Merry Christmas, Everyone.

* A lighthearted narration of a family Christmas. *

Yes, it's that time of the year again. The Christmas tree is up, decorated with glass baubles and a string of flashing coloured lights, with stacks of wrapped presents surrounding the foot of the tree. The few Christmas cards displayed on the mantlepiece over a crackling fire shows that some relatives and friends had not forgotten this family. Across the ceiling, a couple of coloured ribbons are purposely twisted to give the wave effect, adding to the festive atmosphere, while at each upper corner of the room, inflated coloured balloons of various shapes complete the seasonal festive interior.

Outside, the ideal mock Tudor home stands alone in the winter countryside. The fields are covered with a layer of glistening, brilliant white snow, along with the leafless branches of any trees near the house, and near the end of one of the branches, a robin is perched, happily twittering away. Oh, such an idyllic, picturesque Christmas scene featured on many Christmas cards, a magical scene so removed from reality that such seasonal beauty can only exist within the imaginations and dreams of the artist who design these cards.

And so, a family living in a suburban terraced house tries to bring this idyllic Christmas scene closer to reality by installing a Christmas tree, then decking it with coloured baubles and those pretty lights, and surrounding its base with wrapped presents. The obsolete twisted coloured paper ribbons are replaced with cords of glittering tinsel, but the fully-inflated balloons are still tied with string to where the wall meets the ceiling.

But here in real Britain, there is no snow. Rather, fog may linger for much of the morning before clearing to reveal an overcast sky from where a light, unsightly drizzle precipitates as it starts to get dark by three-thirty in the afternoon. On the run-up to Christmas and seeing the stacks of wrapped presents surrounding the tree, a child with a sharp mind asks Mother just when did Father Christmas call, if all the presents are already here, perhaps feeling that first jab of reality that Santa Clause may not exist after all, and the aged, bearded gentleman in a red suit he had spoken to at the department store grotto could be an imposter after all!

On Christmas morning, the kids are excited as they unwrap their presents to reveal goodies that will keep them occupied for the rest of the day. When the adults unwrap their presents, their response may or may not be so enthusiastic. After all, if you want or need something, chances that you will go out and buy it yourself - at any time of the year. As such, husbands and boyfriends have a good idea of what to give their sweethearts for Christmas. For them, jewellery always does well. But for the male recipient, I guess it's going to be clothing. And without doubt, when the wife wants to keep her gift a surprise until Christmas morning, that's when not first trying out the garment in the store's fitting room may raise problems.

Ah, Father Christmas! Apparently, he wasn't able to keep track of me, especially after flying the nest whilst in my early twenties. I was living in a bedsit apartment without an open fire, hence having no chimney. One Christmas eve, I decided to leave a mince pie on a plate just inside the kitchen window left ajar. It was a sign of hospitality shown to the bearded elderly gentleman who might be feeling a bit chilly and hungry. Then I retired to bed. The next morning, the pie was still there, untouched, and there were no presents. One theory was that Santa felt it to be unfair to feast on the pie without sharing it with Rudolf and all the other reindeer pulling the sleigh. But he could have left my presents there, even in the kitchen, nevertheless. After all, the window was ajar and was able to open fully when required. When I saw that all my presents were at my parents home, the Theory of Unfairness was discarded in favour of his inability to track properly. Heh!

Is this all real, or am I kidding? I'll leave that for you to decide. After all, why shouldn't I leave a cake out for Santa? Such a kind act during the Season of Goodwill is perfectly plausible, isn't it?

Going back to a typical home scene on Christmas day. The pre-teen children are playing with their recently-gotten toys. The younger teenager is carefully laying out his train set. And dare you to call his train set a toy! To him, it's a hobby, and he would be the first to answer that there are many adults - fully-grown men - who own layouts that took ages and serious concentration to create and function. Finally, the older teenager is in his bedroom, totally absorbed in his new PlayStation that would put his skills to a fresh challenge.

Meanwhile, the remains of the turkey now sit, as if abandoned, in the kitchen, the dining room table is littered with unwashed Christmas pudding bowls and unwashed cutlery. A half-finished bottle of wine, a fruit bowl of tangerines and another of walnuts, mixed with hazel and brazil nuts dominate the table, along with the snapped halves of crackers, cheap and naff plastic tokens and ever more dreadful cracker jokes littering the tablecloth, along with discarded nutshells, orange peelings, and chocolate wrappers.

The husband relaxes in his armchair and he fills the air with the fragrance of a Cuban cigar, making the lounge even more Christmassy than before. Oh, happy day! The wife looks into the kitchen and sees a plethora of dirty dishes and pans waiting to be washed. These days, all she has to do is stuff the mouth of the electric dishwasher, slam the door shut and turn the start knob. What a contrast from the old days when all dishes and pans had to be hand washed. This was most likely the cause of intense quarrels. The wife, the poor soul, spent all morning slaving over the cooker, ensuring that she did her best with the main dinner. Now she felt whacked and would appreciate her husband taking over the kitchen duties, even if it means just stuffing the dishwasher. He can thank his lucky stars for the handwashing had become a thing of the past.

Yet, there he was, in full relaxation in his cosy armchair, somehow managing to puff away at his cigar and snooze at the same time. Suddenly, one of the balloons burst with a loud pop. Both husband and wife were startled by the loud instantaneous noise shattering the peace, and he looks up to see a limp piece of thin rubber suspended next to its fully-inflated companion. The loud pop had also irritated his wife to a point of losing her temper, accusing him of laziness when there is a pile of dirty dishes to be seen to. After all, wasn't she in the kitchen all morning? All the ingredients for a massive quarrel are now in place, much to the consternation of the children, who are all quite used to it, and well expected too, on Christmas Day.  

After a war with words, he finally arises and makes his way to the kitchen. All the ceramics he arranges neatly inside the dishwasher and gets it going. With the pans, giving them a good scrub with a Brillo pad, or better still, a coarser scourer will burn up that excess energy generated by his wordy altercation. At the sink, he thinks about the balloon. Why did that damned thing burst, just like that? This was not the first time either. He had seen balloons burst spontaneously before, and the sudden loud noise cannot only be startling but it can jar the nerves, even resulting in a painful back muscle strain. Who was the brainless, air-headed idiot who invented the balloon?

One thing is certain: This will be the last Christmas spent at home. From next year on, he'll book a place for the family to have Christmas dinner at a pub restaurant. There, they can enjoy all the trimmings of the festive holiday, perhaps with an even livelier atmosphere as well, and not worry at all about the washing up afterwards. And as for the balloons, they were the wishes of the youngest son, James. No more balloons next year! He had enough of them!

  

Ah, with the dishes done, it's the traditional Christmas afternoon family game of Monopoly. Dad calls his sons to the table to play the game. However, the youngest, eight-year-old James was exempt, as he was still considered too young to fully understand the fabric of the game. He then calls down his eldest son, 17-year old Peter. But, being fully immersed in his video game, no way would he stop to play that capitalistic evil, that epitome of greed, the dog-eat-dog, rat-race love for profit at the expense of another's suffering and loss. The nation's economy was one of the current A-Level subjects of his school curriculum, and the more he learned, the more the idea of socialism had an appeal.

Again Dad called, and again Peter answered with a loud and distinct "NO!" Eventually, the parent allowed to let his son have his own way, just to keep the peace. The four sat at the table, husband, wife, who herself held down a career in marketing, so she knew quite a bit about profit and loss, and their other two sons, twelve-year-old Richard and 14-year old Mark.

