‘Think it possible that you may be mistaken’. This is the final sentence of number 17 of the Quaker Advices and queries (a key text in Quakerism). Is there anyone, anywhere, any time (pass the Martini!) who couldn’t benefit from sitting with that idea for a while?
Here I was, arriving from Oxford at Didcot Parkway on the way to a Quaker Enquirers’ course at the splendidly-named Charney Manor. I was emotionally exhausted after the morning’s encounter with lost youth, and physically exhausted after having a run (flatter than Kendal, but muddier also), wandering round town for miles, and lugging a large backpack whose hipbelt, I discovered too late, was no longer operational. And friends, there’s a lot of train stuff at Didcot Parkway. I mean, a LOT. What with that, and (more…)
The Kendal What are Words Worth? group is currently suspended. I’ll keep the page updated as to when we are able to meet again and in the meantime, if you want to be notified when that is, just drop me a note with your contact details.
What Are Words Worth? is a monthly group I facilitate on behalf of the Wordsworth Trust. We’ve been meeting for over three years now and though we know each other well by now, we’re also delighted that new people are still coming along. It’s a big table: there’s plenty of room!
It’s a shared reading group, which takes place on the first Wednesday or first Thursday of the month, alternately. We meet in a cafe and enjoy poetry together. Each month we have a topic, and we bring whatever comes to mind in relation to that topic. We’re a various, warm and friendly bunch who enjoy sharing our love of poetry, our memories, feelings, musings and life-experiences. There’s no pressure to read, to talk, or do anything but be there. But you’ll probably find yourself drawn in…
Among other things so far we’ve looked at colours, weather, beginnings, creatures, mountains, nature, conflict, pictures and images, death, the elements, local poetry, water… We choose the topics together, and there’s never quite enough time to share all the treasures we find.
We meet upstairs at Finkle’s Cafe on Finkle Street in Kendal, from 11-12.30. The dates in our diary for the rest of this year are Wednesday 6th November, Thursday 5th December, Wednesday 8th January, Thursday 6th February ad Wednesday 4th March. If you’d like to ask about it, feel free to email me. Or just turn up. You’ll be very welcome.
… and I don’t mean in some metaphorical sense. It’s not an image for being efficient, or moving through existence effortlessly and with ease. Nope. It’s actual running. I know. You couldn’t be more surprised than I am.
When I was at boarding school we had to do these things called Standards, which basically meant that everyone with the requisite complement of limbs had to “do” every athletics event—track, field and (more…)
Stripping off with a bunch of other people, variously familiar to me, in the chilly, cramped vestry of some hitherto-unknown church. Dressing for Saturday Night in modest, full-length black, then perching on a chair in an unheated church hall, eating squashed sandwiches. All the ingredients of a perfectly normal weekend for me.
I’ve been singing in choirs since I was about 7 (not continuously, obviously), and this has frequently involved doing gigs in (more…)
I read an interview with Alain de Botton in which he revealed that the mirror features in his morning routine only as something he can glance into and ‘check that nothing too terrible [is] happening’. I like that a lot. This is a level of personal grooming I can relate to.
But even that isn’t necessary, of course, if you don’t go out of the house. If all you’re going to do is have a cup of tea, why put yourself through grooming, or indeed dressing, at all? Why take off your jamas/house clothes and brush your hair? (Or at least redeploy it; those among you (more…)