Wars, Winds and Wordsworth

No blog posting for over a week now. Oh dear, I must rectify that! It's not of course that opportunity hasn't presented itself; goodness knows I have plenty of time on my hands right now. However, I've been spending most of my on-line sessions recently in some interesting e-mail conversations with friends so this one, started last week, never got finished. Maybe I ought to abandon my "long form" style altogether in favour of quicker, pithier paragraphs; let me know what you think.

Today's title however reminds me of that rather tacky but strangely enjoyable mini series The Winds of War of many years back. They don't make them like that anymore, and some would say thank goodness! I believe it was one of Robert Mitchum's last parts, but I can still see him and all the glamorous wartime lovelies, and hear that rather epic theme tune with its poignancy and pathos.

Film and TV will probably always rush to the calamitous and profound emotions of conflict to bring "entertainment", but the unsanitised reality of course is that war stinks. Real people die, not the triumphs of some make-up artist's brush to rise again at the "cut", but mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and innocent young lives who have barely had time to explore this wonderful world, let alone make sense of it's awfulness.

The horror that is post-Saddam Iraq continues to dominate the headlines, but how many other conflicts go unreported or half-forgotten? This is where international broadcasting comes into it's own, so maybe I ought to be listening to short wave a bit more. Darfur and Sudan got mentions a week or two back, but now it is firmly back to Iraq. The latest controversies revolve around the US attempting to bring in the Black Watch to take over their duties, but retaining control. The US continue to bomb Faluja, supposedly justified in an effort to root out the killers of Ken Bigley and many others.

Meanwhile,close to the supposed centre of power in the interim regime in Baghdad itself, Iraqi activists struck last week. At least 7 people are reported killed, but I will wager it is actually many more. Let no one pretend that Iraq was liberated last year: the conflict rages on, and nobody is the victor but sanity is the loser.

And yet, still Tony Blair at Prime Minister's Questions last Wednesday would not concede that going to war was wrong. Oh, he will apologise for just about everything else, admit that the intelligence was wrong, but not for the lives that have been lost in the vainglorious attempt to demonstrate that might is right in league with George Bush. I guess that's politics, but it's not humility. The world needs more of that.

I'm being unusually open in my own opinions here, perhaps, about the war. I don't pretend for one moment that Saddam Hussein had any merits, but what has replaced him for the moment is no better. And yet, it gets to the point where the news becomes so repetitive and sickening you almost want to turn your ears and eyes off to it. For heaven's sake, we know Blair will not apologise for the war, so why don't we just let the past and it's mistakes rest, and get on with planning for a peaceful future. Or is that just too much to ask?

WINDY WORDS
It was a stormy week weatherwise, as local media on Wednesday reported a tornado in Horsham, where I have friends. I worried for them for a while, but fortunately an e-mail reply later in the week revealed all is OK. There was quite a trail of devastation left behind in the small hours of the morning there though. Further east here in East Sussex, we seem to have fared a little better, but it nevertheless has been a time of galoshes and gusts. With the seventeenth anniversary of the great storm just passed this weekend, a few hearts must have missed a beat or two with worry at the time. My own concern during the heavy rain was more for the people of Lewes and Uckfield, the most badly hit during the floods of October 2000.

Is global warming a reality and is this a consequence? Who knows- I don't think even the experts do quite frankly. However, as someone pointed out on the radio yesterday, there is nothing new about all this. Indeed, the very make up of our British Isles has happened as a consequence of melting ice and receeding flood, so why should we expect the future to be any different?

WORDSWORTH WEMEMBERED
Excuse the shades of Elmer Fudd- did you know you can even get Google in his language? It probably comes of singing along with "I tought I taw a Putty Tat" on Abracadbra last week on the DAB, but I can't resist some rather tacky alliteration with all the W's this morning.
Most of last week, my memories turned regularly back to a very happy holiday of exactly a year ago, when I revisited the English Lake District. I had been there only once previously, back on a Merrymaker day trip in May 1979 in the good old days of British Rail. However, I remember how awe-struck I was by the beauty of Windermere and the surrounding fells and mountains, and vowed that I would return one day. A pity that it took me nearly a quarter of a century to do so, but I very much doubt it will be another 25 years before I return to explore this wonderful consequence of climate change eons ago.
It was perhaps appropriate that my arrival in Windermere village was greeted by that nasty fine rain which always seems to penetrate through to the marrow. At least it wasn't actually cold and windy though, How very different the scene looked the next morning, a Sunday, and how appropriate was the first hymn at the lovely service I attended at Windermere Methodist Church: Hills of the North Rejoice! As those who read my Christmas newsletter last year will know, that has always been one of my favourites.