During the game, the throws of the two dice allowed Mark to buy all four London terminus stations - Kings Cross, Liverpool Street, Fenchurch Street, and Marylebone. The teenager would have wished to have purchased St Pancras instead of Marylebone, as the former had a direct Eurostar route to Paris and Bruxelles respectively, such a facility would have a much greater value. However, with the other three players unwillingly landing on all four stations as determined by the luck of the dice rather than market research, not only Mark was able to make a killing but with his four stations, managed to bankrupt his three opponents.

At last, evening television. As Dad checked the programme schedule, he was disappointed at the rubbish and repeats that will be aired, including a puppet rat, or whatever, prancing around and taking up a peak viewing slot. He sat back at his armchair and grinned. He recalls tales of televisions thrown into the dustbin outside on Boxing Day, as well as TV screens smashed by driving a fist into it. Surely, not true tales, but the kind of stuff shown on Christmas Day does rouse the temptation to do either, perhaps both. He checked the list. On one of the commercial channels, the movie, Towering Inferno is shown, and although repeated several times since it was released on the Big Screen as far back as 1974, he decided to settle for another repeated oldie, Harrison Ford and his Raiders of the Lost Ark, purely on how he likes the bit towards the end when spirits from the golden box swallow up all the nasty members of Hitler's Nazi Party.

Oh well, that's another Christmas Day over for another year, a mighty anticlimax of all the build-up and the preparations that led up to it. Santa Clause seems far gone, forgotten, along with the church carols of Christmas eve tradition. Somehow, there seems to be a general forgetfulness on what Christmas is all about, to celebrate someone's birthday.

A Monopoly Board Game.

Although this blog light-heartedly follows the goings-on of a typical British suburban family at Christmas, I just wish to remind the reader of the greatest gift God had ever given - the birth of His Son Jesus Christ. Having taken place in a small insignificant village on the hills of Judah, this baby was born specifically to die, and to die a cruel, painful death on the cross, buried, and on that Sunday morning three days later, to rise physically from the dead - the only human being ever to be resurrected in the whole of human history, and therefore, He can, and is now willing to give eternal life as a free gift to all believers.

Again, let us not forget the stark reality of his birth rather than the perfect Christmas card image of a mother holding a sleeping baby. At birth, he cried, like any other newborn. This was to fill his lungs with air for the first time. In other words, taking his first breath. After that, the mother had to cope with breastfeeding, followed by his need to pee and defecate. Indeed, he may be wrapped in swaddling clothes, but his need to meet the needs of nature was the same for him as any other child.

And then on the eighth day after birth, he had to be physically circumcised to fulfil the Jewish law for all boys. As the knife severed his foreskin, he let out a scream, just as all babies do. That is what it means for God to incarnate as a man to atone for us. He emptied himself, taking a form of a servant, and dying for us, even death on a cross.

Hence, this is a true saying: that Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners. That means Christmas is about Easter. The death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, a condemned Jew glorified as a saving, and eventually as a reigning Messiah, as foretold by the prophets hundreds, even thousands of years earlier.

My next blog will be in two weeks from now, that is, written on New Years Day, God permitting. In the meantime, I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. And I say this despite the current pandemic problem. I thank and praise God for giving us the ability to produce vaccines to help combat the virus. Wonderful mercy from God.

Indeed, just as the Nativity was an act of God's mercy for us.

Masks, Pubs, Church, and Singing.

I have just received a Facebook message from someone who feels disappointed about a monthly church social meeting returning online after meeting physically for the past couple of months. Whether this was the preferred decision made by the host or whether the host was met with requests by his members to return online, unless I'm otherwise told, I can only speculate. But I would not be surprised if the host's final decision to return online was to meet their wishes.

The Apple Computer draws a social group.

And so, a new norm has arisen from the pandemic that had dominated the globe for the last couple of years - the culture of fear, that sense of over-caution over a virus that requires laboratory testing to see whether one has it or not. As such, this probably would explain the feeling of unease I experienced when, on the previous day, someone started to cough raucously whilst I was trying to relax in the sauna. Unlike the Bubonic Plague of 14th Century Europe, where symptoms such as rings of boils would appear across the patient's face shortly before snuffing out his life - and hence the origins of the children's rhyme, Ring a Ring of Roses - Covid managed to kill around 0.1% of the population with practically no visible blemishes. This contrasts with the Black Death affecting 25% of the known population, or one in every four persons having died from it.

And so, back in the Middle Ages, patrolmen wheeling their carts would call out in the city streets to "Throw out your dead!" as one diseased body after another would pile up as they were then taken to the mass-burial site. At such sites, piles of corpses shared a common grave as each individual was buried without a name, no gravestone, and no memories. I guess I feel hardly any surprise when I read stories of supposed spookiness arising when tunnelling took place beneath the streets of London, as the new underground rapid transit system began to take shape during the late 19th Century and into the 20th.

And so, the atheist would protest over the nonsensical stories associated with subterranean ghosts while at the same time insisting that the Earth is spherical and not flat - whilst under the same breath, also insisting we all wear facemasks whenever we step out of our homes. At least those "14th Century superstitious fantasisers who knew virtually nothing on the scientific front" - according to the modern atheist's thinking - attended church every Sunday as the population prayed, pleading with God for the longed-for relief from that dreadful pandemic.

As the physicians of the day had no knowledge of pathogens, let alone any solution to the problem, it can be said that God answered the prayers of the people when the pandemic was placed into the hands of church leaders. By studying whether the Bible had anything to say on the matter, they came across Leviticus 13:46, where God instructs Moses that anyone who has a contagious disease must "dwell alone, outside the camp must his habitation be" - that is, the one who has the illness must isolate.

Therefore, the need for anyone infected with the plague to isolate. Without any medicine but instead, by this Biblical method, the Bubonic Plague was brought under control. Just by obeying an instruction recorded in the Bible. It was a wonderful endeavour. Had the Plague kept on running out of control, any remaining population might have been too small or too sparse for the Renaissance to have occurred, as knowledge of the Bible, especially from the 14th Century onwards, had given the rise of great scientists such as Samuel Morse, Isaac Newton, the Wright brothers, Galileo, Nicolaus Copernicus, Louis Pasteur, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, and others, with many of them had believed in the historicity of the Bible.

Edward Jenner was another outstanding scientist. He was the one who, in 1796, used cowpox to create immunity against smallpox, apparently with enough success to launch the invention of the vaccine. Jenner is another example of a great man who had arisen from obedience by 14th Century church leaders to the advice given in the Bible to bring the Bubonic plague under control. And as I can see around us, it's thanks to this guy that we now have vaccines to deal with the present Covid pandemic.

And now, the rise of the new variant, after being given the name Omicron, seems to be back to Square One. With new restrictions already imposed by our Government once again compromising our freedoms. For example, only this morning, as I walked into our local Sainsbury's superstore to buy the paper, there stood the marshall, after a couple of months without his presence. He was fully masked, and his job was to ensure that we were all wearing facemasks as we walked in, unless I wore a lanyard around my neck instead. This is an item I felt tempted to get for myself so that no one would question me for not wearing a mask. But I would be living a lie, as I'm not really medically exempt. Neither would I feel at peace with my soul had I rebelled and refused to wear one. 

I must now wear a mask in the shop, whilst sitting on the train or bus, at a cinema or at a theatre, and in church. But in a pub, coffee house or restaurant, I needn't wear a mask. Nor would I need to wear one on the train if I happen to have a mug of coffee in my hand. I think those are the rules, at least for now.

Then, recently, an article from the website, The Christian Institute, appeared on my Facebook page. It read that masks are not required for singing in church, but is needed for other purposes, such as sitting quietly whilst listening to the sermon. Quoting word-for-word the opening paragraph of the article, it reads:-

While congregational singing was never explicitly prohibited under previous Covid regulations, the latest rules confirm that while mask-wearing will be mandatory in churches, they may be removed for congregational singing.

