Dawn

Dawn

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Wonderful conversation with my mother yesterday evening, when the events of a long day were finally over. She was sitting in her bedroom, going through my father's things and offering some of them – such as his RAF cuff-links - to me.
Are you alright, Mum?
Yes, yes.
How are you feeling?
I . . I . . Well . .
You're not feeling guilty are you?
No. In fact, I'm not feeling at all like I feared I would.
Don't tell me you're feeling guilty about not feeling guilty!
Well, yes.
[Laughing] You're probably the only person in the world who could do that.

I blame Catholicism.

Talking about religion . . . As someone who's twice mused here about starting his own religion, I was intrigued this week to hear that the mid-19th century Taiping Rebellion in China was led by a chap who'd been told in a dream that he was Jesus'  brother, the second Son of God. So, the Rev. Moon wasn't the first person to believe he'd been anointed to finish the work left uncompleted by JC. I wonder how many more of them there are. And whether there's room for one more. If so, I'd better up the quality of my dreams. Which seem to play a very significant part in religious revelations generally.

Another conversation with my mother this evening:-
How is the radiator in your room?
Not very warm. The room's quite cold.
Well, it shouldn't be; the thermostat's at 30.
That's far too high. Don't put it 30 just to get my room warm. 20 is enough.
I'm not putting it at 20!
Why not? I have mine at 20 at home.
Yes, but you live in a warmer country.

And she's not even from the Irish side of the family.

I went into a supermarket today, with a bag of stuff I'd got from another shop. What made this pleasantly unusual was that I wasn't told to put the latter in one of the lockers near the entrance, as if I were a thief who might use it to avoid paying for some items. This is standard practice in Spain, which is – as one of my Spanish readers once said – a low-trust society. Albeit an enjoyable one.

Finally . . . One of the main Spanish papers last week carried an obit of Nobbie Stiles, a particularly brutal member of the England World Cup winning team of 1966. I can't imagine any British newspaper reciprocating the favour.


Note: Thanks to computer incompatibility, last night's blog was posted this morning. Scroll down to see it.

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