Anybody who has known me for a while will also know that I tend to have the sort of memory that can remember the most miniscule details of past happenings. Last week therefore, I was remembering what I was doing at the same time 366 days ago (don't forget this has been a leap year!). There were so many experiences precious to recall which salved this unsettling time in my present life. Wandering around Ambleside on a Sunday afternoon, for instance, after a cream tea by the lake. Marvelling at the level of detail and expression on a fresco in the parish church there, which preserves on stone a local ceremony which took place poignantly in that dark and dangerous period around the start of the Second World War. Or the sedate passage southwards down Windermere to Lakeside on Monday morning, or taking delight in the antics of the otters in the aquarium there, following my ride on the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Steam Railway. And could I ever forget probably the most heavenly train journey in Britain, along the Settle to Carlisle line on the Wednesday afternoon? If Windermere took my breath away in 1979, this holiday certainly left me gasping anew at the beauty of it all, and marvelling at the creator behind the splendour of the landscape.

However, probably the day of that holiday which most endures for me was the Tuesday, when I followed in the footsteps of probably the greatest of the romantic poets, William Wordsworth. Taking tea and a Danish (or was it coffee? See, my memory is not infallible!) sitting next to the tiny river which runs through Grasmere, before following the tourist hordes to the church Wordsworth worshipped in there was a good starter, but somehow it didn't quite capture the spirit of wandering lonely as a cloud.
Looking round Dove Cottage, the house he shared with his sister Dorothy, was getting nearer to the essence of the man; it was certainly a fascinating trip back in time. At the next door museum maintained by the Wordsworth Trust, I felt a time of high emotion and joy as somehow this great channel of the muse took on flesh and blood again in the twenty-first century, though time seems to stand still in these parts. Never was a scribe better named.His ability to encapsulate the profound beauty of his surroundings in rhyme and rhythm, syllables and syntax would stir the poet in all but the hardest heart: it certainly did in mine.
However, it was the area around Rydal Mount, Wordsworth's later home, that I found my most precious time of the day. Over a pub pint of the delicious complexity which is Coniston Bluebird Bitter (well, had to sample a local brew, didn't I!) I refreshed my thirsty body before exploring alone the wonderful, relatively simple little church built by Wordsworth's patronage at Rydal Mount. It's interior with it's rounded roof reminded me rather of a tube train, and hence figuratively of the journey that we are all making towards eternity. Yet it's not with anguish or fear this image came to mind, but with cheer. The interior of the church is bright and airy, almost like the light of a spring day which so famously inspired the Lakeland poet as he watched my favourite flower, the daffodil, dancing in the breeze.

Outside in the churchyard, I shared my joys,my hopes and my disappointments with the Lord, looking out over the timeless watery serenity of Grasmere as the poet did on many occasions. No wonder he loved this area so much. I bet he prayed here too.

As I sat there and brought my words as well as my silences to The Master, I thought back to my own hopes and promise of early boyhood. I recalled the wonderful primary school teachers who had helped to foster my own love of the language, of the high marks scored for "composition" (i.e creative writing) and of always being the one who got asked to help the other children with their spelling. Doubt I would do so well at the latter now! I thought of those holiday accounts I used to love writing and which meant so much to my grandma. And once again, I realised that I longed to write, that I felt born to write, but how and where?
Well, maybe in part you're seeing an answer to that particular prayer right now- excuse the pun. I would never have dreamt a year ago that I could be letting the world and his wife read my opinions and thoughts so easily through the web (even less that anyone should actually want to read them!). I would not have even had the time or energy, with the stressful existence which was my previous job, to get writing most of the time. I'm not intending to be conceited, but this most definitely is one of my gifts. But as we were reminded at the excellent service and AGM at church yesterday, gifts from God are meant to be used and shared. Yet still I'm asking how best can I use this gift, where should I be applying it for God's glory rather than self-satisfaction and maybe earning a crust.

I guess my full answer may only be found at the last stop, when the Victory line draws nigh to Heaven's Gate and my earthly journey is done. There are no day return tickets on this trip,except in memory, but every opportunity to enjoy the journey as much as you can: "life in all its fulness", Jesus called it. He meant us to get the most out of travelling along that permanent way to the truth and thelife. In his earthly life and teaching, I find all penalty fares are cancelled and a new ticket written by the engineer of creation. No long dark tunnel or impossible gradient is too much for him- indeed he said that faith could move mountains. In Him are words worth trusting. In the beginning was the Word...

ON THE RADIO
I just finished typing my original posting in time to catch the Daily Service on Radio4. It took me ages to realise that this is actually offered as an alternative programme on DAB, though I guess it makes sense- hence "DService" as the radiotext identifier on my Pure Evoke's display. It was an excellent service which fitted in well with some of the thoughts I've written above actually, but one thing puzzles me with the technology.
Both Radio 4's main service and the Daily Service show a sampling rate of 64kbps- quite abysmal really, but we'll have to live with it I guess. However, there is a quite noticeable difference in the audible volume levels between the Daily Service and the main service. This becomes very prominent at 10.00 when both streams of the multiplex join together again. In fact, it is so noticeable that I often have to turn the volume down again. Why is this? Is it something to do with the compression used? Any technophiles out there who can supply an answer, and has anyone noticed this with other DAB opts, such as 5 Live sports extra?