Richard's Ramblings

Bridges are on my mind today. First, the Historical Society in Dayboro, where Leisa and I spent 5 happy years at the lovely little town’s lovely Uniting Church (we’re still spending happy years at this lovely city’s lovely Kirwan Uniting Church, by the way  🙂 ), reminded Facebook that I had blessed the town’s new bridge in 2012. And that I had never blessed a bridge before. Neither have I since. That conjured up an ear worm of Simon and Garfunkel (giving my age away 🥲 ). Bridge over Troubled Waters is one of the few tunes which I can plink out on a piano, although I make a better stab of it on a harmonica. Do you remember the story in John 5 of the lame man at Bethesda Pool? The familiar verse 4 is missing in most modern translations, because it appears in some manuscripts, but doesn’t in later discovered scrolls which might be more reliable. At this pool, blind, lame, paralysed people gathered “ waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the

Peter Siddle is one of my cricketing heroes. In case you don’t know who he is (I’ll pray for you), he’s a right-arm fast-medium bowler who has retired from an illustrious international Australian career, and now plays for Tasmania – he was a long-term Victoria player – in Sheffield Shield, and for Adelaide Strikers in Big Bash. He was never a big-name multi-wicket taker like McGrath, Lee or the current crop (although he did take a hat trick in an Ashes tour). His value lay in being completely dependable, keeping a nagging line and length, and so frustrating opposing batsmen that they would play silly shots against the frontline bowlers who had them caught outside off. I’m sure that there is a spiritual point to be made here, but I haven’t thought what it might be, and it’s not what brought Siddle to mind anyway. I have a couple of things against him. He’s a Bushranger (Victorian), or was. And he’s vegan. I look askance at vegetarians (if vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitari