And here’s one that did link properly. Only 23 seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YuWLKQ5e54
About
The life and thoughts of Freda Marshall, a retired Church of Scotland minister living amongst the mountains and glens of Argyll.Pages
Pie Jesu
A new Pie Jesu from Britain’s Got Talent. (Btw I don’t watch the programme, but this song has the Aaaaaah factor.)
Sorry – this particular video doesn’t seem to want to work as a click-on link, but it is well worth doing a cut and paste to find it. The other thing you can do is go to youtube and type in Pippa and Puppy.
Stressometer and Camping
My stressometer has been into the red this week. As well as the credit card problem there have been a couple of extra biggies. I’m not going to bore you with them as I am doing the best I can to zone them out. However, I was interested to read that people who go camping, caravanning or go away in a motorhome are significantly less stressed and also much more happy than those who don’t.
Ta-da…… the proof that we are supposedly happier than we would have been had we not been happy campers. Of course it is impossible to prove that as a fact, but the Camping and Caravanning Club (UK) have indeed done a survey looking at attitudes of those who do and those who don’t
The current Prime Minister, Yes, I do know who he is – David Cameron – (so I presumably do not have Alzheimer’s,) says that as a country the UK should be more interested in what he calls Well-Being rather than Gross Domestic Product. In other words, he states that GWB is more important than GDP. I do wonder whether this is showing a touch of paranoia or desperation. After all he is campaigning against his Deputy Prime Minister (Nick Clegg, in case you have forgotten who he is, which wouldn’t be surprising….) with regard to the type of voting that will apply in General Elections. And the recovery from the recession is wobbly at least. OK we have the Royal Wedding next week, but rising prices, job losses and the impact of cuts on the most vulnerable are very worrying.
I wonder if Cameron goes camping? Or maybe he should go camping?
What strange thoughts for Good Friday. At this time of year, ie before Easter Day, I used to struggle to find an appropriate message to share with people. The best I can do this year is to recognise that there are invariably hard times in all our lives. The message of this day is that, no matter our faith (or lack of it) we are somehow never alone. And it is definitely true that being in the outdoors means we can appreciate creation and the beauty that just happens every year at Springtime.
Posted in Blog
Tagged Alzheimer's. GDP, breaks, campervan, Camping, David Cameron, faith, Good Friday, GWB, Happiness, holidays, job losses, Nick Clegg, recession, spirituality, stress
8 Comments
Update on credit card fraud
If you read my post on Something Stupid you might be wondering what stage I am at in having the fraud sorted out. Since my original rant I have had 2 emails and spoken to another operative in the Disputes Dept. of the bank. The emails were, by their nature, calm and considered, and today’s talk with an advisor in the fraud dept was reassuring – (I think.)
What made the difference? In today’s phone call I admitted to being very upset at the last dealing with a real person, and……. I played the elderly card. I know – shameful at my relatively young age of 67 – but it helped me not to feel quite so stupid, and it obviously made a difference as far as “Lian” was concerned.
She set out to reassure me and take me through the exact steps by which the bank could help to recover the money and limit any further dealings. I wrote everything down in a 1-2-3 fashion, read it back to her and she confirmed I had understood. I still have to pay the original debit of £125-odd but hopefully it will be refunded in due time.
Have I learned my lesson about signing up for free or trial offers?
I certainly hope so.
Sunday Blessing
I found this over at The Rev and a Dog – it’s a new blessing to me and it is really beautiful. Happy Palm Sunday
May the blessing of light be on you – light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine on you like a great peat fire,
so that stranger and friend may come and warm himself at it.
And may light shine out of the two eyes of you,
like a candle set in the window of a house,
bidding the wanderer come in out of the storm.
And may the blessing of the rain be on you,
may it beat upon your spirit and wash it fair and clean,
and leave there a shining pool where the blue of heaven shines,
and sometimes a star.
And may the blessing of the earth be on you,
soft under your feet as you pass along the roads,
soft under you as you lie out on it, tired at the end of day;
and may it rest easy over you when, at last, you lie out under it.
May it rest so lightly over you that your soul may be out
from under it quickly;
up and off and on its way to God.
And now may the Lord bless you, and bless you kindly.
Scottish Blessing
Posted in Blog, Poems and Prayers
Tagged Palm Sunday, peace, Scottish blessing, spirituality
4 Comments
Tripping the light……
This is our new community centre – the result of 12 years hard work by many volunteers who have done a marvellous job at bringing the project to fruition. As a result of all this, there has been a resurgence of all sorts of activities – again these are mainly run by volunteers.
At a recent open day HBTW signed us both up for ballroom dancing and last night was the first of a 3-month “term.” We duly turned up at 8pm along with a whole bunch of other eager potential dancers…….. I guess it is the result of the success of the Strictly Come Dancing phenomena. Thankfully there was not a Craig Revel Horwood in sight, nor was there an elderly host who tells terrible jokes. There must have been between 35 and 40 of us, all looking equally nervous.
The style of dress varied from jeans and trainers to smart skirts and fancy tops. Some of the women were well adorned in make up and jewellery, yours truly was more concerned with staying upright. Indeed there had been a slight altercation at the Dalamory Homestead as we got ready for the big night…… Himself favoured smart casual trousers, shirt and jacket (no tie) whereas I had on my variation of loose summer trousers, t-shirt and over-smock. (I wasn’t going to have any midriff showing, that was for certain.) I had a slight uneasiness that we didn’t quite match but in the end it didn’t matter. We had both purchased suitable shoes so all we needed to do was to remember the long-handled shoe-horn, a bottle of water and a small towel. Yes – I really thought it was going to be that much hard work.
