Saying nothing

Posted on 9th January 2025 by Ian

‘Ian, are you alright?’

‘Yes. The older I get the more I think and the less I say.’

Sitting in silence with my hands folded in front of me seems to discomfit some people.

It is not intended to do so.  It is not some psychological power play. It is not an attempt to intimidate or to make a statement.  It is simply sitting quietly and listening and watching and thinking.

Once, there was a delusion that thinking could lead to the uncovering of something significant.  Of course, decades of thinking have never brought any breakthrough in knowledge. More often, there has been the replaying and replaying of the same sequences.

Once, there was a need to say something in every discussion, to contribute some insight imagined to be new, to attempt some pithy summary of the exchanges. now, silence seems a preferable option.

First order questions have never been welcomed. Matters of principle are not the stuff of routine meetings, not considered relevant to day to day management.

Too many years of engagement in theology have prompted a desire to dissect arguments, to ask why conclusions have been drawn.

After saying ‘yes’ there was a desire to say something else.  It had seemed abrupt, perfunctory and had offered no explanation for the noticeable diffidence.

Eventually, words from my grandmother came to mind.  They seemed to offer a rationale for having sat disengaged while the group around the table took part in a discussion, the thread of which I had long lost.

Turning to my questioner, I said, ‘my grandmother taught me a rhyme when I was a child.  It was primary school stuff, but it has stuck with me.

A wise old owl sat on an oak
The more he heard the less he spoke.
The less he spoke the more he heard,
why don’t you be like  that wise old bird?

Perhaps it didn’t really explain anything.  Perhaps it was appropriate to someone sat in a classroom in High Ham Primary School but not for a sixty-four year old who had left that school more than fifty years previously. Perhaps it was a disingenuous response, a deliberate avoidance of the reason for my silence.

Had there been an honest answer, it might have been an admission that I could just not be bothered, that I had attended meetings for more than forty years and could not remember one that had made a difference.

Perhaps at next week’s meeting I shall sit with a notepad and assume a greater air of interest.

 

 

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Shivering cold

Posted on 8th January 2025 by Ian

‘It’s cold’, said my mother, during one of our thrice weekly telephone calls.

‘It is’, I said. ‘I can’t wait for the spring.’

When I was young, in our house being cold was normal.

There was a fire lit in the living room on a daily basis. My father would light it before heading out to work at 7.00 each morning.  During particularly cold spells, the fire might have been kept in overnight.  There was always a sense of security in seeing the glow of the coke with which it had been banked up.  Sometimes, not often, the kitchen fire might also have been lit.

In the bathroom, which was downstairs, there was a paraffin heater that was lit while we washed; but on cold nights, it had to go outside to ensure the pipes in the toilet did not freeze. Warmth in the bathroom generally depended upon filling the washbasin with hot water and plunging one’s arms into it. The other rooms were unheated.

The purchase of a big grey convector heater was a great boon, although it could not be used on a casual basis. In 1972, four electric storage heaters were fitted in our three bedroomed council house, and the toilet was moved inside. It seemed the most cosy house in England, we still had to go downstairs to the toilet, but it no longer had a seat that chilled the flesh.

In the years of ministry in parishes, the cold moments returned. Half of the thirty years were spent in buildings from former times, big rambling glebe houses, dating from times when servants were a customary part of life, it was impossible to keep more than a handful of rooms at a tolerable temperature. People in the parishes regarded the oversized buildings as part of the heritage of the community and many thought clergy should regard themselves as privileged to be living in such houses, had they experienced the places on winter mornings, they might have revised their opinion.

Perhaps the advancing years have caused the blood to thin, or the metabolism to slow down, but there has developed an aversion to the cold. It is not hard to understand why so many people moved to Spain upon retirement, it wasn’t about flamenco or sangria, it wasn’t about beaches or bars, it was just about being warm.

There is cold in the air tonight. It is the sort of chill that penetrates to the bones, and that leaves the whole body shivering.

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Remembering a soldier

Posted on 5th January 2025 by Ian

‘Who is that?’ asked a cousin last week.

‘That’s our great grandfather, Albert Luxton. His uniform was from when he was in the military police after the First World War.’

Born in 1880, he was the youngest among his siblings to serve in the 15th Hussars. Along with Albert, there were older brothers William, Henry and Richard, each enlisting with the Corps of Hussars, each being assigned to the 15th Hussars, each being assigned to other units later in their career.

Military service seemed to have come with severe hardships.

Richard was deemed unfit for military service at the beginning of 1900, but was called back to the colours that summer and was despatched to South Africa to join the battle against the Boers. His health did not improve in the decade that followed and he died at the age of 42 in 1914.

Born in 1869, Henry was three years senior to Richard, and perhaps set the pattern for his younger brothers, enlisting at the age of eighteen. Henry completed the twelve years for which he enlisted and was transferred to the army reserve. Back at home in Aller, his wife died just before the First World War, and Henry returned to army life at the age of forty-five. Great great grandmother Luxton became the guardian of his children, a woman whose reputation for severity has been passed down through the generations. Henry’s attestation has ‘United Kingdom service only’, written across the top. He served as squadron sergeant major in a number of military depots. It was 1920, when he was fifty-one, before Henry returned to civilian life.

