Tag: Shopping

B1 and B2


I stopped at the fruit market yesterday morning on the way into the office, to pick up a couple of bananas. At the checkout I realised I had only big notes and the shop was only starting up for the day.

To my surprise, the owner of the shop told me at the checkout, that I could just pop in the next day to pay. It was only a dollar or so but that gesture went a long way. This morning I made sure I went into the same shop and looked up the same guy and gave him the money as well as pick up more stuff from him.

These simple acts of decency were little anchors of hope in this increasingly apathetic world we live in.  It’s good to restore and maintain decent relations with another fellow human being.

The shop is simply called Box Hill Fruit Market Pty Ltd – that would be the shop I would buy from whenever I am in Box Hill. Thank you Mr Proprietor, whose name I shall elicit soon.

Frosty Grump


It has continued to be cold, in this only the second week of winter. The thermometer has struggled to go past 10 deg all day. During lunch, I took a walk for a couple of blocks around the office and basically tried to be a little bit more active after sitting down for the most part in the morning. I didn’t have my coat with me – so I had my shoulder hunched with hands stuffed in my suit jacket pockets but thankfully I had a scarf which I think I might see a lot of this winter.

In this sort of weather, it is easy to see how lonely Australians succumb to a depressive state. You look out and it is grey, windy, wet and cold. If you get out it will all hit you simultaneously – the wind, rain and cold – so you either don’t stay out too long or you don’t get out at all. Indoor, the heated air and white fluorescent light keeps the air stale and the environment cold and lifeless.

When you leave the office after a day’s work, you walk down wet and slippery footpaths and board the crowded public transport, often filled with tired, cold and uninterested passengers.  You get off at your stop, walk yet more leave strewn wet and dark footpaths and head for home. At your front door the leaves are scattered across your porch and when you finally let yourself into the house, you are confronted with an equally cold house. It is also dark and you turn on the lights and heater and put on the kettle. Sometimes you reach for a glass and a corkscrew instead, depending on what you needed to do that evening.

If you’re like me you soon settle down at a desk, reading material on the left and writing material on your right and you continue to work albeit at a different outcome. My desk lamp is yellow so at least that is a little brighter. I’d sip from either my coffee mug or wine glass and begin working. You put aside all other thoughts, or try to. You try not to think of the fact that the whole cold, wet and windy conditions would repeat the next day and you remain in a cycle, in groundhog day mode for as long as these weather conditions remain.

Late that night, you’d leave your study room or desk, refill the glass and settle down for a quick winding down in front of the television before climbing into bed about half an hour later, waiting for the next day when it’d start all over again. Am I being grumpy and cold …

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Slip Sliding Away


Things appear to be rosier now – or are they? Yes and no. This –  the here-but-not-yet, already but yet to come, bad but good, good but bad, first shall be last and last shall be first – fluctuation, undulation, the to-ing anf fro-ing of events, sentiments, expectations and outcomes, they all seem to be the flavour of the day. The flavour indeed, of life. Seasons come and go and with them our sentiments ebb and flow. Is winter here? Yes but not yet. The cold is here, for now. Soon it will be no more, smoked out by the heat.  But it will come again – it is yet to come, even when it is here already. The circle of life, the cycle of time. None are happy all the time, nor sad. None are melancholic all the time, nor glad.

No I have been smoking funny cigarettes. I am just reflecting on what Tress and I briefly talked about on the train this morning, on the way in to work. Nights of school lectures and events for kiddo, long hours of work for Tress, reasonable hours during the day and attention stretching work at night for yours truly. It is a time where heads are down and quills doodle (or keyboards hacked away) as the nights arrive sooner and stay longer, bringing with them cold winds and gloom to be swept away only by cheery and hopeful hearts and minds in our God. I now wake up to chilly mornings – it was 9 deg this morning – and I can no longer head off to the gym in my shorts and t-shirt. On a good day it still hits 25deg albeit momentarily but as always, it is the dark – the early arrival of farewell to the sun – which gets to me.

Maybe I have been cooped up in my study just a touch too long, but then again I have been thinking I have not spent enough time in there! Or maybe that too is a yes and no example. Life’s too hard some times. Fun, but hard.

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HairSpray!


Kiddo wanted badly to watch the Hairspray musical so we went last week, on Thursday night. It was at the Princess Theatre and I am really glad Kiddo suggested this because she obviously enjoyed it thoroughly but not only that, Tress and I enjoyed it immensely too. It pays to listen to your kids!

Screwtape Revisited


One of the yellowest and most tattered books sitting on my shelf is CS Lewis‘ “Screwtape Letters“. I first came across this gem more than 20 years ago, gave away a couple of copies and the old fragile copy is one of the many CS Lewis books I brought with me from Malaysia 2 years ago.  

         

Letter Eight of this book has this:

“Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal… As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirits can be directed toward an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change – for to be in time means to change.

Therefore, their nearest approach to constancy is undulation – the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back. It is a series of valleys and peaks. Ifyou watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every area of his life: his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth, periods of emotional and physical prosperity will alternate with periods of depression and poverty. The dryness and dullness through which your patient is now going are not, asyou fondly suppose, your workmanship. They are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make good use of it.

To decide how to best use this unstable condition, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it and then do the opposite. Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the valleys even more than on the mountain tops. Some of His special favourites have gone through the longer and deeper valleys than anyone else…

You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be physically present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the irresistable and the indisputable are the two weapons which th every nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the slightest degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot dominate them. He can only woo. For His idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves. To neutralize or assimilate them will not serve His purposes…

He leaves the reature to stand on its own feet – to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost their enjoyment. It is during the peak periods, that they are growing into the kind of creatures He wants them to be. It is the prayers offered in the state of dryness that please Him best.“

I dont know why I took that book out again. I have borrowed a book called “Daughters of Galilee” and have been toying with Alex Ferguson’s autobiography again so I certainly have entertaining stuff to read for now. CS Lewis’ work however, has always provided a solid intellectual basis for my beliefs and the above passage somehow struck a very rational chord in my mind. I wont try to articulate it for now (and would appreciate anyone assisting with that task) except to say it has centered me, at least for now.

“So, I commend the enjoyment of life.” (From the Bible – really. Eccl 8:15)

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