The 'P' Part, I hate flies!

I hate flies!

God is pushing at the seams of my envelope right now.  I love to be outside but I really do hate flies.  You could say I'm manic about them.  (When they get in the house I hunt them down with a swatter until they are all dead)! But here in Rubite there are flies everywhere and I mean everywhere. This is a rural farming village with at least two herds of sheep/goats at about 100 head each that live right here.  One flock is just a few doors away from where we are.  They are driven past the house daily and where there are sheep there is sheep S...! Lots of it, plus all the mule, cat and dog S... from around the village and you get the picture.  That is my reckoning on why there are so many flies.  So each time I sit outside I'm literally covered in flies and the less I have on, it been in the 20's, the more flies are on me, not my clothing, me, Yuk!

What is the meaning of this? Who knows, what could I possibly be being prepared for? I don't know, I don't think I want to know. I do know I still hate flies but I am able to function in a place where they rule the roost, which I think is a good thing.

Thanks God :)

PS, it's a rather windy day today, so mercifully there are far fewer flies than normal as I sit out here and write.  It's a good day in Rubite.

UK 3

We made some new friends in Fetcham and were invited back to cook for them anytime, kinda cool really. I left Fetcham on Sunday and Rick dropped me dropped off in Horley, just north of Gatwick airport at a Best Western there. I met Penny at the train station early evening, she came down from Holmes Chapel after visiting the other part of the family up there. I didn't go because of all the baggage and the transfers we would have had to make including one leg on the London Tube, not fun! Anyway, we had a couple of days in Horley and went up to London on one of them. I love to walk London, one of my favourite places on the planet to walk around, so much to see, the history and all the activity!!! We walked from Victoria station past Parliament and Big Ben,

10 Downing Street, just missed Mr. Cameron, Horse Guards

and then by Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square.

Down The Strand past the Savoy Hotel and took the scenic route (the wrong way) to the British Museum. We did stop at the New London Theatre and picked up some decent seats for Warhorse that night. Tough day :)

Now the The British Museum... Most of us have seen the old movies of mummies and the Egyptologists and all, well this is where is all comes from. That and more!!! Penny and I walked up to the a great stone edifice that is “The British Museum” (which is free to enter by the way), left the backpack at the coat check, walked into the main gallery and were immediately blown away by its sheer size, a great round “inner edifice” inside a huge inside space (sorry no pic here). A quick “biffy” stop and we were off to the rooms on the left. We did not get a map and only used the tall standing map in the room, so we knew we were off to Egyptland LOL. The first thing we beheld as we entered the room was the Rosetta Stone!

I was completely over come with emotion as I was seeing with my own eyes one of the “wonders” of archeology, the means of deciphering hieroglyphics to Greek via an intermediary of Demotic text. You know, you read about things and see pictures but nothing prepares you for when you see the “thing” with your own eyes. I just stood there for several minutes and took it in. It was the highlight of the entire museum for me! Then off we walked through all the Egyptian and Assyrian rooms on the ground floor of the museum seeing things 3000-5000 years old. We think in North America we have history at 300-500 years maybe back 1000-1500 but nothing like this…

We wandered the museum for about 5 hours seeing artifacts from 7000 to a few hundred years old. Bone and stone tools, 2000 year old glass, a clock from the mid 16^th century that was still running and playing beautiful tunes with bells.

You could easily spend days in the museum reading all the placards and pouring over all the displays but we only had a few hours and throughly enjoyed it all!

Time to leave the museum and head for the show, “Warhorse”, but first a little pizza and pasta with some red wine at a close by restaurant, it was grand! “Warhorse” is the stage production of the movie from a few years back where the actors are mostly human (some mannequins) and the animals are all puppets with human puppeteers “running” them. The adult horse, Joey, had three men wearing, cabling and poling the legs and all but after a few minutes, it was just as some other friends of ours who had seen it earlier this year said, all you see is the horse. Amazing! The show was superb. The goose puppet pretty much stole the show! Back to Horley late and an early start, 5am, for the airport and a flight to Spain...

The 'P' part, chance encounter ?

Chance encounter ?

So there we were heading out for a day in London. We walk to the train station in Horley, the short way that we know now, as we've done it a time or two at this point.

We leave time to pick up our pre-booked and paid for tickets via V. Trains as we've also learned that can get tricky sometimes too.

As we get close to the station we notice a couple rolling up the hill with a large red suitcase.  We bump into them a few minutes later at the ticket machine as the four of us jockey back and forth in the tight corner with the suitcase, our lattes and confirmation numbers.  Tickets are dispensed and each of us become absorbed in our own worlds as we tuck return tickets away and prepare for the trains arrival.

Now standing in the middle of the station there's a rail employee letting passengers know the 9.41 to Victoria station will be delayed about 10 minutes. No problem, it won't make much of a difference. This will now give us a few minutes breathing space. We make our way down the stairs and out to the platform.  There is a young lady out there wearing way too much perfume, so I quickly lead us down the platform a ways.  Yep, you guessed it, the couple with the red suitcase arrive at the same time and we're just about shoulder to shoulder.  In my usual outgoing manner I ask the woman where they are off to and a whole conversation follows.

They are on a one year sabbatical!  He's from Australia and she's Canadian. Their home is rented out to a family of recent Russian immigrants to 'down under'. Their belongings are spread out amongst family, a storage unit and supportive friends.  He's in IT, she's a nurse.  Just on their way to store the camping equipment they have been using for the past 90 days all around Europe, with another friend in Redhill, then off to Canada where they'll stay through Christmas.

They have been going on faith for much of this journey, not knowing where or how they are going next. Monique gave an example of them disembarking a ship with the question where now God? Harry and I couldn't help but smile.

So until the train arrived and for the one stop down the line until they got off we went back and forth with bits of our stories, managed to share each other's email addresses and were both encouraged to meet another couple on a similar adventure.

If the train had not been delayed we probably wouldn't have had such the depth of conversation and the chance to hear about their journey.  Sorry to the rest of the train load of passengers who had to wait for us!  Life is like that sometimes, chance encounters that are really not random at all, but for us, preordained.

Harry will share his thoughts on our day in the city, so stay tuned for that.