The answer to why the four brothers joined the army, facing hardship and risking death, was not hard to find. The occupations listed on the papers are manual work, one is a gardener, the others are labourers. Work was scarce, pay was poor, army life was a better option than remaining in Aller in the hope of improvement.

On returning from the Western Front in 1919, Albert found himself facing the situation common to hundreds of thousands of other soldiers who were being demobbed.  He had been a soldier for twenty years and had no other trade. He rejoined the army and was sent to Ireland where the War of Independence had begun.

For years there was a fear in the family that he had served with the Black and Tans. Only in recent months did I discover that he had served with the Military Provost Staff Corps. He had the unenviable task of trying to police soldiers, many of whom, like himself, were still in uniform because they could find no other work.

One of the recollections of him among older family members was of him having a serious drink problem in latter years. Such a comment prompted a sharp response on my part. ‘Can you imagine serving as a cavalryman throughout the Great War and you come home and no-one wants you? Would you not have started to drink? Can you imagine the PTSD he must have suffered?’

 

 

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The things that last

Posted on 3rd January 2025 by Ian

A suggested video on a social media site was of a yellow-fronted diesel locomotive approaching a railway station.  The briefest of searches would have produced thousands of such images from lines the length and breadth of Britain.

Is there any nation in the world quite as fascinated by railways? Much of the fascination is not with railways that operate Twenty-First Century rolling stock as part of the national rail network, but with railways which were closed more than fifty years ago. These are the lines where volunteers run trains on lengths of track which may sometimes be miles from the nearest line of the network. Stations which may have been used by a handful of passengers in British Rail days may now attract hundreds of visitors at weekends and holidays.

It has been noticeable that diesel locomotives now feature more and more among the engines. Diesels were once despised by steam railway enthusiasts, they are the villains in the Thomas the Tank Engine series of books by the Rev. W. Awdry. Perhaps it is a practical decision, the boilers of steam locomotives require regular inspection and expensive maintenance; perhaps it is an economic necessity, railways run on a shoestring are able to more readily run diesel engines.

The appearance of diesel engines on steam railway lines suggests that nostalgia is flexible, that something that was once cold-shouldered could become something that was much loved.

If blue and yellow former British Rail diesel locomotives are evocative of the past for people in 2025, then what things are there in 2025 that will become objects of nostalgia in fifty years’ time? In 2075, what will people preserve and restore as symbols of the past?

Perhaps there will still be railways, perhaps the sleek dark green locomotives of the present Great Western Railway will have found homes for retirement on preserved lines where the use of a carbon fuel will still be tolerated. But what else will there be?

Visit antiques centres, and much of the stock is the everyday miscellany of former times. Growing up on a farm where my grandfather milked a herd of twenty cows, the churns and the buckets were so commonplace as to be unworthy of comment, yet such items are now to be found on sale as antiques. Kitchenware, furnishings, clothing, garden tools, machinery – there seem to be few things that will not find a buyer. Even tins for biscuits, sweets and cleaning compounds will now be found for sale.

If the everyday of fifty years ago has become the nostalgia of today, then how much of today’s everyday will appear in antiques shops? Will there be air fryers, microwave ovens, coffee machines, Dyson vacuum cleaners, desktop computers and iPhones and countless other consumable durables from 2025? What that we have will be worthy of nostalgia?

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Unexpected intelligence

Posted on 1st January 2025 by Ian

Perhaps it was the discovery that bees could count up to four that made me think about intelligence in the natural world. A friend still doubts the studies of Queen Mary University, London that shows the mathematical ability of bees, but it was a beekeeper who explained the dance that the scouts do to indicate the distance to the nectar.

Given such a capacity among bees, it should not have come as a surprise that dogs seem considerably more intelligent than I had imagined.

The long secondary school summer holidays in Ireland (June, July and August), meant being able to spend eleven weeks in Somerset, during which time the Arthurian dogs in the house, Guinevere and Galahad became accustomed to a routine.

A Maltese and a Chihuahua, they are dogs that love company and comfort, and they love carers who can tell the time as well as them.

Lunch is at midday and dinner is at five o’clock. A delay of more than a few minutes will prompt a barked reminder that their meal is due.

In the summer, the dogs decided that a third snack was in order, that a small snack would be welcome at around 8.30 each evening. In the middle of an ITV 3 episode of Vera or Midsomer Murders, Guinevere would assume the role of messenger and appear in the room. The request was made with a brief bark or pawing of my leg. Once the chew was given, they would run off contentedly.

The Halloween mid-term break brought a return to Somerset on the Saturday, and at around 8.30 pm, I was sat chatting with my son who had come on the trip. There came the sound of dogs’ paws running across the tiles of the kitchen floor. The dogs appeared and there was the customary bark.

It had been nine weeks since I had last been in the house. How on my first evening back, did the dogs remember not only the treats but also the time at which they might hope to receive a chew?

Perhaps the daily routine of lunch and dinner are more memorable, like humans perhaps their stomachs tell them the approximate time?

But the treats? There had been no routine for more than two months, no-one keeping up the habit of the chews. How did they remember not just that I was a soft touch but that at 8.30 they could expect a response?

Posted in The stuff of daily life | 4 Comments