24th September 2011

Weird stuff happens.

Sometimes it happens in dreams.

Sometimes it happens in real life, sometimes in a missed call or in an interrupted way as you catch sight of something out of the corner of your eye, say whilst passing a poster, or reading something that wasn’t there or thinking that a piece of text says one thing whilst it says another but you read the words you want into it giving it a whole new meaning.

Yesterday I thought I had caught a fish but it wasn’t, I must have snagged some weed, but for one brief moment my heart skipped a beat as I thought that this summers dry season with a whole year of nil returns was about to be ended with my landing a 10lb Salmon.

I once read a story in a fishing magazine about an angler who caught a fish whilst fly fishing on a stocked lake, but before he could land it the fish managed to escape by snapping his leader and making off with the hook still in its mouth and trailing a length of leader behind it.

He repaired his line attached another fly and began fishing again, soon enough he had a fish on but to his amazement when he landed it, it was the same fish and he had foul hooked it through the ring on the original hook.

A tall tale or a fisherman’s tale?

Difficult to know but the story was published in a reputable magazine and it wasn’t the first of April.

Weird stuff happens.

Today I saw a photograph of myself in the newspaper.

I was amazed and did a double take, I even checked in the mirror and sure enough it was definitely me.

The same bald head, the same glasses, the same general features.

I was in Ramallah as part of a crowd listening to President Abbas address the UN asking them to recognise the Palestinian State.

Marvellous really.

Even though I knew that I was actually fishing on the River Tummel.

But the camera never lies.

Every picture tells a story and I had signed an online petition urging the UN to recognise the State of Palestine so in a sense I was there, in spirit if not in fact, and there was my picture proving it.

Had the organisers of the petition worked some kind of internet magic? Did I have a doppelganger? Or was I in fact in two places at once?

Weird stuff happens.

Apparently if the UN had agreed then the Americans would veto the proposal so it was unlikely that Palestine’s Statehood would be recognised.

But this state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue.

On the 21^st of September I led prayers for peace in recognition that it was the International Day of Prayer for Peace.

The current economic meltdown and the threat to the Global Economy that it implies was also debated by the UN.

The British Prime Minister recommended Britain’s answer but the IMF are not as convinced that it is the answer as Mr Cameron is.

Ultimately, whether it is in Palestine or the UK the only peace that will truly last is the peace based on justice, whether we imagine it, whether we campaign for it or whether we pray for it we have to continue to hope that it will come.

After all weird stuff does happen.