The Blurb: July 2006

Chess on Castle Rock

Wednesday 19 July 2006  7.45 pm

I'm sure you never have weeks like this.  Weeks where there just seem to be so many things to get sorted you can't imagine how they'll all manage to work.  Where deadlines look like they might be forced to become ... flexible.  Where sometimes you can almost tangibly feel God smoothing the road ahead and sometimes your road ahead becomes littered with metaphorical cattle grids apparently designed to trap the hooves of large elephants (to coin a phrase).

I'm not saying that you ever get weeks like that at a calm and peaceful place like Lee Abbey where I live.  But I might be implying that some of us do.

It's worth noting though that through all the preparations for New Wine, the Lee Abbey Summer Revue and the thrice-yearly publication of Rapport magazine this month (okay, so the above description does relate to me), there have been some stellar moments.

Not least yesterday, in the coffee group where I found some guests with my degree and my taste in music and when the evening entertainment was located on the front lawn in the setting sun.

Yesterday, which finished with a slightly windy but very exciting "on the edge" game of chess with Dorota atop Castle Rock (pictured) as darkness fell in the Valley of Rocks.

In other news, those of you who religiously check the Cartoons section every day will have observed that a new one has been added in the last few days.  Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
 
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When a stranger calls over the hedge...

Saturday 8 July 2006  11.32 am

Are we receiving a hidden coded message here? Take a look at the sequence of films to be shown in the Grand Lynton Monoplex Cinema (as it is affectionately known) later this month.  It made me laugh.

This was just after having watched the disaster action movie Poseidon, where a luxury liner gets turned upside down by a freak wave in the North Atlantic.  The only survivors are those who choose to make their way from the sealed ballroom to the bottom (top) of the ship and escape in dramatic fashion.  Lots of explosions, flash fires, roaring water, inching across narrow beams, and even a scene which would have Henry the Hoover on the edge of his seat.

Echoes of Titanic, but not as deep.  Good, nonetheless. :o)
 
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New insights

Sunday 2 July 2006  1.08 pm

I discovered two new things of significance yesterday.

1.  That the Eden Project in Cornwall has the groovy silver tree and several other plants only found in the Cape in South Africa, where I used to live (the tree is the greenish thing to the left with a silver glint, not the reddish thing to the right);

2.  That England really are incapable of winning a penalty shoot-out.  Apparently we also lost to Portugal on penalties in the EURO 2004 quarter final.  England's departure from this contest means that there is only one Community-represented team remaining: hosts Germany.  In fact, there are now only Western European teams in the Cup at all (Germany, Italy, Portugal and France).  Is this a first?
 
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