Please now. I actually believe that breath from the lungs is actually expelled with greater force when singing than breathing normally or even engaging in normal conversation. At Ascot Life Church, we sing a song of praise that contain the lyrics, It's the breath in our lungs so I pour out our praise. Indeed, I certainly don't want a piece of cloth over my mouth to muffle my praise to God, do I?

It was the Church that brought the Plague under control...

This is why I believe that, throughout this pandemic, national and even worldwide, logic seems to have descended into absurdity. Last week, my friend Dave, one of our church elders, and I sat across the table at Starbucks Coffee. Young enough to be my son, this married man with a growing family has always been happy and humble enough to accept advice from me, according to my own greater life experiences. I demonstrated that we were less than a metre from each other and talking face-to-face without masks (Starbucks have small tables, after all, we don't eat proper meals at a coffee house.) It was perfectly legal, and neither of us felt uncomfortable, and neither of us believed that we were going to go down with an infection.

But if Dave and I were both strangers sitting on a train, opposite each other, then masks would be compulsory. Never mind the British idiosyncrasy, that you must never talk to a stranger whilst travelling on the train, and even then you are between 1.5 to two metres apart, or several metres away from the next person, masks are still mandatory. But if I was holding a cup of coffee in my hand or even a Mars bar, either of them bought from a passing trolley, then I can remove my mask. Woe betides if both Dave and I are holding a cup of coffee as we sit opposite one another without a single word spoken. The virus will either jump in excitement or suffer a food phobia!

What's the difference between browsing the shelves alone at a superstore, with several metres between that person and the next one, and sitting much closer to one another in a coffee bar which is annexed to the store, thus with easy access? Why is it so important to wear a mask when you're browsing the shelves while it's okay not to when you're sitting at a coffee house table?

Going back to church life. It's now mandatory to wear a mask while I'm sitting and listening to the sermon, or, I assume, while our heads are bowed in silent prayer. But, according to The Christian Institute website, it's okay for us to remove our masks if we're about to sing. I suppose there is some justification after all, at our church in Ascot, that the members of the band at the front don't wear masks when they lead the worship. Perhaps the distance between the band and the front row of seats is more than two metres wide, and with the windows open, blowing an (often cold) draught through the room and therefore, eliminating the chance of any virus lingering around. At least, when the band leads, the songs are heard with clarity.

Do I make sense? Or am I losing my mind? Am I really thinking that the world is getting more and more cock-eyed as the pandemic keeps on feeding our fears, our anxieties, and the need for greater caution? In addition to the mandatory mask-wearing, on the cards at Parliament might be the need for a Covid passport to enter a pub or a restaurant as well as at larger venues such as nightclubs, theatres, and sports stadiums. I personally don't believe that any pub manager will be happy to have a staff member at the door, a sight conspicuous enough to deter any customer who might, at a whim, decide to stop for a drink or a social. And yet, contrary to my belief, polls seem to indicate that Covid passports are more favoured by the customer.

Nothing new to me. I recall 1997, after flying into San Diego from Los Angeles Airport. That evening, I walked into a bar for a refreshing alcoholic drink. I watched the barman behind the counter prepare my drink, filling the glass to the brim. But instead of asking for payment as I was expecting, instead, he asked for my identity. I was shocked, then apologetic. I never thought that in a civilised State such as southern California, I would need to show my passport just to order a drink. With such reasoning, I left my passport tucked safely away at the hostel dormitory. The barman refused to hand the drink over, as well as having refused to take my money. What did he do with the beverage? By then, I had already walked out of the bar, onto the street. So I can only assume that he had poured the whole glassful down the sink. No other customer would accept a "second-hand" drink from the bar. Such anti-British bureaucracy causes much waste!

If there were reasons why here in Britain we are treated and trusted like proper adults than I was while I was in America, then this is a good reason. True enough, here in the UK, I do miss the balmy Californian climate, the palm trees arranged nicely along the street, the Rockies, the Grand Canyon, the Wild West Country, the desert cacti, the thundering Niagara Falls...

But I'm grateful for the taxpayer-funded National Health Service where treatments are free at the point of use, the ability to walk into any pub or bar and order a drink at will with no need of identification, the freedom of speech, the gently rolling hills of Surrey and Sussex regarded as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, it's rugged Dorset coast, burnt toast, the pageantry of royalty, the red public telephone box, it's many historic monuments...but the most treasured side of our culture, personal freedoms - this very virtue for which many had given their lives during the two world wars.

Very British - the old phone box.

Oh well! Here we go again! As I write this, I'm wondering just how well would the public accept another full lockdown and the loss of our precious freedoms if the stats for the Omicron virus shoots through the ceiling? Despite the rapid rate of infection, this variant could be less harmful than its predecessors, so my mate, Dave, who has a degree in microbiology, speculates. But thanks to a successful experiment carried out by Edward Jenner, just over 300 years ago, we now have vaccines to help combat the virus, thus holding to the hope that the rate of hospitalisations and deaths from Covid will remain very low.

In the meantime, sing away!

Theism v. Atheism in the Steam Room.

Funny, coming to think of it, only last week I wrote about how many things in life had changed over time, and the pandemic had speeded up various changes, especially the decline of the "club culture" at our local sauna facility.

Yet, only yesterday, I found myself sitting in the steam room with two other fellows, one looking to be a Brit in his forties, or even in his fifties, who I will refer to as Mick, the other was a Serbian immigrant in his late twenties or early thirties whose parents moved to Germany, and he then came over to live in the UK. As the Brit was quite inquisitive about how his parents had coped with the Croatian/Serbian wars that ended the State of Yugoslavia by 1992. Not that he had to cope with the break-up of the country back then, as he either wasn't yet born, or he must have been very young at the time. Yet, Mick still asked if the young man was able to cope whilst he was still in Serbia.

Inside a typical steam room.

That's was when I joined in their chat, reviving the nostalgia of days gone past of a better social life at the facility. The conversation between the three of us went something like this - my own speech quoted in italics:-

Me: Mick, can I share this true story? When I was at a hostel in the Holy Land, I found myself chatting to a couple of fellow backpackers. They were asking me where I was from.

When I said that I was from near London, they looked so flabbergasted! One of them then asked, "London? Isn't that where there's was a lot of bombings - from the IRA, I believe?"

I burst out laughing. "No, I was never fortunate enough to witness a bombing!" I replied to them. "It's amazing how one or two isolated incidents can so easily damage the reputation of any location. But be assured, London is just as safe a city to be in like any other."

Mick: "You've been to Israel? How long were you there for?"

Me: Well, I went quite a few times. But if I were to string these trips together to become one, it would total almost five months - or 20 weeks.

Mick: "Are you religious?"

Me: Well, put it this way, erm, I know Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour. I have known Him for the last fifty years or so.

Mick: "Well, I'm an atheist. As in Life of Brian, I don't have to follow anyone or anything, and I don't like religion forced down my throat. 

Me: What had made you an atheist?

Mick: As I was growing up, I saw a growing conflict between religion and science. As a boy, I had to attend Sunday School, even if my parents weren't churchgoers. But it was later in life I saw that these religious myths did not match scientific facts, like Evolution. Hence, I switched. However, where did you stay in Israel?"

Me: I stayed at a backpacker's hostel in Jerusalem Old City. Over there, you really experience a different culture. As an example, over here, our hostels have separate dorms for each gender. Over there, I slept in a room shared with and surrounded by couples, many sleeping arm-in-arm. 

