Up to date

May 2025

I'm about three weeks behind with blogging, but this week I'm volunteering at the usual retreat centre, leaving my regular weekly commitments behind. So, a bit more time in hand. 

Back at the beginning of May, mum, Sister D, Lola II and I headed off to the woodland cemetery where dad is buried. The idea was to plant some flowers on the grave and to think about what wording we'd like on the stone, but we discovered that the grave had already been planted - when and by whom is still a mystery. We added some daffodil bulbs and scattered some poppy seeds, and planted the primulas we'd brought on a neighbouring grave. Maybe that's how dad's grave acquired his plants? Anyway, it was a surprisingly jolly outing with plenty of black humour.

After a weekend in Nottingham the next item of note was the first of two periodontal surgeries to try and improve the chronic problem of my gum disease. As before, it was unpleasant and uncomfortable, but with little pain either during or after the procedure. I'm not convinced that the infection will not return, and perhaps it already has, due to the difficulty of keeping the site free of food debris. 

Then there was an online retreat over a weekend, when three of us took ourselves off to a luxurious house not very far away to do the retreat together. I rigged up the TV with a webcam and hooked it up to my laptop so we could sit together for the general sessions and we split up into separate rooms for the parts where we were in different groups. We cooked and ate meals together, had some deep conversations and generally looked at life in a different way for a weekend. We all agree that it's a fine way to do this type of retreat - I don't sign up to do the online ones at home because I'd be too distracted with all the things needing my attention in my own house.

The next event was a trip to London where I met up with Lola II and Mr M for a Nepali lunch and a walk around in Woolwich, followed by a film in a cinema which has a membership scheme a bit like a London club. Next day Lola II and I went into town for brunch, she went on to one of her volunteering shifts and I met an old school friend before going on to visit mum. Then came the trip to Manchester that I wrote about last time, and a busy week leading up to this stint of volunteering. I've mostly been in the kitchen, which is the work I particularly enjoy, often in charge of the meals for those with allergies and intolerances.

There's plenty more that I'm looking forward to in the coming weeks so I don't expect I'll be able to keep on top of blogging, but that's life and I'm making the most of it.

Pointing

April 2025

Glf is a very good bloke as well as a bricklayer and did a wonderful job on my wall on the pub side, nearly four years ago now. So when I needed the chimneys pointing, he should have been my first port of call instead of the cowboys who persuaded me that they could do it without scaffolding.

The job involved a lot of coordination between the Glf and the company with the scaffolding, which led to a few weeks' delay.  They all turned up first thing on Friday to case the joint, plans were made and the scaffolding started to go up for the first chimney, which took all day. It was decided that a separate scaffold tower was needed for the other chimney, so that was erected the following Thursday. 

I actually climbed up to the top to have a look, and sat for a while just experiencing the discomfort of fear. I couldn't manage to take any pictures that time, but I overcame the fear and went up again a few days later and did take some of my own pictures - the weather was beautiful and I had a lovely view of my neighbours' gardens.

Glf appears to have done a similarly good job on the chimneys, and even came to my rescue and fixed things when the scaffold people broke my key safe. He wasn't able to help with a leak that is discolouring the ceiling right next to the front door, but has given me some contact details for roofers who may be able to help.

I haven't yet contacted the roofers because, in time-honoured fashion, I have taken on too much and have passed peak efficiency into a state of frazzled panic in case I forget anything important. I was looking forward to a clear weekend when I hoped to catch up, but sadly a family member died and I was called away. Lola II came with me and made the weekend much better (for both visitors and for host, I think) and we were even able to be useful by helping to look at possible venues for the food and drink after the cremation. 

With a stint of volunteering to come, I am trying to do just one thing at a time. When I remember to calm my mind, everything is fine.

Cooking

March 2025

I'm going through a particularly busy period at the moment, again (when will I ever learn?) One of the things I've been doing is a whole lot of cooking for people - there have been many recent cooking events, two of which included someone whose dietary requirements are the most restrictive I've had to deal with. 

The first meal was at the Birmingham Buddhist Centre, where I'm going to be volunteering on Tuesdays when I'm not doing something previously arranged (like volunteering elsewhere, staying with friends, and retreats). This is to cover for someone who's gone off to be ordained, so it's going to continue until mid July. The people who work there (including the one with the severely restricted diet) have a team lunch (which I will attend) followed by a team meeting (which I won't) and they take turns to cook. I'm only doing the cooking on alternate occasions that I'm there, along with jobs like testing the fire alarm, a bit of cleaning, and replacing consumables like toilet rolls, washing up liquid and hand soap. Having done a quick stock take, next time I'm there I'm going to go through the store cupboard to release some of the older jars back into the wild.

