Good Teacher

What must I do to find purpose in life?
Start with kind words, begin with husband or wife,

What must I do, family relationships to mend?
Go on holiday with them as you would a best friend.

What must I do to live a life full of meaning?
See the people about you and and see them with feeling.

What must I do from death to be free?
Give away your luxuries and then follow me.

European Idiosyncrasies

Here is a collection of my favourite European idiosyncrasies.

What about the tiny country of Moresnet?
A legal state from 1816 to 1920.  Official Language was Esperanto as the population spoke Dutch, French and German.  Size 1 square mile.  Main reason for the state was that is surrounded a economically valuable bauxite mine.  Maintaining it's neutrality was expedient for all parties, until the ore ran out, and the territory was of little value and reverted to Belgium.

 
Green is German (Prussia)
Orange is The Netherlands
Yellow is Belgium
Blue is Moresnet.

Other Belge idiosyncrasies are:

• Baarle-Hertog (Belgium)
• Baarle-Nassau (Netherlands)_

There there is Kein Walsertal, This is part of Austria, but has no access to Austria at all. The distance from Riezlern to the next nearest Austrian village at Hittisau is 43km taking some 50 minutes.  Why is it there?  Apparently it was a historic hunting ground for a local Austrian Bishop.

Italy an enclave in Switzerland at Campione on Lake Lugano.

Germany has an enclave in Switzerland at Busingen am Hochrein

Spain has an enclave in France at Livia on the Pyrennean border

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_enclaves_and_exclaves
http://www.exclave.eu/
http://enclaves.webs.com/westerneurope.htm

PRAYER

From the George Herbert festival 2014

The George Herbert Festival in Salisbury between 10th and 12th June 2014 was brilliant.  For me it was a rich mix of three great wonders.  1) Our relationship with The Creator, 2) A celebration of creative expression and 3) the significance of historical narrative.  This inspired me to attempted to do what Mary Sydney, Herbert's patron, enjoyed doing with the Psalms, and paraphrase the Herbert poem 'Prayer'.
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Prayer the Churches banquet, Angel age,                                
         Gods breath in man returned to his birth,                               
         The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,                          
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth;               
Engine against th' Almightie, sinners towre,                          
        Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,                       
        The six-daies world transposing in an houre,                         
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear;                   
Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,                
        Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,                                       
        Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,                                        
The Milkie way, the bird of Paradise,                                       
         Church-bels beyond the stares heard, the souls bloud,           
         The land of spices; something understood                                


Communion - the eternal celebration,
         Our life force from the origins of time,
         Reflected images, face a heavenly destination,
The perfect interaction joining soil and the sublime;
Empowered  by their Lord, transgressors are  fortified,
         With crashing noises, kill the thing they love,
         A sudden fault-line, and the world transmogrified,
A peculiar call, affecting all from above;
Our contrary desires, all things made good,
         Bountiful provision, joy shared by all,
         As originally intended, humanity stands tall,
The extraordinary about us, sweetness of heaven,
        Echo from afar, an interstellar fragrance,
        An exquisite land, now all making sense

Self Portrait

Mr Saddler asked me whether I was pleased with my 'O' Level result.
I hadn't thought, so I decided 'why not?'
In the same way, I see my face and think 'why not?'

As the years go by, the baby grows into an old man,
And I hardly notice a thing.

So today I looked closely into the mirror, with razor held to my throat.
At first I smiled, I saw the little shock of hair, curling upward from my ear holes,
Like smouldering wisps of smoke.
I remembered little Joshua, three years old, tugging on a tuft as I sat with him in the crèche.
"You've got a beard in your ear" he rightly said.

The following week my Iranian barber trimmed it right off without asking.  He trimmed my eye brows too.
He understands these things.  It's best not to talk, just get it done.

I remember my grandfather; shaving by the kitchen sink.
Not much hair on top, but gushing hair from his ears, and eye brows.
Boy he needed an Iranian hairdresser.

I notice my head of hair, a gift from my mother.
Thin hair, but not a sign of grey.
Just visible, symmetrically positioned flashes of cloudy grey; from my father.
These come and go with trips to my machine-gun shooting barber (a basement in Birmingham apparently).

And on my left forehead, a faint touch of the Gorbachov's white ink stain.
I am reminded of the day my chain fell off, swiftly followed by me,
And my forehead grazed Mere Road.
Later in A and E, the junior doctor asked me to recite the names of the queens' children.
As an ardent republican, I was shocked when the names came forth, 'Charles, Ann, Andrew, Edward'.
A nurse reassured Margaret far too effectively.
She eventually found me in my hospital bed, red faced and swearing allegiance to the Crown.

Two faint symmetrical indentations line my top lip.
A genetic legacy to roving canines.
Whilst descending into my jaw, these were blown off course,
Like misdirected missiles they flew away into my brain.
After extraction the rogues were discarded.
For my young sister there was progress.
The same happened to her,
But hers removed and chastised, where put back (minus their bite).

A real smile can be detected in the eyes.
The Dechennce muscles can not be faked.
Creases curl with genuine warmth, and I saw my eyes rise as I looked in the mirror,
As my razor came down.