of the Cowal and Bute district - as we were at last able to acknowledge that a new priest had been appointed. The Reverend Andrew Swift, originally from Aberdeen, is currently a full-time curate in a semi-urban parish in Gloucester City, and before training for ministry worked in the shipbuilding industry.

For the first time in almost 30 years there will be a young family living in the Rectory, the last such family belonging to our recently-retired bishop, +Martin. At that time I was one of the young adults in the congregation, and some of us were reflecting the other day that we are now the Old Women of the tribe - though strangely we don't feel like it. Thirty years ago women of my age wore tweed skirts - remember these skirts with the pleats from each side of the hip? - and Pringle twinsets under their sensible jackets and above their sensible shoes. They perhaps wore pearls, or a Luckenbooth brooch. At yesterday's meeting there were jeans, technical-fabric trousers, trainers, hiking boots (so still sensible footwear!), fleeces and T-shirts. Presumably we now head to the grave dressed as we have since we left mini-skirts behind ... but I digress.

Life is short, but at least with a new priest it will be less demanding - just a bit - for the lay team, who may not have to write so many sermons. And it promises to be interesting. What more could we ask for?

Illuminating the Lighted Rooms

I've been reading Richard Mason's The Lighted Rooms - a book which might have appealed to me solely by its Larkin-inspired title had it not been lent to me for my recent holidays. An unusual study of dementia, it was at once gripping and illuminating - and no, that's not a pun - though occasionally the familiarity of a situation described would have me wincing in recognition. This was particularly true, I think, in the description of the expensive nursing home in which Joan, one of the main characters, takes up residence - all the "advantages" which distinguish such establishments from the hotels they seek to emulate add up to a prison in Joan's eyes and are so well described as to make any reader uncomfortable.

And yet this story conveys not pathos but a kind of joyous heroism, as Joan makes easy friendships with two very different young men, inspiring their loyalty and gratitude in a way which her competitive and successful daughter cannot. On the way to the"triumphant serenity" achieved by Joan at the novel's end, we learn about such diverse subjects as British concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer war and the operation of hedge funds, but it is in the illumination of the "Lighted Rooms" that Larkin thought might make up the sum of consciousness of old people that Mason's chief accomplishment lies. It seems not quite right to say I enjoyed the book, but I was riveted by it and recommend it wholeheartedly. And if you're looking for a Book Group subject, there are some helpful suggestions for discussion at the end.

Morning

This didn't begin life in poetic form, but morphed somehow in the telling. Anyway, it was yesterday, and it was perfect.

Walking on the Toward shore
the sea flat, a sheet of glass with
liquid, slightly moving edges,
the light blinding from its morning place
the hills splendidly white and pure
I found my being gripped with joy
so fierce that walking seemed too much
and stopped. And then I heard the quiet
crooning from the glistening rocks
where the conversationalists were quite
hidden till one stretched and looked
so like the duck it really was
that laughter bubbled in my throat.
And then I saw the crowds of them
all sitting in the morning sun
and burbling gently, as ducks do
until they flew towards the light
and skiffed like stones and circled round -
and all I knew was beauty. Mine. My land
and yet not mine as I pass through -
this need to possess the things we love
not new, but part of life itself,
this love of place, of light, of air,
of tiny waves against the shore.
This ache that takes the place of prayer.

©C.M.M. 03/10

We are marching

Every now and then, someone at church remarks on the apparent miracle of the suitability of the hymns (chosen by Mr B) for the lectionary of the day, and while it is true that Mr B chooses the hymns with great care and does in fact read the lectionary readings while doing so, he is helped by a useful RSCM publication which lists a multitude of suggestions from a variety of hymnbooks. One of the suggestions for today's final hymn was We are Marching in the light of God.

At first it seemed an odd choice. Lent. Mainstream church. A particularly trying time for our diocese and for our congregation, as the challenges of our Victorian buildings multiply and with them the tradesmens' bills. But in fact it turned out to be just right. This African song, with its origins in protest, lifted us on this freezing Sunday so that we sang, and clapped (on the back beat too!), and felt warmer, and found ourselves smiling. Yes, things are hard in our church just now - but we aren't alone, are we?

And I'd never in a month of Sundays have thought the congregation of Holy T would swing so well!

Powers of hell ...

