I passed the 'Seat' shop early this morning, before any of you were up, and decided that this would be an ideal Christmas present, for me! There were two reasons for this, one the colour yellow is the safest on UK roads it appears, and two, it was the cheapest car in the pound. A mere £5999, a snip for the rich amongst us. When I got home I checked the £2;34 in the savings account and at 0.001% a year I may soon be able to but this car myself, what?...oh.
I learned to drive in a Seat Ibiza and very nice it was too. A nice tight 'feel' to it, although the driving instructor did keep in it tip top condition, not counting the time yon lassie rammed it against the left hand side and scattered them across the road of course! He thinks of that still!
On the way I passed the setting up of a 'Boot sale.' You will all be aware of this, people driving, paying the man in charge a £5 note, setting up a small table or blanket, and selling all the junk in the house they wish to lose. I am told there are many bargains to be had but when I passed nothing had begun and I had no cash. Why these boot sales always occur early on a Sunday morning when I have other things to do I know not. Why not use a Saturday I ask? It would suit me and my piggy bank better? People are so selfish I find.
My Sunday ended in here, the first time I have been inside. I should say I took the picture earlier when the heat of the day had returned, chased away the mist and made the heart glad. These English churches fascinate me, it is very different in Scotland you see. Places like this go back hundreds of years and many bear traces of the events history has wrought on them. This was possibly began as a Saxon church and was developed as the town grew once the market began in 1199. Roman brick can be seen in places and the graveyard may well have been used by them and Saxons, though not at the same time! An unusual Anglican church this one, they appear to believe in God! Pews, arches, interesting things in corners I would have liked to look into, and as I sat pondering I pondered on the Victorians sitting stiffly in these pews, each in their place, the unwilling dissenters from the years of the reformation forced to attend unwillingly, the vicars who canny men that they were led the people wisely, the vicars from distant times who may not, and who may not even have been able to read that much! Pilgrims passing through, beadles using sticks to control 'rowdy youths,' a panoply of a thousand years of the towns history. As I was having difficulty following the sermon, acoustics not as good as I hoped and his speech a slight hindrance, I mused instead. Nice to be in such a place, in spite of the Anglican way of doing things.
Oh yes, and for collectors of doors we have this narrow item. I suppose this is used by those wishing to climb into the ancient tower, and those who each Monday practice ringing the bells. There is not much point in being a campanologist if you are too fat, says he taking his stomach of the table.
I told the vicar and he tolled the bell mate.
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13 comments:
Maybe you could get a car with an unapproved seat for a lot less?
I need an new car or a new second-hand car or a new third-hand car badly! I need a car that I don't have to coax gently each time I get into it in the hope it gets me to the stores and back again! Poor little thing...it's served me well and I hope it continues to do so for a little while longer!
Oh! Give me some help Lotto, please!!!
A lovely old church.
Jerry, All seats must be approved by UK law!
Lee, Ah yes, trusting in the Lotto will help buy a car.......
There's nothing wrong with dreaming, Adullamite...and saving. Both, unfortunately, take as long to come into fruition...if they ever do! ;)
They appear to believe in God in that church you say? True believers don't put lightning rods on top of their steeples.
This is an amazing piece of architecture though.
Max, True believers know that infidels sometimes take over churches so prepare for this.
God doesn't let infidels take over the churches of her beloved flock. Flocki.
She told me so.
There is much that should be made fun of, my dear Max, and other things that should never be.
Well, Jerry, I'm kinda with Max, here.
As you may know, I'm very interested in history, and in the development of the great churches and cathedrals of the middle-ages. These were magnificent, and unprecedented buildings. Nothing even remotely similar had existed before, no castle aspired to such uninterrupted height or length or span.
What we now see is a wonderful legacy, but had we been alive in earlier times, we might have a different view, because the truth is, these magnificent buildings used to collapse, magnificently, on the heads of the believers inside.
When they stayed up, they were an occasion of praise and the glory of god, but when they fell down, the devil was blamed, of course, in those days, you could execute a few stonemasons and a widow with a squint, make an offering to an obscure saint, and, ideally, secure a relic, such as a splinter of wood someone brought back from the holy land, claimed to be a fragment of the true cross.
All would be well. Everybody would believe god would see their pious response to disaster and protect them. I'd say that the structural development of the flying-buttress was more effective than relics or devotion when it came to walls staying up.
The lightning conductor... If only Ben Franklin had come along earlier, spires might have been less likely to be blasted to pieces and set on fire, thus destroying their churches. God, if he is responsible for lightning, certainly seemed to show something of a predilection for blasting churches. Until Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod.
Read the book!
I fully agree with your point, my dear Soub, but this is nothing to make fun of. For if we are indeed talking about matters of eternal spiritual life and death here, how can the eternal damnation of anyone be a laughing matter? No, this is not to insist that anyone who believes that it is a sin against God to put lightning rods on the steeples of churches is surely headed straight to Hell, but it has been given to me to say that anyone who assumes such does not actually know Him. Of course, if the absolute truth of the matter truly is that we really have evolved from some amoebas swimming around in a pond of primordial ooze, the joke is on all of us. For what does it matter what anyone wants to believe happens after our time as part of this world comes to an end?
I'm not really making fun, but I think, reading the book, lightning conductors rather come under the "Render unto Caesar" heading.
I think God , if he exists, expects us to figure out and do the worldly stuff ourselves, to the best of our ability, and I'm sure that's all part of his experiment with us. Lightning, flood, tempest, disease.
Bit by bit, we figure out ways to survive that which previously would have killed us.
I can't think though, overall, with the terrible things we humans still do to each other, that he's likely to be at all satisfied.
"How many times must the cannonballs fly, before they're forever banned?"
No, I was not contending that you were making fun, my dear Soub, but Max was. In regards to the cannonballs and all of the rest of the apparent gross unfairness to this world, it is all by design--our Creator's design, to be exact. For this world was never meant to last but for a little while in comparison to the whole of eternity, and He will pour out His gratitude for all of eternity upon all who will but want to give Him the full benefit of their considerable doubts. Considering the fact that it seems much more likely that He created most (if not all) of us to be the objects of His scorn--certainly not His affections, that sure seems to be asking a lot of us, but since He has always been with everyone from the first microsecond of conception, none of us have ever been nearly as much on our own in this world as it has been so widely taught in His name, Of course, what does any of that matter to those who do not want to believe it?
By the way, I invite you to take a hard look at what our Heavenly Father has given me to say in Bittersweet Refinements. Each topic is broken down into fairly small bites for ease of consumption, and you just might be surprised by some things if you adopt an attitude of, "Why not?"
http://fishhawkdroppings.blogspot.com/search/label/Bittersweet%20Refinements
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