22nd February 2011

...... getting started slowly after the weekend.

In fact I spent most of yesterday thinking that it was Saturday but in fact it was the Monday of half term and the week began with Bowling. Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone was a reflection on the increasing individuation of society. He noticed that people spent less time in groups, bowling or hanging out with friends or at Church or whatever. The social cost of this increasing isolation was that society becomes less social to the point that a previous Conservative Prime Minister was able to say that 'there is no such thing as society'.

So in one leap we seem to go from no society to the Big Society.

Certainly there was a lot of social interaction in the Bowling Alley on Monday and it seemed a pretty cool place to be hanging out especially with a group which in our case spanned three generations, whilst the newest addition to the family relaxed in the peace and quiet of home, the rest of the gang hurled bowling balls down the alley hoping for a strike whilst the grandparents cheered them on.

I left the Bowling in full swing and went out to buy a key ingredient for our supper (Feta Cheese the soubriquet of a middle class supper dish as recommended by Lindsay Barham in The Times) and met a well known poet in Lidl:

He greeted me as he entered the store
Amongst the bargain hunters by the door
Was he, I wondered, searching for a bargain sonnet
Or possibly a reduced price Haiku
Of eight and a half syllables or less
I recognised him instantly even though
I have lost weight and am thinner
Buying pasta and Feta Cheese for our dinner
He the published writer and me the blogger
Both of us in Lidl, poets of the people, in touch
with our feelings, the inner man and such

Sunday, the real Sunday rather than the day before the Saturday which was really a Monday I went fishing. Rather like the famous quote about second marriage, fishing is definitely the triumph of hope over experience.

On Sunday the fish were having a whale (sic) of a time leaping out of the water, splashing, rising to flies, and resolutely ignoring our best efforts. However we presented the fly, however elegant the cast, however tempting the flies and lures we tied and no matter how many times we cast onto the nose of the fish, they resisted the offer we made. I became convinced that out there somewhere there was a practical joker who was playing with a motor controlled fish in the lake and that what we were seeing was a battery driven fish, Billy Bass, surging through the water just out of reach, tempting us with the almost fishy possibility of the day. So even before the season has begun the landing net remained dry. It was just as well there was Feta Cheese and Pasta for supper.

Having now realised that this is not a long weekend but is in fact half term I am hoping to go fishing again. But this time I have decided to take no chances and am hoping to persuade a couple of young fishermen to accompany me, they always seem to catch something and should be able to guarantee some success, even if its only allowing me to land their fish in my landing net.

The rest of the week ahead seems to offer a lot to look forward to from lunch with friends and a chance to compare notes between grandparents, and football and music in the hat, a pub concert with an invitation to pay what you think the concert is worth, then a first meeting of the co-op party in Gateshead before services on Sunday which neatly brings me back to the Saturday which was really a Monday, Bowling alone and the 'Big Society', by a Gospel insisting that we 'seek first his kingdom and his righteousness' the kingdom of right relationships which is described by the Gospels as the Kingdom of God, simply outclasses the limited vision of the politician by a country mile. Get it right, love your neighbour and look out for each other and there will be no need to 'worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself'.