Danshari

 Danshari — that composite Japanese word meaning three things (all verbs): refuse, dispose, separate. It's written like this.

It is by itself more or less a minimalist manifesto for walking towards simplicity, living lightly.

It came to mind again this week, because our borough council has done a marvellous thing, and hooked up with a company that collects stuff we need to throw out, taking it away to sell on through charity shops, for good causes. They take — bagged up separately — books, clothing and bric-à-brac. We can book a collection online, pack up the items for disposal, and put them out labelled so they know to take it. The collection will be between 8am and 5pm, but the evening before they will email a 2-hr time slot. Then we can put it outside for them, or they will knock on the door to collect — very helpful for rainy days!

My general experience of life is that Stuff finds me. I have bright ideas for kitchen gadgets, or someone gives me a lovely present, or there's a book I want to read, and before long an accumulation of bits and pieces has gathered round without my ever having really intended it. 

But since I don't particularly enjoy housework, and have no wish to spent my time organising and dusting and curating my accumulation, from time to time I have to run it through a danshari process: saying no to even objects I regard with affection, separating out what is daily useful from what is just here because I brought it home, and disposing of enough items until our house can breathe again, simple to clean and calm to look at.

The doorstep collection people are coming on Wednesday, so I have been going through my belongings, imposing a radical cull. They can't take furniture, so some larger items have found their way into the world by other means. A huge plastic box with a lid, and a big laundry basket, have gone to a neighbour packing up her worldly goods to move house. Two folding tables have gone to two people from the Facebook Hastings Give-and-Takery, and a slow cooker and a drinks dispenser went by the same route. Yesterday morning early a woman came to collect a strong and sturdy footstool which she wanted for a step allowing her eighty-nine-year-old mother to climb in and out of their camper van because she's taking her on holiday. Someone came for the low Chinese-looking unit we rescued from the roadside. Bit by bit things have gone on their way.

It's involved a lot of thought and photographing and posting online and waiting at home for people to come by and collect, but it's very much worth it. In this world of mass production, moving things on and sharing them out is essential, otherwise we'll all drown in clutter.

The element of danshari I am not very good at is the refusing part. I'm well practiced at separating and disposing, but I think I need to exercise my refusing muscle a bit. And I am fairly certain we still have more belongings in our house than we really should. In fact I can think of several right now — but the snag is they are things that have emotional significance (though not for me), so I must be cautious and tactful and slow about detaching them. Their time will come, though.

We love our little house, but in another year or two we will probably need to move to somewhere where the house and garden are on one level, no flights of steps inside or out, and where the garden is a lot smaller than the one we have here. We are very happy here for now, but we know that we will need to move one more time to accommodate health issues and growing old. With this in mind, I am determined to reduce our store of belongings to the smallest and simplest I can get it, so as to maximise our freedom and flexibility as we travel the road ahead.

What happened next — Carol wanted to know.

Writing stories has brought me many blessings, not the least of them being the people from far-flung places around the world who find their way to me — usually through this blog — and become dear friends, mostly via email correspondence. 

One such friend, Carol, one of the people to whom The Light of One Lamp is dedicated, wrote to me a day or two back, wanting to know if in due course Nicholas had his sight gradually restored, and if he did ever become a monk in the end.

It occurred to me that some of you might have wondered the same thing. This is what I was able to tell Carol:

Yes, he did; both those things. His eyesight was never that wonderful, but he faithfully followed what he was told to protect his health, and obtained signficant improvement, enough to greatly ease his practical daily difficulties.  

The first thing Abbot John did when he'd finished his recuperative stint in the infirmary was to receive Nicholas into the community as a postulant. When Nicholas entered, he gave Gervase Bonvallet (who was very pleased with them) his beautiful blue woollen hood with the liripipe, and his green and blue surcotes. He carried on working in the pottery, becoming much better at that craft than Brother Robert, who was proud of him and didn't mind at all. Nicholas took his simple vows in 1327 and his solemn vows in 1328. His name in religion was Brother Barnabas. His reception into that community was a pride and joy and massive relief to his mother Melissa; he made the right choice and lived very happily there. Seeing him around the place continued to be an eery reminder of his grandfather, whom he so resembled.

 

And — I don't think I would have expected this, but it did happen — over time Brother Cyril was priested, and he became the abbot of that community in due course, after Abbot John. I don't yet know the circumstances that made them decide he should go to the university and become a priest, but I do know what happened that first drew their attention to his inner resolve and authority.

In fact, Cyril was their abbot when St Alcuins reached the dread year of 1348. At one point I intended to write the story of that — a book that would have been called The Plague Angel — but I didn't have the heart to write it in the end, because they were all lost, that whole community, as the Black Death swept the country. It was heartbreaking. They were just gone, doors banging in the wind, all the accoutrements of a life left behind. I realised you wouldn't want to read about that.

Brother Michael was still their infirmarian then, and John (an old man by that point) worked alongside him after he'd done his stint as abbot and handed over to Cyril. It — the plague — became the scenario Michael sometimes had nightmares about. But they were steadfast and brave, continuing quietly, doing their best and caring for one another, right through to the end, putting one foot in front of the other, persevering in love and in prayer, prioritising kindness.

That would have been an awful book though, wouldn't it? People go to St Alcuins for comfort and support, to lift their spirits and think about how to live faithfully. I don't think that chronicle would have helped! So I didn't write it down.

But meanwhile, from time to time I will still go there and talk to them and watch how they live in the timeline where I can find them, and I can tell you about that if you like.

The need to be sharp as dragons.

 I wonder where you get your health information?

Before 2020, if I had any health issues I would make an appointment to see our family doctor, and follow whatever advice or instructions they offered.

So much has changed since then. 

Our trusted and beloved doctor retired before the pandemic hit, and since that time there has been little consistency of care and getting an appointment is so difficult that I no longer even try.

Then as we came out of the pandemic we had a very welcome (to some of us) rollout of a preventive procedure we trusted and were eager to take. Many of us have been ill ever since.

For myself, the years since 2021 have been spent primarily managing illness that settled into chronic illness, searching for solutions from all the usual trusted and respected sources — our family doctor surgery, hospital consultants, doctors working in the private medical sector, and the testing facilities they recommended. All this left me a lot poorer and no more well. By the end of 2023, after numerous scans and blood tests, randomly prescribed antibiotics and anti-depressants, and endless visits to kind and courteous but clearly unengaged doctors, I realised I was on my own with this.

For 'on my own', read 'Youtube and Facebook'. 

I steadily gathered information and followed a number of false trails until eventually I found my way to a diagnosis and therapeutic pathway that is gradually restoring my health. It's long and slow (and will continue to be so), but every week is now better than the week before, and I have stretches of days when I am no longer frantic with pain. Every now and then comes a day when I have very low levels of pain, and can even go to sleep at night without a TENS machine attached to me. I think I'm getting better, and without information sourced on Youtube and Facebook, it is highly unlikely that would have happened.

But through the last year we have watched the rise of AI, which has indisputably changed the Internet — what you can find, what you can access, and what 'information' is offered.

In case you, like me, have had to rely heavily on self-sourced material gained primarily from Youtube and Facebook, I invite and strongly recommend you to watch this video from Max German (whose work I highly respect).

As Jesus warmed us, we need to be as sharp as dragons as well as being as simple as doves. Trust is a good thing in this world, but we have to be careful where we place our trust.

Max Ehrmann, in his poem Desiderata, observed:

... Exercise caution ... for the world is full of trickery...

... but let this not blind you to what virtue there is...

Absolutely.

If ever there was a time to pray daily for discernment, I think it is surely now. At the moment the information we need is still there for us, but we have to know who to trust and where to look.

Hotheaded

 We live in a nice little house that works very well but has one persisting problem. It is prone to damp and thus to mould. 

Of course this has been exacerbated by the modifications encouraged in the modern world. There's nothing like installing UPVC replacement windows and filling cavity walls with foam for encouraging damp. Both those things have happened to our house.

So in the spring, autumn and winter we have de-humidifiers, one upstairs and one downstairs, that we run extensively to draw out the impressive quantities of water accumulating in the internal atmosphere of our home.

Our pantry off the kitchen had actually fluffy mould like small forests, but we fixed that by a) washing down the walls with bleach, b) not filling it with stuff, and c) changing its window for one that actually opens — and opening it. 

Now we don't get mould.

This summer is part of a wave of hot summers, much like the hot summers we had in the 1970s and again in the mid-80s; and the summer Bernard died, 2004, was shimmering with heat like this year, as well. It has been so hot — by British standards, I mean; I'm only talking about 25^o-30^o Celcius, which is 77^o-86^o Fahrenheit.

So I began to think longingly about getting an air-conditioning unit, even though we do get a lovely through breeze in our home whenever any breeze is blowing.