On another occasion, at a private wedding reception, I watched a live sheep thrashing its legs after having its throat cut and skinned whilst still alive, with its blood flowing to a nearby drain. At least the meat was so fresh when cooked and served! We all sat in a circle and helped ourselves from a large central plate. There was no table or chairs. We all sat in a circle on the ground. That is what travel is all about. Not those Spanish Costa del Sunny or whatever, where you spend your time at an English-style pub!

Mick and the Serbian both laughed.

Me: But most intriguing of all is when I visited the site of the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron, the burying place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their wives Sarah, Rebekah and Leah. It's within the Palestinian territory. If you click, "Cave of Machpelah" on Google, it will come up straight away. A fortress is built over it, and I actually went inside! To think that Herod the Great built it before the birth of Christ. Whilst the whole of Jerusalem was razed to the ground in AD 79 by Roman General Titus, this fortress remained intact throughout, its 2,100-year history, give or take, served as a church, a synagogue and a mosque. In one sense, it's a sentinel commemorating the origin of Israel as a nation. No other country in the world has a sentinel like this one to mark its origins! It certainly upholds the truthfulness of the Bible.

As one story goes, an atheist approached a farmer he knew to be a devoted Christian. The atheist then challenged the farmer by asking, "Can you show me one tangible proof that the Bible is true?"

"Aye sir, the Jew!"

Later, Mick and I found ourselves sitting in the sauna cabin, and we discussed our travels further. This time, I expanded worldwide, including hiking the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, and snorkelling over the Great Barrier Reef and also in the Red Sea at Eilat. Mick became excited as he explained that he holds a PADI certificate for diving instructors. We exchanged our travel experiences further until it was almost time for me to leave. It was then when Mick suddenly asked,

"Do you attend church?" 

To which I replied, Yes, I attend Ascot Life Church. We meet in the Old Paddock Restaurant. So many of us are meeting together that we've outgrown our original building. So we had to hire a venue twice the size to meet in.

Finally, just as I was about to walk out of the cabin for the cool-down shower, I made this parting shot:

If the Resurrection of Jesus Christ had never occurred, then why are we still talking about it some two thousand years later?

Food for thought for Mick, maybe?

The Sentinel of Israel, the Cave of Machpelah.

The world of Travel. How I loved to travel, especially before I married Alex. Since I didn't marry until I was 47 years old, I had plenty of time for that on my hands. Whether it was standing solemnly in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, hiking a trail in the wilderness, or shaking hands with Micky Mouse at Disneyland, the purpose of travel was, and always will be, to explore our fantastic planet that surrounds my home town.

When I was converted to Christ as Saviour back in late 1972, immediately I developed an interest in the Bible as I began to read it. The one feature I come to discover by reading the Old Testament was that gradually, Jerusalem grew in prominence, especially after King David had captured the former Jebusite city, defeating its indigenous inhabitants and then setting up his throne there as King of Israel. As David was the ancestor of Jesus Christ himself, it was the Lord who openly declared to his audience that Jerusalem is the City of the Great King, that is, the Son of God himself (Matthew 5:35) who will return to reign on his father King David's throne.

Hence the inspiration to visit this particular city for the first time in 1976, then again in 1993, 1994 and finally, with my beloved in 2000. It was in 1976 when I attended the Arab wedding Reception. Also, in 1976 and in 1993 as well, I waded through a 2,700-year old tunnel which is a 530-metre long water chute dug through a solid limestone hill they call Mt Moriah. I also stood inside the Dome-of-the-Rock located on Temple Mount. Below its floor, there is a chamber where the summit of the original mountain remains intact, and it's where Abraham was ready to offer up his son Isaac, according to tradition. I stood by that rock with awe!

As I stood outside the golden Dome, admiring its beauty and holding a fascination over me for being on the very site of Solomon's Temple, and also an area Jesus was also familiar with, thoughts began to enter my mind on why this Islamic structure was allowed to be built at this precise spot. If this edifice was never built, then the Jews might have built their Third Temple, prompting the return of Jesus Christ to reign from Jerusalem and marking the end of the present age. The Dome quite literally blocked all this from happening, as it was not the time. In addition to this sobering truth was that - had the Temple rebuilding had occurred during the first millennium AD, we today would not even exist, let alone know God personally. Therefore, it can be said that the presence of the Dome-of-the-Rock blocking the rebuilding of the Temple will allow Heaven to be fully populated by those having faith who are still unborn.

Oh, how wonderful I felt when I thought about these things! These thoughts gave me a new perception of human history and Biblical revelation. And all this is contained in one word - Travel.

Looking back, I could discern a pattern, the putting together of a beautiful picture, like a jig-saw puzzle. By visiting Israel, especially in 1993, had opened the door for worldwide travel in the years that followed. And the combined reasons are a search for adventure and to appreciate our planet in both the natural and man-made structure - inspired by the God-created human brain. Hence, falling in love with the Grand Canyon, snorkelling over the corals of the Great Barrier Reef with its sandy cays held in place by tropical vegetation, hiking through the eucalyptus trees and the rainforest of the Blue Mountains National Park, gazing at the mangrove trees whose roots are submerged in the sea or river estuary, watching tiny shrimp happily thriving in Salt Lake of Utah, the rows of Traveller's Palms lining the theme park of Sentosa Island, standing by the majestic Niagara Falls...

Thus, I regard Travel as a privilege, a wonderful privilege indeed! And something that didn't come cheap at all, but I had to work hard for, the efforts to save up and economise with this for the goal to be reached, experienced, enjoyed, and to be treasured in both memory and photo albums for life.

Travel is one kettle of fish. But there is another - jet-setting - as I call it. With those who jet-set, they are not flying out to experience the natural beauty and the historical riches of this planet. Instead, they fly out to complete an errand, such as visiting a relative, attending a wedding, a baptism, or even a funeral.

Surely, all good in itself isn't it?

I may work hard to fly over a great distance to admire a particular location. Furthermore, throughout my travels, there was no viral pandemic in which I could pass a pathogen to others and infect them. When I arrived back in the UK, there is no thought of quarantine at a hotel, no need to take expensive tests to see whether I'm infected or not. No need for paperwork to prove that I'm fully vaccinated. There was no need for any of that. There was no pandemic. I was clean when I left the UK, I was clean when I arrived back. And I knew it. 

But jetting around the world to fulfil an errand is, to me, cheapens travel to mere convenience. To fly around the world to visit Mum or attend her daughter's baptism or her funeral sounds like a very noble idea. Pre-pandemic, I would have thought nothing of it. But now, a new variant of Covid, the Omicron virus was brought into this country from South Africa by infected people sitting in a jet plane after, say, attending a friend's wedding. And that has made me very cross; the forfeiture of our freedoms and the onset of restrictions due to flying during a pandemic.

As I'm now obliged to wear a wretched mask to cover my face whilst out and about, once again there is a possibility of another Christmas cancelled. In addition, Parliament had just announced that face-to-face consultation with a doctor has been put on hold to speed up the booster rollout. Thus, you better not feel a lump in your breast or suffer heart failure, nor hope for the long-anticipated procedure to end that agonising hip joint pain. All these are now put on hold, especially for senior citizens, so the younger set - who have stronger immune systems - can receive their boosters at a quicker pace.

And travel is cheapened to a mere errand. Instead of spending months, even years working hard to save up for that dream trip, instead, on the spur of the moment, money is easily drawn out of their vast savings to fly halfway around the world to watch a cricket match - as if nipping to the shops for a moment to buy a loaf of bread.

Although well-educated, due to their professional careers, there is plenty of money at their disposal and too much time on their hands, but far too little sense for considerate thinking. Still, that's how wonderful it is to be middle-class. A lifestyle very different to mine, where I was born with a wooden spoon in my mouth rather than a silver one. From my background, I had to learn to appreciate all good things gracefully, fully aware that I couldn't and never will, take anything for granted, especially the wonderful privilege to travel.

