Woodbridge revisited

We had a slow lazy morning, but the sun appeared and the dense cloud of the past few days began to break up, Ann drove us along winding country lanes for lunch in Woodbridge, a lovely village up the river Deben, which we last visited seven years ago, with its old tide mill, boatyard and quay crammed with smallish marine craft. Houseboats, seagoing barges, yachts and the suchlike are crammed alongside each other resting on mud when we arrived, as the tide was out. Several craft of typical character were from from Holland, a near neighbour in maritime terms.

We parked a couple of miles out of the town, down river at Kyson Hill, then walked down to the footpath along the river into Woodbridge. I heard a curlew and an oyster-catcher as we walked, but we didn't see either. The restaurant we were aiming for turned out to be fully booked, so we bought sandwiches and drinks at a modest sandwich shop nearby and took them down to a seat overlooking the estuary, and ate them in the sun watching a couple of snipe foraging for food in the mud, twenty metres away - I think there were more than a dozen snipe feeding in the area, along with the gulls and other birds I couldn't identify a hundred metres away. I took over eighty photos, half of them of birds in the estuary, uploading these from two cameras after supper.

In the news recently Haiti has suffered another devastating earthquake with around two thousand deaths reported. Emergency aid has been slow to reach the country, perhaps partly due to international attention being distracted to the crisis in Afghanistan? Since the recent American and allied  forces withdrawal, the country has been overrun at shocking speed by Taliban insurgents. The capital Kabul was handed over without a fight, and in the past few days thousands of people have sought to flee the country, fearful of reprisals because of their role in government, or as contractors with allied forces. 

Britain has made a commitment to receive up to twenty thousand refugees, army interpreters and their families. Around the country local governments are expressing willingness to offer hospitality, but are concerned that national government should support them financially. This particular national government has a reputation for over-promising and under delivery. It's impossible to see what the impact will be of this inevitable moral decision if post brexit and covid economic recovery is very slow, limiting resources to help poor and deprived citizens as well as those being offered sanctuary. 

Looking back to times when Ugandan Asian and Vietnamese refugees were welcomed to Britain, as with Jewish refugees from the Nazis, it seems likely that in the long run Britain will again benefit from a new wave of incomers bringing their creative gifts and energy to bear in freedom and security of their new country. Some people see refugees only as a threat, and not as a promise that revitalises national life and identity. Will this ever change? I hope and pray it will.

New Year hospitality received

We stayed up to see the New Year in, and watched the fireworks display at Cardiff Castle from the attic window. What surprised us was the number of fireworks set off across the city around midnight and for half an hour afterwards. New Year's fireworks are not unexpected here, but the scale and widespread nature of their adoption all over the city, to judge by the bangs and flashes near and far, this time was still a surprise. More people seem to have money to burn, or are showing reckless contempt for the inevitable increase of austerity in the present political and economic climate.

I was glad of the opportunity of a lie in, although I still woke up at my usual time, oddly ten past seven, just before the central heating comes on, which is puzzling. But I did manage to doze until a quarter to nine. On my way out to Mass St Germans, I dropped Clare off at St John's for the Canton Benefice United Parish Eucharist. There were thirty of us for the service. On arrival I discovered that I had left my printed address behind. I had to remember what I'd decided to preach about and improvise, taking the risk of going on too long and repeating myself. Thankfully, despite it being New Year's day, I didn't see anyone yawning, or looking at their watches.

We were invited to lunch with Martin, Chris and the boys in Newport, so I returned home, collected Clare and drove over there for a two o'clock start. It was Karim's thirtieth birthday. He's a live-in carer helping to look after their fostered lads Andrew and Robert. He invited several of his friends to join us as well, so we met several new family friends. The meal was excellent and the company was good. It was altogether a delightful experience.

During Advent, Martin and Chis opened their home to an old friend of Martin's from College years, who was about to die with little immediate family to support him. His own partner had died several years ago, so he was facing his end alone in a hospice. So Martin and Chris offered him a place to die with friends, which he willingly accepted. He had to be hospitalised with a spontaneously broken bone before Christmas, but was returned to their care a few days later, and died last Thursday, 'fortified by the rites of the Church', as the traditional saying goes. Although an intense and difficult time, it was an experience which Martin said left him feeling greatly blessed.

We returned home in time for the Archers, and later sat and watched a programme of extracts from the television shows of Morecombe and Wise, which were so much part of our young family life, forty odd years ago. And we laughed as much now as we did then. The humour is playful and crazy in the best tradition of music hall and movie comedy. There's very little that ever matches their act to be seen on TV today, so much of which is coarse, crude and over reliant on the bawdy and offensive. On times satire seems to be cruel of the sake of showing how cruel it's possible to be. It's more embarrassing than it is funny, and expression of rage in the face of impotence. Gentle ridicule of human pretensions is a more powerful and sometimes subversive way to challenge the pretentiousness of the status quo than all the anger and nastiness that sullies our screens these days.