At the end of the day of that meal, for our regular weekly Buddhist meeting I'd offered supper to our visiting speaker who was coming from Milton Keynes. He got caught up in the terrible traffic mess nearby that has been caused by a large bridge installation for HS2, so it took him twice as long as it should. As well as inviting the team, I also invited someone who hasn't been to Lola Towers before, and he got completely lost, gave up, went to our meeting venue and missed supper altogether. He was leading the meeting the following week, so I gave him another chance.

The third cooking event was as a result of a fundraising auction, which I don't seem to have mentioned before. The Birmingham Buddhist Centre is in dire need of renovation, and one of the fundraising ideas was an auction of activities - things that people like to do that others could pay for. There were offers of lessons in paddleboarding, sourdough cooking, poetry, swimming, snooker, and crochet; there were guided walks in and around Birmingham; there were home-made items including clothing, jewellery, art and toys; there were press night tickets at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre; there were meals at a local cafe. I won a guided walk around Worcester, and I offered a three-course vegetarian or vegan meal for six, which went for £90 to one of the Buddhist communities in Birmingham, where six people live together in a shared house.

They wanted vegan food, and although the person with the dietary restrictions said she was fine to do some of it herself, I felt as a matter of principle that I should include her. So I created a soup out of all the vegetables that were on the list, then a deconstructed pasta dish that included gluten-free lasagne sheets and buckwheat, and a lemon tart made with gluten-free flour. Lola II had told me to remember to take pictures, which I remembered just as the last mouthful of the lemon tart was being savoured (it really was a good one). So it went entirely unrecorded for posterity.

The next cooking event was for the chap who hadn't managed to find Lola Towers the previous week and involved another three people too, and then the following evening I offered supper to another friend. And this weekend I've been away with two other friends, and we were cooking for one another again. Now I'm ready for a break from cooking.

What I've been reading

For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Ernest Hemingway

"The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerrilla unit in the mountains of Spain, tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal."

Perhaps not the most suitable reading for a Buddhism-centred solitary retreat, but what a writer! Within the first few pages it felt as though I had known these characters in the middle of the brutalism of the Spanish civil war for ever. How they behaved was completely realistic, and despite all the killing they were not dehumanised. This is one of the best books I've ever read.

Spike: The Virus vs. The People - the Inside Story
by Jeremy Farrar with Anjana Ahuja

"Jeremy Farrar was one of the first people in the world to hear about a mysterious new respiratory disease in China - and to learn that it could readily spread between people. A member of the SAGE emergency committee, Farrar was a key decision-maker at the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic amid great uncertainty, fast-moving situations and missed opportunities."

Given to me by Sister D, this book was written just as the pandemic was starting to peter out by a couple of scientific insiders - the Director of the Wellcome Trust, assisted by a Financial Times science columnist. It describes how Covid-19 evolved and was handled internationally, and set this alongside the management of the pandemic in the UK. Despite his flagrant disregard of the rules that he helped to set, Dominic Cummings seems to be the only person within Government circles who actually understood the importance of the science and attempted to direct policy accordingly, rather than focussing on the politics (Johnson), being incompetent (Hancock) or keeping very quiet (Gove). As a book, it is obvious that it was written in a hurry by someone who actually understands and cares about the effects of a pandemic on people rather than politics, so a slightly dispiriting story to read.

Passage
by Connie Willis

"Psychologist Dr Joanna Lander has spent two years at Mercy General Hospital studying patients who have been declared clinically dead but then revived. Many have had near-death experiences, NDEs, which are remarkably similar the world over. Then brilliant young neurologist Richard Wright discovers a way to induce an NDE using psychoactive drugs."

This is the last Connie Willis book that I own other than the two that I love, and I won't be keeping it. It's slightly less annoying than the others I've read recently, but she still needs a good editor to get rid of at least a third of the pages, mostly those containing accounts of the characters simply walking, running or driving from one place to another. But at least there's a little bit of substance here, with a thought-provoking idea of what near death experiences might be leading to an imaginative account of what might actually happen after death.

Orbital
by Samantha Harvey

"A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans."

An unusual book given to me by a friend. The language is very rich and colourful, full of observation of the earth from space as well as detail of life as an astronaut. At one point I became so caught up in the inevitability of the end of the Earth that I despaired (although that's absolutely not what the book is about). A strange and immersive experience.