Sauna Nostalgia and the Pandemic.

And so, we're at the tail end of the Coronavirus pandemic. As I look back over nearly two years, how could I ever forget the need to queue up outside a grocery superstore? Back then, beginning around Easter of 2020 and into the summer months following, how could I ever believe that the time had come that I had to queue up to get into a shop and a large one at that? Indeed, had we entered the apocalyptic age of human history and the whole world is about to blow?

Superstore queue during a lockdown. Stock photo.

Added to that, our local Leisure Centre had shut down, all the so-called "non-essential" shops were closed, along with all the pubs, bars, restaurants, coffee houses...not to mention offices of all kinds empty of their City employees and their bosses...

The town centre was deserted, the streets were quiet, there was little traffic. Even London's busiest streets, such as Regent Street, Oxford Street, Piccadilly Circus, and Hyde Park Corner were all deserted, empty of traffic. It was as if the planet had rid itself of all people - every single individual alive had suddenly vanished - very much like in our home video documentary, Life After People, where the world population was zero, and featuring how the natural elements of sun, wind and rain continued in their destructive work unhindered by any human restorative activity. 

Within a few days after all people have vanished and the population is down to zero, every electric bulb and bar lighting blinks off, along with all neon street adverts, every fan stops rotating, every refrigerator shuts down, all industrial water pumps and power generators cease functioning - every form of power-driven machinery, both domestic and industrial, small and large, shuts down and draws to an eternal standstill - creating a deep, haunting, global silence.

In a course of time, every skyscraper in an advanced state of dereliction collapses into a huge cloud of dust, very much like how the World Trade Center collapsed into a massive cloud of smoke and dust after the 9/11 New York attack in 2001. London's Tower Bridge falls into the River Thames, the Elizabeth Tower housing Big Ben, already a few degrees off vertical at present, falls headlong onto Parliament Square, all the Underground tube and cut-and-cover lines and their stations become flooded, and unless also flooded by the river, all the streets would turn into wild garden strips, with an occasional shell of a car consumed by rust remain to be seen and ignored by any passing wild beast.

And wild beasts would wander through deserted streets overgrown with greenery, even trees, with derelict buildings on each side, collapsing into rubble piling on what used to be sidewalks. The domesticated characteristic of dogs that escaped from their man-made confinements, would breed out over the generations and wander around the streets as wolverine packs, always in search of escaped cattle that had grazed through the streets into town.

Hundreds of thousand years after people, anyone landing on our planet from an alien world would never guess that mankind once inhabited our planet, as all human constructions would have disappeared entirely - with thick forests with all its abundant wildlife inhabiting the tropical, the subtropical and the temperate climate zones of our planet, with the two Polar icecaps restored to their original size, and the oceans teeming with marine life, including species once threatened with extinction now thriving.

Perhaps, the sight of some stones piled in some odd manner might be an indication of long-past intelligent design, but such a theory remains debatable among these aliens - in much the same way we humans debate whether the undersea "Bimini Road" in the Atlantic Ocean is a natural formation or an ancient construction. That is until they wander across Egypt and notice three pyramids buried in the sand, with just their pinnacles showing. But the catch-all surety of intelligent design is the gigantic head of the Sphinx, not far from the Pyramids, also sticking out of the desert sand.

And so, I ponder as I stood in the queue whilst waiting to enter Sainsbury's superstore. The first lockdown caused by the Coronavirus had brought the world to a standstill - all by a minute virus! I guess my thoughts also go back to a TV drama series where almost the entire world population was wiped out by a virus, but unlike Life After People, a remnant of humanity had immune systems which resisted and fought the virus, enabling them to repopulate the Earth after the demise of its former civilisation - rather like Noah's family after the Deluge.

I find it amazing how a minute virus can halt civilisation in a dramatic manner no politician could ever achieve! Before then, I recall the freedom we so much took for granted. The sauna was one example.

I recall 1976, not long after having flown the nest when I was talking to a work colleague who spoke much about the sauna and its benefits. Being an avid fan of Queen's Park Rangers FC, Tony was one of several working-class men who frequented the facility, all of them older than me and therefore, rather intimidating for a skinny sauna neophyte who, once again, had to accept their culture of coarse language and crude toilet jokes. Therefore, for my accountant friend and graduate to refer to all sauna bathers as "sissies" - or as he often refers to as "woofters" - would have put his own safety in serious jeopardy in their presence! 

However, my accountant friend might also have a point. During those early days, the customer changed out of his day clothes in a large single room, lined with individual lockers. The changing room was shared by all. Then, the facility had two sauna cabins, one right next to each other, a steam room housed in a plastic cabin, and a very cold plunge pool. At its reception, manned by elderly Fred who was respected by everyone, lemon tea was purchased and consumed at the large resting room, itself furnished with reclining beds, adjoining the main sauna suite through a door. The larger sauna was used by "straights" - heterosexual working-class men, and it was the one I always sat in. But the other was frequented by gay men, attracted to the facility by an advert posted on their magazine by a staff member. Some of these gay men, after talking with several of them, turned out to be better educated and holding down professional careers. Amazing it was when two different cultures dwelt side by side, yet, as I soon found, each kept themselves apart from the other and there was no trouble.

A Sauna cabin. Stock photo.

But above all that, each bather in both groups knew each other well, thus creating a club atmosphere, and I was accepted into their "club", so to speak. This sense of "being part of the family" was certainly felt among the straight working classes, more so than in the gay group. In addition, I would have felt an oddity had I worn shorts or swimwear at the sauna. All the men there were starkers, like a nudist beach camp. However, I quickly got used to it and within days, being nude in company with others was never an issue.

Also, the men's session and the women's session alternated each evening. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday were assigned for the men, while Tuesdays, Thursdays, and I think, Sundays, were assigned for the women. It's these single-sex sessions, patterned after the ancient Roman culture, that had allowed nudity to flourish. Not any more.

Those were the days I look upon with fondness, a hot room smelling of pine and eucalyptus, a fragrant oil poured with the water onto the hot coals, located at the corner by the door. Anyone can ladle the mixture onto the coals, and as often as needed. There always was that sense of adult freedom that seemed to fade over time, with the fading accelerated by the recent pandemic.

How the facility had changed over the years! The whole spa suite is now refurbished with individual changing cubicles, two luxury bubble baths and both of them are rich in aesthetics. The steam room is of much better quality, and one of the sauna cabins is now replaced by a saunarium, a cooler room with higher moisture content in the air. But gone is the cold plunge pool. Instead, a cold shower had taken its place, which, to my mind, doesn't hold a candle to the old plunge pool. Gone too, is the old resting room. Instead, the wall that separated it from the sauna facility was demolished, leaving a smaller space within the facility with fewer reclining beds.

But the big difference is the lack of the "club atmosphere" created by the old regulars. Instead, its patrons tend to be strangers who keep themselves to themselves, although before the onset of Coronavirus, there were a few regulars who kept a remnant of a club atmosphere, even that was wiped out by the pandemic. No longer hosting single-gender sessions, swimwear is now compulsory for all bathers, with even a wall notice reminding us of it.

Then came the pandemic. And with it, the national lockdown. This included the closing down of the entire Leisure Centre. The sauna facility remained out of use for around 18 months. It was also when we all had to queue to get into a superstore such as Sainsbury's. I remember the first time we all had to queue. At first, it looked very long and daunting. But each person or couple stood more than two metres apart, the newly-initiated social distancing which made the queue appear longer than it really was.

But it took up to an hour between joining the queue and actually passing through the doors, with a marshall monitoring each person entering, to ensure that the people inside the store didn't exceed the maximum number. Over time, the queue got shorter, and with the shop encouraging its customers to shop alone rather than as a couple, the waiting time became considerably quicker.

