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As it was a glorious day (and we don't get too many of those here in Ireland!) I thought I'd go for a walk in Cairn Wood, which is half way between Bangor and the Craigantlet hills if you take the back roads. As it was 11.30am there weren't too many people around so I was able to walk along some of its designated paths in absolute silence. Bliss! I took my mobile along with me, and whilst I couldn't get a signal I was still able to use the camera, and so I took around 20 or 30 pictures.
I was just blown away by the beauty of the place. I walked among the trees aware of Nature and my place within it. I felt like a little cog, but a little cog in the huge, enormous, beautiful machine that is our planet.
On the way in there was a noticeboard that gave some general info about the area and the walks around the Wood. After skimming down the blurb my eye caught a tag-line from the Forestry Commission. It read, "Kill only time, leave only footprints, and take away only memories".
It was so simple, and yet so beautiful. And it reminded me that life is so simple and so beautiful. Yes it can be complicated, and yes it can be dark and distressing, but yes it is simple and beautiful. Only we make it unnecessarily complicated. And at that moment I was drawn to the Bible, and to a passage in Micah:
"He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? "
I only hope that I can do that. Forget doctrines and creeds. Forget theology in all its convoluted forms. Forget religion and denominations. Faith can be simple and Faith can be beautiful. ANd so can we. Amen.
What a day it was today!! The sun was shining and people were bustling round Bangor. So I went down to the seafront where there was a car boot sale opposite the Marina. Having nothing much to do I pottered round the various stalls.
What I encountered could only be explained via the word "tat". Well, maybe "tat" is unfair. "Dirty tat" is closer to the mark.
It looked like people had cleared out their attics, sorted through their stuff, throwing out the rubbish and selling what's left at the car boot sale.
I noticed a number of visitors (I presumed by the accents) and my heart sank. Not because they were here, but because they were being subjected to a sub-standard Jumble Sale. What must they have thought! I remember wandering round the Flea Market in Amsterdam and it being anything but that. It was well organised and had a great variety of stalls selling all sorts of things. It was a lovely Sunday experience.
Pirated DVDs and second-hand toys (that could do with a wipe with a damp cloth) were the best on offer today. It was rather embarrassing to say the least.
If North Down wants to improve its Tourist appeal then things like the car boot sale need to be taken under its control. Car boot sales are fine for Church car parks and the like, but you'd expect something better, or better regulated, for the town centre.
Now let's get one thing straight from the very beginning! I quite like football, especially local football, but I don't live and die by the League Table. If my team does well, so be it. If it does badly, well, it's not the end of the world.
And that's a good thing, because at the moment Bangor FC have had an appalling run of luck. I say luck, but for a football team to have a run of bad luck they need to have an initial talent base from which their 'bad luck' seems so unfair.
Bangor started the Season quite well, actually topping the League Table for a week. But all that changed when other teams started playing games of football. Poor Bangor's last 4 matches have been lost, scoring only one goal, and letting a staggering fourteen in! Fourteen!!It's been a massacre. Bereft of mercy the last 2 Home games were both 0-5. And they have the cheek to charge £11 to get in - it's £9 if you want to stand, but at my age...........
I've never understood people (men usually) who's mood rises and falls depending on the results from the Premiership, 1st Division, or wherever. Yes it's good to have a hobby and it's good to show loyalty to a team, but please people! A bit of perspective!
What Bangor FC teaches me is never to give up hope. Yes, they can be rather poor. Yes, they can disappoint on a regular basis. Yes, the 'Club Shop' is never open so I can buy a scarf. Yes, it's mainly supported by older men. Yes, the burger van has a poor vegetarian selection. But more importantly, yes, there's nothing quite like a live match, and the sense of camaraderie is lovely (more like 'misery loves company' most Saturdays).
While things are bad now, there's every chance that things will improve, and even a chance, fairly remote I realise, that some massive win will unexpectedly be pulled off. I text a friend every game I'm at to keep him up to date as he lives in Manchester, and strangely the National Sports Headlines don't include the JJB Sports Northern Irish Premiership results. BBC! Why, oh why, oh why, oh why! What he said to me was this, "It is only by coming thru the pain and misery of being a bangor fan that we can truly appreciate the joy of the occasional victory!"
Wise words my friend, wise words.
Like Paul on the Road to Domestos I had an epiphanal moment. Not quite 'on the road' but more like parked in the drive.