I looked up on Amazon about small and affordable air-conditioners, and was not filled with enthusiasm by what I read. 

It turns out they are merely fans sitting above a reservoir of water into which you can include ice cubes. So they make a breeze that wafts the moisture from the tank of water around your home as the heat evaporates it.

Wait, what? We spent all autumn, winter and spring sucking the water out of our house and now, just as the sun is drying it out thoroughly, here's a way to put it all back? No thanks.

It made me realise, too that the Hollington stream flowing along behind the houses just beyond the foot of our garden is in effect a giant air-conditioner. Mature trees grow along its banks, the heat evaporates water from it, and the sea breezes we have here make the trees into fans distributing the resulting coolness. I was intrigued and impressed. All for free as well.

So I moved on to thinking, well, if we actually live adjacent to a massive natural air conditioner, and I don't want to make the house damp, so I'm not buying one from Amazon, what can I do to get cool?

Our Grace, who feels the heat terribly, always likes to put a cold can of drink against the back of her neck; it makes her feel better. So I thought about that.

Our brains must be kept at a stable temperature; the human body goes to some lengths to protect the stability of brain temperature. The rest of the body can cope with a much wider fluctuation.

This means that in the winter, you can often keep your whole body warm just by wearing a woolly hat. If you keep your brain warm in cold weather, your body doesn't need to keep sacrificing the heat it has generated to protect the stability of brain temperature. Bald men need beanies.

So I reasoned it should follow that if I wrap an icepack from the freezer in a dish towel, and place it on the base of my throat or the back of my neck, where all the blood vessels and spinal cord etc come near the surface en route to my brain, that would keep my brain temperature stable, which in turn would mean the rest of my body wouldn't have to keep ferrying heat away from my head and making the rest of me too hot.

It's also a lot cheaper than buying an air conditioner off Amazon and getting a mouldy house thrown in for free.

I tried this — with the ice pack — and it does seem to work.

Heatwave sympathy

 Sympathy to all fellow English folk for whom this heatwave feels like an actual illness — especially hyper-mobile friends; I imagine that (like me) you just have to remain as near horizontal as possible until it eases off. I managed to remain upright long enough to water the herbs and veggies and flowers in pots, then crashed out again. 

It's supposedly easing off toward the end of the week.

😓 😵‍💫 😬

Meanwhile, keep up the electrolytes, especially the sodium.

A song for these days. Prayers, please.

 Never give up.

Your prayers requested please for our homeless friend, who has moved out of our area and messaged today his intention to commit suicide. 

May God's host surround and protect him, may God watch over him, may Jesus walk with him.

Waiting and carrying

 Sometimes I dream of a time when I neither have to wait for anyone nor carry anything. It hasn't happened yet.

I remember the days when my children were small — before I learned to drive and had a car — when, through my living room window I would see my neighbour walking along the street with nothing in her hands. It was beyond my imagination that this could ever happen to me. Everywhere I went I had a toddler on my hip or a baby in my arm, or a stroller and a bag of nappies/snacks/wipes/toys. 

Sometimes, coming home up the hill from the bus stop, carrying four bulging bags of groceries, I didn't feel certain I could make it all the way to our house — I wasn't strong enough, the hill was too steep, the bags were too heavy. But I managed it because there was no one else, no one to help, so what can you do?

But those days have passed. I had learned to drive by the time my first husband left me in my early forties, and a result of his departure was that for the first time I got to choose my own car. No more cast-offs from my mother-in-law or navigating the country lanes in a massive Volvo estate (husband's preference).  

I got a zippy little Nissan Micra like the one that belonged to the Classics teacher in the school where I'd worked as a chaplain. I used to look at her car and wish I could have one the same. And once my husband left, I did. I loved that car. From then on I no longer had to carry everything with me and travel by bus. I could roll up to the edge-of-town supermarket and get as many bottles of milk and packs of toilet paper as I wanted, because I could just toss them in the back and drive home. How wonderful was that? 

So I don't have to carry much any more, but I still have to wait.

I remember being at York University when I was nineteen, Ken Roberts coming by (also a student then). I still see him, an elderly man nowadays, he lives in our town. He stopped and asked me what I was doing — because I was just standing there, in the foyer of Vanbrugh College. "Waiting for Roger" (who became my first husband and the father of my children), I said. 

