Happiness … joy … sadness … despair

Once in a while when I drive home from work I’m listening to the 6:00 pm news on Radio 4.

Once in a while, when a news item touches me, I turn it off to drive and think.

Last week there was a bus that crashed in Scotland. On it’s way taking a group of kids from Lanark to Alton Towers – an adventure theme / entertainment park in England.

Not kids really – they were sixth formers … mostly aged 17 I would guess.

One of the pupils, a 17 year old girl named Natasha, died in the accident.

Incidents like this touch me somehow.

Life is such a strange kind of an affair.

Happiness and joy never very far away from sadness and despair.

I feel a sadness and desolation for the parents of Natasha.

Each day, I know, the same kind of thing happens to many people. People that I don’t know. Events that I will never hear of.

It’s difficult to discover meaning.

Vote for Katie

My younger daughter, Katie, is a keen traveller and photographer. She’s entered a competition that brings the two together and would love it if you watched her video and voted for her. It’s all at: http://www.worldtravellerintern.co.uk/member/katie-wright/

If you have a spare couple of minutes please take a look and vote as well. If several people need to vote from a shared computer you can do that in Internet Explorer by pressing Ctrl + Shift + P to start an “InPrivate” browsing session. In Google Chrome press Ctrl + Shift + N to start an “Incognito” session.

Eddie Izzard

I watched part of a TV program about Eddie Izzard’s 43 marathon’s in 51 days (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8256589.stm).

He ran over 1,100 miles.

And he’s 47 … and not an athlete.

Eddie is a transvestite but didn’t run in heels.

Wow though … he did great!

Physics, Chemistry, Cosmetics, Doctrine and Cats

A few weeks ago I watched part of a TV program about the solar system.

A very enthusiastic young man used nothing but an umbrella, a tin can full of water and a thermometer to work out how much energy is generated by the sun.

Being able to do this was why he loved physics.

Of course, he also needed to get to Death Valley, know how far it was from the sun to the Earth, know how to work out the surface area of a sphere, know that the Earth rotates around the sun, be able … and so on and on and on.

I always preferred chemistry.

Once upon a time I did a teacher training course and spent a while teaching a class of 13 and 14 year olds all about cosmetics. It was … shall we say … challenging.

I also taught Religious Education for a while. A similar age group studying the Apostles Creed. I’d mad the pint that it was all about doctrine. Towards the end of the lesson I thought I’d better check on their understanding.

“Can you tell me what is meant by the word doctrine?”

A boy raises his hand.

“Is it what you do to cats?”

He is serious. No one is smirking.

Somehow I feel that I may have given these impressionable young minds an erroneous kind of picture of what the early church spent its time doing.

I think that it’s never safe to assume that people that seem to be listening are actually hearing what you are intending to say.

Cholesterol and Hell

I’ve booked tickets at Party on the Lawn (http://www.partyonthelawn.co.uk/) and so will get a chance to see Chris While and Julie Matthews play live. Sally and my elder daughter (now, doesn’t that sound a little over-formal?) are coming along as well. It’s a noon until midnight affair and it looks good to me. The more I listen to their music, the more I like it.

Over the past few weeks there’s been a Surrey Swans get-together, a buffet at Kathie & Billie’s and a trip out shopping and dining in Windsor.

I timed things not-too-well for the buffet. Cutting a long story short … I ended up with my annual-ish blood cholesterol test sample needing to be taken from my arm the morning after the buffet … and I had to fast for fourteen hours. So Andrea had to sit and watch everyone else eating the wonderful food and just take an occasional sip of water.

When I got to see Nurse Nicky the next morning … as I rolled up my sleeve I said I’d be looking the other way … the sight of my own blood makes me faint. She quipped back … that’s fine … I’ll look the other way as well.

The trip to Windsor was with Billie. It was the usual kinda thing. In and out of shops and lunch at Cafe Rouge. I bought some food at Marks and Spencer’s and some nail polish and moisturiser at Boots.

The election is approaching and a lady handed me a Labour party leaflet. I had a little chat with a man that was selling … or maybe giving away books about some kind of spirituality and meditation. He seemed nice enough, but it was one of those conversations that opened with the question “Have you thought about what happens after we die?”.

Well, I have. Quite a lot over the years.

I’ve journeyed from childhood faith through atheism, born again Christian and then to agnostic and now … a part of me would like to believe … but mostly I’m not able to. It all doesn’t make sense to me.

As I was chatting with the man, Billie explained that she was a totally committed atheist.

I’m not at all sure what I am … but if there is a God I hope that he or she is different that the one that I used to believe in. I believed in the all loving and all forgiving kind of God that evangelical Christians believe in. But in the final analysis it also meant that I believed that it was likely that the vast majority of people that had ever lived would spend eternity in hell.

Whatever is true … I hope that it’s something different than that.

That first ever shopping trip as Andrea seems along time ago now.

It’s nice that to step outside as a feminine me seems more and more natural as time passes.

Same and Shame

A short while ago there was a program on TV about Transvestites Wives. It was also about Transvestites.

One of the TV’s lived in Yorkshire. In male mode, he works in the steel industry and explained that his work colleagues know nothing of his female self. Though if any of them are interested in the concept of Transvestite wives, I expect that everyone knows now.

Another who lived in Scotland explained how local people had tried to get them to move away.

One tgirl went out with one of the couples for a first trip out as a girl in the daylight. They spent a day in Blackpool. Nothing especially bad happened. But there were taunts.

I think that one of the feelings shared by everyone was a desire to just be allowed to get on with living and to be themselves.

Society has a mixed track record  on this.

It seems that there are quite a lot of people who find it very difficult to live with people who are different than themselves.

That’s why there are places where it’s hard to be gay. Or lesbian. Or Christian. Or Muslim. Or female. Or transgendered. Or black. Or Asian. Or disabled.

During a lunchtime walk I thought about this.

It seems that there are people who want to attach some kind of shame to other people.

 

There is no shame in being.

The shame is theirs who mock and taunt.

Or give the blame to God.

A God of the same.

Unable to accept the different.

Infinite Andreas

Last night Horizon (a television documentary program that has a scientific kind of bias) was all about infinity.

I only caught a part of it.

It included a consideration of the possibility that the combination of an infinite number of chimpanzees with an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time would eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare.

Some of the mathematicians explained that there are an infinite number of universes, each with an infinite size.

This, it seems, means that whatever is possible must certainly exist somewhere.

In fact, because the laws of science would be different in different universes, then a whole lot of impossible things must also exist somewhere or other.

Somewhere there is another Andrea sitting at a laptop computer typing this blog posting.

And another using different words.

And another writing Shakespeare.

And another … and another … and an infinite number of others.

Somewhere there is also a chimpanzee named Andrea typing a blog posting with exactly the same words as I am using.

The mathematics of infinity, the mathematician on Horizon gave the impression, makes this not just a probability – but a certainty.

Me?

I’m a sceptic.

I’m not convinced that infinity is all that it’s cracked up to be.