I was thinking about fossils and how Creationists say that all fossils are as a direct result of the global flood of Noah. All very sweet. Ah, bless!
Then it struck me. If fossils were formed via the Flood (ah, bless!) then why are there only dinosaurs and other prehistoric fossils? If the flood wiped out all life and it occurred only 4-6,000 years ago, then why aren't there fossils of cows, lions, sheep, donkeys, horses and other modern animals in with the dinosaurs in the same strata?!? And why not humans too?!?
I know Creationists (ah, bless!) talk about animals floating and sinking at different stages, hence the dinosaurs appear lower (and therefore older) but as Ken Ham has said (ah, bless!) the bulk of the dinosaurs were actually quite small - that's why Noah could get them on the Ark (ah, bless!). If that is the case, then why aren't there small dinosaurs fossils alongside the fossils of similarly sized modern animals? Surely they would've sank at the same rate/time?
Oddly enough, there aren't any! Indeed, I'm not aware of any modern animal fossils being found.
Don't you just love Creationists?! Ah, bless!
Today I spent the most pleasant couple of hours in my own company. Normally I'm fairly good about being alone, but usually crave some sort of human contact after a while but today was different. After watching Bangor getting a 3-1 thrashing by Coleraine I needed a 'nice' experience.
I drove along to Downhill beach and walked along it for around half an hour. It was a calm day, not sunny but not cold either. Lots of people were about and a few families were having BBQs on the sand. People were fishing or playing games. It was a lovely atmosphere. From Downhill you can see Mussenden Temple, and it was there where I next walked.
The air was crisp and the smell of the sea was pleasant in my nostrils. The setting sun lit up the clouds with a beautiful reddy glow, and it was silent. Absolutely silent. It was almsot a 'spiritual' experience. It reminded me that the North Coast, and especially the Downhill area, is my little Heaven on earth. If God were ever to take holidays, I'm sure S/He would rent a little cottage there. I don't think I could ever tire from a place like it and it did my soul good to walk there. Many, many pleasant memories flooded through me, and I must admit I did feel a little emotional. There was a sense of oneness with Nature - nothing really mattered - nothing was really important other than enjoying being there and enjoying being alive. I snapped away with my little camera phone and will post a selection of them so that you can enjoy a taste of what I had.
It's the eve of something big. Something really big. In fact, it could be a big bang, or possibly a damp squib. The particle accelerator at Cern will be fired up and ready to roll tomorrow. Along a tube some 27 kms long, two particles will be shot at almost the speed of light towards each other. The data that is gathered will hopefully tell us something about what happened in the first one billionth of a second after the Big Bang.
And that's as far as my knowledge goes. I always regret not pursuing Physics beyond O-Level but I didn't have the Maths, and you need the Maths. Nevertheless, I continue to have an armchair interest in Science, to the point where I'm genuinely excited about what might be discovered after tomorrow. My worry is that it won't deliver the hype that's been generated, predominately by the press. My other worry is that if nothing significant is discovered then all that money will have been for nought: some £5 billion as far as I'm aware. Now I realise that 5 billion is the cost of a couple of weeks in Iraq, and even if Cern produces nothing it will be a thousand times better than what's been achieved via the 'war' there.
So I wait with baited breath. In response to the Daily Mail article that said we'll all die in a black hole, I'll leave posting off this month's credit card payment. Seems best.
Just back form the cinema with the kids having been treated to 90 mins of my life that'll I'll never get back. It was "Disaster Movie" by name and by nature. When did parody sink so low?! And why wasn't I told!?
It's not often that I sit through a film that contains NO redeeming features. There has to be a first I suppose. This was it. Live and learn!
The only good thing I can think about this appalling evening (no reflection on Dan or Soph here) was that I saw a poster advertising another film, "the boy in the striped pyjamas", a film about a young boy in a Concentration Camp.
It just goes to show you that there's no such thing as a a complete wipeout. If I hadn't been at Disaster Movie I would never have seen the other poster. Not a complete disaster then.
As it was a glorious day (and we don't get too many of those here in Ireland!) I thought I'd go for a walk in Cairn Wood, which is half way between Bangor and the Craigantlet hills if you take the back roads. As it was 11.30am there weren't too many people around so I was able to walk along some of its designated paths in absolute silence. Bliss! I took my mobile along with me, and whilst I couldn't get a signal I was still able to use the camera, and so I took around 20 or 30 pictures.