Every time I saw Ken in college I was waiting for Roger. I spent many hours of my life waiting for Roger. Waiting for him to come home from school (he was a teacher) so I could give everyone supper and bath the kids. Waiting for him to come by with the car and pick me up from the roadside where I stood with bags of groceries. Waiting on windy street corners for a lift home from preaching somewhere in the Methodist circuit. Waiting maybe twenty five minutes, maybe three quarters of an hour...

I came new to this town — Hastings — when I was carrying my first child, waiting for her to be born. It's a seaside sprawl of roads and buildings, straggling along the coast. Unlike the compact medieval market town of York, Hastings resembles a trailing drift of seaweed. Everywhere is a long way from everywhere else. I didn't know anyone here except my in-laws then, but I made friends with other young mothers. On Thursdays I would catch the bus up onto the Ridge to see my new friend Carole. I would wait patiently for Thursday to come round, the day I got to see another adult, a friend. I remember waiting at the bus stop, Rosie as a toddler holding my hand on the narrow pavement, Grace as a baby strapped to my body in the sling. There was a bus only once an hour, and sometimes it didn't come at all — and we would have to trail home, Rosie screaming, Grace asleep.

That was forty-five years ago, but today I am still waiting. My (current, different) husband has gone out but someone has to be home for the tradesmen working on the roof. I can't get too involved in anything because they intermittently need attention. So I am waiting until later, until they have finished, until they go away. My husband has arranged for them to brief us on the work they have completed when he returns home at 12.30. He says he will try to be prompt (and he always is, and is a man who does his best in every respect).

In the afternoon he has another appointment.

I wonder when we will have lunch, and how it will materialise, if I have to be part of the builder's briefing but we have to eat before my husband goes out. I have no idea.

I have turned this over in my mind. I think if I assemble everything and start cooking, if I get the timing right then it can be not quite ready but not going cold or burning, and I can get back to it in time to serve up before my husband has to go out again. Meanwhile I will be ready with cups of coffee for the tradesmen from time to time in the course of the morning. I will not allow myself to concentrate on anything that engages my attention. I will remain on duty.

So I am waiting, to get the timing right, to weave through the inflexible concrete posts of masculinity that trust me to be ready when they need me but otherwise in the background not impeding their complex lives balancing important and pressing obligations. Cheerful. That is what men want women to be, primarily. Cheerful. 

Can you tell, I do not feel cheerful today?

I remember a day when we had builders in when our kids were little, and I was similarly occupied as a handmaiden. There to let them in to answer any questions as and when they arose, to make coffee and tea and serve snacks.

"Day off, is it?" the builder asked me kindly.

I wish.

Waiting. Carrying. Waiting and carrying. These two unacknowledged and unnoticed commitments are so very much part of the lives of women. 

But I also remember a day when instead I asked someone else to wait. It was when my second husband Bernard was in hospital, terminally ill. The doctors had cut a hole in his throat for a tube and offered to cut out his kidney — but no, he was coming home. The consultant came round and said he could leave. It was at the end of July. And I... I said he'd have to wait. My twins' twenty-first birthday was on the third of August. Before I plunged into juggling round-the-clock care of Bernard with pastoring four churches, I wanted to just pause and make sure they had the best birthday. Treats. A lovely afternoon tea. Gifts. Time dedicated to them, not pushed aside because someone else needed me and couldn't wait. My dear, clever, gentle twins, my third and fourth children, who — when they were little — waited so patiently for the chance to hold my hand, as we bundled along through the world; and whose eighteenth birthday was tossed aside in the chaos of losing our home and our income as their father left us. So, since Bernard was safe in the hospital, I told him for that last couple of days he had to wait, and then I would bring him home. But that's not what I normally do. I usually fit round what other people have on their agenda.

And you?

Day off, is it? What have you been doing this morning?

Try to be cheerful.

*        *        *

Later, it turned out that all of us were waiting.

Our builder (a solar panels engineer) was waiting for a part that should have come today but didn't, and for a colleague who couldn't come after all so the last bits of work to the roof had to wait. He looked very despondent about it — had to reorganise what he'd planned, because our job can't be finished until tomorrow. He just had to wait.

And my husband did his best to get home when he said, but he had to wait for the bus, which didn't come, so he had to get a different one and walk home the last bit down the hill from Asda.

But both those men were also patient and cheerful. They did their best.

Repetition in writing and public speaking

There's a particular feature of writing for public speaking, which differs from writing to be read — repetition.

If people are listening to you and don't have the text in front of them, repetition of important points is very helpful. It can be used to embed an idea or an image in people's minds, or underline a central thought. Repetition can serve to keep listeners with you, as a phrase creates a refrain they come to expect — it can even inject humour.

