Richard's Ramblings

Late Week Wander

T his has been a sensory week for me. The sense of sight on Monday at Specsavers, of taste on Tuesday at the dentist, and of hearing on Wednesday at my ENT surgeon.  Some of you know the story about sight overlapping with sound at Specsavers. Sitting in a (socially-distanced) waiting area, a young girl came out of her office and told me what I already knew, “Your hearing aid is whistling”. “Yes”, I said, “it’s badly fitting, it’s either whistle or nothing”. “I can fix that”, she replied, and she did. She lengthened the tube between the in-ear bit and the behind-the-ear bit, bent it into a different shape, and hey presto, no whistling. The dentist came up with what dentists are good at, a treatment plan which will cost more than my car’s worth unless BUPA come to the party. And the ENT surgeon offered the quote of the week: “You’re young” 😊 More above-the-neck stuff on Thursday, a haircut, and to round the week off, an MRI and CT on Friday to show the cochlear surgeon where my skull is

Online service There are some questions which invite a metaphysical response. Bertrand Russell, perhaps the pre-eminent English language philosopher of the 20thC, when he climbed into a London cab one day, got a cabbie’s stock conversation-starting line, “Wot’s it all abaht, then?” And expats the world over, as well as (comparatively) new Australians like me, are asked, “Where ya from?” (Then, when you answer “London”, a city of some 10M souls, your interlocutor exclaims “Oh, you must know X and Y, they were on our cruise last year, they’re from London”). "Where are you from?" "Where is your home?" "Who are your people?" We tell our stories to identify our origins. This is particularly poignant for me, I’m adopted, I had a very happy childhood indeed, but I can’t answer that ultimate genealogical question. Even if I suspect that I’m the rightful Duke of Westminster.   This reading from Genesis is also an origin story — the origin story of humankind, and it

I had a stonking cold the weekend before last. Of course, my recovery was down to “… pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much ” as James writes in the KJV (5:16). Myrl Eddy would want us to add “and a righteous woman”, and she’d be right. But those fervent prayers availed even more because of righteous Leisa’s effectual administration before bed of a hot whisky toddy, which I fervently drank. Here’s the recipe:   100ml whisky Juice of a small lemon Tablespoon of honey Top up with boiling water   I knew that it was a cold, and not COVID-19, because I could smell and taste the ingredients. That recipe works every time, for a cold. The therapeutic mechanism is quite straightforward, it just helps you to sleep. And then a good night’s sleep works the real magic.   There are so many things keeping us from sleeping at the moment. Events in our own lives, in our church’s life, in political events in Australia and overseas. On t