Our teachers are an experienced couple of dancers who live in the village, so it felt like we were among friends. First off we had to sign up and then were given a sheet of basic dance floor etiquette. Oops! I was floored at the start, too many lines of dance, against line of dance, down line of dance and so forth. As I realised that HBTW would have to steer, I relaxed. This was going to be one time when I would let him be in charge.
What a relief – the first part of the class was to be the waltz. We used to go dancing a lot in our youth, so surely we could manage this. The basic 1-2-3 was OK but when it came to the move called something like a zig-zag progression – (see, I’ve forgotten already.) it was more of a challenge. Basically it means doing a 6-step turn, followed by a 3-step break, then a 6-step turn in the opposite direction. Are you still with me? The good news is that there are lots of videos and sites online to help. On the other hand it might just muddle me up before the next class.
By half-time everyone was slurping from their water bottles and mopping red faces. This was real exercise. But great fun…. lots of laughter and tripping up, but in the end most people managed a passable basic waltz step. Thank goodness for tea-break. Then – can you imagine the horror when the dance coach said we would be doing a rumba afterwards. Yes – the lessons are to be for ballroom dancing and Latin. HBTW lit up – here was a challenge – he had to learn new steps himself and guide me in the right direction. It got easier when we tried it to music, but there is a long way to go.
By the way, did I mention that I am creeping and creaking about the house because of all the aches and pains? However – it is well worth it.
Posted in Blog
Tagged aches and pains, Ballroom dancing, challenge, classes, community centre, exercise, fun, Latin, rumba
9 Comments
Happiness
After yesterday’s rant about banks and credit card companies, how about thinking instead about happiness? There is a new initiative encouraging people to look positively at life. Their premiss is that money and things do not necessarily make us happy. They are trying to form a network of people to spread happiness, which is no bad thing.
However, I can’t help feeling that though although it is very good and full of good advice, it is rather sad that we have not been listening to our wise elders; they could tell us most of the ways to make the most of life if we would only listen.
What’s your best advice for happiness?
Something stupid
The “Something stupid” is actually me, or rather something I have done. This is intended as a cathartic rant of a post and may not make it past the publish button. Anyway, writing things out might help me to feel better and to act in a detached and adult manner.
A couple of weeks ago I made a stupid decision to click on an advertisement online, it was for a free trial of a certain product – no it was not viagra – but was a health product. Again being stupid I did not check the company out, but as I was only authorising a payment of £2.60 on my credit card (for postage) I saw no harm. Stupid…..stupid…….stupid.
Immediately I had pressed the send button I was uncomfortable. It was not a company I knew, though I had seen their adverts many a time, and I decided to cancel. The email address was nowhere to be found and a “confirmation of sale” email had already popped into my inbox – it was a no-reply address. There was a dodgy looking phone number – ie premium rate overseas – so I wasn’t going to try that. But I did google the number and found it was a well-known scam.
Straightaway I phoned my bank and was assured that providing my card was cancelled, debits would only get through for one month, then I was safe. Also, I could flag up any fraudulent amounts and they would be stopped. I explained we were going away for a week or so and the nice young operative said no bother, he would cancel the account and issue a new card and then he would watch my account daily and see that nothing untoward happened. On coming home I checked the account only to find an unauthorised debit of £125 – I got onto the bank to ask what had gone wrong. This is where the story unravels – along with my temper. The advice of Operative #1 was wrong – because I had given my card details it meant that I had authorised whatever payments the company wanted to put through. I could only dispute them with the company, after which my redress was through the bank’s fraud dept and maybe even the police.
I jumped up and down and asked why I couldn’t just say not to pay anything at all, ever, to this particular company, only to be told it was not possible. Even if I closed down the credit card completely it would make no odds. Visa was obliged to pay them and then chase me for the money. Even if I closed all my bank dealings (current account, savings, credit card) with the bank, they would still just chase me. I could only hand it over to their disputes dept.
It seems to me that banks are rogues. Sorry, but I have felt like this since the first time a local bank took over a client’s insurance account (I was an insurance broker at the time) by “leaning” on him because he wanted a loan for his business. And I have been as upset as most of the country at the way banks are bailed out by public money and yet still find cash to pay themselves large bonuses.
Yes, I am stupid. Yes, the law is wrong. Yes, banks are immoral. The trouble is that we need them.
What do you think?
Posted in Blog
Tagged bank bonuses, Banks, credit card, fraud, insurance broker, internet scam, stupidity
12 Comments
Back at home
In case you hadn’t guessed we had taken advantage of the good weather to go travelling. This is a shot of HBTW and Misty taken at the southern tip of Loch Lomond.
We started off in the campervan last week in rain and drove east towards the good weather. Edinburgh was not a success, much time was spent driving round in circles trying to find the Royal Yacht Britannia and somewhere near to park. It was all roadworks, closed carparks and noisy machinery, so in the end we gave up, found a quiet spot and brewed up. That’s one of the advantages of having your travelling base with you.
A couple of days later, in brilliant April sunshine we set off south to the Borders. It’s amazing how everything looks better in good weather. I am pretty sure that many of the problems we have in Scotland are caused by incessant rain and lack of sun. Still, too much heat brings scorpions and flying things that bite and sting, and snakes, and alligators……..
But there’s nothing to beat Loch Lomond……. and coming back towards home.
Moses and technology
Just as a by the by yesterday was my late Father’s birthday. He would have loved all the new technology. May he rest in peace.
Posted in Blog
Tagged Bible, Exodus, internet, Moses, Red Sea, Scripture, Sinai, technology
4 Comments