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No Birthday Cake
I had plans for today, carefully made well in advance. As I wrote in an earlier post, I was going to give out a special lunch for my work colleagues, to celebrate the end of my sixty-fifth year of life. Those plans had to be cancelled, and new plans made: the union has called us out on strike for a day and there is a certain obligation involved; I pay my dues, and it is for this reason that I pay those dues....
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Taking to the Streets
As a child, when I still imagined that television was interesting, I sent a great deal of my time ensuring I would not have to go to bed too early by watching the adult programmes; that is, those documentaries and news bulletins which I equated with being an adult, as opposed to what we now understand to be adult (sexual / violent) content. I gained, over several years, a very solid view of what the world was like: Thunderbirds was never going to be able to rescue us....
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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. ...
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The Best Laid Plans
I am one of those older people who is not young enough, nor old enough, to wish to celebrate a birthday. I am past the stage of claiming each quarter of a year to increase my age, and not yet at the stage of adding each quarter of a year to my time spent on this small planet to impress with my longevity. Unfortunately there is never an age when other people do not wish to celebrate your birthday, whether they do the same with theirs or not....
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The Big Gold Nightmare
I met a North American from the United States in a small town in northern Germany a few years ago. He was sitting on a bench under a tree in what passes as the town's main square, where the May Tree is erected each year, and looking very sorry for himself....