By the Summer of 2020, the pandemic began to wane, and I thought that life will return to a resemblance of normality. But with new variants of the virus, first, the Kent variant followed by the Delta variant, by Autumn of that year, our Government made mask-wearing compulsory. And here is the twist. As soon as mask-wearing became mandatory, cases of new infections began to rise again. But at least there was one issue in its favour - the doing away with shopping queues altogether, thus, the normalisation of daily shopping trips. 

Whether there's any connection between mandatory mask-wearing and the rise of the third wave, in particular, I can't be sure, but there are many who argue in favour of the facecloth. But the scientists who had worked hard to develop the vaccine deserve my praise! As I see it, the vaccines are a mercy from God. And as the rollout took off with vigour at the start of 2021, the effects of the pandemic began to wane, with far fewer hospitalisations and deaths after a positive test.

And the rate of hospitalisations and deaths remained at a roughly flat rate. By the Summer, I was able to swim again every week. But it's no longer the case of just walking in at any minute of the day and swimming as long as I desire, as it was pre-pandemic. Now I have to book in advance, and I'm allowed a maximum of one hour to swim. Although I dislike the restriction, yet I find it's enough for me. The sauna is different. Fortunately, I can make two sixty-minute bookings back-to-back, therefore giving me two hours of bathing time which again, I have found to be adequate enough.

And so, I sit alone in the sauna cabin with no one to start a proper conversation with. What a difference from what it was 45 years previously! At least I'm no longer buffeted with swear words, the teasing and the criticising of others, and toilet jokes. But that "family atmosphere" is forever gone.

And then another phenomenon which never occurred back in the old "club" days - the admission of the severely disabled. Only yesterday, some carers brought in two mentally disabled women. Both were in wheelchairs. But one of them, plump but quite facially pretty with long dark hair, kept roaring like a lion. The loud noise was quite daunting, yet I looked upon her with my heart longing to give her an embrace, a tight hug. If I had the love of Christ for her, that was it. I would have done anything to enhance her welfare. 

And just as I was, in all, beginning to settle into this new way of living and enjoying the facilities, news comes in of a new, more dangerous variant of the virus. Named Omicron, after a Greek letter for "o", the Government is at present trying to reassure us that there is no need to panic. At least not yet, as further research is needed to establish the power of Omicron, whether if it spreads quicker and if so, would it intensify illness of its human host? Is it resistant to the vaccines? Would hospitalisation rise again to the levels back in January? And would deaths follow suit? And so our Government, having learned their lessons from previous variants, quickly banned flights from the affected countries. Good on them!

Vaccines for Coronavirus was a wonder in themselves.

Another lockdown? No, please, no! If our beloved Leisure Centre with our sauna facilities (paid for by us members) was to close down again, who knows, it could be permanent. New homes built on the site after demolition? No thank you! After all, who wants such wonderful memories swept away forever by a virus? 

Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear...

Isaiah 59:1 AV.

The real cure for this global pandemic is to fall on God's mercy and call upon his name. No one can go wrong there.

A Hike Along the Coastal Trail.

Whilst I was writing a comment on somebody else's blog on this website, my memory went back to 1996. Oh yes, that year. Having been on a trip to the USA a year previously, which included a hike down into the Grand Canyon, and then back up again on the following day, this time, I was at it again, hiking the West Coast Path from Bournemouth to Exeter via the Poole Harbour ferry, and taking in six overnight stops. 

The toughest part of the hike was between Swanage and Lulworth Cove, completed on Day 2. It was the most interesting leg of the hike and indeed, the most physically demanding. As such, I shall let my thoughts wander a little - the kind of thinking I might have indulged in whilst walking such a route.

The Foreland and Old Harry Rocks, Swanage.

As my feet trumped along the path, the ground so unyielding, the rock so hard under my feet, to fall could cause an injury, yea, even fracturing a bone upon contact with the solid rock. How could the surface be so unyielding, with not the slightest dent in the ground caused by the impact between my feet and solid hard rock? And yet, who would anyone realise that if our planet was the size of a golf ball - just over 4 cm across, the Earth would have the same constituency as toothpaste.

Or as I look at a lifesize mirror, or even down my own legs as I take one step after another as I headed west towards the Cove, I can't help thinking that like everything else in our Universe, both animate and inanimate, we are all made of atoms. Yea, those tiny particles, rather like miniature solar systems, the nucleus in the middle of each atom, with electrons whizzing in their orbits around the nucleus in a similar way that a planet orbits a star, or even the Moon orbiting the Earth. However, if I had a golf ball in my hand, which has a standard size of 4.268 cm, and assuming that this represents the nucleus of a hydrogen atom, then an electron would be represented as a slightly smaller ball, just over 25,804 metres, or nearly 26 km, 16 miles away!

This rather fascinating fact brings home the reality that everything in the Universe consists mainly of empty space. In other words, by using the hydrogen atom as a model, if every atom that makes up my physical height - all 1.80 metres of it - were to implode, so every electron is touching its nucleus, then I would be hardly any taller than a grain of salt in the kitchen. And if the same were to happen to our planet, the diameter of the Earth would be just a little more than 2.1 km, 1.3 miles, across.

I wonder whether if all this was to happen - every atom in the Universe - were to implode in such a manner - I would ask whether everything around me would look exactly the same, except that I'm a human the size of a grain of salt walking on a sphere just 1.3 miles in size, or would everything be vastly different, especially in the relationship between the rate of density, and gravity? And what would the condition of our atmosphere be like? And our oceans?

And so, such thoughts circulate in my mind as I pause to take in the scenery, especially passing Durlston Head, with its quaint restaurant housed in a small castle, and arriving at Anvil Point Lighthouse, which is on the other side of a small but deep ravine, known locally as a chine, with a steep descent followed by a steep climb to get to the lighthouse. As the chine has every resemblance of a dried river bed leading directly to the sea, I guess it wasn't hard to imagine water from an inland flood flowing through this chasm, cutting through the Purbeck Beds and then cascading over the hard Portland Stone cliff as a spectacular waterfall.

Oh, how I long to have gone back in time to when this chine was draining away fast-moving waters, at the same time, cutting out the ravine as the water flowed into the sea. I carried on walking along the reasonably level coastline, the trail forming an endless streak along the clifftop, and unlike with chalk that is prone to crumble into the sea, this is, in a geological sense, almost permanent, as Portland Stone making up the cliffs is so hard, that coastal erosion is minimal. A rather unusual geological phenomenon to my right, as I headed west towards the Dancing Ledge and St Alban's Head. That is the landscape slopes between ten to twenty degrees off the horizontal as it faces towards the sea, with the trail running along the lower edge of the sloping strip. A raised beach? Quite a point, that.

I can imagine this part of the coastline slowly rising from the sea as the Flood receded, with the waves lapping at the sloping beach, and where the trail is now, that particular zone still underwater, especially during high tide. Now it's well above sea level, the ancient beach having frozen in time, grass replacing bare sand, cows now grazing where jellyfish might have been left stranded by the receding tide, the vertical cliffs beneath the fossilised beach exposed whilst taking the full force of the waves crashing onto them on a windy day. Ah! That particular day was warm and sunny, being in the height of Summer.

And so, the trail rounds a bend which marks the tip of St Alban's Head, and the path leads to a spectacular sight: Chapman's Pool, although not knowing who this Chapman fellow could ever be, I'm reminded of our short-tempered Deputy Head during my schooldays. Bearing the same name as this natural inlet, Mr Chapman was reputed by all the students for wielding his cane too willingly. To continue on the trail, I had to descend the steep slope of the ravine where its mouth is directly above the cove. Having crossed the dried river bed, the rest of the hike all the way to Lulworth Cove will be strength-sapping, starting with a steep climb out of the ravine. 

