-
It Isn’t All Tourism
When I visit a new town or city, I tend to spend hours just wandering round the streets randomly, looking at the people, the shops, the architecture, the little things which come together to make a community within a city centre. I note the people standing in front of churches and museums, town halls, ornate buildings with a long history which contribute to the whole atmosphere, posing with their cameras or, more often, their mobile telephones to either capture memories, or to prove they were there. I see people consulting maps and tourist guides, going from one well-worn area to another, queuing up at museums, pushing heavy doors open to…
-
Appropriate Weather
I commented recently on weather perceptions at funerals, and the way many films seem to portray the moment when the remains of a loved, or unloved, person are laid in their final resting place. Here, over the last three days, I have not been disappointed. Aside from a brief period of relative warmth under clouded skies, rainwater has increased the flow of the river, cleaned the streets, soaked those coming out of the train station and walking through town. A fortnight earlier, I am told, the area was covered in snow....
-
Closing A Chapter
All the best films starting with a scene set in a cemetery seem to go for rainy weather. A small group dressed in black, under umbrellas, gathered around an open hole in the ground as a pastor says a few words from the little black book, and the casket is lowered into the grave. Sobs and sympathy all round, flowers and earth on the wooden box, and off we all go. There follows the usual words as people walk off, or the detective in charge comments to the Sergeant, or the lover races up to the waiting limousine hoping that now the time has come....
-
The Urge to Travel
The season has hardly begun, and in some areas the snow has barely melted from the roads, but the first motorcyclists are venturing out, letting the breeze blow - symbolically - through their hair as they blow the cobwebs off winter-stored bikes and warm leathers. I sit, almost every working day, in my commuter train and dream of places further afield, of packing a small bag with the bare necessities, and just taking off again....
-
Stone by Stone
Freemasonry is, partially, built upon a system of symbolism which is used to assist with ethical, logical and philosophical discussion and learning. It takes a raw recruit, or candidate, into its Masonic workshop as an Entered Apprentice; rough and unready for what is to follow, for the learning process, for confronting new ethical and humanitarian ideas. Symbolically, this new candidate is shown as being a rough stone, fresh from the quarry, torn out of the mother rock, and unprepared. ...