And grow hotter
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

A reminder of the power lurking just below the earth on Lanzarote hit us powerfully at Islote de Hilario,Timanfaya, where a residual chamber of magma remains close to the surface - what vulcanologists call a geothermic anomaly. Every ten minutes or so, a National Park employee in a strange, dust-coloured uniform entertains tourists with a demonstration of this power when he thrusts a scrub bush into a hole in the ground (see photo). Within seconds there was a strong smell of toast burning, and shortly afterwards it burst into flame - very hot flame. We also saw geysers produced by pouring water down a pipe in the ground, chicken being roasted over what looked like a well outside the restaurant but was in fact a pit of intense heat, and picked up small stones that were too hot to hold for any time.

All very entertaining - well, no, actually: more terrifying. There was nothing man could do to affect this energy - it just was. The smell of the volcanic dust was so prevalent that I can smell it still when I write of it, and the texture of the vocanic debris like nothing else I have walked on.

The Lanzarotenos (this should have a ~ above the second 'n', but I can't work out how to do it - Lanzaroteños - hurrah!) have an ambivalent attitude to this whole aspect of their island, protecting what was in effect a dreadful curse; everywhere we see evidence of the work of César Manrique who supervised the building of the Ruta de los Volcanes over which we were driven and designed the symbol of the park - and who decreed that no buildings should rise more than two storeys about ground level. This extraordinary level of control means that everywhere on the island you see little white boxes, with green window-frames (unless at the seaside, when they are blue). It makes our own National Park restrictions seem liberal indeed.

When I look back at the experience - we were on a walking holiday, and covered considerable ground on foot, along with an agreeable bunch of HF types - I feel that apart from the experience of summer weather in February there isn't much I'd go back to Lanzarote for. I feel it's a faintly melancholy island, with little going for it and a great deal to struggle with to make a living. I may be wrong - but that eruption in the 18th century dealt a blow that the island still has to work hard to recover from.

By the way - their roundabouts (on the roads) are magnificent. I kid you not.

Volcanic holiday

Volcanic landscape
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Lanzarote is a strange place. In fact I'd had no idea how strange - when I told people we were having a winter break in Playa Blanca they said "Oh, it's lovely" and left it at that, so when we arrived and I saw the black land everywhere and the low-rise white cubes of the houses and the pointed black and red hills I was aware that had I been there only to sunbathe and walk up and down the pleasant promenade of the town I'd have been depressed long before my week was up.

However, once I'd grasped some of the history of the landscape, I began to see things differently. Between 1730 and 1736, and again in 1824, huge volcanic eruptions, in one of the most spectacular eruptive processes in the Earth's volcanic history, drastically changed the shape of the island and left a quarter of it almost completely buried under a thick layer of lava and ash - 174 sq. kilometers of it. If you're interested in such things, the lava is of two types - the jagged "aa" lava, and corded "pahoe-hoe" lava, is completely impassable, and has been marked by very little human impact.

I was moved by a contemporary account of the first eruption - for this was happening when people in mainland Europe were listening to Bach, dressing in silk hose and full-bottomed wigs, even more recognisable as our forefathers than was Pliny when he wrote about Vesuvius, and somehow that made it all the more vivid. Don Andrés Lorenzo Curbelo, the priest in Yaiza, wrote this:

On the first of September 1730, between 9 and 10 o'clock at night, the earth suddenly opened at close to Timanfaya, two leagues from Yaiza. On that first night, and enormous mountain rose up from the heart of the earth, and from its summit there escaped flames that continued to burn for nineteen days ... They were accompanied by a great quantity of lapilli, dust and ash that spread over the surrounding areas and from all sides drops of water fell as rain. The thunderclaps and explosions that accompanied those phenomena, the darkness caused by the mass of ash and smoke that covered the island, forced the inhabitants to flee more than once...

Today the volcanoes are silent, but their power is still apparent. I shall return to Timanfaya in another post.

New poem/prayer

There's a new poem - or maybe it's a prayer - over on frankenstina, which I used as the meditation during Morning Prayer on our last morning at the House of Prayer on Iona last weekend.

I shall return to this visit when I've done with my holiday on Lanzarote, from which we returned two nights before we left for Iona. Two very different experiences to build body and soul as we come to the end of winter.

Blogging off

I've been neglecting this blog for the past fortnight - away walking in Lanzarote for a week, of which more anon, and now off to Iona for a couple of days. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible, but in the meantime there are a few Lanzarote pics on flickr

The Book Thief

I've just finished reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. And I mean "just finished", which means that I'm still steeped in the smoke of burning Himmel Street in a small German town as the second world war turned against Germany, still caught in the mesh of words echoing the words of the book thief herself, regretful and bereft because it's finished.

This book is beautifully written. It's quirky and unusual and the narrator is Death - a narrator you soon learn to trust utterly. It tells of the wartime experience of a young girl, living with foster parents, learning to read after she steals her first book. In the end her books and her writing save others, save herself and have a profound effect on Death himself.

It's the best book I've read in ages.

Chimney pots but no smoke

No white smoke from Dunoon, but a tale of five chimneys - or rather, five Victorian chimney pots, the organist, and the organist's wife.

Yesterday, as the candidates for the post of Rector here were shown round the church and rectory, we noticed that the builders working on the roof had removed the massive chimney pots and set them in a row in the back garden. Now, it is a fact that these pots are much prized around these parts - indeed, the one that survived from our own chimney now stands in my garden with a small thyme bush growing in the top of it, and very ornamental it is too. It is a sadder fact that such objects left untended around these parts will be nicked - especially if no-one seems to be around.

It was decided, therefore, that the pots should be moved into what was once the coal-hole at the rear of the rectory. Now, for reasons I'm not going into, it came about that Mr B was unable to meet one of the three able-bodied men in the congregation at the hour appointed for this bit of heavy lifting, and rather than leave them out for another night he and I decided we would do the deed ourselves. As the light faded this afternoon, we headed for the back of the rectory - the very place where those entrusted with choosing our new incumbent were still closeted with the Dean. We crept inconspicuously up the slimy bank. The pots sat there, dauntingly large, at the top of the back green. We laid hands on the first one. The top of it turned out to be in two parts, the outer of which moved disconcertingly. Our hands were already covered in a noxious mix of soot and green slime, but we began to manhandle the brute towards the door, rotating it over the soggy grass.

I can't keep it up, this blow-by-blow account, but must hasten to the good bit that didn't quite happen. By the third pot I had hit on the brilliant idea of letting it topple onto its side and rolling it down the slight incline to just beside the step of the coal-hole. By the fourth, I was feeling bolder: the pots really moved quite rapidly if you helped them with a shove. But I have to tell you, Best Beloved, that the fourth pot almost got away. And if it had, it'd have careered down the bank and into the unfamiliar green car that presumably belonged to the Dean. So picture, if you will, the organist and his lady wife, doubled up in mirth, diving to restrain a slimy Victorian chimney pot while smothering hoots of laughter like a pair of naughty weans.

I have to report that a coffee-seeking church official saw us and opened the door, and that the chimney pots are now safely locked away with the dwindling supply of parish booze. But where, pray, will the white smoke come from?

Let us begin ...

Tomorrow Piskies in this corner of the church - Dunoon, Rothesay and Tighnabruaich, acting in their linked charge capacity for the first time - begin what we hope will be the last act in finding a new Rector. Tomorrow the visit to Rectory and church, the meeting with the Vestry and worship leaders, the informal conversations; on Tuesday the formal interviews. Three people are putting themselves through this process, and ten or so of us here in Dunoon are praying hard for guidance and harmony.

We're praying especially hard because it's been a long year, counting back to when we first heard of the impending departure of the previous incumbent. Some of us are beginning to feel a real hunger for the nourishment that wise leadership can bring. Today, because a former rector celebrated and preached, we were actually fed. I should have been preaching, but you can't run on empty. Tonight I'm thinking of all of us whose lives are about to be changed one way or another.

For now, anyway.

Contrasts recalled

Found myself thinking back to our trip to las Vegas two years ago - one of our "let's escape the tail-end of the Scottish winter trips", another of which I shall soon be off on. A quick look at the flickr set of photos from the trip revealed a pleasing patchwork of colour; I've reproduced a section of it here.

The interesting thing for me is that this particular section represents what I most recall about the trip: the huge contrast between the silent tranquillity of the desert and the frenetic sounds and lights of the city. The desert is all pale blues and greys - even the vegetation has a blue-grey tinge - while the city, and in particular the Strip, is alive with colour. The liveliness, of course, is artificial, as fake as the interiors of the casinos replicating Rome, Venice, Paris. There, the noise is constant: the background of the tunes the one-armed bandits play incessantly, the changed chords for a win, the hum of machines rather than the sound of conversation.

But in the desert there is nothing. No birdsong, no sound of water, no wind, no smells. A purity of place that I have experienced nowhere else. And it is the desert that I remember.