Chapman's Pool, Dorset.

After Chapman's Pool, it's up and down, up and down. Some of these slopes were very steep, and with a heavy rucksack weighing me down, it had almost got to the point of crawling on all fours. There was hardly anyone around, the trail was deserted. Yet, I continued with this challenging hike. Although I felt tired, I couldn't help but admire the beautiful seascape, and how land meets sea through vertical cliffs of varying heights - especially after pushing myself up those slopes. 

For me, the hike symbolises the Christian life, more so than the Grand Canyon hike. Here in Dorset, the general height of the cliffs from sea level remains at an average level. But this section of the trail crosses some hills, many of them quite steep, but, as I always like saying, what goes up must come down - a true fact when considering that this particular hike will terminate (for the night) at Lulworth Cove beach - after starting that morning at Swanage beach.

The Christian life isn't easy. Jesus himself has once said, 

In the world, you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world - John 16:33.

Climbing those hills, one after another, with a heavy backpack strung across my shoulders wasn't easy. But after reaching the summit, I was rewarded with magnificent views, vistas of the fields and trees inland, a dramatic view of the neighbouring hills, the cliffs, and the sea. Furthermore, there is that sense of satisfaction in accomplishment, that feeling of exuberance in a quiet a peaceful setting, far from the road busy with traffic lights, crawling car queues, exhaust fumes, lorries, bad driving and foul tempers. Indeed, by car, you can get to your destination very quick and easy, such as on the Bournemouth-Exeter route. But you would also miss out on the sense of adventure, the pure air, lovely views to enjoy, the sea, good exercise, sleeping at different venues, meeting people, sharing your experiences...

I wonder how Paul the apostle took it all? Apparently, he too lived a fulfilled life in Christ, so much so that he compared his new way of living with his old, religious life as a Pharisee. Comparing one with the other, his new life in Christ has made his old life as a Pharisee seem like human defecation! Yet, according to a couple of his letters, he was suffering a physical ailment. He even called upon the Lord to have "the thorn in his flesh" removed, but the Lord refused to heed his request. Instead, God answered that his grace was sufficient for him (2 Corinthians 12:7.)

It does look as if Paul had an ailment with his eyes, according to Galatians 4:12-16, 6:11, which affected his eyesight. I personally believe that he suffered from conjunctivitis, a viral or bacterial eye infection that causes a mucus discharge and difficulty in opening the eyelids. Accompanied by soreness, the disease can be highly infectious. To the believers in Galatia, Paul must have looked a sorrowful, even a disgusting sight.

Yet, according to his letter to the Philippian church, he was running the race with joy, encouraging them to shine like stars and demonstrating how life with Christ is so much more fulfilling than his past life as a Pharisee, even if, as a Pharisee, he enjoyed better health. Yet, even after his conversion, God refused his request for healing. And that's not too difficult to understand why.

With so many visions he had, along with various revelations from God, his heart would have been good soil to sow the seeds of pride. His illness had not only kept the apostle humble but quite likely had generated a greater show of love and compassion from his followers. The Galatian believers were proof of this. This sense of greater compassion added further credit to his message, along with encouraging stronger faith among his listeners, and quite likely added a greater number of converts to the church. Furthermore, rather than seeing his pride and feeling put off, they were encouraged by the humility his illness had brought.

Both Alex, my wife and I have health problems. She suffered from cancer, still suffers from pain, is reliant on medicine and attend regular healthcare appointments. In turn, I'm living with heart failure, hence my need for blood thinners and a plethora of other medicines. But, as I can see, these struggles have kept us close to God, and no matter how serious or threatening our crisis can get, we both refuse to turn away from God, his love and saving power. Furthermore, we are both hoping that our weak health will strengthen our testimony about our faith in Jesus Christ and, like Paul, can edify others and, in turn, receive compassion and encouragement.

Hence why I had made a comparison between walking in Christ and hiking a tough trail. I can see the parallelism. Can you? Climbing those hills and then easing down the other side, one hill following another, some with rather steep sides - all that is hard work, tiring, even frustrating and with a temptation to give up. How I longed to see the end, the welcoming end of the hike, and an even warmer welcome of my bed awaiting me at the Lulworth Cove backpacker's hostel. Yet rewards of magnificent views and good photography, along with a sense of fulfilment accompanies the hike.

After passing Kimmeridge Bay, a beauty spot with a car park and a stopping point for hikers, the trail enters a restricted area, owned by the Ministry of Defence. The MoD opens the trail for public use only during school holidays. At all other times, the area is closed to the public and it's used as a shooting range. When I completed the hike, it was accomplished during the Summer school holidays, hence, I had no trouble with access. The restrictions cover the trail between Kimmeridge Bay and Lulworth Cove itself. 

At a point between Kimmeridge Bay and Lulworth Cove, the Portland Stone cliffs give way to Chalk cliffs, hence a change in character. This section of Chalk is actually the far end of a chalk ridge, known as the Purbeck Hills, with Ballard Down, just north of Swanage town, and famed for its stacks - the Foreland and Old Harry Rocks, along with Corfe Castle further inland. The ridge arches inland until it meets the sea further west at the Cove itself, but the coast does cut into the chalk ridge for some distance east of the Cove.

After arriving at Lulworth Cove, it was early evening. After a 24-mile slog, 39km, (including the bit from the Cove to the hostel) the sight of the bed was so welcoming! Packed away in my rucksack was the ingredients needed to cook a meal before relaxation and then, much later into the night, off to the welcoming bed. Ah! Heaven!

Lulworth Cove, with Stair Hole in the foreground, terminates the day's hike

A terrifyingly-loud electric storm greeted me as I prepared breakfast the next morning. By then, I had made friends with an Australian backpacker on the previous evening. This was one of the inspirations that led me to book a flight to Australia for the following year.

The thunderstorm was intense. Maybe being by the coast and surrounded by hills had intensified the booms and rumbles. But as long as it lasted, I stayed at the hostel until the storm had passed. But I needn't wait long. The storm soon cleared up and I was able to resume the hike, a much short stint from Lulworth Cove to Weymouth town, where I managed to find a hotel.

Hence, when I finally boarded the train at Exeter St David for the return journey home a few days later, the hike proved to be an adventure I won't easily forget - with a spiritual ring to it.

Committed Christians and a TV Soap.

Eastenders is one of those TV soaps aired on the BBC four evenings a week. It's one of those programmes I can't imagine being watched regularly by committed, middle-class churchgoers. It portrays a way of life that is far too coarse and as unbiblical as it gets while trying to put across how typical East London working classes live and interact with each other on a day-to-day basis.

The scene is an outdoor setting that bears the name Albert Square in a fictional district of Walford, which is set at Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. The Albert Square setting is based on an actual square of the same design, Fassett Square in Dalston, in the East London borough of Hackney.

Toby Smith plays Gray Atkins in Eastenders.

But as I see it, the characters do not quite portray the real life of the working classes, at least, not so much among the male characters. The incredible absence of swear words, curses, smut, and other strong language and insulting speech have robbed the soap of real, true-to-life drama. You know, the sort of stuff I had to endure as a naive teenager entering the adult world of an all-male factory workshop from the kindergarten of school life. As author Charles Dickens once explained, when he wrote his books, the language spoken between the villains and criminals had to be unrealistically modified so as not to startle and upset his puritan readers.