I can think of a couple of instances from the Bible where this is seen in action. Bear in mind that in biblical times a lot of ordinary people couldn't read, and significant portions of the Bible emerged from oral tradition before being written down.

Have a look at Daniel Chapter 3, and see how repetition is used there to set the scene. Look for the repetition of the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counsellors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces (in vv. 2, 3 and 27) and the repetition of the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music (in vv. 5, 7, 10 and 15).

Although we receive this written down, its power becomes recognisable when we imagine it being said — it's how the writer makes the story build. It brings out both the tension of the situation (what's Daniel going to do?) and the pretentiousness of the king. Because bear in mind the chapter opens by saying King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold — so right away we know that's not going to go well; we know about the gold calf and the disaster that was, we know the Almighty's opinion about the worship of graven images. 

Another phase that repeats in this chapter is Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (in vv. 12, 13, 14, 16, 19, 20, 22, 23, 26, 28, 29 and 30), the three men appointed at Daniel's request to oversee the province of Babylon (part of modern-day Iraq). See Daniel 1.7 and 2.49. Twelve repetitions in Chapter 3 of their names, in the same order, constituting the same phrase — so we're not going to forget them, are we?

The whole thing has the same effect as the song about the Harem of the Court of King Caractacus — it involves the audience, it builds, it injects humour, it embeds the story in the memory, and in the case of the Daniel story it effects a contrast between the empty pretensions of worldly power and the courage of those few who hold the line, remaining faithful to the precepts of the Lord in their time and place.

Rhetorical repetition of this kind is written imagining yourself at the podium or seated in the middle of a group of listeners, and is employed to hold their attention.

But when you are writing for lone readers holding a book in their hands, the technique doesn't transfer. 

Some writers — perhaps used to public speaking, out of which their book has emerged — transfer the technique, but it doesn't work.

Here's a snippet of Amazon copy for the book How To Do Things You Hate by Peter Hollins: 

Doing things you hate is a skill. And it's a skill that is always in high demand.

The repetition doesn't have the punch public speaking would give it, mainly because even though there's a full stop, you can't recreate on the written page the dramatic pause needed to create the imagined emphasis. That belongs to public speaking, not to written text. It would do just as well — or better — to say: 

Doing things you hate is a skill that is always in high demand.

That said, repetition doesn't always work in public speaking — it depends how it's done. Simple repetition is merely tedious.

Here's a short excerpt from a YouTube video about welfare benefits:

These are not minor conditions. They are conditions that change lives. 

 And another from a YouTube video about crime:

...on the face of it that kind of behaviour is the kind of behaviour that the police really ought to be arresting people for... 

Both would be improved by alleviating the repetition, because it's not skilfully done. So the content could be rendered:

These are not minor conditions: they are life-changing.

and

...on the face of it that is the kind of behaviour the police really ought to be arresting people for... 

In my own writing I often need to weed out extraneous repetition. It comes from writing as I'm thinking — so, in effect, thinking aloud — rather than doing the thinking beforehand and then crafting the text when I know what I want to say.

So I might write, for example:

The sermon that really makes a difference is the sermon that creates a bridge between the biblical text and lived experience.

I'd need to cut that down to:

The sermon that really makes a difference will create a bridge between the biblical text and lived experience.

Or I might write:

Jane Austen highlights how women observe the behaviour of others and how they create practical solutions to the problems of daily living.

It would be better trimmed to:

Jane Austen highlights how women observe the behaviour of others and create practical solutions to the problems of daily living.

There are, of course, effective forms of repetition in writing intended for solitary reading rather than public speaking. As a basic generalisation, I'd say it works in the story, but not in the texture of the prose.

So, for instance, in my later Hawk & Dove stories, once Brother Conradus becomes part of the community, there's a repeated inbuilt small joke, where Conradus offers sage advice about life and William asks, "Did your mother tell you that?" Every time Conradus is surprised and says that yes she did and asks how William knew.

For it to be amusing (which I hope it is), I am relying on the reader's familiarity with the characters in question and their respective personalities and spotting it as a recurring interaction. It also rewards the reader's engagement with the story, and sense of belonging in this place and connection with these people — the feeling of really knowing them. But of course, if the reader simply doesn't notice then not a lot is lost. 

