We haven’t done much blogging this month – not because we’ve been slacking on vacation, though. Actually we’ve been rather busy. John has just completed a major revision of his book, Introducing the New Testament – all 200,000 words of it (and then some). And started on its Old Testament counterpart (3 chapters done, 10 more to go). Olive has been working flat out with a church reassessing its mission activities in the community. And for fun, we’ve remodelled the garden, which is a sizeable enterprise in itself (the picture only shows less than half of it).
Garden for a mousehole
Finding piles of wonderfully flat stones on a local beach has provided a great supply of materials, but by the time we’ve filled one bag of them we’re both struggling with the weight – plenty of time to reflect on other weights we all carry around in life. And also to get rid of some of ours by throwing smaller stones into the sea with a ‘and that ones for him‘ sort of prayer (write your own script). It may sound mad, but it’s a great way to de-stress and put awkward people in perspective.
Oh, and on top of all that, we now have a hive full of honey bees buzzing round the garden – who of course need lots of tlc and who also provide a great deal of fascination and fun. And are amazingly docile – not a sting in sight, nor even an angry bee in fact. Nice to know that we must be in tune with nature.
This week we’re off for a 24 hour trip to the Edinburgh Book Festival, for a Society of Authors event hosting the great and the good of the worlds of books, politics, civic life, etc. More on that on our return. Well, if it’s as good as the publicity suggests, otherwise there’ll be nothing to report on.