No doubt, the classic TV soap Eastenders has followed Dicken's path of language modification. And that includes the complete omission of toilet jokes - indeed, often common at a working men's club or at a pub - the sort of jokes which I tend, at times, find hilarious but can be offensive to many other Christians. Indeed, I have wondered whether an odd joke thrown in occasionally would add a bit of cheer to the otherwise melancholic script and even raise its viewing figures. Or would such a joke aired on TV open the door for a plethora of complaints flooding the BBC centre? And eventually, leading to the danger of taking the soap off the air?

I have once read that Hollywood loves to portray the villain as a smartly-dressed English businessman. This is also true in Eastenders. Here, the producers at Elstree Studios wrote a script that led to the introduction of one character, Gray Atkins, played by Toby-Alexander Smith. In the soap, he plays the character of a failed solicitor cursed with a quick temper. On the outside, he looks swell to the women around him, as he goes about in a business suit and tie, thus, he stands out as a middle-class gentleman, a beacon of enlightenment and higher education living in a working-class estate. But behind closed doors, his wife, who was also the mother of his two children, was terrified of him, as his quick temper eventually led to a violent scene where she was stabbed. By covering up the murder by using a smashed bottle of milk, he was able to persuade the police to pass the incident off as a tragic accident.

Afterwards, he kills two more people. One of them was Tina Carter. After an argument and questioning him whether he really killed his wife rather than having been in an accident, he strangles her, then hides her body in a bin wrapper and places it into the boot of his car whilst there was no one else around. He then drives off to bury her in some remote, unknown location. Finally, after an altercation at an underground station, this time he pushes a man, Kush Kazemi, off the platform in front of an approaching train. Afterwards, he leaves the scene to look as if it was a suicide incident.

But despite being who he is, as a widower, he still has that appeal to draw in other women, as the series continues, we now learn that he proposed to the beautiful Chelsea Fox. At his first proposal, she hesitated and turns him down. But shortly afterwards, she changes her mind and accepts his marriage proposal. How I cringed! He may be a serial killer, but his profession as a solicitor with his suit-and-tie attire doesn't fail to allure her, as if she's walking into a deadly trap.

How true to life all this is a matter of opinion. For example, real-life John Reginald Christie, to name just one, murdered at least eight women, including his own wife Ethel, and then buried their bodies under the floorboards, also in the tiny back garden, and even walled up others in the kitchen. He was active in the decade between 1943 until he was executed by hanging in July 1953, then aged 54 years, by then, I was already ten months old.

John Reginald Christie.

The two criminals, one fictional and the other real share some common themes - as children, they were both ill-treated by their unemotional and unloving fathers. Both suffered bullying at school, yet, both achieved a high level of education. Both found women to be a threat to their egos. Both concealed their crime or their victim's bodies to avoid discovery. It's these similarities that have made me ponder whether the fictional character of Gray Atkins was borrowed from the historic John Reginald Christie.  

It's my opinion that most committed Christians would shun watching the soap, branding it as too worldly, unspiritual and glorifying sin. And it's quite true that, throughout the series, evil was allowed to flourish for a very long time before the perpetrator was brought to justice, much to my own sense of injustice. But one lesson does stand out quite clearly - that is, if you sleep around, you will face grave consequences. Throughout the soap, where adultery and unfaithfulness happen, it's always followed by the shock of its discovery, anger, strife, tears, divorce, mental illness, an unwanted pregnancy, even violence, and long-term ruin for the guilty. Perhaps that was why God instructed Israel not to commit adultery. God had already known of its dreadful consequence and wishes nobody would suffer from such sin.

The same applies to lending and borrowing. There are multiple stories in Eastenders connected with large sums of money lent out, and the borrower is unable to pay back the debt. The results often end in fear, frustration, hate and gang violence, a very sad set of consequences for not taking the advice Jesus gave, which is if you lend, don't ask for the money back, if they ask for your shirt, then give him your coat as well, and if they tell you to walk a mile, then walk two miles - advice which seems at first to be incredibly unrealistic, even imbecilic and impractical, along with the fear of becoming a doormat, but at the end turns out to result in peace of the soul, greater happiness, less stress and anxiety, far less hostility, a recipient of greater respect, maybe even honour, and just as important, "piling hot coals on the enemy's head" - a poetic way of piercing his conscience. Indeed, Watching Eastenders could give us all a lesson in not behaving in a way that discredits the truth of the Bible.

As Christians, both Alex and I have discussed the consequence of sin after watching Eastenders. Rather than tut-tutting for wasting our time on "unwholesome hedonistic pleasures", such storylines does bring us to the Bible and if anything, conclude that the soap verifies the truthfulness of the Bible rather than denying or ridiculing it.

And now? We're waiting for Gray Atkins' comeuppance for his murders. It will come eventually. How? We just have to wait and see. It all hangs on how long the contract will be between the actor Toby Smith and the makers of the soap. If the producers of the soap stick with Biblical principles, then the thick of reaping what you sow will eventually bear fruit for Gray Atkins. And I believe that is what the viewers want, and patiently waiting for.

And if there's an irony here. We both also enjoy nature programmes, especially those presented by David Attenborough and physicist Brian Cox. Lately, we've been watching the Universe and how it began, a presentation by Brian Cox. Throughout the two one-hour-long documentaries, there was no mention of God or any hint of divine or intelligent creation. Rather, our Universe, including our Sun and Solar System, were all formed purely by chance over multiple billions of years. And we as a species, are nothing more than a coincidence, an offshoot from the Universe out of pure luck, an unnecessary side-issue, the Universe owing us nothing. Although all that is diametrically opposed to how the Bible evaluates us - as the pinnacle of Creation and made just a little lower than God himself and perceived by our Maker as worthy enough for redemption.

And so, such science-based programmes appeal to the middle-classes, including Christian graduates who fill our church pews. Such documentaries appear far more wholesome than the horrid goings-on within the soaps. Yet although very interesting to watch, such philosophies presented by the likes of Brian Cox can be soul-destroying, making us feel worthless and psychological damaging - far more so than Eastenders. At least with the soap, it's all fiction and the world knows that. But what Cox (and also Attenborough) presents is meant to be taken as historical fact while at the same time the Bible is relegated to mere legend, well within the realm of mythology.

Then, if we as a species is nothing more than an accidental spinoff from the gasses that swirled in universal space, then what's the point of good or bad? Indeed, Gray Atkins, and for that matter, John Christie, can snuff out the lives of as many people as they want. Why then, is that bad? We're just swirling gasses, after all, nothing more. And the NHS. Why do we all here in the UK love the National Health Service so much if all we are is a mass of random molecules gotten here by a stroke of luck?

Earlier in the week, my good friend and PhD holder Dr Andrew Milnthorpe posted a video of a Remembrance ceremony that was held at the Royal Albert Hall in 2016. He posted it on 11/11/2021, the day we remember Armistice Day, which was signed to end the Great War on that very day in 1918. After the hymn, I vow to thee my country, was sung by the choir filling the auditorium, a colonial publicly addressed the Queen with such adoration, had I arrived from another planet, I would have sworn that she was a saviour-goddess. Such praise and adoration for the Head of State do not come from a chance offshoot from swirling gasses. Rather, it arose from the Biblical record of Divine Creation.

Brian Cox.

I write this blog on the eve of Remembrance Sunday. Biblically based, it's an important day for us to remember all those who gave their lives for our freedom. Indeed, I see myself as more of a European than an Englishman. In 2016, I voted to remain in the EU at the Referendum and I was very disappointed when the result showed a national favour to leave the EU, especially by a very narrow margin. As a full-blood Italian (both my parents arrived in the UK before I was born) I still feel for my roots stemming from Italy, although by law, I'm a British citizen. Therefore, it's right to remember those who gave their lives so we can enjoy our freedom here in the United Kingdom.