There's another kind of repetition that all writers almost inevitably fall into — unintentionally using one word twice within a short space of time. for instance, just at the moment I'm reading through someone else's text (I'll change the name of the character to Smith for anonymity). It says:

... and had a soft spot for Mrs Smith, whose pugnacity hid a generous heart. At that moment the vicar spotted his recently-acquired curate…

Note the repetition of 'spot' in that excerpt. As I say, all writers fall into this trap, which makes a second pair of eyes on the text essential.

And finally there's what I call 'flocks of thats' — a repetition to be weeded out from any text.

Consider this (glorious) prayer by Thomas Merton. I see it's under copyright so I can't reproduce it here.

Notice that within seven lines of it he uses the word 'that' nine times. It's too many. I think he could cut it down to three — 'fact that' and 'that desire' (x 2).

Thought for the day

Each has his own tree of ancestors, 

but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal. 

                                                      ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Absolutely.

But if you're in the mood for a chewier version of this Thought, I loved what this young Jewish man said at his graduation from Harvard. I don't understand that title the YouTuber has given it, because if Ilhan Omar came into it anywhere I missed it — but that's YouTube for you, I guess.

Well-worn phrases

There are shoes you wear every day that become comfortable through familiarity, so much so that you never take them off, you no longer think about them, they're just what you walk through the world in. 

Donovan wrote a song about this back in the 1960s.

But eventually they start to annoy you as the soles crack and holes appear. The day comes to throw them out. And so it is with language — the vocabulary, the phraseology that belongs to the present moment. Eventually it's had its day. Time to move on.

At the present time there are phrases worn like garments, vocabulary fashion crazes adopted for effect.

Tedious beyond belief. Time to throw them out.

Top of the list for me at the moment is that phrase beloved of every politician —

Let me be absolutely clear.

"Let me be absolutely clear" Ha. 🤣  Clear, all right. We can see straight through you. It is so very transparent that we can see you are lying and manipulating us.

It is worn like a lanyard by everyone you should not trust, and just now it seems no political pronouncement is complete without it.

Next on my list — always sets my teeth on edge — is the sarcastic resort of every TV contestant (on Bake-Off, the Sewing Bee, anything like that) —

No pressure!

I am so weary of it that it passes through my head like a convulsion, every single time it resurfaces. Happily, it is slowly beginning to fade, as everyone else gets tired of it too.

After that, I am well weary of hearing (in that curiously robotic voice redolent with the self-righteousness that we know so well) the phrase —

Far-right thugs.

Oh, yes, "Far-right thugs." We know who they are, don't we? Ordinary people. Probably you. Anyone who has the temerity to mind when a lad is stabbed to death or a little girl brutally violated. 

Hot on its heels there usually follows, like the trailing scarves of Isadora Duncan (Did you know that's how she died? One strangled her) another fashion accessory — "Full force of the law". Worn to remind you that you are not safe, that someone who is not you has power over you, that you'd better be quiet, better comply, better be afraid, because someone in a suit or a uniform will ruin your life if you don't kow-tow.

Ah, these phrases; they take me back to the good old days when no Evangelical prayer time was complete without the curious phrase —

Just really

— as in "We just really want to praise you, Lord."

Type it into the YouTube search box.

Look:

Somewhere in heaven an angel murmurs "Seriously?"

"Just really" wasn't honesty, it was a badge, a tribal cry, the signal of a particular religious in-crowd.

Sometimes, of course, you may come across a well-worn phrase that is the sole property of a particular person, because no one else wants it. My prayer partner Margery treasured one such example, an elderly friend from her own younger days, who was fond of saying —

Nobody wants to see my old face.

And oddly enough, Margery said, she was right — they did not.

Margery herself had two well-worn axioms, but they came in verse form. They were still at the comfortable stage and hadn't yet begun to irritate. They were abidingly useful, and return to my mind from time to time.

The first was —

Here lies the body of Jonathan Grey

Who died defending his right of way.

He was right — dead right — as he strode along;

Just as dead as if he'd been wrong.

And the second, a caution from Ogden Nash for those of us who wear trousers; and it is sadly true —

Sure, deck your lower limbs in pants;

Yours are the limbs, my sweeting.

You look divine as you advance —

Have you seen yourself retreating?

(Reading it requires you to adopt an American accent, obviously, to make it rhyme properly and sound as it should).

He was right of course, no doubt about it. But there's a new phrase on the block, adopted and utilised on every possible occasion by the British politician Rupert Lowe. I rather like it, and it applies well to the trouser scenario —

I don't care.