Trying to get hold of it

So I'm casting my mind back to the mid seventies. I'm in church on Sunday nights wrestling manfully with a tambourine that has taken against me and a floppy hat that keeps going wonky. And we are singing. This was pre Hillsong, pre Matt Redman and this was considered quite funky. 

 "The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.

 The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, is mighty, is miiiiiiiighteeee!"

(Thanks very much - I'm here all week)

It's from Zephaniah 3. How does it feel? Thinking that God "Joys Over You With Singing?" Most of the time I don't think the God looks at me and thinks - "There's someone I would like to Joy Over." It's the age old challenge - learning to see ourselves through God tinted glasses. I need to remind myself - I don't deserve this yet there it is. The mightiest mighty God - rejoices and joys - over me and over you. Just because he is who he is. It helps I think, to get a hold of that. Just thought we needed reminding. Dunno why.

Thank you

Hello, just a small shout out to says thanks for all your good wishes etc. I am feeling much better now but it was really horrible for a while - even my knees hurt. I am not one of those people who bangs on the doctor's door demanding antibiotics all the time but I gave it some thought this time tbh. Anyway much better now and hopefully will get back to a bit of writing this week. Am leaving you with photo of my handsome son playing in Battle of The Bands in York. The music isn't exactly my kind of thing, if I am being totally frank but the young people seem to like it. Also this is on it's way. Hurrah! Just loving these books.

Unwell

Chest infection
Can't eat
Can't sleep
Feeling very sorry for myself.
Unable to write
Struggling with will to live.
Hopefully back if survival proves possible (seeming unlikely at the moment)
Dog unconcerned

All the Films

Just a couple of films I thought I might tell you about. I think there is some decent stuff out there at the moment, even without considering the best film franchise ever made (Star Wars - disappointed that you had to ask) The Force Awakens is an excellent addition to the franchise but that is just really my personal happy place and I don't expect everyone to live there.

In a slightly more adult vein we also went to see "The Big Short". This is a film about the world banking crash which kind of started as a housing crash in the USA. There were fiendishly clever people around at the same time who saw the crash coming and bet huge sums of money on it happening - therefore profiting from the misery that was heaped upon innocent people who lost their houses and their jobs. I am not sure that I am selling this that well at the moment but it's an excellent, quirky and even funny film. It's quite complicated (well very complicated) but it doesn't treat you like an idiot and tries to explain what is happening - not always successfully in my case. It also has a heart, there is a great moment when suddenly the speculators know that the crash is going to make them very rich and the Brad Pitt character who has helped them get this far stops them celebrating and reminds them what is happening. By the end you will want to damage a politician, which is a bit sweeping but none of the people behind the mess has ever been jailed for any of it you know.

I took quite a lot of talking into Room as I had started the book and found it too distressing and had to ditch it. It charts the relationship between a mother and her son as they live through almost unthinkable circumstances. The son has been born to a girl who has been kidnapped held as a slave in a shed in a back garden for seven years. She has protected him for five years from the reality of their situation by telling him that his reality is the only reality and there are no other people in the world except for him, her and "Old Nick". He is protected from what Nick comes and does to his mother every night by the wardrobe she keeps him in as he sleeps. But as he begins to grow, she realises that he is in danger and things will have to change. I can't recommend this enough. It doesn't sound too promising I know but it really is - as so many others have said - life affirming. If you can go, you probably should.

There was a lot of fuss about Grandma but I found it a bit thin really. It was ok I suppose but a bit too right-on for me. Lily Tomlin is a cool lesbian nana who is also a poet (why are the people in these films always poets? No one ever works on a fish counter) I think it was supposed to be about love and mourning but I thought it was more about just whinging a lot.