Farewell and thank you

For over ten years, during which time I became rather fond of her, she served me well.  What ever I asked of her she responded to willingly and I know that some of my more extreme demands, pressed in foul weather, on rock strewn meadows, were far less than reasonable. Ever ready for action, she kept strong and healthy.  Recently though she has been showing some signs of her age and the consequences of my unreasonable treatment of her; leaks becoming evident where there once were none, discoloured blotches on exposed surfaces here and there, minor failures.  The time, sadly, had come to look for a replacement for her, something younger, fitter, more sprightly.

At the car dealer’s showroom in Kalamata I found something to suit me; ten years younger, smart, little used, perhaps just a little flashy. The dealer eyed my trusty steed suspiciously.  “There are holes in the floor” he said.  “Of course”, I replied, “The rain that pours in through the holes on the roof has to get out somewhere”.  He offered me eight-hundred euros for her which I accepted with alacrity; before he had a chance to change his mind.  I said a sad and silent goodbye to her as her drove her down into the service bays under the showroom.  But, life must go on!

Plough the fields and scatter?

Not a paddock and far from Kent, it is all I have handy, it will have to serve to illustrate this post.

In an e-mail received here this morning, I learned from a friend in Kent that a local developer has bought a large paddock close to her house on which, she says, he intends to have built an evangelical church.  That ground be ploughed to rid it of all life is, apparently, a prerequisite condition of building.  If this is true; that in order to raise a  building in which the creator  of all life can be worshipped it is necessary to have all life destroyed, does, it seems to me and to say the least of it  sound like something of an extraordinary paradox!